One of the core tenets of “Star Trek” is an undercurrent of pacifism. The ships we see in any given “Star Trek” series are usually research vessels devoted to missions of exploration and study. Just as often, they do repair work on distant worlds, help planets in severe environmental trouble, or taxi diplomats to important peace talks. And while the U.S.S. Enterprise is equipped with weapons like phasers and photon torpedoes, they are only very rarely assigned a mission of combat. More often, the crew of the Enterprise will threaten a potential battlefield foe while still doing everything they can to avoid war.
The core tenets of pacifism, however, are typically ignored in many of the “Star Trek” feature films. Because of their medium, the “Star Trek” movies typically demand larger-scale stories and easily consumed conflicts that can be satisfactorily wrapped in about 100 to 120 minutes. This demand often dictates action-driven plots wherein “heroes” face off against “villains” and the drama is solved with fights and explosions. It’s a less interesting approach to “Star Trek,” but the franchise’s more traditionally long-form ethical dramas, the wisdom goes, don’t make for compelling cinema.
The “action movie” approach was all over the third season of “Star Trek: Picard,” a series that ends with the U.S.S. Enterprise-D being flown into a Borg stronghold, weapons blazing. That season saw the last remaining Borgs in the galaxy using an insidious, transporter-based brain infection to take over the Federation. The only way they could be stopped, viewers are told, is to blow them all up in an exciting action scene. The only thing missing from the Enterprise’s frontal assault is “Sabotage” on the soundtrack.
The finale is plenty slick and exciting … but it also stands in direct contrast to the second season of “Picard,” where wiping out the remaining Borg in the galaxy was seen as a genocidal tragedy.
Two seasons of Star Trek: Picard seem to have opposing viewpoints on Borg genocide
At the beginning of the second season of “Picard,” Picard (Patrick Stewart) is magicked into an alternate dimension by the trickster god Q (John de Lancie). In this parallel universe, Earth has become a galaxy-wide genocidal military power that devotes all its resources to wiping out other species in the galaxy. Picard learns that his “evil” counterpart is a bloodthirsty warmonger who keeps the skulls of his enemies in his den. Picard is, of course, disgusted by this universe.
Indeed, Earth is preparing to celebrate the public, televised execution of the final Borg in existence: an insidious Borg Queen played by Annie Wersching. Picard and his “good universe” compatriots see the public execution as one of Earth’s greatest moral failings and even go so far as to rescue the Borg Queen from the chopping block. They then travel back in time to the year 2024 to find out how Earth became genocidal in the first place. Genocide is not to be tolerated, even with one’s worst enemies.
Ultimately, the second season of “Picard” ends with the Borg Queen fusing with Dr. Jurati (Alison Pill) and becoming a kinder, gentler, more cooperative enclave of cyborgs. No one, that season declares, is incapable of redemption. Even the Borg can be saved.
This attitude, however, makes the action-packed finale of the third season of “Picard” seem kind of bleak. In season 2, it’s of vital importance the Borg be saved, rescued from execution, and allowed to develop. In season 3, however, the Borg are seen as irredeemable villains who need to be executed to restore moral order. Just because Data (Brent Spiner) commits the execution in a really cool way using the Enterprise-D doesn’t mean the Borg are any less the victims of genocide at Earth’s hands.
The Borg have proven themselves worthy of redemption many times
As I previously wrote for /Film, the Borg became the victims of overexposure. For years, they seemed cold, soulless, and unable to be stopped, and Trekkies fell in love with them as an existential threat to the Federation. Sadly, through overuse, the Borg became less and less threatening over time. In the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode “I, Borg” (May 10, 1992), it was revealed that single Borg drones could be severed from their collective and re-grow their individuality. In the two-parter “Descent” (June 21 and September 20, 1993), many Borgs were seen after such a process. And, of course, on “Star Trek: Voyager,” one of the main characters was a rescued Borg, and the show became very much about Seven of Nine’s (Jeri Ryan’s) rediscovery of humanity. Borgs were no longer soulless cyber-zombies but people who needed rescue from their mind-wiping mechanical implants.
Even “Picard” deals with the rescue of Borg drones. One of the first season’s major settings is a mass de-assimilation site devoted to extracting Borgs from the collective. The Borg weren’t scary villains anymore, and it seemed that Starfleet had long ago figured out how to deal with them.
That is, until, the third season of “Picard,” where they were transformed back into villains again. The Borg were about to become extinct anyway, having used up their own resources in their unrestrained assimilation quests, and they needed one last-ditch effort of mass villainy to survive. Rather than extend a hand to the dying Borgs, however, and offer them a means of peaceful survival, the Enterprise-D chooses instead to open fire.
Is the finale exciting? In an action movie way, it is. Does it reveal a grievous ethical contradiction? Yeah. It does that too.
