TNG – Descent Part I

Plot – Borg with names, laser weapons and fighting hand to hand combat feels instantly wrong and uncomfortably like this species are being taken in the wrong direction. Whilst I applaud Ron Moore’s attempt to do something completely different with the species, in doing so he has forgotten everything that made them so effective in the first place. It reminds me of Steven Moffat’s efforts with the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who. Every time he brings them back he tries to innovate them in some way and every time we see them again they become less scary and less effective than they once were. The Borg of Q Who? were terrifying, unknowable and relentless. They were truly a force to be reckoned with. Now they are just like people with standard weapons, individual personalities and a less than impressive fascistic leader. None of this is a shift in their favour.

The trouble with TNG at this point is that it running on empty a little bit. Voyager was having exactly the same problem at the end of its sixth season but at least it had some kind of continuing narrative with the Borg that was trying to weave into the fabric of the show. TNG has had six years now where the show has bounced from one story to the next and built up quite a picture of the Alpha Quadrant. The problem is it hasn’t tried to do anything particularly innovative narrative wise with those building blocks. So here we about to head into the last season of the show there is a suggestion that Lore is attempting to create a new race of Borg to bring down the Federation. It’s not exactly compellingly presented but it is a bold idea (albeit total fanwank) and if the show had grabbed hold of that as the premise of the final year and had an ongoing narrative in place dealing with this new threat we might have had a show with real focus. Instead it is another idea that is tossed up in the air and completely dismissed at the beginning of season seven. In comparison, DS9 is firing on all cylinders at the end of season six (the invasion of Cardassia, the death of Jadzia, the destruction of the wormhole) with an episode that has devastating consequences for the final year. I don’t understand why this show (which had the capacity) wasn’t making bolder creative decisions like that. The one positive here is Picard’s decisions regarding Hugh being questioned and criticised. It’s about time somebody took him to task about that.

A fleet of fifteen Starships to take on the Borg. Fifteen? I’m glad those shipyards are at full capacity before the Dominion War.

Character – The idea of Data experiencing negative emotions is a really interesting one, but something that would become a bit of a crux (and not a positive one) in the movies. However, at this point it is a fascinating exercise, especially when the consequence of his anger is to murder and attack. He’s technically one of the strongest lifeforms in Starfleet and so the thought that he might enjoy inflicting harm on people is quite a tense one. The suggestion that Data has been looking at extreme pornography to try and turn himself on is amusing, although I am pleased that we never got to watch those exploratory scenes. Brent Spiner really leaps on the opportunity to show real emotion after repressing them for the past six years. He’s typically excellent.

Picard’s anger about the Borg remains one of the best things about TNG, and shows that Roddenberry’s approach to characters in the future is a flawed one because he did not want ‘perfect’ humans to experience negative emotions like anger or hatred. And yet this is the best of Patrick Stewart’s performance as Picard; that fear of assimilation, his shame at committing murder and his newfound anger towards a species that used him as an instrument of war. It only comes up in one scene here (it is far more pronounced in I, Borg) but it is just as riveting.

Performance – Brent Spiner is superb in this. He has been given the chance to emote before on the show but never the chance to show such a range of powerful emotions. He proves to be quite sinister when that childlike façade drops and he gets to play angry. This is his chance to cut loose and play human in a way that he never has done before. Season seven would see these opportunities come up time and again – and with a frequent misunderstanding of how the character works. Masks is an especially egregious example, and the movies would take it to an absolute extreme.

Great Dialogue – ‘Not the apple story again’ moans Stephen Hawking as he is forced to listen to Newton bang on about his achievements in science in a very witty opening that sees Data playing poker with some of the greatest scientific minds that the human race has ever conjured up. It does go to show just how frivolous the show has become at this point because there is little plot or character point to this frippery but that doesn’t really matter when the resulting scene is as enjoyable as this. ‘The Uncertainty Principle will not help you now, Stephen’ chides Einstein as he is about to clean Hawking out.

Production – When the Away Team beam down to the output and discover the crew manning the outpost dead I was surprised by the lack of tension, atmosphere and, well, blood that was on display. Alexander Singer (whose praises I sang recently for his direction of The Adversary) directs this with a casual abandon that surprises me. We’ve seen scenes like this play out countless times over TNG’s last six seasons and there have been times when it has been terrifying (think exploring the Borg Cube). Even the shock appearance of the Borg is wasted and lacks punch. It’s like opening a cupboard and finding a child standing there playing a game. The aesthetic of the entire episode is so spotless and bloodless. TNG needed to get a lot dirtier.

Worst moment – The cliffhanger. Once upon a time TNG dared to suggest that it would kill off the Captain at the hands of the First Officer and send a mighty fleet of Borg ships to sector 001 and invade the Earth. It was insidious and dramatic and unforgettable. Now, the show is pushing camp to a new level by having Brent Spiner play the super villain and command his own army of dreary robots. ‘The Sons of Soong have come together…and together we will destroy the Federation.’ He’s even made Data sound like a dreary super villain.

A reason to watch this episode again – You’ve got two plots in play in Descent and one is infinitely more interesting and less embarrassing than the other. Data’s newfound anger manages to create some tension and uncomfortable moments that befit a season finale and capitalises on the chemistry between the crew that is the best of this show. The return of Lore and his new collection of individual Borg drones is standard science fiction drivel of the sort that TNG would normally avoid (or at least portray to such a pretentious level that it would elevate the b movie ideas to something resembling drama) and it leaves the season on a particularly sour note that this is how we are heading into the final season. I have said before that TNG hit its zenith with the climax of season three and every subsequent finale is worse that the last after that. This is the one of the weakest of all because it does have some potential but the writer and director seem to squander any attempt to create tension, excitement or drama and instead this leaps from one functional plot point to another until the episode throws in a truly schlocky cliffhanger at the last minute. Descent is not TNG’s finest hour and it has taken the one truly terrifying element of this show (the Borg) and reduced them to a bit of a joke. There’s no momentum or pace to any of this, no real drama. It feels like TNG has lost its pulse.

** out of *****