#Star Trek best of both worlds

[spittyfishy]

The whole time I was watching the ‘Best of Both Worlds’ two parter I thought Picard’s Borg name was ‘Le Cuitous’ and I found it really funny the Borg let him stay French, and it was only when I had to look up drawing references for this did I find out it was in fact ‘Locutus’ and decidedly not French

[starfleetshrimps]

star wars fans who haven't watched the clone wars (the show) are missing out on a truly astronomical amount of pain and suffering and they should remedy this immediately right now

[starberry-cupcake]

Jim Kirk 🤝 Chris Pike "I don't know how to read Star Fleet regulations when it comes to my First Officer"

Star Trek SNW S1E3 Ghosts of Illyria / / Star Trek TOS S2E1 Amok Time

[fixing-bad-posts]

wikipedia: the best of both worlds (star trek: the next generation) 

[borbtrek]

tos spirk is classic friends to lovers and aos is classic enemies to lovers

[cryptocollectibles]

Star Trek The Next Generation #50 (September 1993) by DC Comics

Written by Michael Jan Friedman, drawn by Peter Krause, Pablo Marcos, and Romeo Tanghal.

[ansonmountdaily]

Strange New Worlds 2x02 "Ad Astra Per Aspera" behind the scenes - The Pike/Una hug

"We've talked a lot about our relationship off-screen. We feel that we've known each other a long time. We think we were actually in the same class at Starfleet Academy together and I'm just the one that happened to get the commission, but I couldn't captain without her. She knows me better than probably anybody, I think." - Anson Mount, Filmtopp interview, July 6 2023

"It just speaks volumes to the level of trust they have with each other, the level of admiration they share for one another, the fact that he was able to provide asylum for her, the level of guilt she feels by putting him at risk that way, but, ultimately, old friends, you know? We really enjoy those scenes [when we're on set together]. I feel like we offer each other real groundedness whenever it's just a two-hander, when it's just the two of us. I mean, in all of our scenes together, but when it's just the two of us, it feels very grounded. He's a delight to work with." - Rebecca Romijn, The Ready Room interview, June 22 2023 (clip of the hug is at 17:43)

[risingchaos]

Being a member of both the Tumblr fan communities and the Reddit fan communities gives me a wild amount of whiplash.

Over here I find silly stuff on my feed including look at how gay these two are, fun little fanarts, heartbreaking little fanarts, look at my deep dive filled with love, damn look at this angsty interaction, and what the fuck was that thing they did? Good thing canon is a plaything at my disposal.

Over on Reddit I get a bunch of very invested people who know so very much about things and can provide the most detailed explanation you’ve ever seen with nineteen different cited sources casually in a comment but with a shocking amount of homophobia and/or racism and/or sexism and/or pick your bigotry sprinkled in.

[the-time-lord-oracle]

The epic cliff-hanger from Best of Both Worlds ptI

"I am Locutus of Borg. Your life, as it has been, is over. From this time forward, you will service... US."

"Mr Worf... fire."

[spocks-husband]

See you around, Ahab.

Little teaser drawing for a fanfic I'm working on rn... I think about Locutus a lot if you can't tell. Like. A lot. It's a problem. I'm obsessed with this story line and it haunts me on a daily basis. He went through so much dude I just wanna give him a hug 😭

[spockvarietyhour]

Her face screams: Yeah, these Borg aren't so tough!

[sshbpodcast]

To Be Continued: Multi-parters in Star Trek (Part 1)

By Ames

Back in the day when Star Trek series were less serial, stretching an episode out to two weeks was a sneaky sneaky way to stretch a dollar, applying two weeks’ worth of budget to one story. Relatedly/unrelatedly, this was also the heyday of the season finale cliffhanger, in which a show would leave their audience in suspense for a few months in order to ensure they’ll return next season to see how their heroes get out of their latest scrape. Trek of the streaming era does this less since modern series are arguably all one continuous plot, so that got your hosts here at A Star to Steer Her By thinking: What makes for a good two-parter?

Over the years, we’ve very rarely been satisfied with multi-parters. Our constant refrain has been: “This should have been one episode.” So let’s look back at our first batch of two-parters from The Original Series and The Next Generation to see how the pattern emerged. Check ‘em out below and listen to our chatter on this week’s podcast episode (skip to 55:25) to see which ones actually had enough material for a sequel and which ones could have been trimmed to a 44-minute slot. And spoiler: it’s gonna be a cliffhanger!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

TOS: “The Menagerie”

The only two-parter we see in the ultra-episodic original series was really just a way to keep up with deadlines and to work around budget limitations, already thin mere months into the franchise’s existence. The unused pilot, “The Cage,” (which we talked about the other week in our pilots post!) already existed. The team had a full week’s worth of material right there to release at no extra cost! It was just a matter of writing a frame story around it to feature the current cast, and presto! It’s basically a clipshow that audiences wouldn’t realize is a clipshow!

And while the two-parter itself occasionally feels a little stretched (watching people watching Star Trek isn’t exactly riveting), we do have to admit that adding the Pike character and his fateful story into the canon would benefit us fifty years down the line. Is watching both parts of “The Menagerie” any better than watching “The Cage” on its own? Well, that may be a matter of taste and how tired you get of courtroom hearings.

TNG: “The Best of Both Worlds”

The next generation of shows would use the two-parter more commonly and to a new effect. TNG’s first foray into season finale cliffhangers is also one of its best uses of the mechanism. Ending season three with “The Best of Both Worlds, Part I”’s hair-raising final moments teases the audience so expertly that they are guaranteed to be champing at the bit after the summer hiatus to see what Locutus’s deal is, if Shelby will stay on the crew, how Riker will handle being in charge, and what the effects of firing on the assimilated captain will be.

By the time season four starts up, we also see another trend with two-parters: one part is usually far better than the other, and it’s frequently the first part. Part II is definitely laggier, and even the writers admit that they hadn’t planned how they were going to reconcile the actions of Part I until they’d already shot themselves in the face, quite literally. So while Part I was groundbreaking television, especially in the 90s, TNG still needed to learn to pace themselves.

TNG: “Redemption”

Lightning doesn’t strike twice, and the next season’s big twist in its finale is significantly less interesting than firing on a Borgified Picard. Instead, “Redemption” introduces us to another incarnation of Denise Crosby, this time as Sela. It’s more perplexing than mind-blowing, though, and the cheesy “Humans have a way of showing up when you least expect them” line doesn’t help matters.

This two-parter is on the more convoluted side, but we can forgive most of the rest of it because it’s the Klingons and Romulans at their best. From the Duras Sisters and Toral, to the Klingon Civil War, to the Romulans’ involvement, to the ship blockade, to whatever on earth Sela was supposed to be, these scripts feel as dense as one of the novels. Some may argue that there’s too much going on, but at least it doesn’t lag.

TNG: “Unification”

Oh good, Sela’s back in our next two-parter! “Unification” is plopped a couple weeks later in the middle of season 5, mostly as a way to cross-promote with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and to get Nimoy into TNG for the fans to cream themselves over. The Romulans are up to yet more shenanigans, as is their wont, and ambassador Spock is in the mix! What’s not to love?

Well, a lot, it turns out. As far as catering to fans goes, your SSHB hosts are frequently too skeptical to take the bait. And not being blinded by all the familiar guest stars, we were able to see all the flaws. The pacing of this one struggles more than ever. Even more than “Redemption,” there’s just too much going on, the pudding is thoroughly overegged, all the sideplots on on the Enterprise feel superfluous, and Sela is far too distracting as a concept. Like most Romulan plans, everything is just overwrought. Even if that does mean it has plenty to do over two episodes, we question if it’s worth it.

TNG: “Time’s Arrow”

What definitely isn’t worth it is the frustratingly repetitive and obnoxious “Time’s Arrow,” which is on so many of our bad lists, I get to pick and choose which links to cross promote! It’s another cliffhanger episode that bridges the gap between seasons, but since none of us could even remember how Part I ended, that pretty much shows you what kind of job it did at leaving an impact. (I looked it up and apparently the answer was Picard and crew following the Devidians through the temporal door, I guess? Yawn.)

While I can (and often do!) blame most of these episodes’ faults on the ear-splitting portrayal of Mark Twain, there’s not much here that’s actually compelling overall. Any elements that could be compelling (Data dealing with his own mortality, aliens who live out of phase and feast on human neural energy, etc.) are emphatically upstaged by the goofy hijinks in the past! It’s a pair of episodes that are tonally all over the place and agony to watch. Not only should it have not been a two-parter, it shouldn’t have even been a one-parter.

TNG: “Chain of Command”

In a rare instance of an episode for which the second part is significantly better than the first part, see “Chain of Command, Part II.” The first installment of this mid-season-6 two-parter is mostly setting up what will be a phenomenal acting showcase in the second, which could frankly just stand on its own with some very simple tweaks. The Cardassian torture chamber is where the action is. The rest can’t stand up to David Warner and Patrick Stewart.

And sure, you’d want to keep Jellico’s “Get It Done” attitude, Riker’s little temper tantrum, and getting Troi in a proper uniform for a change, so maybe cramming it all into one episode would feel bloated, but maybe it’d be worth it? Or maybe we could retain the two-parter and give Patrick Stewart the proper runway to get to his “There Are Four Lights” moment if we swapped Ro in for Crusher, who just seems out of place inexplicably spelunking around for a full episode. I posit Ro could’ve balanced a mediocre Part I with the stellar Part II.

TNG: “Birthright”

We’d take all the part ones of “Chain of Command” we could handle over “Birthright” though. Over the course of an episode and a half, Worf finds a colony of Klingons under the rule of Romulans while looking for Mogh (which turns out to be a red herring). And for the other half episode, we get some surrealist Data stuff plus a random Bashir cameo.

The writers seemed to know there wouldn’t be enough of the Worf plot to stretch over two episodes, so they stapled on this Data dreaming plot that ends by the time Part I is over. Which just feels weird because then Part II is nothing BUT Worf plot… and it’s just not that compelling. Part I ends with Worf just finding the camp, which makes everything up to that point feel like exposition. And thus skippable. I’d say it should have been condensed down to one episode and then you could move the Data plot to some other episode, but frankly they could have both been skipped entirely.

TNG: “Descent”

While I wouldn’t put “Descent” among my favorite TNG episodes or anything, it might actually be a decent example of a two-parter. There may be a little stretching of Part I to get to the cliffhanger, but overall it keeps the pace moving along. I can’t think of a time during either episode when I was feeling bored or thinking more things ought to be happening. Sure, the season 6 cliffhanger revealing that Lore has been behind the whole scheme is kind of a corny twist to keep fans abuzz over the season break, but it does its job.

It’s also a two-parter that keeps most of the characters busy, which is a rarity! Crusher flies into a sun. Geordi gets tortured by Lore. Troi tries (and fails) to help Data with his emotions. Everything is working toward the same goal instead of tacking on more and more disparate things. It’s not perfect, as the Borg would prefer, but it might be the most worthy of being a two-parter so far. Dang, that’s something I never thought I’d say.

TNG: “Gambit”

The final two-parter of TNG we get until the finale (which we talked about last week!) comes in the middle of season 7, and boy does it fall flat. Picard feels out of character, like he’s involved in this whole pirate shenanigan just for the sake of plot. Riker’s on top of things, but that’s pretty typical. But everyone else feels like they’re just spinning their wheels while the other plot unfolds.

Unlike in “Descent” where I felt like the other characters’ plots felt organic and in service of the whole concept, this one just feels like everyone’s doing busywork so they could justify putting them on the callsheets. In terms of our pirate friends, they keep momentum for the full two parts, revealing things as they go to open up new possibilities. So yeah, “Gambit” definitely fills its airtime. It’s just not that interesting.

—

Our story continues next week with more multi-parters, so make sure you’re following this space. Go to Black Alert with us over on the podcast as we catch up on episodes of Discovery on SoundCloud or wherever you like to listen, and compare cliffhanger theories with us over on Facebook. To be continued…

[iswateredible]

that episode.

[filmjunky-99]

s t a r t r e k t h e n e x t g e n e r a t i o n created by gene roddenberry Captain Jean Luc Picard as Locutus of Borg [the best of both worlds, part ii, s4ep1]

'I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance is futile. Your life as it has been is over. From this time forward, you will service us.' - locutus

[quasi-normalcy]

But I actually think that, dramatically, it's way more effective that they don't show the Battle of Wolf 359 in "Best of Both Worlds," and just find that the fleet has already been turned into a debris field before the Enterprise gets there. Especially considering that it's really the first major battle that they ever had on Star Trek, and the whole point is that the Federation loses it badly.

[cata613]

You get

Chillin out, take it slow

Then you rock out the show