It’s been said that Star Trek: The Next Generation is a series that didn’t really come into its own and start firing on all cylinders until its third season.
I think that’s a half-true assessment – generally speaking, fans tend to view the third year as the time that the series emerged from the shadow of the original series; when we stopped comparing Kirk to Picard and simply embraced the TNG crew on its own merits.
Star Trek: The Next Generation turned the corner in its third-season finale, ‘The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1,’ which is almost universally regarded as one of the greatest summer cliffhangers of all time.
In conjunction with the upcoming release of Star Trek Into Darkness as well as the release of TNG’s third season on Blu-ray, Paramount and CBS have also released Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Best of Both Worlds (with parts one and two edited together as a single presentation) on Blu-ray.
The episode opens with the Enterprise investigating the disappearance of a colony on the edge of Federation space. Once they beam down, they learn that the Borg, a powerful race of cyborgs that operate with a single mind and purpose, have destroyed the colony.
With the aid of Starfleet’s Borg expert, Commander Shelby (played by Elizabeth Dennehy), they begin to prepare themselves for an inevitable confrontation that will spell either the survival or destruction and subjugation of humanity.
In the midst of the battle is Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes), the Enterprise’s first officer, being forced to decide whether he will remain at the side of Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) or if he will accept a command of his own. Shelby serves as a foil to Riker – she’s impatient, a bold risk-taker, and seems poised to take Riker’s job whether he decides to leave the Enterprise or not.
This was one of the few episodes that allowed conflict to erupt on the ship and the first to have Starfleet characters at each other’s throats over something that we as an audience can relate, and it was executed brilliantly.
The episode is, of course, most famous for the cliffhanger ending of part one, where we see that the Borg have assimilated Captain Picard and intend to use him as the ultimate weapon against Earth. In the first installment’s final moments, Riker orders the Enterprise to destroy the Borg ship and his own captain.
For all intents and purposes, I continue to consider this episode to be superior to any other presentation from The Next Generation, the movies included. It had drama, it had action, and the characters (particularly Picard and Riker) grew a great deal as a result.
The acting from Stewart, Frakes, and Dennehy is magnificent – they all understood their role in the story and they played it beautifully. Of particular note is Dennehy’s arc. She begins the story as someone who, as an audience accustomed to and fond of the regular characters, is difficult to like. Star Trek fans have always been (and continue to be) weary of anything that looks like it might upset the status quo, and Dennehy inflects Shelby with the desire to do just that.
In the second part, she ingratiates herself to the crew and, by extension, us. It’s a shame that Dennehy was never able to reprise the role in any future Trek installments.
Paramount has cleaned up the visual effects and they look positively cinematic in high definition. There have been some digital alterations to some shots, particularly the final explosion of the Borg cube as well as some touch-ups to the already spooky and atmospheric look of the Borg ship’s interior.
The pacing is terrific, a credit to director Cliff Bole, and the script by the late Michael Piller remains the gold standard for which every Star Trek writer reached up until the franchise’s departure from television with the cancellation of Enterprise in 2005.
I will say that the editing together of the two pieces into a single film does diminish the effect of what was originally a cliffhanger ending. Even though we know what’s coming, it would still be fun to feel that tension with Riker’s iconic final line (“Mr. Worf … FIRE.”) and then having to scramble to hit the “next” button on the remote to get to the next episode.
As it is, the tension is all but erased, and yet the presentation still functions well as a single work without losing much emotional impact. While the editing works to the detriment of the cliffhanger’s original intention, it makes the second part (historically considered to be the weaker of the two) much more interesting, and it makes Stewart’s performance as the brainwashed Picard far more powerful and chilling.
High-Def Presentation
Paramount brings Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Best of Both Worlds to Blu-ray with a gorgeous 1080p MPEG-4 AVC encoding. It retains the original 1.33:1 aspect ratio, but I can live with the black bars on either side of the screen – the less tampering the better in my opinion. The color saturation, as it has been with other TNG Blu-ray adaptations, is wonderful as we’re finally able to see the deep reds and soft golds of the Starfleet uniforms, and the black levels finally help to define the parameters and look of the Borg interiors the way they were always intended.
There are two shots that are not remastered and have simply been up-converted from standard definition. It’s jarring and distracting for a moment but not enough to lessen the enjoyment of the viewing experience.
The sound treatment, a DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 mix, is also up to the task, preserving the sound design and editing that earned the first part of the episode an Emmy award back in the day. Explosions are big, phaser and torpedo hits are dramatic and powerful, and yet the dialogue never suffers. Just an amazing transfer, even if it does tend to favor the center speaker a bit much (I know it’s a TV episode, but it’s one of the biggest TV episodes ever produced – up the surround factor, Paramount!).
Beyond the Feature
Given that Paramount and CBS undoubtedly wanted to ensure that they made some money off of the full Season Three and upcoming Season Four releases, we’re treated to a small selection of bonus features, but given that this is a single episode that’s both understandable and forgivable.
There’s an audio commentary featuring Bole, Dennehy, along with two of the series’ behind-the-scenes contributors, Michael and Denise Okuda, that examines the popularity of the episode, the technical challenges and achievements of Bole and crew, and Dennehy’s “fish out of water” experience in bringing the character of Commander Shelby to life.
There is also the 29-minute documentary Regeneration: Engaging the Borg that tackles many of the same themes and topics of discussion raised in the commentary – the only difference being that we get a wider array of contributors as the doc features snippets of sit-down interviews with Stewart, Frakes, Bole, and Dennehy as well as series regulars Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden, and Marina Sirtis.
The set also includes a pair of TV promotional spots (each around 35 seconds long), presented in standard definition, as well as an UltraViolet download of the episode.
I’m in the minority of Trek fans who think that TNG didn’t truly hit its stride until part one of this episode. As such, I find this a wiser purchase than the entire third season (as a whole, I don’t think the series set itself apart in terms of routinely engaging storytelling until the fourth season). It’s also interesting to see the entire work assembled as a single piece, giving fresh perspective on an old classic.
In that respect, this set truly does provide a viewer with the best of both worlds.
Shop for Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Best of Both Worlds on Blu-ray for a discounted price at Amazon.com (April 30, 2013 release date).
