Star Trek: Picard 3-10: The Last Generation (Quick Review)

Episode:

30

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Writer:

Terry Matalas

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Director:

Terry Matalas

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Air Date:

20-Apr-2023

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm reviewing The Last Generation, the dramatic conclusion of Star Trek: Picard's dramatic concluding season. This means I've completed another series! This, Star Trek: Discovery and Babylon 5 are the only three shows I've finished writing about in their entirety, so this is a rare event for me.

The episode was produced, written and directed by showrunner Terry Matalas, so it's more one person's vision than any other Trek episode since, I dunno, the first episode of Strange New Worlds (and that has a couple of other names besides Akiva Goldsman's on the 'story by' credit). The next closest episode after that I can think of is from way back in the 60s, as the Original Series' Elaan of Troyius was written and directed by John Meredyth Lucas. So that's pretty rare too.

There are going to be all kinds of SPOILERS below so I wouldn't go any further unless you've seen the episode yourself. Also Star Trek: Voyager. And Return of the Jedi.

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RECAP

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The Enterprise-D crew track the Borg Queen to a Cube in Jupiter's atmosphere. Picard, Riker and Worf go over and discover it's even more of a haunted house than usual. The Queen was hit badly by Janeway's Borg-killing pathogen in Star Trek: Voyager's dramatic finale and she's been consuming her drones to survive ever since. But she's created a new collective of young Starfleet officers and it's currently destroying Earth's defences using the Federation's entire fleet. Seven and Raffi manage to take back control of the Titan and harass the other Starfleet ships a bit, but it seems hopeless.

Picard finds Võx, formerly Jack Crusher, and decides to face his greatest fear to be with his son, willingly plugging himself into the collective. Inside he manages to talk Jack into turning against the Queen, freeing him from the Borg. Meanwhile Data begs to be allowed to fly the 640m Enterprise-D into the Death Star to blow up the main reactor, and gets his wish. Troi uses her empathic powers to detect the away team and beam them away before the whole place goes up and the Borg Queen is finally properly dead.

All the Borgified officers return to normal, they crew are able to fix the transporters and capture the Changeling infiltrators, and Seven learns from Tuvok that Shaw secretly respected her all along. A year later Ensign Jack Crusher joins Captain Seven, Raffi and Sydney as an officer on the re-christened USS Enterprise-G, and Picard plays poker with his friends. But not Laris, we don't know what happened with her.

Also Jack gets visited by an extremely not-dead Q, who intends to turn his attention to Picard's son from now on.


REVIEW

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Look, they put the Enterprise-D in the Star Trek ident at the start!

Before watching the episode I already knew I was going to start this review by writing about how this was their one opportunity to ever make an Enterprise-D version of this opening... and they blew it. They just threw their chance away. But I put the episode on and found out that they'd actually gone and done it! Though the Borg assimilated the logo, so that sucks.

The writers had some weird ideas of what they wanted to see in Star Trek, but they also knew what would make the fans go wild and that's the return of the legendary Galaxy-class starship. I was wondering if some of the other museum ships might also make an appearance before suffering a horrific death, but nope the Enterprise-A, Defiant, Voyager etc. sat the final conflict out and they all survived!

The Earth survived as well, so that's cool. It's very lucky they got its shield installed by this point in the timeline. We finally got to see Earth's Spacedock in a fight as well, and it was strong enough to survive sustained bombardment by literally every ship in Starfleet! If the episode The Best of Both Worlds had taken place now instead of 35 years earlier that Borg Cube wouldn't have stood a chance.

Meanwhile, the Borg have fallen to their lowest point, with their huge empire apparently reduced to just the Queen and some zombie drones on a decaying Cube. They're a desperate wounded animal, which makes them scary in a different way.

I appreciate that the series has strengthened Voyager's ending by having its events matter and I can also appreciate how it's flipped the Borg's role. Here the Borg were forced to use sneaky infiltration and unconventional thinking to take on the overwhelmingly powerful Federation, infecting Starfleet officers like Future Janeway had infected them.

But then the Enterprise-D defeats them by just flying around inside the Cube like an nimble X-Wing and blowing up the weak point at the core. Just a big shameless absurd action movie ending that's somehow more Star Wars than the J.J. Abrams Kelvin Timeline movies!

Plus that route to the core they showed was ridiculous for any ship. Though the funny thing is, if you cut out the other scenes and just leave the VFX of the ship's race through the Borg Cube, the shots all connect fairly seamlessly into one 30 second sequence. They showed us the entire run, start to finish, and it was nowhere near as complicated as the map indicated.

Also, I have to give the production team credit, as they really put the effort into the visual effects. They even modelled how fire is pushed around the Enterprise's shield bubble, leaving an oval-shaped hole as it flies through. It's maybe the best demonstration of the shields I've ever seen in Star Trek.

Also the Enterprise-D is 135 metres tall, so that is bloody huge flame.

I liked that everyone in the Next Generation crew had a role to play in saving the day, though not the roles you'd necessarily expect.

Troi used her empathic talents to find the away team, Data used his android skills to pilot the ship, Crusher was at tactical, Picard did the counselling, and Geordi was in command. The episode has a bit of a fun with this, with everyone looking around at Crusher when she successfully blows up the Borg weapons with manual aiming, but they should already know she's a deadeye with a phaser! Always has been.
 
Anyway, Crusher kills the Borg by firing the guns and Picard saves their son with a hug.

The season's made a habit of put emotional scenes above plot logic or believability and this episode's definitely not an exception. Usually when people are assimilated into a hive mind they become part of a hive mind, but here we see Picard going into a green dreamworld to win his son back from the Borg Queen with the power of love! Uh... okay?

I know this is a remake of Return of the Jedi, and Jack having to choose between being Jean-Luc and Beverly's son or Locutus and the Borg Queen's son was fairly well done, but I needed just a little more cleverness and science to explain how Picard is talking Borg out of being drones now.

The series has given us a few pieces of explanation over its run, like Picard facing his trauma and becoming a machine in season 1, and Jurati successfully stealing information from the Queen and getting out without being fully assimilated in season 2, but it doesn't connect these dots when it counts.

All the assimilated officers are magically turned back to normal the moment the signal's turned off, so we got to have this happy scene of the old Enterprise and its successor flying side by side with the sun coming up, just the ending of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Except this time they're surrounded by the lifeless hulks of a thousand Starfleet vessels, each with a crew of hundreds. This is the Battle of Wolf 359², a horrific attack perhaps worse than any Starfleet has endured in its history.

But it's fine, the attack is over, the Borg assimilation tech transporters got cleaned out of the transporters, and I'm sure plenty of counsellors survived the massacre to help the young officers deal with having murdered their superiors. Plus there's a time jump and the Changeling conspiracy is over as well. It was the most desperate situation, with infiltrators on every ship and no one knowing who to trust, but the crew just did a thing and it's sorted out.

I suppose Starfleet really must be doing alright at the end if it makes sense to them to return a working Galaxy-class ship to the museum, especially as it was clearly functional enough to swoop around like the Millennium Falcon and blow up the biggest Borg Cube ever. It had to go however, as they needed to make room for the brand new Enterprise-G!

Which is actually just the old Titan given a new name.

There are a lot of satisfying things in this finale, but this choice is a total misfire for me and think there are two reasons for that. The first is that this was the Titan-A! They don't give out letters like that to just any ship, a vessel has to earn that legacy, and so far it's only happened with the Enterprise, Voyager and Titan. In fact, if you take the series literally when it calls it a refit (even though it's clearly a new ship), this is the actual Titan they just renamed. Doesn't feel good.

The second reason it's a misfire for me, is that the ship is a weird retro mismatch kitbash with hardly any good angles and it doesn't even have carpets. It's not pretty enough to be an Enterprise. Plus they call it a Neo Constitution-class at the start, but the Constitution-class Enterprise was the toughest ship in Starfleet, designed to survive the unknown for an entire TV show, while this was outgunned by the first bounty hunter they met out of space dock due to being an 'exploratory vessel'.

I suppose it's cool that the scrappy underdog earned the right to be an Enterprise, and that Starfleet is moving from a paranoid era of heavily-armed warships to one of less-aggressive explorer vessels, but I wasn't cheering during the scene.

Also, does this look like the bridge of an exploration vessel bringing Starfleet into a bright new future?

I'm not fond of the ship but I can't argue with the choice of captain. Seven has had a meteoric rise through the ranks, reaching commander in months and captain shortly after. And Jack did pretty well himself, getting through the academy in just one year. That's faster than Nog managed on DS9! But I'm fine with it. I want Seven as a captain, with her ex as her XO, Sydney at the helm, and Jack as the guy who sits in Troi's seat and acts like a smart-ass. I'd watch that series.

The episode doesn't just leave things open for a continuation it practically begs for one, especially with Ensign Jack getting a visit from Q, who says he'll be pestering him instead of his dad from now on. Sure Q died in season 2, but he's an omnipotent time traveller, so it makes sense we can see the end of his story before the middle.

But while the Enterprise-G crew are set up for new adventures, the Enterprise-D crew are given a proper send off.

Their ending is bit of a retread of All Good Things... but I'm fine with that. The first episode of Picard started with Picard dreaming about playing cards with Data in Ten Forward so it feels right that it's how it ends. They're not back on their ship, they can't fly around through space playing poker in Riker's quarters anymore, but now that they've reconnected they can always meet up and play in Guinan's bar instead. And this time they're just friends, not co-workers.

In the end I suppose the season has had two morals. First, it's okay to return to something you enjoyed 30 years ago, you don't have to leave that part of your past behind forever. And second, you should kill all of your enemies. Leave no survivors or they will return for revenge.


RATING

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I've been comparing Picard episodes to their corresponding TNG story, and the ultimate battle between Picard and The Next Generation turns out to be The Last Generation vs The Defector. A dumb sentimental action movie versus a thoughtful drama about a man betraying his people to avoid a war.

I really like The Defector, in fact it's one of my favourite episodes of the whole series, so for Picard to stand a chance here this has to be a damn good finale. And I think that it is! Well, it's pretty good... but unfortunately it's not good enough. Sorry, I'm giving this one to Next Gen. I'm always going to be a little biased towards stories I can actually take seriously.

This puts the final score for season 3 at TNG 3: PIC 7, a pretty clear win for Picard! I mentioned way back in my season 1 review that Next Gen would give the show a real fight this year, but I didn't take into account that stories like Yesterday's Enterprise and Best of Both Worlds were in season 3's second half. If I'd brought the Enterprise-C and the original Borg Cube into this fight then things would've turned out very differently.

But as a final chapter in the 36-year Next Generation saga, the one thing that The Last Generation absolutely had to nail was the the ending for the returning heroes, everything else was secondary to that. Fortunately the episode got that part right, giving Jean-Luc Picard, William Riker, Geordi LaForge, Beverly Crusher, Data, Worf and Deanna Troi the proper send off they didn't get back in Star Trek: Nemesis. Sucks about Laris though.

8/10

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COMING SOON

Okay, only one more Picard review left as I cover the season and I guess series overall in my Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Review and then I can take a break! I've got other things in my life to do, I can't write about science fiction all the time.

If you want to share your own thoughts about The Last Generation, you're welcome to use the comments box below.