259. Descent, Part IFORMULA: I, Borg + The Mind's Eye + (your choice of Evil Data episode)
WHY WE LIKE IT: Data's creepy exploration of his negative emotions.
WHY WE DON'T: Emasculated Borg.
REVIEW: Descent feels a bit random to me at times. It starts with a gratuitous cameo by Stephen Hawking playing cards with Einstein and Newton (fun moment, but wholly irrelevant), has the Borg return in less than full force, plays with the idea of Data generating emotions for the first time, and finally brings back Lore in the cliffhanger. Where it feels random, I think, is in the tenuous link between Lore and the Borg (supervillains team-up!).
The fact is that Best of Both Worlds wrote the Borg into a corner. They were too powerful an enemy, making their use dangerous and even ill-advised. So instead, we have the Rogue Borg infected by Hugh's individualism, but then corrupted by Lore (or so we'll find out... after this episode, we can guess that's what happened, but we're not sure). I'd say a good cliffhanger makes you want to see what happens next, but not what JUST HAPPENED. Summer hiatus gives us too much time to forget about unanswered questions. The Rogue Borg bring a different agenda, and are fewer in number, but still draw out a good portion of the fleet. That's realistic, as is the stern talking-to Nechayev gives Picard about not exploiting Hugh as a Trojan horse (helps sell Starfleet's decisions in First Contact). And the Rogues do bring something new to the Borg in the shape of the transwarp conduit, something that explains how they could have been in our space back in The Neutral Zone, but still not have "met" Starfleet until Q Who. Unfortunately, the Rogue Borg ship design is terrible and has nothing to do with Borg design except size.
Most of this episode centers on Data's exploration of his mystery emotions, producing a couple of creepy scenes as he admits to feeling pleasure at the Borg's death to Troi, or Geordi walking in on his holodeck murder session. Of course, we've seen permutations of "evil Data" so many times now (from Lore, to The Schizoid Man, to the fistful of Datas) that we know how Brent Spiner's gonna do it. It left me non-plussed. The scenes on the subject are uneven as well, with the high point being Data telling an amused Troi he looked at porn, and the low point Geordi being unable to describe anger.
As the cliffhanger approaches, the Enterprise is cut off from the fleet and Data leaves the ship with Crosis to meet "the One". Beverly is left in charge of the ship and its skeleton crew while everybody else goes searching for the Borg. It's a weird moment - I don't think they sell the need to send so many people to the planet - but I don't begrudge Crusher the opportunity to command. It'll be the first time we see a doctor in the captain's chair though they have technically always held a high rank. The episode gets marks for the look of the planet, proving that a colored filter can turn even the most Californian of natural settings into an alien place, and the structure used by the Borg is cool both inside and out.
LESSON: Negative emotions don't hurt people. People hurt people.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium: A fair set-up for what's to come, and an important story for Data, but there's no glorious return for the Borg, and the cliffhanger delves deep in melodrama ("The Sons of Soong will destroy the Federation, MWA-HA-HA!").
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