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Star Trek: Picard's final season brought an end to the most iconic villains from The Next Generation. While Jean-Luc Picard's journey is the show's focus, the series highlights why each season needed to include the Borg. Beyond being Picard's greatest enemy, their inclusion showed how Gene Roddenberry's ideal future dealt with the aftermath of such a destructive force.
After Voyager's finale, the Borg were mostly a memory in Picard Season 1. However, Season 2 saw the emergence of a new Borg collective. In Season 3, the true Borg return for a final effort to eliminate the organization blocking their path to galactic dominance. Ultimately, Picard's narrative is closely linked to the Borg, especially since he survived assimilation, with each storyline exploring his connection to them.
Picard's Has a Long History With the Borg
When Picard visits "the Artifact" — a deactivated Borg cube controlled by the Romulans — he's terrified. Despite what he faced in Star Trek: First Contact, the trauma of his assimilation still plagued him. The Artifact is controlled by Romulans, another former enemy that Starfleet refused to help, which is why Picard resigned.
Hugh, the Borg who discovered individuality in The Next Generation, is the leader of the "Borg Reclamation Project." Picard, Seven of Nine, Icheb, and the other ex-Borg children from Voyager are shown to be very lucky. Becoming "unassimilated" is a difficult, brutal process, and the "xBs" (as they are known) struggle to exist outside of the collective.
In Season 2, Borg Queen slowly assimilates Dr. Agnes Jurati. While hunting her, Seven of Nine tells Raffi the sense of connection inside the collective is almost like a drug. Once separated from it, one yearns to feel that connection again. If the xBs aren't welcomed into galactic society, the appeal of the new collective Jurati forms is clear.
Those who join her collective are people who don't fit in the universe. Yet, rather than being a nameless drone, the Jurati Collective includes individuality and empathy alongside the technological distinctiveness it offers.
Season 2 of the Star Trek series ends with the Jurati Collective, as provisional Federation members, standing guard at a gateway in space that is "attached to a threat." The formation of this transwarp conduit would've destroyed much of the galaxy, but the Jurati Collective, working in cooperation with Starfleet, "saved billions of lives."
Given their struggles in Season 1, many of the xBs likely sought out the Jurati Borg in order to rejoin a collective. What makes this still a positive story is that the new collective allows them to retain the individuality they fought to reacquire. It really is the "best of both worlds."
In Season 3, the old, evil Borg Queen resurfaces to threaten Starfleet and Earth one last time. The growth Picard undergoes in past seasons, particularly in his sense of connection to other human beings, is vital. The version of Jean-Luc seen in Season 1 likely couldn't have stopped the Changelings and the dying Borg Queen.
The first two seasons highlight how there is life "after" the Borg, either as individuals "reclaimed" from the collective or a collective based on cooperation. Picard is able to shed his fear and accept what happened to him because of these experiences. Without these stories, Season 3's Borg plot makes far less sense for the once-unstoppable force.
The Borg Story Arc in Picard Goes Deeper Than Kirk and the Klingons
One of the worst Star Trek enemies, the Klingons, menaced the characters from The Original Series era through their final film, The Undiscovered Country. However, that movie ended with the start of negotiations for peace with them via the Khitomer Accords. Kruge, a rogue Klingon, killed James T. Kirk's son, which is why he was so against helping them despite Starfleet ideals.
But the Borg weren't like the Klingons. They were the very definition of unreasonable, the kind of malevolent force in the galaxy that couldn't be negotiated with. However, in Picard Season 2, Jurati is able to reason with the Borg Queen. Setting aside the two characters' loneliness, she points out that in "every timeline," the Borg is ultimately destroyed. So, the new collective they form isn't just a provisional Federation member; they wield the Borg collective's power as a force for good in the galaxy.
Season 1 showed how the xBs were still feared by the Federation and exploited by the Romulans. Even though the threat was "over," the fear remained. Without these experiences, when Picard faced off with the Borg in Season 3 (if he'd even lived to see it), he would have attacked them, like in First Contact, with his hatred.
Instead, thanks to his experiences with Soji, Talinn, Anges Jurati, and even Seven of Nine, Picard had a new strategy, even as his son experienced the kind of assimilation that terrified him for decades. He beat the Borg Queen by showing love and compassion towards his son. If Picard had approached the problem with anger and a desire to destroy, he and Starfleet would have lost.
As much as Star Trek: Picard is about everyone's favorite 25th-century Starfleet Admiral, it's also about the Borg. The scars they left across the galaxy still ache. Fear of what they represent still remains. Yet, through characters like the xBs, Agnes Jurati, and, most importantly, Seven of Nine, a brighter future dawns on the horizon.
Gene Roddenberry wanted his universe's future to become "more" perfect as it progressed. Thanks to Star Trek: Picard's focus on the Borg, it will. The threat posed by the Borg of old was destroyed, first by Admiral Janeway in Voyager's series finale and then by Admiral Picard in his eponymous series' finale. There are Borg still out there, Jurati's Collective, but they aren't villains. Picard was the grand finale for the Borg, and that's always what this series had to be.
Kirk's greatest enemies killed his estranged son, but the Borg tried to turn Picard's estranged son into a weapon of humanity's destruction. Just as James T. Kirk's greatest challenge was fighting and, later, accepting the Klingon Empire, Jean-Luc Picard needed to overcome his fear and anger towards the collective. Just like Kirk, he defeated the last remnants of the species that only understand their adversarial nature.
Yet, like the first USS Enterprise captain fans got to know, he had to challenge himself to accept the idea that they could exist without being an active threat. Just as Kirk put aside his biases to save the peace effort with the Klingons, Picard put aside his rage and his fear, and it erased the evil Borg from the universe.
The complete Star Trek: Picard is available on Blu-ray and DVD, and the show is streaming in its entirety on Paramount+.
