The Most Famous Star Trek Twist Is Weirder Than You Remember
It's one of the greatest TV cliffhangers of all time, but what about the rest of the story?
Jean-Luc Picard’s entire life was redefined by an episode that, when it first aired, wasn’t really about him at all. Every Star Trek fan will tell you that “The Best of Both Worlds” is not only the greatest cliffhanger in the entire franchise, but the most pivotal moment in Picard’s entire arc. If Picard had never been captured and assimilated by the hivemind, cybernetic race known as the Borg, then it’s almost impossible to imagine the rest of The Next Generation happening the way it did, to say nothing of the films and, recently, Picard Season 3.
And yet, for all of its fame — including that very well-remembered cliffhanger — the meat of “The Best of Both Worlds” is not a Picard episode at all. Instead, when we revisit Next Generation’s Season 3 finale, 35 years after it aired in syndication the week of June 18, 1990, what we discover is that the episode that created a ton of pathos for Picard is really a story about William T. Riker.
Riker having some drinks, trying to figure out his life.
The fact that “The Best of Both Worlds” is a Riker episode isn’t some kind of wild, galaxy-brained hot take. It’s simply true. Riker is in nearly every scene of the episode, and when he’s not on screen, people are often talking about him. Yes, Admiral Hanson has to brief Picard about the timetable of the hypothetical Borg invasion, but the conversation is ultimately about whether or not Commander Shelby will replace Riker, and if Riker has the stones to finally accept a starship command of his own.
Yes, “The Best of Both Worlds” eventually morphs into the most important epic battle in all of Star Trek history, but it should be noted that this battle occurs mostly offscreen. When Starfleet makes a stand against the Borg at Wolf 359, the Enterprise is not part of the action. A few years later, the cold open of the spinoff show, Deep Space Nine, would drop us into that tragic battle, but in “The Best of Both Worlds,” the Borg invasion is subtext for questions about middle age, usefulness, and the nature of personal fulfillment.
Four years later, in the series finale of TNG, “All Good Things...” Q, jokes that one of Picard’s preoccupations has been “worrying about Commander Riker’s career.” In “The Best of Both Worlds,” this is accurate. Because again, in terms of dialogue spoken, for the first half of the episode, everything is about Riker’s feelings, his career path, and the idea that he might take a promotion and a different job, only to be replaced by an ambitious young woman, Shelby, who, frankly, is one of the best Star Trek guest characters of all time.
“From this time forward, you will service us.
Today, the idea that Riker would really leave the Enterprise, or that Picard would never be de-Borged feels not only absurd, but borderline sacrilegious. And yet, there is some validity to the idea that there was some concern that Patrick Stewart might not have returned as Picard for all of TNG Season 4. In 1993, Ian Spelling’s reporting in Starlog #195 made it clear that showrunner Michael Piller wrote “The Best of Both Worlds,” partially to accommodate the idea that Picard would no longer be the main character of The Next Generation.
Again, this is unthinkable today, but when you really rewatch “The Best of Both Worlds,” and you notice on what the episode is most focused on, it’s very easy to understand that the entire Riker storyline was a kind of trapdoor to convince the audience that Jonathan Frakes was ready to lead the show, just in case Stewart didn’t return as the captain of the Starship Enterprise.
Our memories of this moment have been erased because so many installments of the Trek franchise have dealt with Picard’s trauma from his assimilation. Hell, in 1996, Frakes directed what is arguably the greatest Trek film of all time, First Contact, which was a direct sequel to both parts of “The Best of Both Worlds.” When Picard Season 3 aired its finale episode in 2023, and presented a kind of coda for The Next Generation, Picard himself says, “What began over 35 years ago ends tonight!”
The Next Generation Producer Rick Berman and showrunner Michael Piller in 1993, after they co-created Deep Space Nine.
The thing Picard was talking about was “The Best of Both Worlds,” a cliffhanger that destroyed the summers of many Trekkies, all who worried that the show would never be the same. Today, that tension can never be recreated, because for those of us who remember, the Season 4 debut made it seem like we never should have been worried at all.
And yet, the brilliance of “The Best of Both Worlds” is that this cliffhanger wasn’t a stunt, it was a cliffhanger in real life. Michael Piller said on many occasions that he didn’t know how the cliffhanger would be resolved, which is why the final moments of “The Best of Both Worlds” feel so big. The entire future of Star Trek feels like it's at a crossroads in this episode, because it really was. Piller was thinking of stepping down from the show, Stewart’s contract was in question, and the big chair was getting pulled out for Riker.
“The Best of Both Worlds” may not be the most brilliantly written episode of The Next Generation, but 35 years later, it's something even better: It honestly captures the mood of the show at the time, and gives us a glimpse at a nearly unimaginable alternate pop culture timeline.
