The Long Road

05/22/2003 Archived Entry: "Enterprise 2x23: Regeneration"

This episode, the Crew of the Enterprise is introduced to the Borg, though they are never referred to as such; “We are Borg” is cut out of the “resistance is futile” speech. On its own, this episode is pretty good. We get a good build up of suspense and have a couple of characters make some really tough decisions. The Borg ship is a joy to see since we get several versions of it as the Borg are constantly upgrading. The ships on this show have been consistently well designed and break the mold from what Trek ships usually look like. I also liked that we finally get to see someone get physical with the Borg when their weapons start to fail. I’ve always wondered why no one thought of just using hands and traditional weapons when phazers stop working. What if you gave ‘em a nice shotgun blast to the head? Can Borg adapt to projectile weapons? “Adapt this!”

If this is the first episode ever for the Borg, it’d be pretty damn good; but it’s not. “Regeneration” puts a pretty big dent in the carefully weaved Trek continuity. They wanted a Borg episode and found a way to do it, but in doing so screwed up so much! Yes, it is possible that a couple of Borg survived the explosion in First Contact, but it’s also possible that none of them survived; there was no issue to be addressed here. If Archer knew about the Borg and an impending invasion in 200 years, why would Picard have never heard of them and Starfleet be completely unprepared when the Borg finally came around in TNG? Unless everyone on the ship and those on Earth that know about the incident dies in the next episode with no time to report anything then this episode is just one big plot hole. Never mind that there is now a butt load of 24th century Borg technology sitting in the 22nd century Earth Arctic. Also, these Borg are such wimps! They are 24th century Borg; it’s hard to believe that it would take them a dozen deaths before they can adapt to 22nd century weapons. Even against the TNG crew it took at most five shots for them to adapt to any weapon.

The Borg are the most overly used ‘event’ villains in Trek (see Voyager), they've really been powered down and made into more of a joke than a credible threat everytime they've shown up. I’m all for a Borg episode, but if they can’t do it right then they just shouldn’t do it.

This episode basically amounts to a ‘stunt’ because they needed some good ratings during sweeps. Next week’s episode is “T’Pol in heat”. Kill me now.

For screwing things up, this episode gets 5/10