'Star Trek': The Story of the Most Daring Cliffhanger in 'Next Generation' History
In June 1990, many Trekkies considered the crew of the Enterprise-D pretenders to the throne. Star Trek: The Next Generation was closing out its third season, and it was still struggling to step out of the shadow of Kirk's (William Shatner)
Enterprise. That was about to change thanks to a daring cliffhanger
pulled off in an era of television in which shocking deaths and major
plot twists weren't par for the course.
When "Best of Both Worlds: Part I" aired 25 years ago this week, it
was truly jarring to fans. The season three finale saw the return of The
Borg, the seemingly unstoppable villain introduced a year earlier. The
Borg captured Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and
transformed him into Locutus of Borg, a de facto spokesperson for the
collective consciousness. The episode ended with Picard's No. 1
Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) giving a shocking
order ("Mr. Worf, fire.") and the screen cutting to the words "To be
continued...", something it had never done.
Written by Michael Piller and directed by Cliff Bole, "Best of Both Worlds" is arguably the most influential arc in Next Generation history.
Along with "Best of Both Worlds: Part II" and its aftermath episode
"Family," the story introduced layers of psychological complexity, bold
storytelling and emotional depth the show had not yet explored. "RICK BERMAN CALLED ME AND SAID, 'THIS IS FANTASTIC!' " Ronald D. Moore, member of the writers room: The
story really goes to Michael Piller, who was running the writing staff
in the third season when I joined the show. In the writers room, we
would often talk about revisiting the Borg. Piller said as the season
went on that he thought there should be a cliffhanger, which Star Trek had never done. Jonathan Frakes, Commander William T. Riker: All of
us were quite thrilled they had the balls to leave Picard on the Borg
cube. I don't know if they were trying to threaten Patrick with
renegotiations. It's commonplace now. Shows like Lost and House of Cards
— they'll kill off a regular and think nothing of it. This was 1990. It
was not commonplace to be killing off any of your series regulars. That
was a big "who shot J.R." type of plot. Moore: It was the only show that year that we didn't
actually sit in the room as a writing staff and break together. Michael
said he wanted to go do it. Michael had a very personal connection to
that particular story. The episode starts with Riker getting an offer to
go command another ship. That's at the heart of it. Michael said very
overtly that he was in a very similar place. He was the number two guy
on the show, and he was debating whether or not to leave Star Trek
and go and run his own show or if he wanted to remain second in command
of the Enterprise, as it were. So he was Riker, and he wrote the story
from that perspective.
Frakes: The episode was key to Riker's character.
Previously, I thought it was not very cleverly handled to have Riker say
in the first two seasons, "All I want is to have my own ship. I aspire
to be a captain in Starfleet." But then, when offered the ship, the
writers put in Riker's mouth that he didn't feel he was ready to
captain, or he didn't want to leave his friends. Michael Dorn, Lieutenant Worf: We didn't know how
they were going to handle it in terms of the special effects with
Patrick. At that point we trusted each other, we trusted the producers
and we trusted the writers enough to know that it was going to be
exciting. Alan Sims, property master: My pride with those
episodes would be the prosthetic arms, for which I created remote
control apertures. You would see it flicker and flip back and forth.
When the one Borg came to the Enterprise and captured Picard, that was
me off camera with a little remote control with two control joysticks
and antenna. Michael Westmore, makeup artist: Patrick Stewart
loved being in the makeup chair. He didn't care what it was — whether he
was doing a Shakespearean character in the Holodeck or doing the old
age makeup on "Inner Light," Patrick loved getting in the chair and
getting made up. He would be putting his two cents in, "Oh, let's do a
little more shading right here." He loved that part of the process. Moore: My favorite moment was seeing Picard in that
Borg outfit for the first time. When that reveal happens and he looks at
the camera and he's a Borg, and he says, "I am Locutus." It was a
shocking moment. You realize the show had gone someplace different. We
all knew that internally and were like, "Woah, OK. This is going to
break some molds." Westmore: My son [Michael Westmore, Jr.]
found the laser we mounted on Patrick's head for the end of "Part I."
It cost $200. It was a new product on the market and had never been
used on TV previously. We thought, "Oh this is going to be great," but
we go into the set, and we can't see it at all. The special effects guy
said, "Let me put a little smoke in." And oh my God, that light cut
right through everything. They wanted Patrick to look directly in the
lens, and nobody knew what was going to happen at all. Patrick turns to
the camera, and the refraction between the laser and the mirrors in the
camera made it look like it's just shattered everything. It's the one
time [executive producer] Rick Berman called me and
said, "This is fantastic! Oh my god." It blew Paramount away. If it was
an optical, it would have cost thousands of dollars and we did it with a
$200 laser.
"IS PICARD GOING TO BE KILLED?" The episode electrifies audiences when it begins airing on
syndication June 18, 1990. Even Trekkies who refused to accept Next
Generation as legitimate are buzzing. Rumors of Patrick Stewart's exit
swirl, with fans waiting an agonizing three months for the conclusion to
air in September. Meanwhile, the writers are tasked with figuring out
how to follow up their first cliffhanger ever. Moore: What people forget now is in the first couple of seasons of Next Generation, we were sort of not taken seriously as Star Trek.
The fans were split on the acceptance of the show. You would go to
conventions and there would be bumper stickers and t-shirts that
basically said, "I'm a real Trekker. Forget the bald guy." Stuff like
that. We were the second-tier Trek. When "Best of Both Worlds"
came out, suddenly there was all this buzz. And it got in the press and
there was all this tension and people were talking about the cliffhanger
and Picard. Jordan Hoffman, freelance writer/critic who specializes in Star Trek:After
that "To be continued…" we felt, "Is Picard going to be killed?" After
that episode, there was a lot of talk. Somehow we knew — there were
rumors that Patrick Stewart was going to leave the show. That was
definitely in the air. There would be somebody who goes, "You know
Patrick Stewart is leaving?" How do you know this? "Everyone knows it."
Dorn: We figured there wasn't any problem with
Patrick's contract. He was coming back. The interesting thing was, how
were they going to play that? Moore: "Part II," we did break the story together in
the writer's room, but when Michael did "Part I," he said, "I have no
idea how this thing ends. We're going to end on this cliffhanger of
"fire" and we're going to figure it out next season." We all gather in
the room, and it was essentially a new writing staff. I was the only
holdover from season three. We sat down, and Michael was like, "All
right, I don't know where we're going. Let's just try to figure out
something." Hoffman: Something that younger people don't quite get was the fact that Next Generation
was on in syndication. It was not on a major network. It was the first
show to be in syndication to have tremendous ratings. What that meant
was it was on in different times of the day depending on where you were.
I would go down to my grandparents' on the weekends. They were in
southern Jersey outside of the Philly markets. I lived in the New York
market. You could catch it three times a week. I relived that "to be
continued…" moment over and over. Moore: There were various efforts to try to keep the
scripts' distribution tight and the plot secret. They were trying to
watermark the scripts — which was a novelty at that point — and
number them. It was the pre-Internet days, so it wasn't like the files
were being passed around in emails. It was all hard copy stuff anyway. Gary Hutzel, visual effects coordinator: The budget
was small by today's standards. A lot of stuff you see on the series
wasn't shot on a professional stage. A lot of it was shot in people's
basements, because there was no money. Brent Spiner, Data: I remember Worf and Data beamed
over to the Borg ship to grab Picard and bring him back to the
Enterprise. There was a moment where a Borg is coming up behind me, and I
turn and blast him with my phaser. We shot a version of it where the
Borg was coming up behind me and I didn't even turn around. I just put
the phaser over my shoulder and shot it and blew it away. We thought
that would be really cool if Data just sensed it and didn't have to turn
around. It looked great, but they sent it to Rick Berman and he said,
"That's ridiculous. He can't do that. He doesn't have eyes in the back
of his head." So we didn't use that one.
Dorn: This might take away some of the drama for the
audience, but there is a scene where Data and I go and rescue Patrick. I
had to struggle with Patrick. He tries to hit me and I grab him and
we're going "ah, ah!" back and forth. And we just started cracking up.
We just started laughing uncontrollably. All of us laughed
uncontrollably most of the time on the show. Marina Sirtis, Counselor Deanna Troi: The episode
was a very important one for my character [Troi is key to figuring out
how to save Picard]. A lot of the time, I was decorative. Hey, that was
fine. I was a very ugly child, so if you had said to me when I was 13,
"One day you are going to grow up to be this sex symbol," I would have
asked if you were high. But, as far as character development goes, the
third going into the fourth season, where my advice was listened to, I
always used to treasure those moments. Every weekend at a convention,
someone will say to me it was so nice to see a competent woman on a TV
show who wasn't "the bitch." Troi was strong and professional, but took a
pride in her appearance. It was kind of a first, to have a professional
woman, who wasn't "the bitch." It was very important to me that the
writers began to see Troi as a whole person. I think it kind of started
with "Best of Both Worlds Part II." Westmore: Creating the Borg took a lot of makeup
artists and it took a lot of time. Not only because of the makeup, but
because they had the suits to put on. It was a process that probably
took at least three hours at that time. We had it down to a system,
where we could line them all up and make them up very fast. For the
faces, I found every makeup artist shades differently. In the early
shows, all the Borg had all different looks to them because of all the
different techniques people used to shade. Later, I took an airbrush
class and I could literally airbrush each one of them in a minute and a
half. It was easier for me to do than for a bunch of makeup artists,
where there'd be some great ones and there'd be some not so great ones.
That was the beginning of Star Trek using the airbrush. After that point, I insisted any makeup artist I hired knew how to use an airbrush.
Hutzel: My coordinator Judy Elkins,
had a great idea as we were preparing to do the destruction of the
fleet. We didn't have that much money to work with, and we had to
physically build everything. How do we show an entire fleet destroyed?
We invited people from the art department and other people on the show
for a kit bash. We got spaceship models and all destroyed them. And we
gave them our own names and whatever we wanted and put on them the ships
for the shot. We were able to get quite a few ships made that way with
pretty minimal effort and money. I rigged them all with internal
lighting to make them look like they are on fire and we shot then that
way. The toy company gave them to us for free. Spiner: Near the end, I'm hooked up to Patrick. It's a tribute to Michael Westmore's genius and his son Mike Jr.
who did all of the electronics. They always did a great job of opening
up my various bits. They opened up every part of my body, save one —
and they were saving that one for I guess in case we did another movie (laughs). Michael Westmore is a genius. Hutzel: I had to build the Borg ship because we
couldn't afford a modeler to make it. I just brought a whole bunch of
models. I put chicken wire over a framework. And I stapled that on and I
attached a board and attached all the plastic to it. We hung the cube
on one of the sound stages and the pyrotechnician came in and he rigged
it. Back then, if you really wanted to blow something up, you would use
primer cord. Nobody really does that anymore because it's dangerous. But
this thing is loaded with primer cord. They let it rip. I didn't know
that putting chicken wire inside of something with primer cord would
cause it to become a big grenade. And so when it went off, stuff flew
everywhere. Fortunately it was a safe situation and no one got hurt.
They'd cleared the stage before we fired it, but we came back in and saw
the mess on the floor and bits of chicken wire stuck on the walls. THE AFTERMATH The arc would go down as one of the most daring in Star Trek
history. It also gave birth to "Family," an understated but highly
acclaimed episode which saw Picard deal with the psychological trauma of
becoming a Borg, as well as Star Trek: First Contact (1996), the Next
Generation cast's most beloved film. Moore: That was the turning point on Next Generation's acceptance as Star Trek,
among the fans and with the public. Suddenly we had done something that
was legitimate and got people's attention and told a great story. From
then on out we carried the torch. We were legitimate and that was the
show that turned it around for us. Frakes: The cool thing about the story was that he
was forever haunted by Locutus being in his DNA. That informed the first
movie that I directed, First Contact. Moore: The second half of the show was kind of not
as satisfying as the first half, in all honesty. It was a little too
technobabble. It doesn't quite have the oomph that "Part I" did. But
Michael [Piller] was fine with that. He launched us into more
character-based storytelling. The next episode was "Family," which was a
complete character episode, which I got to write. It was set down on
Earth after Captain Picard's experience in "Best of Both Worlds." He
goes home and you meet his brother. There was no action-adventure
component to that episode. It showed you Piller was determined to make
the show more character-oriented and more about the people on the
Enterprise, instead of the alien on the week. Dorn: In the end, Patrick, although he was back and
he was fine and he was like, "Yeah, I'm fine. Everything is great," you
knew by his look, and by the way he felt and looked out the window that
it wasn't over. We didn't know how it wasn't going to be over, but it
wasn't over. Interestingly enough, it culminated in First Contact, the movie. Moore: We had to kind of fight for "Family." [Star Trek creator] Gene Roddenberry hated
it. He wanted to throw it out. My only story meeting with Gene was that
episode. It was me and Michael and Rick Berman, who was running the
production side of things, we all met in Gene's office and Gene just
said "this isn't the 24th century." "These brothers reflect outdated, 20th-Century
modes of childhood development. Mankind had solved these kind of issues
by then. I hate this." I sat there and I was a really green writer. I
was like, "Oh my God, what are we going to do? I'm dead." We walked out
in the hall and I just looked at Michael and Rick and was like, "What do
I do now?" They said, "You know what? Just go write your story, we'll
work with Gene." That was the last I ever heard of it. So they went off
behind the scenes and did something and got him to back off or let it go
or kind of distracted him with something else, because then we did the
show.
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