Did you guys get to see this one in the cinema last week? Wasn’t it THE BEST?! Weren’t you so excited to see the behind the scenes featurette where Elizabeth Dennehy talked for literally like seven whole minutes about how she didn’t learn her lines? (Girl, we get it. You were dumb. Move on.)
This two-parter is almost exclusively uniforms, so there’s not a whole lot to cover on the fashion front, but we’ll discuss the few things that do pop up.
The episode starts with an away team going to a “town" that actually looks like this:
Welcome to Cratersville, Population BORG
Clearly that is not a town. The Borg’s been up in here, y’all, and I don’t mean Björn.
An admiral and a commander come to the Enterprise to see what’s going on.
Can we get Ernest Borgnine? Get it? GET IT?!?!
The admiral is working it out with some disco piping all around his uniform. You fancy, admiral.
Other credits include Glenn Close’s stand-in and also Meryl Streep’s stand-in
Here we have Commander Shelby, who is on a fucking MISSION to not only solve this Borg situation, but also to steal Riker’s job. She talked a lot about this hairdo in the featurette about the making of this episode. We get it, girl, you’ve got fine hair! Somehow it’s been wrestled into a blonde cloud that would look equally appropriate at a church picnic in 1988 and also a beauty pageant in 1958. That lip stain is ahead of its time, though. I’d wear that right now with a subtle cat eye.
Picard, ever the gracious host, offers Earl Grey:
I’m a little teapot, short and sort of triangular
I’m mostly including this because a) Picard’s face and b) at the showing last week, a woman behind me stage-whispered “I WANT THAT TEAPOT" when this happened. I’ve done some research, and did not find THAT teapot (which is, admittedly, GREAT), but I did find this OTHER teapot that Picard uses, made by Saenger Porcelain. This concludes your Picard Teapot News. (Update: the good news is that reader John S. found this tea kettle on Amazon. The bad news is that shit is $285! Also, Picard is way too classy to be serving tea straight from the kettle.)
It’s Poker Night on the Enterprise, and Commander Shelby decides to join in, for reasons of character development. Data rocks what appears to be a visor made of glass:
That doesn’t block light, you dummy
And we get treated to a series of faces, including:
Wesley “Tryna Be Smooth" Crusher
William “Girl You Wanna Call My Bluff" Riker
Elizabeth “I Called Your Bluff AND Got All Your Money" Shelby
Basically, it’s Riker vs. Shelby and because she’s a woman, there’s ALWAYS the possibility of it getting SEXY up in here. With this hairdo, though, I think there’s a limit to HOW sexy:
French twists aren’t nearly as sexy as French kisses…or even French fries
I don’t know how many hairpins it took to put that thing together, but I can tell you that the last thing you want to deal with when making out with Will Riker is a million hairpins and a shit-ton of hairspray. It’s a wonder anyone in the 80s made out at all.
OMG The Borg
There they are.
Okay, so the Enterprise finds the Borg and then they need to hide from the Borg because the Borg’s offensive and defensive capabilities are better. The Enterprise goes to hide in the PRETTIEST CLOUD IN THE UNIVERSE:
"My colors are blush and bashful" - this cloud
Okay, so technically it’s a nebula, but isn’t a nebula just, like, a space cloud? This shot looks okay here, but you guys, in the Blu-Ray version, on the big screen, it looked fucking GORGEOUS. I straight-up want a poster of this in my home.
The cloud hides the Enterprise from the Borg’s sensors for a while, but eventually - as they always do - the Borg figures out a new system and prods them out.
Down in Engineering, the crew attempts to figure out what to do:
They are not even looking at him
This shot is noteworthy because it includes Riker, in the Robert Blackman-redesigned Season 3 uniform right alongside some background artists in the original William Ware Theiss Seasons 1-2 uniforms. See the differences? The higher collar, the lack of visible front closure, the removal of that colored piping in the shoulder area. Much better.
Also appearing in this scene: a Jeffries tube jumpsuit, which has never looked more 70s to me:
Jeffries Tube? Or roller disco?
I think it’s a combination of the color, the wide leg, and that guy’s butt being SO butt-like in this moment. Butts were so 70s.
Picard has a quick chat with Guinan, as he sometimes does in times of trouble:
And in my hour of darkness / she is standing right in front of me
It’s hard to see, because Ten-Forward was, like, CLOSED, but Guinan is wearing a really wonderful medium grass green. It’s a little on the yellow side - I tend to like a tealy kelly - but I think it looks so great on her. I don’t know why the empire waist is sitting where it’s sitting. It’s a little bit of a babydoll, but not in a bad way. Remember those? Are those back yet? I hope not. If you do have boobs, you look like a brick in those, and if you don’t, you look like a literal, actual child. Neither is ideal.
Stop! In the name of my hat
I was taking this online survey the other day in preparation for this consumer study I’m doing about perfume - I lead a REALLY exciting life, you guys - and one of the questions was about whether you liked or disliked certain shapes, and one of the shapes was a hexagon, but it was labeled “octagon." Do people just not know the names of shapes anymore?! WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TO? Anyway, Guinan has an octagon hat on.
The Borgs (Borg? Is there a plural for Borg?) board the Enterprise and we get to see the nice details in their costumes:
One Borg, two Börgen
If you get a chance to watch the featurette about the making of these episodes, do - Michael Westmore (lead makeup artist on the series and occasional visitor to the SyFy series Face Off) talks about making all the extras into Börgen with a “Mr. Potato Head" type system, where you could switch out where the tubes and things go, to get a new combination of Borg looks each time. This guy has a sweet eye camera.
When he gets shot down, he’s replaced by this guy:
Zoidberg?
This won’t hurt a bit
This Borg is showing some sexy arm. And kidnapping Captain Picard?! Dammit, I was distracted by the sexy arm!!
Welcome to your new home
This guy’s plastic thigh is probably my favorite Borg part.
I’m your biggest fan
This guy has what appears to be a tiny industrial fan as an eyepatch. You know, like hamsters use when they do a re-enactment of that one scene in Singin’ in the Rain.
Blue Steel
All the Borgs have such severe Nordic features. Do you think that was on purpose?
So now the Borg have Picard and the crew try to save him and we get a lot of shots like this:
Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s phaserbeam
I’m using Bev here as the example because a) her face looks fresh to death and b) we’re about to transition into Part II of the episode and her hair is like COMPLETELY different.
Anyway, they find Picard, but it’s too late!! He’s been Borged!!
Novice Borg. Like Maria in the convent
HJe’s not fully Borged-out yet, but they did give him a nice plastic six-pack there. As if he needs it.
This is how the first part of the episode - and the final episode of Season 3 - ends: with Riker preparing to fire on the Borg ship, even while Picard is still inside. Patrick Stewart tells a nice story in the featurette about some people who yelled at him in a convertible that he ruined their summer (because of the cliffhanger).
We return to find everyone on the bridge, as the Enterprise fires on the Borg cube, with no effect. Bev and Data are concerned (at least Bev is):
Like a concerned cocker spaniel
Okay, so her hair is still red, but it’s definitely longer and lighter and it’s got more BOUNCE to it. Stacks on stacks on stacks on stacks of extensions went into creating that volume.
Curlz MT
The hairstylist also came up with a better way to do Liz’s hair here - compare this with the look she was rocking in the beginning:
iCloud
Before: more of a cloud. Now: more of a mass of curls formed into a vague brain shape, like when you make a jello mold full of spaghetti and pretend it’s a brain on Halloween. (Is that a real thing?)
Riker’s in charge now, with Picard kidnapped and on the way to being a Borg, and he’s floundering a little bit. Guinan barges in with WISDOM and PURPLENESS:
This is my “dropping truth bombs" attire
At first it looked like pretty much every other Guinan outfit: swingy top with matching pants in a bold color; matching crazy hat. But it’s got some cool details:
DAT SHOULDER
These colors - bright purple and port wine - really barely make sense together. They’re just a little too close together without actually being the same OR complementary, like if you served a salad with ranch dressing AND blue cheese dressing. Everything just gets all muddled. But somehow I like it? (I would probably eat that salad, too.) And the port wine velvet looks deliciously tactile.
Offset Neckline is my new improv troupe
With a slightly closer look, we can see that there is some sort of bananas double-neckline-asymmetry happening, which I am fully in support of, as well as the fact that the bright purple fabric is a nubbly 60s upholstery fabric that looks like it belongs on a chair in Prince’s swinging bachelor pad. (Perhaps that’s also where one might find Prince’s mattress, if I can remind you all of one of my favorite lines of Charlie’s.)
Eventually, the crew succeeds in retrieving Picard from the Borg cube, but they do it all while wearing uniforms, so let’s skip over that for now and show you a more Borged-out JLP:
Exoskeletons are SO 2365
Okay, so maybe this is just me reading into things or the angle of this shot or something, but I like how Picard’s Borg Gear (or BorGear™) looks newer than the rest of them, like they really did just mold those plastic plates for him in their Borg Mold-a-Rama and throw him into them.
Data takes Locutus (Picard’s Borg name) to his lab and strips him down to try to figure out how to disconnect him from the rest of the Borg. The thing with the Borg, in case you’re unfamiliar, is that they’re a collective, and all connected to one hive mind, so the crew can’t just take all the BorGear™ off Picard and expect him to live.
Locutus of Bokayyyyyy
Picard hangs out in the same tube thingie Data used when building Lal and Data and the others try to figure out what to do. Data hooks his own positronic brain into Locutus’ Borg brain, which means he’s also hooked up to the Borg hive mind as a whole and that ends up being the key to the Borg’s downfall: Data finds an unattended subchannel of the hive mind and puts them all to sleep! But whose idea was that?
MOTHERFUCKING PICARD
This guy is so fucking badass he can be assimilated by the Borg and then fucking MENTALBLAST his way out of there.
When I posted a picture of Locutus before the cinema event, reader lefthandednessleft reblogged it and added that ze had named hir kitten Picard because “His markings on his face remind me of this picture." I just think that’s cute.
In the end, JLP is de-Borged and the cube is exploded, and we are left with a wistful Picard, drinking tea and considering what it means to be human:
That’s fucking heavy, bro
Sometimes shit gets heavy. That’s why you need tea.
Screenshots from trekcore.com because they look way better than the ones we take.
