The Best Star Trek Movie Only Happened Because One Man Saved Picard’s Greatest Foe

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 1 hour ago

Outside of the Klingons, the most legendary foe in Star Trek is arguably the Borg, whose nearly-unstoppable cybernetic warriors have come close to wiping out the Federation on a number of occasions. While these baddies were thought to be defeated in the series finale of Voyager, they popped up yet again to torment the titular hero of Picard across multiple seasons. However, what most fans don’t realize is that we would have possibly never heard from the Borg after The Next Generation if not for the late, great executive producer, Michael Piller.

Piller is, in a very real way, the man who saved TNG: he became showrunner in Season 3, ushering in an era of better uniforms, bigger sets, and infinitely improved writing. In Season 6, the writer of the two-part, Borg-centric episode “Descent” was unsure how to broach the fact that the Enterprise crew returned a freed Borg (Hugh) back to the Collective. This could theoretically change their entire race, and while “Descent” dealt with Borg who had been infected with individuality, the episode never specified just how many Borg were affected by Hugh’s return.

My Borg Friend’s Back (And There’s Gonna Be Trouble)

That was actually Michael Piller’s suggestion, and he thought the episode would be stronger if it left that matter as an open question for the fans. Understandably, these episodes led to intense online speculation and more than a few Star Trek convention arguments about whether the Borg were now completely different. Previously, they had been like robot zombies driven by the monolithic will of their Collective; however, the Borg in “Descent,” after reabsorbing Hugh (a Borg who developed an identity of his own), were basically just a bunch of independent-minded thugs being bossed around by Data’s evil brother.

While Star Trek fans generally liked “Descent,” the fandom was almost collective in its dislike of the new Borg. Having them team up with another villain made for some good temporary drama, and it led to a really great episode for Brent Spiner’s Data. But as villains, the Borg had arguably lost everything that made them cool or unique in the first place.

Resistance Was Futile

That’s why it was such a relief when these villains showed up as their old selves in Star Trek: First Contact. Sure, some things were new (mostly, the fact that they now had a creepy Queen), but these guys were mostly back to being the shambling, unstoppable robot zombies that terrified fans in the first place. This movie served as a kind of creative reset for these villains, and most future appearances of the Borg (from their many appearances in Voyager to their final appearance in Picard) focused on them as a Collective rather than a group of individuals.

None of that would have been possible, however, without Michael Piller. He was the one who suggested that “Descent” writer Ronald D. Moore should never specify how many Borg had transformed into individuals once Hugh’s freed personality had been absorbed into the Collective. At the time, many fans hoped that it would just be a small segment of the Borg that were affected, and the rest of the Collective had remained unchanged; those hopes were paid off in First Contact, a movie whose plot would have been impossible if Piller hadn’t saved the Borg from becoming generic villains.

Creatively speaking, this was both a blessing and a curse; the Borg eventually became wildly oversaturated in the franchise, with every new appearance making them feel a bit less special. Nonetheless, though, they remain the most legendary foes from the Golden Age of Star Trek, and they would have faded into obscurity if not for the intervention of Michael Piller. In this way, the man who saved Picard’s first show also saved the foes who would make the captain’s life a living hell for decades to come.