The choice of Picard let the show illustrate how implacable they are as foes and how little anyone -- even the captain of the Enterprise -- could do to stop them. However, the act runs counter to the established understanding of the Borg, which views no one individual higher than any other.
Ostensibly, they conducted it to more smoothly facilitate humanity's assimilation, but that never seemed a priority before, and it goes against the whole notion of their unstoppable nature. First Contact took steps to remedy that with the introduction of the Borg Queen.
The Queen fully intended to use Data as a replacement, suggesting that the position was far more important than just heralding the conquest of a new species.
As it turns out, the Queen wanted Picard to choose assimilation willingly, as she believed Data had done. But "The Impossible Box" finally establishes an informational disparity between the two of them capable of producing some genuine tension, when Soji starts investigating herself, uncovering what Narek already knows. She doesn't like what she finds: not only are daily phone calls with her mother some form of hypnotic control, but all of her photos, mementos and possessions can be dated to a little more than three years ago "Probable Age: 37 months," we learn.
She seems to have no past before that, leaving Narek an opportunity to play savior. His ruse begins in a Zhal makh chamber, where Narek guides Soji through a Romulan meditation rite, accessing her dreams through a twisting path on the floor with lantern waypoints.
His plan is to "access her underlying engrams without triggering her self-defense subroutines" to get at the information he needs: whether there are more synthetics like Soji out there. No hacking is involved, instead, Narek guides Soji through a recurring dream, pushing her into deeper layers of her psyche.
While Picard pushes the Federation in some anti-Utopian and discordantly violent directions, the scene demonstrates how it can also recapture some of The Next Generation 's sillier side, including its fondness for bizarre and unsubtle symbolism. In what seems to be a nod to Deanna Troi's transformation into a mint-frosted cake in the Season 7 episode "Phantasms," Soji finds herself as a wooden doll, disassembled and helpless. Less Inception , more The Cell , the dream sequence ends when Narek gets what he wants: a clue pointing toward the world where Soji was created.
As anyone who's ever seen a television show could have guessed, Narek betrays Soji, but expresses an adequate amount of grief to suggest he genuinely loves her, establishing the hope that Narek might later redeem himself. Star Trek: The Next Generation , p.
As for the name Locutus, Michael Piller termed it as "a name which I got out of the dictionary about language — I think it's a Latin word for language. The final draft script for "The Best of Both Worlds" stipulates about the assimilated Picard, " Half his face is gone… replaced with machinery. The way in which Locutus was represented in "The Best of Both Worlds" turned out to be very successful with production staff.
David Livingston remarked, " I just remember the moment in dailies of seeing Patrick say, 'You will be assimilated' […] I think that was the turning point for the series, because here you have your captain, who's now a Borg, who's saying he's now gonna take you guys over. That was an extraordinary moment. Because at the time, the fans were bitching about Picard [such as by complaining that he was 'too cold' or not similar enough to Kirk] […] But by Borgifying Picard — which is something that Michael really related to, because there was a little bit of Borg in him — it led the way to 'Family,' and […] it's what kept the franchise alive.
Jonathan Frakes had several suspicions regarding how effective Locutus was with fans. Following the initial airing of "The Best of Both Worlds", fans anticipated discovering Picard's fate so much that someone devised a hoax script supposedly of the concluding part of the story, in which it turned out that Picard's assimilation had actually been a prank by the Q Continuum. For help with wording the process of corrupting the Locutus persona in order to enable Picard's inevitable return in " The Best of Both Worlds, Part II ", visual effects artists including Rick Sternbach were consulted.
You know, to not just have that one dimension that he had on the series, " observed Director Cliff Bole. He enjoyed it, tremendously. He explained, " The interesting situation for me was how to create this murderous, autonomous figure while retaining, behind all that, the shadow of Jean-Luc [ I can think of other episodes in which I felt that the character was expanding, developing and learning much more than in that one.
It principally for me was a way of trying to find out how technically to make the Borg character work. Of course, a lot of it was left to the makeup department and the special effects department.
The makeup made a significant contribution. Initially, this was done by showing the exposed areas of his body paler by a couple of shades. According to Westmore, this demonstrated that "as humanity was drained away so was the color of life. They didn't want to put a helmet on him.
The suit's face plates were crafted by Westmore from life castings of Patrick Stewart. There were actually two main variations of Locutus' full Borg makeup created for television — one that was used at the end of "The Best of Both Worlds", and another that was applied for the start of " The Best of Both Worlds, Part II ". Whereas the first of these makeup designs incorporated a headpiece that wrapped round from the back of the head to the front of the face where it covered the right cheek, the second version extended the headpiece so that it covered the majority of the face.
Similarly, though the first variant of the makeup included only a few black ribbed tubes that seemed to run into his body and merely one identical tube that ran through the headpiece a lead which, according to Michael Westmore, was intended "to indicate that it was connected directly through his skull to his brain" , the later version had considerably more tubes. The immediate aftermath of Picard's transformation into Locutus was originally planned to be featured in an alternate past timeline experienced by Picard in TNG series finale " All Good Things Cinefantastique , Vol.
Among the changes seen were airbrushed "wiring" on the skin made to seem as if it is beneath the skin , slightly more detailed "Borg implants" and a completely new body suit. The changes enhanced the somewhat sparse original look and corresponded with the "new look" of the Borg for the movie.
Although creating this physical redesign for Locutus represented a comparatively special challenge for the makeup and costume designers of First Contact , it was not as challenging as it could have been, given that Patrick Stewart was not required to move much or perform stunts while in his Locutus guise. He not only drew a concept sketch of the appliance on Picard's cheek, in its fully spread-out state, but also created a computer-generated demonstration of the facial changes.
The latter was done using six copies of a promotional head shot of Patrick Stewart as Picard taken during production on the series and inserting the slowly evolving "cheek popper" with Photoshop. Jaeger cited an ice-cube holder as inspiration for the dreamt device, "with those fingers that extend and grab. Cinefex , No.
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