“The Last Generation” Takes ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Home
Star Trek: Picard is over. Whatever comes next, this is the final frontier for the Enterprise D. But what a choir to sing her to her rest.
“The Last Generation” comes to us during an uncertain time for Star Trek. Both Picard and Discovery are ending. These two series brought Starfleet back from the dead after years away from our TV screens. But now this moment is passing. Where do we go next?
For something new to begin, something else must first end. Even if there are guest appearances in the future, this is the end of the road for the assembled crew of the USS NCC1701-D Enterprise. And for those of us who watched Star Trek: The Next Generation as it first transmitted, we, too, find ourselves passing the torch to a next generation of our own.
So. How do Terry Matalas and his team weave this final tapestry? What does it say about these characters or about this world? What does it say about us?
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To Boldly Recap “The Last Generation”
The main story splits along two tracks: one is with the Enterprise D’s crew and the other is with the Titan’s. Picard and co. face a Borg vessel hidden inside Jupiter. And on the Titan, Seven’s team uses phasers jury-rigged to transport rather than stun to seal the Borg away and retake the ship.
Picard, Riker, and Worf beam down to an all-too-welcoming Borg cube. Picard is there for Jack. Worf and Riker are there to find the Borg beacon transmitting Jack’s signal which controls the fleet back at Earth. Seven’s team, meanwhile, realizes they can get the Titan out of formation by cloaking. They do so and then attack the entire fleet to slow down its barrage against Space Dock and Earth.
Worf and Riker get the necessary info to the Enterprise. Unfortunately, the beacon is deep inside the center of the cube thoroughly out of reach – unless, of course, you have an android with enough computational power to navigate through a Cube like it’s the Death Star. Hi, Data.
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Locutus, Vox, and the Big Borg Mommy Queen
Picard finds Jack (now Vox) in full Borg regalia. He also finds a necrotic Borg Queen. She does a real villainsplain. Basically, she is the last of the Borg. She was cannibalizing her own drones to stay alive when she sensed Jack, his abilities, and his loneliness. So the Borg Queen forms an alliance with Vadic’s changelings out of a shared desire for vengeance. She also intends to use Jack to grow a new generation of Borg organically and then annihilate anyone she cannot assimilate.
Meanwhile, Data gets the Enterprise to the beacon. Unfortunately, if they blow up the beacon, they blow up the cube, too. So Riker and Worf head to find Picard and Jack knowing they only have a minute to get him to a beam-out point once the beacon goes bye-bye.
Picard, out of options, reconnects his body to the Borg Collective to communicate with Jack. But Jack is happy where he is. Inside the collective, he is surrounded by voices and he is safe.
Picard tries to explain how this is subterfuge. When Jack won’t hear it, Picard tells Jack that he sees Jack as the part of himself that was missing all along, that he, too, has felt the loneliness Jack does for his entire life until now. And if Jack won’t leave then Picard will stay with him. And that father’s love snaps Jack out of it.
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Watch Your Future’s Beginning
Troi senses Riker’s thoughts and uses that to guide the Enterprise to pick up the away team and Jack. With everyone aboard the Borg cube explodes along with the Queen. It’s a good thing, too, because the bio Borg in Starfleet were about to kill Seven’s crew and basically all of Earth. But no cube means no bio Borg. Everyone returns to normal.
We get a number of codas. Seven of Nine finds out from the real Captain Tuvok that Shaw had recommended her for captain. The Enterprise D gets decommissioned again. A year later Jack joins Starfleet, becoming an ensign aboard the Titan which is newly rechristened as the Enterprise G. Picard and his crew celebrate at Ten Forward. Picard gives a stirring speech and the episode ends with the original Enterprise D gang playing poker.
Did I say that’s the end? Well, almost. As Jack unpacks in his crew quarters he gets a visit from a very surprising face – Q. Apparently he’s not dead, at least not this version of him. And he has news for Jack. While Picard’s trial is over, Jack’s and humanity’s trials are only just beginning.
The End Beginning.
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To Boldly Review “The Last Generation”
Watching “The Last Generation” gave me mixed emotions. There are things I love about this story. It is, in many ways, possessed of profound kindness. And let’s start there because the kindness is important.
Something I’ve noticed over these last 10 weeks is how Star Trek: Picard has acted almost as a kind of balm for people. The world is on fire. People’s stress is inflamed. But in the middle of all that we have this reunion for some of the most beloved characters in TV history. Star Trek: The Next Generation remains one of those shows that simply makes people feel good. It’s been making people happy for over 35 years and it will keep doing that forever.
Over two months ago I said that this new season of Picard is very similar to the previous two. But in many ways, it is the exact opposite. The first two seasons avoided the past, in some ways even damned it. Season 3 of Picard is about giving people what they want. They want reunions and references to glorious adventures passed. More than anything, people just want to be told it’s going to be okay. Good will prevail. The fallen will be redeemed. And after everything, you can still go home again.
The strength and the weakness of “The Last Generation” is that it is a fantasy. In real life, adventures are rarely as grand as you remember them. Relationships usually fade. People inevitably die. All homes must, in their time, crumble to ash.
But not today. Not on Star Trek: Picard Day.
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All Good Things Don’t Come to an End
It would be an oversimplification to say that our heroes come out unscathed. But be honest — you thought one of the main legacy characters was going to die, right? Riker, maybe? Or Worf? Worf could’ve died. Michael Dorn does hate that Klingon makeup after all.
And yet the deaths in this finale are relegated primarily to the villains. The Borg Queen certainly is dead (so far as we know). Some Starfleet officers are also likely toast, but none with names. In the end, everybody lives. Just this once, everybody lives.
Is that satisfying? Yes and no. The tension of the conflict is lessened by a lack of clear consequences. But it is nice.
Picard embraces fatherhood so he and Jack don’t have to feel alone anymore. And that is very nice. It turns out Shaw believed Seven of Nine was ready to be captain after all – and now she is. That, too, is nice. The Titan is now the new Enterprise. Seven, Raffi, Jack, and Sidney are now the stewards of the next chapter. They are the living embodiment of that continuing voyage to seek out new life and new civilizations.
And 20 years after the ignoble and abrupt previous ending of Star Trek: Nemesis, the former Enterprise crew, at long last, ride their final tide; from rapids to ripples and from sea to shore. The trial for humanity may never end, but for these characters who have shepherded us through days both light and dark, there is that elusive prize – peace. The only gambles remaining are over a deck of cards as long-cherished friends smile, laugh, and see in each other a lifetime of joy.
And it’s nice. Genuinely. It’s lovely.
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It’s Also a Little Too Easy
The Borg Queen, isolated, zombified, and working her final act of madness is, in many ways, more dangerous than ever. She weaponizes Vadic’s trauma and helps the changelings infiltrate the Federation in near totality. And yet at the moment of her greatest triumph, it seems like she hesitates.
Sure, the Enterprise is about to blow her cube sky high, but so what? Who cares? When you’re that desperate, winning doesn’t really enter in. Sure, having a new, self-producing collecting, nigh immortal collective is the ideal for the Borg Queen. But when you’ve lost everything else, sometimes you’ll settle for good old-fashioned revenge.
And so I find it hard to believe that the Titan did anything other than get blown up. It’s facing an entire fleet of vessels and we’re supposed to accept that it ducks and moves, flitting in and out of cloak so fast it can slow a homicidal invasion force by any appreciable measure. It stretches credulity. I don’t buy it.
The Borg Queen letting Picard and co. on her cube? Sure, that I get. Hubris is never a surprise. But she could’ve executed one final order before she died: blow up Earth. Why not? What’s to stop her? Nothing.
All the kidnapped officers are alive for some reason. The changeling takeover is resolved via voiceover. I appreciate that Beverly Crusher is the bomb dot com, but with respect, some of the potency of this story is lessened by how quick and pat some of the resolutions are.
None of these flaws ruin “The Last Generation” but they become clear after the haze of good vibes wears off.
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“The Last Generation” and Family
There’s a question rattling around in my head. It’s been rattling in my head for a little while and it pertains to chosen family vs. bio family. “The Last Generation” leaves no debate: Jack is what Picard was missing. He says he is not complete until he meets Jack. And Jack seems to reciprocate. After all, Jack feels completely alone to the point that he embraces the Borg. His mom is not enough. Everyone he’s ever met is not enough. But Picard is.
I feel like I’m Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind playing with his mashed potatoes. This means something. This is important. What are the Star Trek: Picard writers trying to say about biological imperative? Clearly, they are saying it’s important, even necessary. Biological family is what drives Picard and Jack’s story this season. It’s a major topic for Will and Deanna as well as Geordi. Alton Soong gives an entire speech about evolution as familial addition.
Even the Borg Queen has abandoned assimilation in favor of procreation! She says she is Jack’s real mother and there’s an explicitly biological component to her logic. But it feels as though chosen family gets diminished in the process of telling this story. It’s not that chosen family doesn’t matter. Clearly, it does. But this focus on biological connection suggests that life is somehow inherently limited without it.
As a queer person with tenuous-at-best ties to my bio family, this story leaves me a little cold because my chosen family is everything to me. But that’s my response to it and I’m curious to see how other people react to this element of the story after having time to process it.
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“The Last Generation”… Or is It?
There’s so much to talk about in this episode. We’re not even going to talk about President Chekov beyond saying that the shoutout to Anton Yelchin is very nice. For me, the biggest question is about the future. Let’s not forget that one of the biggest legacies of this season is that it actually rated as one of the top streaming shows – something that Star Trek doesn’t typically do.
Whatever future there is for Star Trek, it seems like a guarantee that Terry Matalas will be a part of it. And if Matalas is there, then some aspects of this third Star Trek: Picard season will continue as well. So what’ll it be? Another legacy series with characters from Star Trek’s past? The adventures of the Enterprise G with “counselor” Jack Crusher and Q? Will Data seek out his own family? He does have a daughter out there in Soji. And a daughter in his own memory in Lal.
The best part of “The Last Generation” is that it leaves the world wide open. Anything could happen. Like a game of poker. Five card stud, nothing wild, and the sky’s the limit.
See you out there.
4/5 stars
