Star Trek 677: Regeneration

677. Regeneration

FORMULA: First Contact + John Carpenter's The Thing + Q Who?

WHY WE LIKE IT: The tension that always follows the Borg around.

WHY WE DON'T: Playing fast and loose with continuity.

REVIEW: In Regeneration, scientists discover the wreckage of First Contact's Borg Sphere in the Arctic Circle and a couple of frozen drones to boot. It's a logical way to get the Borg into an episode of Enterprise, though like Acquisition's Ferengi appearance, it's always a bit strange to think this would not have any impact on the Enterprise-D's actual first contact with the species. No outright blunders, and there's no way Picard would have been briefed on every one-shot encounter Starfleet's had in the previous 200 years, but it does keep your hardcore Trekkie distracted for the length of the episode, and that's not a good thing. I was especially edgy about the crew having the lingo down immediately (nanoprobes, tubules, etc.). At least use different words so that later crews wouldn't have thought of those old reports.

Enterprise doesn't appear until the second act, the first reserved for the inevitable assimilation of the Arctic science team. You know it's going to happen. You're just waiting for the poor shlubs to buy the farm. At least they don't linger on the entire assimilation process. Once someone is turned, they just cut to three days later, and Enterprise is put on the trail of an assimilated transport. Now, the episode is rather incoherent when it comes to Borg capabilities. Assimilation via nanoprobes is slower than normal (no doubt because the drones are low on resources), but they can transform a ship in no time at all. They come from the future, but take forever to adapt to phase pistols (and don't all do so at the same time). What does work, is the level of tension. The music is dark and moody, the fish eye lenses add to the anxiety, and you know, they're the bloody Borg!

Nothing heightens the tension as much as Phlox's assimilation though. Since we know not many have come out of the process intact, it's a scary bit even if we know he has to pull through. The poor guy has to work at a cure with a death sentence hanging on him. And contrary to popular belief, that cure does not actually contradict Star Trek continuity (nothing in Regeneration actually does). Crusher had to de-Locutize Picard, for example. We were just never privy to conversations where Enterprise's old files were uncovered after the first meetings with the Collective. And as the mention of Bynars here infers, there are other cyborgs in the galaxy. What might contradict continuity is the inclusion of a scene in which Archer worries about a message sent to the Delta Quadrant (how can you tell the distance it was sent?) that might bring the Borg to Earth in 200 years time. It is given so much importance, it's obvious the writers meant it to be the real reason for the Collective's interest. Then what was Q Who? about? I prefer to think that the message got there after Q Who? or not at all.

But before all that nonsense, there's some relatively competent action scenes and both sides being smart about the conflict. That's always nice. Archer, reticent to take lives, nevertheless blows two drones out an airlock in a cool, tense sequence. The Borg respond with a Trojan horse that blows all the fuses. Only Archer and Malcolm's raid aboard the Borg ship looks sluggish and poorly staged, though the resulting explosion is nice to look at.

LESSON: Waste not, want not. And there are all those costumes left over from Voyager in the storeroom...

REWATCHABILITY - Medium-High: Despite its potential as a continuity nightmare, I think Regeneration actually passes that test (if barely). The plot isn't always sound, but the atmosphere is killer, the effects are great, Phlox is as good as ever, and Archer doesn't play it glibly.