Star Trek has revealed the next generation of a major franchise villain – all puns intended. The big surprise twist came in Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Episode 9, which finally answered the question of what the true threat has been behind both the Changelings that infiltrated Starfleet and the red door that Jean-Luc Picard’s son Jack Crush has been seeing in his mind. As it turned out, the threat was one and the same all along…
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(WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW!)
Star Trek The Next Generation… Of Borg
In “Võx” we finally get the reveal that Jack Crusher’s ‘true self’ is that of a next-generation evolution in the Borg and its collective. Picard, his former Enterprise crewmates (Beverly Crusher, Geordi La Forge Data, Worf, and Deanna Troi) discover that the Borg have always hidden a piece of their own coding within the DNA of those they assimilated; when Picard was restored to humanity after becoming Locutus of Borg, that coding was still dormant inside of him, and began a kind of evolution within Picard – that change caused the brain abnormality that ultimately killed Picard’s organic body; however, the mutation stabilized within the next generation of Picard’s DNA signature – namely, Jack Crusher. Jack now represents the first of the next generation of Borg – who have breached the divide between organic biology and cybernetics in order to assimilate their enemies from the inside out.
Starfleet Is Borg
The other piece of The Borg Queen’s new plan had the Changelings steal Picard’s organic body from the Daystrom Institute vault in order to recover the Borg coding hidden in his DNA. Using their unparalleled ability for spying and infiltration, the Changelings are revealed to have snuck into every starship in the Federation fleet, hiding the Borg code within the transporter systems. Any and every Starfleet officer under a certain age of brain development that used the transporter is found to have had Borg code added to their DNA while being re-materialized in transport. As Starfleet’s armada gathers for a milestone celebration using their new ship-synching tech, the Borg launch their ambush. All younger officers are instantly assimilated (with black eyes and veins instead of cybernetic prosthetics) and the entire fleet of ships is co-opted by the Borg.
Now, Picard and the heroes of Star Trek: The Next Generation are back aboard the classic USS Enterprise-D, racing to once again stop the Borg from annihilating Earth. Classic Star Trek.
Star Trek: Picard Season 3 is now streaming on Disney+.
