The past coming back has been a major theme of Star Trek: Picard, and the most recent two episodes forced the former captain to face the biggest of his unresolved issues, his attitude towards the Borg.
Picard’s hatred of the Borg came about after the events of the 1990 two-part Next Generation episode “The Best of Both Worlds,” the first half of which was a season finale and ended with the cliffhanger of Picard’s assimilation into the Collective as Locutus of Borg. It was not resolved until the next season premiere three months later with his reclamation, which he believed to be a miraculous achievement near impossible to replicate.
This traumatic experience informed his actions in the movie First Contact, where the calm, measured and philosophical captain was transformed into an action hero hellbent on the destruction of what he perceived as a blight on the universe. The monomaniacal nature of his obsession lead to comparisons with Captain Ahab’s hunt for Moby Dick, and the execution of drones who were members of his crew hammered home how deep-seated his loathing had become, while also being heavily inconsistent with the Picard fans had come to know over the prior decade.
The previous Picard episode, “Stardust City Rag” saw him encounter Seven of Nine, a notable interaction from them being uniquely able to empathize with what the other went through, and also due to the two characters never actually meeting each other over the course of the older TV shows. It leads to Picard admitting he feels he has not regained all the humanity he lost as part of the Collective.
In “The Impossible Box,” upon Picard’s arrival at the reclaimed Borg cube, his lingering PTSD almost overcame him until the arrival of Hugh, a former drone the Enterprise crew once encountered alone and considered using as a WMD against the Borg. Far from his own saving being a fluke, Picard sees firsthand the extent to which any drone can be reclaimed, and it allows him to appreciate that every one of them is a person, much like the lives of the Romulans he lamented being unable to save in the series opener.
The scenario is another example that shows Star Trek: Picard revisiting old plotlines and themes is not mere fan-service, but a genuine attempt to address the history of the characters and how their previous choices still have importance all these years later.
