For many, the greatest TV cliffhanger of all time — not just in science fiction, but ever — is the ending of “The Best of Both Worlds, Part I,” the final episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3. In the summer of 1990, the newly energized fanbase worried about whether or not Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) was really now part of the Borg, and if his former first officer, William T. Riker (Jonathan Frakes), had actually just decided to murder his former captain to save the Earth.
“The Best of Both Worlds, Part II,” which aired during the week of September 24, 1990, answered all of these questions, and then some. Taken together, the two-part story is perhaps the most pivotal and consequential arc in all of The Next Generation, and the moment in which the character of Picard was utterly redefined forever. And yet, for all of its impact and canonical relevance, is “The Best of Both Worlds, Part II” truly a worthy conclusion of its more-famous cliffhanger? A vague general consensus among random Trekkies will probably lead you to think the answer to this question is “no,” and if you use the Borg-ish hive-mind of Google and ask it, “best of both worlds part 2 not good?” you’ll get a similar answer: The conclusion was rushed, and Part I is better.
