Jean-Luc Picard’s entire life was redefined by an episode that, when it first aired, wasn’t really about him at all. Every Star Trek fan will tell you that “The Best of Both Worlds” is not only the greatest cliffhanger in the entire franchise, but the most pivotal moment in Picard’s entire arc. If Picard had never been captured and assimilated by the hivemind, cybernetic race known as the Borg, then it’s almost impossible to imagine the rest of The Next Generation happening the way it did, to say nothing of the films and, recently, Picard Season 3.
And yet, for all of its fame — including that very well-remembered cliffhanger — the meat of “The Best of Both Worlds” is not a Picard episode at all. Instead, when we revisit Next Generation’s Season 3 finale, 35 years after it aired in syndication the week of June 18, 1990, what we discover is that the episode that created a ton of pathos for Picard is really a story about William T. Riker.
