It’s time for another Star Trek: Picard update, but this time it’s a clarification on a major plot point from season two. Executive producer Terry Matalas is clearing something up regarding how the season fits in with what we know of the Borg that might have been confusing to fans.
Borgati’s “off-shoot”
The final two episodes of Star Trek: Picard season two saw Agnes Jurati become a Borg Queen. She initially merged with the queen from the 25th-century Confederation timeline, then the two were given La Sirena back in 2024 to leave and form a new type of Borg collective based on cooperation and consent instead of domination and subjugation. When the crew returned to the 25th century, it was revealed that this was the masked Queen who had taken over the USS Stargazer at the beginning of the season; however, her intentions were good and she was trying to get Starfleet to help prevent a galactic disaster.
Alison Pill as Borg Queen
This revelation of the “Borgati” Queen in the Prime Universe of the 25th century raises a big question: What exactly had she been up to since 2024? Did she, with the advanced tech of La Sirena, transform the Borg Collective, effectively rewriting everything we know about the Borg from Star Trek history? According to season two co-showrunner Terry Matalas, the answer is no. Jurati’s Borg were an “off-shoot” of the Borg Collective that “stayed out of history’s way.” He revealed this in a Twitter reply to a fan who asked how Jurati’s Borg impact the Borg we know.
They’re an off-shoot from an alternate timeline that have stayed out of history’s way. They are not the the Borg. I’d imagine the real Borg are licking their wounds still in the Delta Quadrant after Alt Admiral Janeway poisoned them.
— Terry Matalas (@TerryMatalas) May 31, 2022
Matalas added he expected the traditional Borg are “licking their wounds still in the Delta Quadrant after Alt Admiral Janeway poisoned them.” This refers to the Star Trek: Voyager series finale, which had a future Admiral Janeway come back in time to help Captain Janeway get the USS Voyager home more quickly using the Borg conduit network. Admiral Janeway stayed behind, sacrificing herself to be assimilated, but in so doing she infected the Borg with a “neurolytic pathogen,” breaking the Queen’s control over the Collective.
Borg Queen (Alice Krige) infected by Admiral Janeway in “Endgame”
Matalas also revealed that an earlier draft had Starfleet give Jurati’s collective a different name to differentiate them from the other Borg, calling them “the Jurati.”
In one of the earlier drafts of the finale, Starfleet recognized them as the Jurati.
— Terry Matalas (@TerryMatalas) May 31, 2022
No Borgati in season 3
Alison Pill has already confirmed she will not be in season three of Star Trek: Picard. Matalas also confirmed that season three will not be dealing with the Borg v Borg conflict, but he expects someone else to pick up that story.
I’m sure someone will write something like that, but it’s not the focus of Season 3.
— Terry Matalas (@TerryMatalas) June 1, 2022
Alternate Borg ship
In other Borg news, production designer Dave Blass revealed that there was an alternate way for the Borg Queen to get on board the USS Stargazer; they designed a small Borg shuttle for the Queen that would have penetrated the Stargazer’s shields before she beamed onto the bridge. He shared the early artwork for the design by John Eaves, James Chung and Doug Drexler on Instagram.
View this post on Instagram
Star Trek Picard season 2 is available to stream now. There is no word yet on when the third season of Star Trek: Picard will debut.
Amazing. This is the exact opposite reasoning used to explain why there was no “Time’s Arrow” Guinan who recognized Picard in 21st century LA. (In that scenario, the alternate timeline infiltrating the prime timeline would’ve been the Enterprise crew from TNG coming into the prime timeline of the 19th century Earth in which Guinan was visiting. But the explanation we were given was that since that TNG timeline was wiped out, they never traveled to 19th century Earth. Here, the alt-Borg timeline gets wiped out so it can’t hang out in the prime timeline until the plot demands.)
That finale needed Janeway to show up and speak for the audience. “This is giving me a headache.”
As quickly and easily as Picard and the Enterprise-D would’ve solved the Caretaker dilemma without having to strand themselves in the Delta Quadrant, Janeway would’ve solved the Borg Queen dilemma, negating the need for all of Picard’s season two “adventure.” She would’ve sniffed out the problem and solved it by the end of the teaser.
Agreed. He’s full of it in a nutshell.
That whole concept of “no alt timeline, one overwrote the other” shot the story in the foot later. Setting the future right again would mean there was no Confederate timeline anymore, so there was never any Confederate La Sirena to travel back into the past. The switch meaning no TNG Picard to go back and meet Guinan meant, by the exact same token, switching back there was no Confed La Sirena to travel back to 2024 to fix things.
I think the explanation for all this is that Q shielded Picard and Co. from the time travel overwriting since if they got altered there would be no memory of the gift he gave to Jean Luc and it would have all been for naught.
WTF were they thinking with S2 of Picard?
Well I’m glad it was clarified. I been confused over it too but seen people cite that as a theory and they are just an alternate version of the Borg, which I’m happy about since I really didn’t like how they resolved it. But knowing that, I’m good with it. And while I am OK with changes, I still want the Borg to be the Borg basically. But having an off shoot of them can be interesting for future shows and stories.
Still, I don’t really get how they could’ve been around for 400 years and yet we supposedly never heard of them until now? But this is how time travel works I guess (and yes space is very big). And to this day I’m still confused over Endgame and how that time travel worked. The original Borg was crippled by a future Janeway from what became an alternate timeline, so shouldn’t she and her actions have been erased the minute Voyager got home 20 years sooner? Wouldn’t that just reset everything? But this is why I love Star Trek, it’s so trippy and weird lol.
In my mind, Admiral Janeway was a remnant of the alternate timeline similar to the variants in the show ‘Loki.’ The variants can get pulled out of their timelines and still exist.
“The original Borg was crippled by a future Janeway from what became an alternate timeline, so shouldn’t she and her actions have been erased the minute Voyager got home 20 years sooner?”
Yes.
Assuming that what I wrote above is *not* the case, and leaving Jurati out of the discussion at least for a moment, what is the status (in canon) of the Borg post-“Endgame”? Did Future Janeway just deal them a “crippling blow,” or did her actions eliminate them? “Picard” is canon, and my memories of season 2’s episode 1 are not clear, but I don’t recall Picard’s saying, when it became known that it was the Borg who were trying to communicate with the Federation, “WTF? I thought Janeway destroyed the Borg.”
I guess this would be a causality paradox, as Janeway needed to get Voyager home later to go through that process of going back in time to get Voyager home earlier, but getting them home earlier means older Janeway never existed to go back in time to get them home, so that means…I hate time travel 🤯
I kind of figured that the original Borg were still out there because Borgati told Seven and Raffi to tell Picard that there would no longer be a need for a Borg Slayer, at least, not from them. I assumed that meant that the Borgati were not a threat, but the real Borg collective that we’ve seen over the years is still around in the Delta Quadrant. I also figured that the artifact from season one of Picard was Borg Cube that had recently arrived in the Alpha Quadrant but had their link severed. And if sphere 634 was able to operate after what Janeway did, it’s safe to say the cooler Borg are still out there doing their thing and that the Queen self-destructed Unimatrix One to keep the rest of the collective safe from the pathogen. Plus, there was a reference on Voyager to something called a Trimatrix. They never explained what it was but I figured that this was possibly some backup unicomplex.
I am sorry, and it is rare for me to be this critical, but this “clarification” is just gobbledygook. Please let’s have a moratorium on any more time travel stories for a while. Especially ones that have little or no consistent operative principles or are haphazardly revised producing intolerable internal contradictions. It is a basic principle of the scientific method that there are universal natural laws that can be studied, experimented upon, and produce predictable results. While there can be unknowns, unresolved mysteries, and paradoxes, obvious chaos and randomness in a sci-fi genre are quite simply magic. If you’ll excuse me, now I need something for my headache.
As Chief O’Brien and future Chief O’Brien once said: “I hate temporal mechanics!”
Especially when the “mechanics” part is ill considered. :-)
Actually, it’s very simple, even for the likes of us fans:
Original Borg was crippled by a possible future Janeway who changed the present’s timeline direction, so that Voyager came home earlier (from the future Janeway’s perspective).
“Borg Cooperative”, one of which was led by Hugh (RIP).
Borgati/The Jurati, an offshoot of the Borg from an alternate future, that stayed in the shadows until now.
As established by the episode “Parallels” (TNG), a timeline doesn’t get erased; it branches off. And changes in the Prime Timeline is a result of a variant travel back through a branch to the point of divergence. At that a point of divergence, the switch to another timeline branch is made. We, as the audience, will always see the Prime Time as one timeline, regardless of any divergence that may or may not take place. It also allows the shows to get away with in-plot inconsistencies that the audience may or may not pick up.
At least, that’s how I take it…
I have found the name of my new coffee shop. All are welcome to “Borgati Cafe” – it’s in the West Village. We spike our espresso with silvery nano bits. Don’t ask for decaf!
Are we to believe that all of the Borgati setup at the end of the S2 finale, guarding the gate etc, is basically a dead-end that won’t be concluded at all?
That’s what it seems like. Just like how Picard being in a synth body was never followed up on.
“Just like how Picard being in a synth body was never followed up on.”
Yeah. In early season 2, Jurati said to Picard, “You’re looking positively positronic.” That was the only follow-up, if it can be deemed a follow-up at all.
Hmmm… Sounds like a bit of a cop out to me since it seems like Jurarit would not wish to stand by while millions died and got assimilated at the hands of the Borg. But whatever. I questioned it but never thought it was all that important.
Jurati would recognize the need to stay out of histories way or risk undoing everything that brought everyone to this point.
Terry Matlas standard answer template: “alt time line blah blah technobabble blah blah ‘its not like that because’ add more riddlish technobabble here”
Nonsense. This Borg Queen originated from a different time and traveled back into the past of the ‘main’ universe. There is zero reason to think that would some how wipe ‘our Borg’ that were originally their from existence.
The problem for me with all this is that if you have stop and explain it after the fact, then the actual episode script wasn’t well written to begin with. This isn’t a case of having an intentionally ambiguous ending, but rather having a specific intention and not communicating it clearly.
There is always a lot of explaining after the fact, especially with Picard and Discovery; probably because both are so serialized and they never get around to answering all the questions by the end of the season. I will say with Discovery season 4 they answered everything by the end of the season which is a first for that show. Picard season one was so bad they needed an entire Q&A section to get through all the dropped plots and issues.
For all of Picard’s problems in season 2, I think it was a little better in that regard at least.
I came here to say, “If you have to explain it afterwards, it was poorly written.” You beat me to it. And your absolutely right.
Or, worse, realizing you’ve screwed it up and then scrambling to make a justification after the fact.
I wish I could just talk myself out of watching the third season. I fear many more annoyances such as the one this post is about are headed my way.
“If you have to explain it afterwards, it was poorly written.” Yes, exactly.
That’s exactly my opinion, too. There are so many plot holes that you hardly get around with it. Star Trek always was a show of continuety. They thought first, got help from scientific consultants and wrote smart stories that were not seldomly picked up in later episodes. They even drew blueprints and “invented” imaginary technologies that were so good created that they are still picked up by modern scientists (warp drive). There is a whole encyclopedia about trek and so much information on the internet that it was possible to create smart story-telling. The producers just didn’t care. One “nerd” of the old generation could have checked the stories for dis-continuety, e.g. a ten forward-pub in the 21st century and other dumb stuff like photovoltaic on the Golden gate Bridge while you have matter-antimatter-generators. Don’t want to start with the 3D-printers on the 2009 movie… What about Picards older brother in the story of his childhood. Where was he? Why did the new borg in the 21st century suddenly have weapons with a borg-green laser? And why did they have to eat batteries and stuff, while they should have evolved in contrast to the TNG and VOY-Borg, who did not have to eat anything for transforming. Why this electronics look on their skin? Why Why Why? The reason is: the producers just don’t care. They make enough money milking the “Star Trek in its name”-cow without caring for its legacy. It works. That’s the most sad part about all of that. They take some good names, put it into some crappy stories and make money like hell. The target group for this new Trek is way to young and so not-Trekkies that it works out for them. Bring some action and give it a history of 55 years and you get enough people to watch it and think “yeah, that’s good scifi”. But it’s not. It’s some CGI packed together with some random story in space. No sci there, just some bad fi.
Star Trek always was a show of continuity….
Umm no it wasn’t. There are plenty of things that Trek reworked or changed over its decades.
Yepp and they explained why in most of the cases. It’s something different if you got a hand full of discontinuity or cometely ignore it.
Wait,
Wouldn’t the existing Borg have hunted them down? They don’t like to let their drones just wonder off by themselves. And… is this creates a new Queen, wouldn’t that naturally set up conflict? … And… And… so we are to beleive that the Borg Q introduced Picard to in TNG are a different set of Borg?? Wouldn’t he already know this?? This leaves us, beginning in 2024 ‘good’ Borg and ‘Bad’ Borg… Q supposidly introduced the bad Borg to the Federation during TNG, but the ‘good’ Borg knew of Earth in 2024. I just wanna know which Borg is Björn Borg??? (Google it if you do not know who he is).
“Definitely not Swedish.”
Why do you think that the “existing Borg” would even know about them in order to hunt them down? Queen Jurati would have made serious efforts to stay hidden to the “existing Borg” and there’s no reason to think that they couldn’t do it. They have the advantage of 4 centuries of advanced technology and knowlege of the galactic landscape. The Borg weren’t “everywhere” in the 21st century, or even the 24th century. Lots of places to hide…. the galaxy is a big place.
Its just stupid. They even don’t take Star Trek serious, telling us every bullshit they want with no care for the canon. This is insulting. This is no minor fact fans are discussing about to fill the gap between two episodes – this is starfleets major foe and maybe one of the most creative inventions in story telling. And they are put just shit on all of that. And the fact, that they need to clarify things after the season finale is just saying: producer, showrunner, writer – they are all very, very, very bad!
I still accept Kurtzman way of going all in and do all different things because no one (especially we fans) really knows how to do a star trek series surviving the expectations of the fans and the streaming market. But I really would wish he doesn`t take that much sacrifices along the way. Its hurting.
That looks like Nero’s ship, which did use Borg technology, at least non-canon. (Which would indicate that the Romulans were exploiting captured Borg ships even before Romulus was destroyed.)
It was all so poorly written, the fact that they have to send out tweets explaining plot holes is pretty sad. I had such high hopes for season 2 and it turned out to be worse than season 1 and I didnt think that was possible. While Discovery is far from my favorite Star Trek, I was able to get into it enough to be excited for the next episode. With Picard, I was concerned with what they were going to mess up every episode.
I’ll never understand some fans’ obsession with minutiae. Star Trek is literally completely based on the concept that nearly everyone is humanoid and we can travel galactic distances thanks to technobabble. The reason we still watch is not because we’re looking for hard science lessons solely, but because we want allegories it even straight up stories about the human condition. Discovery has been telling stories about trauma and how to cope in various ways. Picard is giving us extremely personal depictions of regret and how allowing regret to control your life can have seemingly galactic consequences for the individual. Are they perfectly capturing these themes every time? No. But they’re giving us the opportunity to experience and discuss. There is a level of holding the writers’ feet to the fire expected but the extreme vitriol coming from this comment section as a whole is just so disappointing. One could even say that most commenters seem to miss the entire point of Trek in the first place. Cooperation, compassion, debate. Infinite diversity, in infinite combination.
I, for one, was happy mostly with s2 of Picard. Not just for the chore of putting together the time travel puzzle pieces, but for the issues they raised (albeit sometimes clumsily and sometimes even insensitively), the performances they gave us, and hell, even the nostalgia they dipped us in (even if they forced our heads under that particular water’s surface from time to time).
Bottom line is, I’m not a writer. If I were, I wouldn’t waste my time here with hateful comments. I’d try to spend it more constructively and hoping that old open script policy returns. I’m over the moon that we’ve been given a second golden age of Trek content and I’ll continue to enjoy it while it lasts. We can be critical. We can even occasionally get nitpicky. But, please remember what Trek is to so many people: a forum for debate on the human condition and a playground for fantastical situations in the realm of science fiction. I personally think we’ve been given that in spades.
Very well said.
If we follow the branching timelines / variant theory, there can be no grandfather paradoxes. You go back in time, kill your grandfather, but you’re still there, because now you’re a remnant of a different timeline where he wasn’t killed.
Nero’s ship goes back in time, creating the branched Kelvin timeline. The Prime timeline continued on without Nero and Spock from that point (hence, the Romulan refugees seen in Picard S1, because the destruction of Romulus still happened)
In the past Prime 2024 before the divergence that created the Confederation timeline, Borgati takes the Confed-era La Sirena to go create the new Volunteer Borg. It’s not erased because it, too, is a remnant of a different timeline.
Q snaps his fingers to return everyone to the Prime future just before the Stargazer auto-destructs, but that’s just moving them forward from Prime 2024.
What is a little hazy in the writing is the implication of linear timelines that can be rewritten (causality loops), vs. branched timelines, vs. parallel universes.
It isn’t consistent, to be sure, but there’s been so much inconsistency around time travel and causality in Star Trek that it’s probably best to not worry about it too much; it’s a storytelling device, not actual science.
👏👏👏🖖
Do you remember the days when the writing was comprehensive enough that you didn’t have to try to explain the convoluted plot points after the show ended? When Terry wrote that, did he ever consider ‘Hmmmm…perhaps we should have answered that rather important point in the actual series as opposed to Twitter.’
I do indeed, Trev. Serialized shows like that are still out there, to be sure. They’re just not produced by these folks.
What important point? There’s no reason to think the original Borg would be affected in any way, people just haven’t thought it through properly.
You can see that something is poorly conceived and badly written when the creators have to keep explaining things
I actually understood this was an offshoot Borg without needing an explanation so apparently not everyone needs to be spoon fed information like some do. People will find anything they can latch onto to ahit on Picard. Was it perfect? No. It has some flaws but people make it out to be way worse than it is.