(2x23) Regeneration: Borg!

[Honeybee]

Discuss Regeneration here.

[Honeybee]

I'll start:

This is one of my favorite episodes of the second season, in fact it's tied for first with Carbon Creek. It's just very well put together and very, very scary. (I always did think Enterprise did scary best.)

I love the fact we really don't see our crew until the second act. The first act is a great homage to The Thing, makes great use of First Contact and is very classically suspenseful. We, the audience, know how scary The Borg are but our poor doomed scientists don't. And the actors, including John Billingsley's wife, do a great job of making their characters likable.

When we finally get to Enterprise, our crew might be a little more clued in - but they still have no idea how dangerous the situation is. And everyone gets to play their part. Phlox's subplot is outstanding, and we get to see the steel behind the geniality. Hoshi's small part where she consoles Phlox is excellent. T'Pol gets to play Scully with the whole Zephram Cochran story. Trip gets to be the genius Engineer, verbalizing how advanced Borg tech is. Jon faces a moral dilemma. Malcolm gets all security like.

And I like that just a handful of Borg - between 3 and 9 and later about 30 of them - are absolutely terrifying and dangerous. One problem I had with Voyager was that they defeated the entire collective a few times. This episode made great use of the prequel concept by giving the crew an enemy that was familiar to the audience and way, way, way beyond their ability to understand. Jon had to kill the Borg - Borg that used to be people - and that was very difficult. But this episode did foreshadow some of the tough choices of Season 3.

[Hummingbird2]

Wow, Honeybee, what can I add to that except...I absolutely agree! This is one of my all-time favorites.

It's unfortunate that this episode has gotten such a bad rap from fans, but, to each his/her own, I guess.

[Aquarius]

I agree with everything Honeybee said, and I will add this:

Before I first saw this, I thought "Oh god, another Borg episode." The Borg had started out scary as hell when they were first introduced, and then they gradually got declawed. The most menacing enemy the Federation had kind of became a joke, so I couldn't help thinking, "Oh no, they've pulled out THIS stale and reheated thing again!"

Was never so glad to find out I was wrong! The Borg had been restored to their former terrifying, creepy-assed selves. I was SCARED when I watched this ep! I was even scared last night -- I'd seen it before, I knew how it was going to turn out, and still I was CREEPED! Honestly, "Regeneration" one of the best of the entire show.

[Kathy Rose]

I really do like this episode. I admit before I saw it, I had misgivings. Not the Borg again!

But I was pleasantly surprised, and I think a lot of it has to do with the "creep" factor. Our heroes had no idea what they were getting into, and yet anyone who has seen other ST, particularly TNG and VOY, was probably biting their fingernails at knowing what they were up against.

I think part of the reason the Borg seemed so intimidating in this episode, besides the crew never having encountered them before, was because the Borg were back to the way they were when most fans were introduced to them. Other than the eerie voice that demands that "You will be assimilated," there is no speech from them. There's something inherently terrifying about a creature that looks (somewhat) human and was once human, but makes no effort to communicate. In TNG and VOY (particularly with Seven of Nine before she joins the crew), there some real two-way communication between the Borg and the crews, which opened up other options besides fighting them to the death. Hence, less scary.

[panyasan]

I really enjoyed this episode, not only for the suspence, but also because when I watched it for the first time I was dying to see some new episodes of Enterprise. We lived abroad back then and my not so technical and not so into Star Trek parents had promised us to tape the episodes. Any way, after dvd full of Voyager episodes and a two hours special of something they found very interesting, we finally got a dvd with ENTERPRISE episodes. The first one we saw... Regeneration.
I think the best part was the first scene and the fact that everybody played a part. It's a pity we didn't see more episodes where everybody shines with his or her talent. And I did liked the tie in with Voyager with code with the coordinates of Earth that the Borg sent in the end.