The Best Enterprise Just Returned In Star Trek: Picard
The Enterprise-D returns in this week's episode of Star Trek: Picard.
“Vox,” the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Picard, sees the surprise return of the iconic Enterprise-D. Turns out as the head of Starfleet Fleet Museum, Commodore Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) has been rebuilding the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew’s original ship in secret for years. The Enterprise-D winds up being essential when the joint Borg/Changeling plot culminates on Frontier Day with the reveal that via a new organic method, the youngest members of Starfleet have been assimilated into the Borg for months, possibly longer.
The new commanding officer of the Enterprise-F, Elizabeth Dennehy’s Admiral Shelby, tells us in her Frontier Day speech about how all the ships in Starfleet have been linked to provide stronger defense. At the same time, an organic virus has been running through all Starfleet transporters, to which any Starfleet crew under the age of 25 are susceptible. The assimilated crew are activated all at once, proceeding to slaughter any non-assimilated Starfleet personnel, including Shelby and the Titan’s Captain Shaw (Todd Stashwick).
This is why Geordi leads the Star Trek heroes to the Enterprise-D. Once they turn the proverbial ignition switch, the old ride from TNG becomes the only ship in the fleet unaffected by the Borg’s influence. Considering they’ll be facing down literally all of Starfleet, it’s not unlikely that the old ship will be giving another heroic farewell.
Outside of flashbacks or dream sequences, it was 1994’s Star Trek: Generations that last saw an active Enterprise-D. In battle with a Klingon Bird-of-Prey under the command of the Duras sisters Lursa and B’Etor, the heroes prevailed but not without sacrifice. The saucer section crash-landed on Veridian III while the rest of the ship exploded with a warp core breach.
Geordi explains that the saucer section needed to be recovered because of the Prime Directive — Veridian III was a populated planet with a pre-warp species. The rest of the refurbished Enterprise-D is harvested mostly from the U.S.S. Syracuse.
Star Trek: Generations is the first franchise film to feature the TNG crew, but the destruction of the Enterprise-D doesn’t slow them down. Two years later, the Enterprise-E debuts in Star Trek: First Contact and serves the crew until the final pre-Kelvin feature, 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis.
Along with Star Trek: Picard‘s reveal of the restored Enterprise-D, the episode also strongly hints at the fate of its successor. As the heroes approach their first ship, La Forge says, “And obviously, we can’t use the Enterprise-E.” All eyes turn to Worf (Michael Dorn), who responds “That was not my fault.
It’s not exactly confirmed, but it seems likely that at some point between the events of Nemesis and Picard, Worf became the Captain of the Enterprise-E, and that it did not survive his tenure.
