Sauron on Jupiter
Spoilers for Star Trek: Picard Season Three
The Borg show up as the “big baddies” in Star Trek: Picard Season Three (STP). But these are not just any Borg. This is the Borg Queen who assimilated Picard into Locutus of Borg to defeat the United Federation of Planets. This queen was believed to have been defeated by Picard decades prior.
When the big reveal of who was behind the various mysterious happenings in the galaxy, I could not help but think of Sauron’s part in The Lord of the Rings. (LOTR) Like the Borg Queen, many believed that Sauron had been defeated by Isildur almost two millennia prior to the events in LOTR. But Sauron had power that allowed him to fade, but not fully be destroyed. He had been amassing power to attempt a new incarnation for those millennia by absorbing power and drawing others to him. But until we have confirmation of Sauron’s involvement in the encroaching evil doings, there is only rumor and whispers on the wind. In fact, many do not believe Sauron to be back. But Gandalf and others understood that the existence of the One Ring could only mean that Sauron still had a connection, even if tenuous, to Middle Earth.
While the analogy is very imperfect, instead of a ring, STO introduces Jack Crusher. Jack is the biological son of Jean Luc Picard with Beverly Crusher. Jack exhibits strange visions and behavior throughout the season, culminating in the big reveal of being connected to the Borg. How can he be connected to a Borg Queen who was defeated many years prior to his birth? That is the brilliant turn of the story. Jack was conceived after Picard had been Locutus of Borg. Inherited by Jack is a biological interface to the Borg Queen that creates a method of biological assimilation. It is this connection that is the awakening of The Borg in a similar fashion to the awakening of Sauron.
Even the visuals reminded me of Mordor. When the team finally locates the Borg ship that has been broadcasting the signal assimilating through biological means, it is parked in the eye of Jupiter. Approaching the planet, we see a giant Borg cube with the angry, eternal storm of Jupiter swirling around it. I saw a square version of Mount Doom rising in the storms of Mordor. There is no simple way of walking into the cube, so our team has to venture in with little chance of success to shut that signal down and rescue Jack Crusher who is the instrument by which the Borg Queen is projecting her control.
On the cube itself, we learn the Queen has been existing by draining the life force of her drones. Even the surviving drones are wraithlike when they are sent to fight. We have the inevitable willingness for Picard to sacrifice himself to save his son and the galaxy. But, like the Frodo in LOTR, Picard is spared by the selfless actions of others. He is spared because he and others showed mercy and trusted in the enduring bonds of friendship.
I do not see this as a ripoff of LOTR, but as a deeply ingrained mythos of our time. This shows how powerful the myths we tell can become. They repeat themselves as we retell them with different characters and storylines, but they become our way of understanding the world around us. As a person of Christian faith, this is where I believe our hope for a future of the Church that remains a transformative example in our world. Rather than propositions and proofs, our stories matter more than anything in drawing people into that which we find hope.