President Anton Chekov
The opening voice over comes from Trek legend Walter Koenig playing the son of Pavel Chekov, the unseen Anton Chekov, who we learn is the President of the United Federation of Planets in 2401. “Anton” could be a tribute to the Russian author Anton Chekhov (different spelling!) but it also references the late Anton Yelchin, who played Pavel Chekov in the three reboot films.
TNG Space-scape
As Chekov tells everyone, “do not approach Earth,” (a line borrowed from The Voyage Home), we get that familiar blue nebula-ish space-scape straight from the opening credits of The Next Generation. This image occurred in every episode of TNG, starting with the season 3 premiere, “Evolution.”
Enterprise-D flyby
The flyby of the Enterprise-D at the start of the episode gives us a very brief glimpse inside of Ten Forward as well as the conference room behind the main bridge. In the series, and in Generations, we never quite got this kind of look at these rooms from outside the ship.
“Over 35 years ago…”
Picard says, “What began over 35 years ago…ENDS TONIGHT!” This refers to the fact that the events of “The Best of Both Worlds” happened in 2366, which would be exactly 35 years before the present of Picard season 3 in 2401. By “over” he probably means that the Enterprise encountered the Borg the year prior, in 2365, in the episode “Q Who.” In real life, it’s been 36 years since the debut of The Next Generation in 1987, so that number connects to our world, too.
Portable Beaming With Phasers
Seven and Raffi use phasers to activate the transporter beam. This happened before in the TNG episode “Gambit,” when a group of pirates used phasers to beam up things just by firing at them. At that time, everybody thought Picard was dead when he’d actually been beamed up!
Geordi Takes Command
Although Data was third-in-command of the Enterprise-D during the run of TNG, Geordi is given command of the ship here. Why? Well, this version of Data doesn’t even have a rank yet. On top of that, Geordi is a Commodore, which means he outranks even Riker at this point. The TOS episode “The Doomsday Machine” established that Commodores had more pull than Captains, but less than Admirals.
