Star Trek: 10 Best Captain Picard Speeches
1. Disturbing Historical Parallels
The Next Generation: Journeys End (Season 7, Episode 20)
The events of Star Trek: Insurrection had a precedent. Journey’s End, a seventh-season episode of the Next Generation, served as both a final episode for Wesley Crusher, and debut episode for what would eventually become the Maquis.
A new treaty between Starfleet and the Cardassian Empire creates the Demilitarized Zone, while also placing several former Federation worlds under Cardassian control. One such planet is Dorvan V, on which a community of Native American settlers has made a home.
Admiral Nechayev, a sometime thorn in Picard’s side, orders the captain to convince them to move to another world, one that is not in Cardassian territory. Picard’s brows furrow.
'You see, Admiral, there are some very disturbing historical parallels here. Once more, they're being asked to leave their homes because of a political decision that has been taken by a distant government.'
He is, of course, referring to the episode’s inspiration – the mass relocation, and assassination, of the Native American people. While the episode would go even further in its exploration of this idea, this speech that the captain makes is both incredibly well defined, and also calmly insistent. Picard has had his share of fights with admirals – and this certainly wouldn’t be the last one – but at least it was well-worded. Nechayev, for her part, underestimated the Dorvan colonists’ will to remain, an idea that would be revisited in Deep Space Nine’s The Maquis.