10 More Crazy Star Trek Fan Theories
7. Why "Captain Ahab" Was Such An Offensive Insult To Picard
When Lily was trying to convince Picard to give up his desire for revenge and blow up the Enterprise in First Contact, Picard initially seemed unphased, but instantly got more heated when she said one specific thing: "Captain Ahab has to go hunt his whale."
Lily couldn't have known this, but it's likely that this comparison would seem incredibly offensive to someone from the 24th century.
Captain Ahab was the whaler from the book Moby Dick who got his leg eaten by a whale and vowed to get revenge on it by hunting it down by any means necessary. In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, whales and other cetaceans were revealed to be highly intelligent sentient beings (and some even served in Starfleet after being brought back), which made Ahab less of an obsessive madman, and more of racist mass-murderer.
Knowing the touchy history between humanity and whales, it makes a lot more sense why Picard would be offended by being compared to Ahab.