Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for The Next Generation Seasons 3-4, Deep Space Nine Season 1, and Picard Season 3.
I don’t cover fan films very often here on the website. Trekkies have created some great productions over the years, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just never been a priority for me – especially when there are still some recent official episodes I need to catch up on! But I wanted to take a moment to highlight one such fan-made production today, as it’s something I greatly enjoyed.
Over on YouTube, a channel called JTVFX has put together a four-part series all about the Battle of Wolf 359: the famous battle between Starfleet and the Borg that was depicted in The Best of Both Worlds. The creator took what we saw of the battle in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine’s premiere and massively expanded upon it, crafting what is genuinely one of the best space battles set in the Star Trek universe that I’ve ever seen. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that this fan film easily eclipses many of the space battles seen in official Star Trek films and TV shows.
I wanted to highlight this because, at time of writing, The Massacre: Part II has just been published on YouTube – so it’s the perfect time to check it out if you haven’t already. The first part garnered a whopping 1.5 million views, and with Part II being bigger, longer, and even more intense, I think it’s something that no fan of The Next Generation era and The Best of Both Worlds should miss out on. I took time away from working on my review of Alien: Earth to step back into the Star Trek galaxy, and I’m so glad that I did!
We are gonna get into spoiler-y territory, so if you want to watch the whole fan film without any spoilers, this is your last chance to duck out. But I hope you’ll come back after you’ve seen all four parts!
What I really loved about this fan film was how it incorporated everything we know about the Battle of Wolf 359 from canon. We had Picard/Locutus aboard the Borg Cube, being influenced by the Borg Queen. Admiral Hanson leading the Federation fleet. Sisko aboard the doomed Saratoga. And even a young Liam Shaw – future captain of the Titan-A – was glimpsed as he escaped his ship. It felt like JTVFX had gone out of their way to tie together The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Picard in a way that felt natural.
Then we come to the Klingons’ involvement. At this point in the 24th Century, the Klingons and the Federation are allies, so it makes sense that they’d be willing to come to Starfleet’s aid. While a request for help from the Klingons was mentioned in The Best of Both Worlds, we never saw any Klingon ships on screen in the episode. I really liked seeing the Klingons here; their fleet racing to join the battle at the last minute was reminiscent of the Enterprise-E’s arrival in First Contact, and hit all of the same emotional notes for me.
Obviously, this is, first and foremost, an animation and VFX project. And there were so many beautiful starship models on display. I’ve said this before in other contexts, but I love seeing a big, beautiful, and diverse fleet of starships. It’s so much more visually interesting to see different classes and styles of ships working together than just copies of the exact same ship, and when most of the designs were from The Next Generation era, that just made it even better!
In The Best of Both Worlds, Admiral Hanson’s fleet always seemed to me like the kind of thing Starfleet had tried to throw together at the last moment. The Federation just doesn’t expect this kind of deep incursion into its territory, and with no major wars in this era, it makes sense that Starfleet wouldn’t just have a massive defence force armed and ready to go. I’ve always assumed that Starfleet was basically forcing ships out of mothballs, staffing them up with whoever was available, and throwing them into Hanson’s fleet – the time constraints surely meant that recalling ships from long-range exploration voyages was impossible.
And that feeling of a hastily thrown-together collection of random ships was absolutely present in JTVFX’s film. We got a collection of ships from the 23rd and mid-24th Centuries: Excelsior-class, Ambassador-class, Constellation-class, Miranda-class, Oberth-class, Nebula-class, Constitution-class refits, and a few others that I’m sure I’m forgetting. The Klingon fleet, too, contained D7-class ships, Birds-of-Prey, and just one more recent Vor’cha-class as its flagship. I just adored the way these fleets felt, especially the Federation ships. You could feel how Admiral Hanson had been scrounging around, trying to find any spaceworthy vessel to throw at the Borg. In that context… does it make the losses more understandable? I’d argue that maybe it does!
One thing we never really got to see in canon was whether the fleet at Wolf 359 made much of a dent in the Borg Cube, and even though the outcome of the battle was known, the moments where the Federation and Klingon ships seemed to find an advantage or a weakness in the Borg’s defences still felt incredible. The whole battle was exceptionally tense, with some of the named characters genuinely feeling like real people. Given that the focus was on the starships, not their crews, that’s a hard thing to achieve.
So let’s talk about the animation work.
I’m not an expert in CGI or any of that, not at all. But as a Trekkie, I know what a good space battle looks and feels like when I see it! And for me, JTVFX absolutely nailed it. The Battle of Wolf 359 felt… well, like how I’ve always imagined the Battle of Wolf 359: a desperate last stand against an impossibly powerful adversary, with Starfleet throwing everything it had at the Borg Cube to absolutely no avail.
The Borg Cube looked fantastic, its tractor beams, weapons, shields, and repairs all felt like updated versions of what we saw in The Next Generation, and I loved seeing Locutus aboard the ship, coordinating the battle. The Federation and Klingon ships all manoeuvred and flew through space exactly like they did in The Next Generation era, and many of the sweeping action shots reminded me of Deep Space Nine’s Dominion War battles, which I think JTVFX must’ve drawn inspiration from.
It’s one thing to make a CGI model of a starship – but it’s altogether more complicated to make that ship fly and move around in the way we, as Trekkies, are used to seeing. But whether it was the smallest shuttles and escape pods or the largest Klingon and Borg ships, all of the vessels on screen – and there could be many on screen at once – felt absolutely perfect… and like they’d flown out of a Star Trek production from that era. I loved it… if you couldn’t tell already!
I also adored seeing the recreations of Next Gen-era LCARS displays and computer graphics. I think that added a lot, and seeing a few moments in the battle from behind a computer screen or a tactical display were really fun inclusions. It also adds to the feeling that the Battle of Wolf 359 was playing out exactly as it had in The Best of Both Worlds, complete with the limitations of computer graphics at the time the episode was made.
I’m not always a fan of this. Sometimes, it’s nice to see franchises modernise and move with the times, and trying to use deliberately anachronistic things like CRT monitors, cassette tapes, or ’80s graphics can rip me out of it if I’m watching a modern production. But here? It worked seamlessly, and the displays and monitors felt like they came right out of starships of the 24th Century! The Klingon displays and graphics looked great, too.
This was an incredibly creative project, one that blended The Next Generation with other shows, films, novels, and even video games to create an intricate and detailed recreation of one of the Star Trek franchise’s most epic off-screen space battles! The only thing I wasn’t expecting, or didn’t imagine back in the day, was the arrival of the Klingons – but as I said, I think it worked exceptionally well, fits in with canon, and felt great in the moment as the Klingon fleet arrived. The rest of it, though, with the Starfleet vessels, the absolute shellacking they got, and the assimilation and deaths of many of their crews? It felt exactly the way I imagined this battle would when I first saw The Best of Both Worlds in 1992 – which is when it first aired here in the UK.
So if you’ve missed JTVFX’s channel or the earlier parts of this Wolf 359 adaptation… what are you waiting for?! Head over to YouTube and check it out!
Given Paramount’s occasionally antagonistic stance toward fan films, I think the sooner you watch it, the better. These things can, sometimes, be subject to copyright claims and other issues, so there’s no guarantee it’ll be around and available to watch indefinitely. I hope the new Skydance/Paramount corporation will do better on that front… but you can never be sure, unfortunately.
I had a great time with JTVFX’s masterpiece, and this absolutely wonderful recreation of the Battle of Wolf 359. If you enjoyed The Best of Both Worlds and you’ve always wondered what the battle looked like… here’s your chance to see it for real! And if you just like epic space battles in Star Trek, I genuinely believe this is one of the absolute best – eclipsing even some recent big-budget official productions.
Don’t miss out… and as always, Live Long and Prosper, friends!
Wolf 359: The Prelude Parts I & II and Wolf 359: The Massacre Parts I & II are available to watch now on YouTube through JTVFX’s channel, which is linked below. Still frames above courtesy of JTVFX on YouTube. The Star Trek franchise – including The Best of Both Worlds and all other episodes, films, characters, and properties discussed above – is the copyright of Skydance/Paramount. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Click or tap here to go to JTVFX’s YouTube channel, where you can find the Wolf 359 fan film. (Warning: External Website)
Trekking with Dennis 