Going from the moment The Traveller invites him to join. However in this arc, he declines, wanting to further himself within the capacity he came into this life/existence. Ultimately fuelled by the desire to follow in his father’s footsteps as well as via Picard’s inspiration.

He joins the academy, unsurprisingly excelling beyond most if not all other students. For this, he unfairly draws the disdain of his colleague who presume his closeness with a captain of a flagship as well as having a mother in such a senior position has afforded him opportunities and bias toward his success.

Rather than be beaten down, he doubles down on his extra-curricular studies and experiments in an effort to make his own footprint on the world and show that his successes are of his own making.

During a routine shuttle trip (possibly returning to the Enterprise for a sojourn), his vessel is intercepted by the Borg who have managed to employ a temporary wormhole to essentially teleport to him and bring him back to the hive.

Though he resists assimilation as best he can, the Borg Queen manages to tap into his mind and confirms that he is indeed a genius among humans. She halts the transformation process before he loses anything that is mentally left of him.

The Queen ‘employs’ him as the hive mastermind in order to preserve his ‘genius’ and use it to their advantage. She sends out a broadcast to the Enterprise to say that Wesley is now part of the Borg and to simply accept his assimilation.

….Fast—forward a series or two during which time Wesley’s situation is mentioned and usually a sub-plot involving more and more challenging hyper-logical hindering puzzles designed the trap them until the Borg return to assimilate the caught prey.

As a later series comes towards its finale, Beverley has become convinced that these ‘puzzles’ are actually a way of Wesley leaving a breadcrumb trail to help Starfleet track his whereabouts and ultimately rescue him. So much so that her indomitable maternal instinct sways Picard to believe the same and causes him to wilfully pretend to not have received orders to leave the Borg to other star fleet teams.

On to the final episodes of the season.

The Enterprise successfully track down the Borg cube in which Wesley is held. It appears to have been lost from the collective and on a mission to establish contact with them. Through various nail-biting missions to get a team onto the ship undetected using clues that Beverley has joined together from the previous subplot puzzles, both she and Picard find themselves the only survivors of the away team and strategise to find Wesley, somehow disable the cube and get back aboard the Enterprise.

During Beverley’s increasing obsession with these ‘puzzles’ that leads to this, Troi had repeatedly tried to make her see that she is being blindsided and that her maternal instinct is sabotaging all logic and sense that would otherwise have stopped her from making such rash and poorly-thought-through decisions. This leads to a tumultuous rift between the two and in no small part, with Picard whose sense of responsibility overrides that of his duty as a leader following Beverley’s repeated pleas and eventual persuasion. As such, Troi is kept apart from the rescue mission.

Jump forward to Picard and Beverley craftily making their way through the cube and employing their usual wit and skills to overcome the Borg they encounter until they finally reach Wesley. At first, we don’t see him clearly (darkened room or other such device) as we hear him thanking his mum for successfully identifying his trail and coming to his rescue, knowing only she would be the one to believe in him.

Then … DUN DUN DUNNNN. Troi comes into the room having been left in charge of the ship and now leading her own away team. She announces that this being is not Wesley, that this is but his shell and the only sense of his consciousness that she can sense is in scatters of thoughts radiating from all over the cube … from all the Borg aboard.

Beverly refuses to believe, verbally cutting Troi down as to how her senses are ever vague and never have been of worth or indeed have always been comedically ridiculed by the crew. “Let me guess … you sense this but you’re not sure or are you sensing *someone somewhere is holding something back?”

All the while, ‘Wesley’ can be heard laughing to himself, voicing agreement with his mother. He is seen clearly now and shows partial physical assimilation though his flesh and most other features still look as they always did.

I haven’t fleshed out how this scene pans out in my head just yet, but the away team is incapacitated. Troi very nearly traps ‘Wesley’ using some cool device La Forge cooked up, but is foiled by Beverley and ends up incarcerated despite repeatedly trying to tell Beverley how wrong she has been. Picard very nearly is convinced that this is the real ‘Wesley’ but in the last second, something happens to snap him out of it and realise this being is Wesley in body and ‘sort of’ mind, but the real Wesley has been ripped out of him and what exists of his consciousness is now basically rendered as a programme transmitted across the species.

Beverley starts to see the truth more clearly now as ‘Wesley’ begins to talk of having Locutus back. Picard heroically nearly subdues ‘Wesley’ but he himself is tricked into a Borg regeneration chamber to bring Locutus back out in him.

Now down to Beverley vs ‘Wesley’. As per usual, he adapts to any attack she attempts. All the while she keeps dialogue going to stall; eventually convincing ‘Wesley’ that all of this means nothing now that she, the mother, has finally gotten back with her child. How no bond is stronger.

She goes to embrace him and manages to inject him with a poison that causes his body to shut down and expire.

Not only has she performed an act that is the antithesis of the Hippocratic oath (to preserve life and not use her medical skills to kill), but that she as a mother has caused the very being she unconditionally loved and brought into this world, now has taken out of the world.

Cue major pathos and heart-wrenching scenes.

End of series.