CONTAINS SPOILERS
So, Episode 3 of this series is called Assimilation. I wonder what will happen in this episode? Apart from the time travel to Calfiornia 2024, what else could possibly happen with a newly liberated Borg Queen?
Episode 3 picks up exactly where Episode 2 left off: Starfleet security (including Seven's husband) have boarded the La Sirena, and things are going badly. Seven attempts to bluff her way through, and when that fails, the crew have no choice but to disintegrate all the security officers. Elnor is still lying injured; Agnes is connecting the ship to the Borg Queen (or vice versa). I wondered if the Borg Queen would assimilate him, to cure his wounds, but the story goes in a very different direction.
Seven and Picard operate the bridge stations; Rios is in command. The ship takes damage, as the Confederation engage in battle, knocking the Borg Queen over and out of her secured pod. At this point I was convinced she's going to assimilate Agnes soon... surely. However, the Borg Queen hooks herself into the ship, fully assimilates it, destroys the pursuing ships in blazes of green Borg flames, and takes the ship on a slingshot path around the Sun. The way Rios yells out the warp speeds reminds me of Sulu doing the same during Star Trek IV, as they do indeed achieve time travel.
And that's just the pre-credits sequence. Did I mention that Q turns up briefly to ask Picard how far his fear will take him?
In a mirroring of Star Trek IV, Picard asks 'did we succeed?' And in Star Trek First Contact style, they look at the level of radioactivity in the atmosphere to date their arrival. As always, there's no chance of making a smooth landing, so Picard makes a 'targeted crash' into a forest near 'home'... as Agnes points out, they can't go crashing into Los Angeles. So where are they? Somewhere on the outskirts of LA (the forests reminded me of the site of First Contact, but that's in Montana; surely Picard's navigation is better than that?
First things first: Elnor is still in critical condition, and with power failing, his biobed isn't working and he'll die. However, the Borg Queen has control of the ship, and she's using the power to restore herself after the time travel jump. Rios draws a phaser - Picard points out they still need her (to get home). Consequently, Elnor dies in Raffi's arms. This is not going well. I strongly suspect that there'll be a time-travel twist where fixing the past brings him back to life - it's standard Trek lore, and it's called a Reset Button Plot. Agnes and Raffi debate it... what do you think, Trek fans?
And the worst of it is that they do need the Queen - not just to get home, but to understand what's broken in the timeline, where to go, and at what exact time, and how to fix it. And it's all Picard's fault for not asking for Q's help; instead Picard is stubbornly going on with his mission without Q's offer of assistance. Raffi nails it when she says that Q and Picard 'joust' and that they 'screw up people's lives'. Let's not forget that each time Q and Picard meet, somebody dies. In the case of "Q Who", when the Enterprise meets the Borg for the first time, there were 18 deaths. This all comes down to Picard's stubbornness, drawn out by Q and exacerbated by the Borg (see Star Trek First Contact - "The line must be drawn here!").
Raffi - emotionally charged - decides to set off for 'The Watcher' who is presumably some kind of alien life-form keeping track of the timeline. Seven, Agnes and Rios debate about who will go after Raffi - I was concerned that she was going to go off without them. The crew discuss the potential effects of altering the timeline: for example, by leaving a phaser or other technology behind on a pre-warp planet: Doctor McCoy did it once at the end of an episode. As Agnes puts it, 'We have to look out for butterflies' (The butterfly effect - even tiny changes to a starting situation can have drastic consequences, and these get larger as time passes).
Seven and Rios will pursue Raffi and search for The Watcher; Agnes and Picard will take care of the Borg Queen - I didn't ever expect to write that, and even Seven is unconvinced.
Agnes uses the smashed-up transporters to beam the away team - in appropriate 21st century clothing - into central LA. Except it goes badly wrong; the team are beamed into separate locations, and Rios arrives 12 foot off the ground, falling badly (via a fire escape stairway) and landing heavily on the ground. He gets transferred to an 0ff-the-radar clinic; after all, the last thing he needs is to get scanned, identified, arrested or anything else that might disturb the timeline. He's separated from his communicator - just like Doctor McCoy - and it gets picked up by a young boy.
Seven and Raffi beam in and join up fairly easily; they acclimatise very quickly to 2024 and even manage some humour (Seven: "2024 likes me." Raffi: "You and 2024 should get a room".) They are able to find a possible location for The Watcher, and also track Rios's communicator while the young boy plays with it. Rios, suffering from concussion, does his level best to retrieve it, and yet it all seems to go wrong, as circumstances accelerate beyond his control.
On the subject of 'all going wrong'; Agnes attempts to convince Picard to let her communicate with the Borg Queen. It's all so very inevitable: Picard can't do it as he's been assimilated before, so that only leaves Agnes. How could this possibly go wrong? Let me count the ways. Even after Picard says, "No," you know that it's going to happen - it reminded me of Kirk's line in Star Trek III ("The word is no; I am therefore going anyway").
"It's only a partial assimilation," says Agnes.
Yeah, right. About that... please see Star Trek Voyager: Dark Frontier.
As predicted, the link between Agnes and the Queen works both ways, and while Agnes is poking around in the Queen's database, the Queen is probing Agnes's mind - part from Agnes's emotions, which are directed at Picard without filter (in humorous and touching ways). Agnes makes contact with the Queen's central core, and Picard has to disconnect Agnes, just in time, before the Queen fully assimilates her. Agnes seems to do okay, but we'll see how that works out for her... I mean them... or do I mean her? Subroutine failing, intrusive presence detected; assimilate. A great scene, acted scarily well as Agnes occupies the Queen's body, and the Queen speaks to Locutus through Agnes.
Yes, Agnes does get the co-ordinates for The Watcher, and apparently they no longer need the Borg Queen. So why not disconnect her and switch her off? I wonder.
Raffi and Seven, meanwhile are more successful. They get to the top of the highest tower in LA, with very little difficulty and with some humour - and start scanning. They identify one alien power source - probably the Watcher - and also locate Rios's comm badge. Considering how much difficulty Kirk and crew had in the 1980s, it's remarkable how quickly everybody acclimatises into 2024.
Rios makes multiple attempts to retrieve his comm badge, to no avail. Circumstances consistently work against him - it would be funnier if it wasn't so critical - to the point where he does everything possible to stay out of history's way. In the end, the unofficial clinic is stormed by immigration police, and Rios makes the heroic and flawed decision to help Theresa, the head of the clinic. His plans continue to fall apart, despite all his ongoing efforts - including pretending to be a doctor (Kirk also did this in Star Trek IV) as he is arrested and taken away by the police, still without his comm badge.
Raffi and Seven - making steady progress. Rios - going to prison, with no means of support. The Borg Queen - minus her legs and also with no means of support - wants full control of the ship (and a pair of legs). However, Picard and Agnes have been successful in extracting (in fact, removing) the Watcher's location from the Borg Queen, and surely they have no further use for her? But no, she knows when the divergence in time takes place. And is it just me, or is she looking more human - she's not the Borg's pale white colour, she's looking more flesh-coloured.
Either way, the Borg Queen still looks dangerous. This excellent episode (which has moved the series from action to psychological thriller) might have concluded, but this is NOT over.
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