Star Trek Picard Season 2 Episode 10 Farewell

As we enter the final episode of this season of Picard, here are my thoughts (before watching) of what I'd like to see (and not see) in the finale.

1. No magic tricks. The crew are stranded in the 21st century with no ship. Let's see how they get home.  Right planet, wrong time.

2.  No reset button plot.  A common cliche in time travel stories, this involves everything being put back the way it was and nobody knows anything about what happened.

3.  Rios to pay his penance for breaking the temporal prime directive.  Butterflies, indeed? He's trampled a few.

4. Agnes not to reappear and bring the crew back home.  No, she's gone and should not reappear to save the day. 

So no, on reflection, I did not think this was not a great episode.

We join the crew standing around and talking in Chateau Picard, with the sense of urgency which they've had since they arrived in the 21st century.  Soong is still out there, planning to sabotage the Europa mission which launches imminently, but hey, let's stand around and talk.

Tallinn will break her cover to keep Renee Picard safe, while the rest of the team will try to track down Soong and stop his sabotage efforts.  Tallinn dishes out some more magic tricorder boxes, then beams out in a box of blue smoke... and Picard leaps into the box at the last second.  He can see (and this is conveyed well) that Tallinn is planning to sacrifice herself if necessary to save Renee, following the Borg Queen's cryptic "one Renee must live, one Renee must die" line in the last episode.  What's with the cryptic clues from the Borg? Can we go back to Resistance is Futile? We knew what THAT meant.  The Borg Queen has become nothing more than a Battlestar Galactica hybrid, spouting philosophical nonsense. 

The rest of the crew, meanwhile, will pursue Soong, who we last saw at his lair, mourning the loss of his daughter, or his life's work... or both.  Not sure how they got from Paris to LA, but I guess they used their magic tricorder boxes. It almost turns out to be immaterial, as they go off on a wild goose chase.  It's been a tragic tale for them, as they've been working in parallel with the main plot and having very little impact on it throughout. This time, it turns out that Soong has already left his house in order to sabotage the Europa mission personally. He's left four drones (mini helicopters, although four Borg drones would have been more fun) to launch and collide with the Europa craft as it takes off.  The crew gain control of one of them, and Rios prepares to take the rest down. "Prepare for ramming speed," as Worf once famously said.

They succeed, and somehow return to Chateau Picard. Don't ask me how, I've lost track. 

Tallinn and Picard discuss sacrifice, destiny and all the subjects that Q dredged up from Picard's subconscious (I still maintain there was no way Q knew what he was doing).  Picard has changed, surprise, surprise, and if he ever gets home will rethink his relationship with Laris.  The relationship between Picard and Q has always been great source of stories and character development.  Until now.   Q deserved a better conclusion than this: he's dying, doesn't want to die alone, so sends Picard on a trip into his childhood to see his relationship with his parents differently, so that Picard will thank Q for the second chance and then go and live a better life.  Oh, and Q mysteriously regains his powers for one last click of the fingers.

No.  It would have been more interesting for Q to have kept his powers, but they switched on and off, just like the transporters, at the whim of the story.

Anyways: Kore (Soong's daughter) is now out and about and enjoying her freedom, starting with the total erasure of all her father's data files.  No more work on genetic modifications for his 'daughters'.  This leaves Soong with just the paper copies of some of his work, including Project Khan.  Nice touch. Khan was a genetically enhanced superhuman - extra strength, extra intelligence, extra arrogance and extra charisma - who was responsible for starting the Eugenics Wars, also known as World War 3.  See the Original Series episode Space Seed, and Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan.  See also Star Trek Into Darkness, which is a modern twist on the same theme.  See also the Enterprise series episodes The Augments and Cold Station Zero.  They could have unpacked a little more of this, but the episode is already crammed full of stuff (some of it was just crazy).

For example, after Kore deletes all of Soong's work, she heads off into her new life, where she is randomly accosted by none other than Wesley Crusher.  Wesley is a character from The Next Generation, who was last seen joining a creature known as the Navigator and travelling time and space.  Long story, see The Next Generation episodes Where No One Has Gone Before and especially Journey's End.  It transpires that he has set up/will set up the Supervisors (or Watchers), of which Tallinn was one, and so was Gary Seven in the Original Series episode Assignment Earth.  This stretches incredulity, but we can play along... until he adds that his organisation's role is to keep the timeline on track and prevent major disasters.  So, he recruits Kore - right there and then - while her father is just around the corner taking humanity on its first steps to World War 3? And he doesn't think to address that?  As a friend of mine pointed out, Wesley Crusher makes everything he touches worse.

This leaves the main plot: will Soong be able to sabotage the Europa mission? Rios has downed all the drones, so direct intervention is needed, and Soong takes matters into his own hands.  Using his money and influence and his own inimitable brand of rude charm, he engineers a meeting with Renee. 

Except Tallinn has got their first, and when Soong shakes hands with Renee, introducing a fatal nerve agent through his hands, it is in fact Tallinn who is sacrificing herself (using her disguise tech to appear as Renee).  Soong goes off, believing he's succeeded.  Tallinn dies in Picard's arms; after all, one Renee must die and one must live.

The crew regroup, having completed their mission and saved the day. Now all they have to do is get home.  Except of course that Rios The Butterfly Slayer is staying to mess up the timeline.  And Q suddenly, despite dying, has one final click of his fingers to spare, and can return Picard and the crew back to their own timeline.  The whole mission was contrived by Q so that Picard would realise that Q didn't want to die alone.  And sure enough, Picard hugs Q before they go their separate ways.  Perhaps the mission was designed so that Picard would face his past, or have the courage to start a relationship with Laris? I honestly don't know - this final episode was rushed, crammed full of stuff, and did I mention that we aren't home yet?

The crew are transported back to the bridge of the Stargazer, with the Borg Queen in full assimilation mode.  Except that the Borg Queen is now a very old Agnes Jurati (but looking good for it). The Borg have come to join the Federation to help them stop a massive explosion at the middle of the galaxy.  It all goes smoothly, except that one ship has trouble sorting its shields out... surprise! Elnor is resurrected and alive and well on the Excelsior.  A new era dawns between the Borg and the Federation and all is well with the world. 

The gang all reconvene with Guinan (back to her Whoopi Goldberg guise) who fills Picard in on all the historical gaps:  Rios The Butterfly Slayer set up a clinic with Teresa and helped those in need - there's a photograph of them together behind Guinan's bar.  Teresa's son, Ricardo, went on to become a biology expert.  Renee went to Jupiter's moons and brought back a biological sample of a microbe, which Ricardo identified as a cure for Earth's ecological ills.  So that's what it was all about.  At least that got tidied up - not sure why not having the ecological fix would cause humanity to become xenophobic overlords, but it's possible.

Even Picard gets to go home to find that Laris is packing her bags, but persuades her to stay.  We don't get to see them kiss - surely the biggest emotional payoff since that near-miss in the first episode - but we can be sure that all is well in Chateau Picard.

If this review seems long, it's because there was far too much going on, all of it rushed and most of it thrown together, and I didn't get to cover it all.  It ended the series in the same way as a parent does with an evening story when it's well past bedtime - everything is finished, but the last page is read at double-speed with half the sentences removed.  It was OK, but much of this could have been covered last episode instead.  Good, but not great, with too many cliches and too many Get Out Of Jail Free cards.

Website Compromization

Test data, just like any other data, is open to interpretation.  The more KPIs you have, the more the analysis can be pointed towards one winning test recipe or another.  I've discussed this before, and used my long-suffering imaginary car salespeople to show examples of this.

Instead of a clear-cut winner, which is the best on all cases, we often find that we have to select the recipe which is the best for most of the KPIs, or the best for the main KPI, and appreciate that maybe it's not the best design overall.  Maybe the test recipe could be improved if additional design changes were made - but there isn't time to test these extra changes before the marketing team need to get their new campaign live (or the IT team need to deploy the winner in their next launch).  

Do we have enough time to actually identify the optimum design for the site?  Or the page?  Or the element we're testing?  

Anyways - is this science, or is it marketing?  Do we need to make everything on the site perfectly optimized?  Is 'better than control' good enough, or are we aiming for 'even better'?

What do we have?  Is this site optimization, a compromise, or compromization?

Or maybe you have a test result that shows that your users liked a new feature - they clicked on it, they purchased your product.  Does this sound like a success story?  It does, but only until you realise that the new feature you promoted has diverted users' attention away from your most profitable path.  

For example - your new banner promotes new sports laces for your new range of running shoes... so users purchase them but spend less on the actual running shoes.  And the less expensive shoes have a lower margin, so you actually make less profit. Are you trying to sell new laces, or running shoes?

Or you have a new feature that improves the way you sort your search results, with "Featured" or "Recommend" or "Most Relevant" now serving up results that are genuinely what customers want to see.  The problem is, they're the best quality but lowest-priced products in your inventory, so your conversion rate is up by 10% but your average order value is down by 15%.  What do you do?

Are you following customer experience optimization, or compromization?

Sometimes, you'll need to compromise. You may need to sell the new range of shiny accessories with a potential loss of overall profit in order to break into a new market.  You may decide that a new feature should not be launched because although it clearly improves overall customer experience and sales volumes, it would bring down revenue by 5%.  But testing has shown what the cost of the new feature would be (and perhaps a follow-up test with some adjustments would lead to a drop in revenue of only 2%... would you take that?).    In the end, it's going to be a matter of compromization.

Star Trek Picard Season 2 Episode 9 Hide and Seek

 CONTAINS SPOILERS

Looking back, this series of Picard has had slow patches and fast patches.  The story raced along at the start, slowed down in the tunnels beneath Chateau Picard, raced through a pre-flight gala that was so fast we even started the episode at the end, slowed down while the crew chased the Borg Queen through LA:  to be honest, the variation in pace has left with the plot equivalent of whiplash.

The catch-up ("Previously on Star Trek Picard") at the start of this episode includes Picard and Tallinn discussing Q's intention to get Picard to face his childhood, and Picard's reply, "All of that is irrelevant!"  I only wish it was, because we get a lot more of it in this episode, interrupting the main plot in the most critical moments.  The story races along... it grinds to a halt as we get flashback... it races again... it stops again...  I either need a seatbelt or an airbag.

I could summarise the plot in a few sentences:  the Borg Queen beams her new drones into the field outside Chateau Picard, and then a few more (including herself) into La Sirena.  In a bizarre jump-cut continuity error, Agnes goes from wearing her bright red dress to absolutely nothing in two seconds, before assimilating the Queen's earlier body and going FULL Borg.

Meanwhile, Rios is on board, and he activates the Emergency Combat Hologram in the form of Elnor, the sword-wielding Romulan ninja commando, who holds his own against the Borg (nice touch: Elnor wears a mobile holographic emitter, as the Doctor did in Voyager).  The rest of the crew take on the Borg outside, get chased inside the Chateau (where Picard has his childhood flashbacks), before managing to return to the ship (Seven and Raffi across the ground, Picard and Tallinn through an escape tunnel initially, before the whole thing turns into a dead end and they also return overground, with Rios's assitance).

Agnes and the Borg Queen continue to struggle to take full control; she attacks Raffi and Seven as they return to the Sirena, and as the Borg Queen attempts to deal the fatal blow to Seven, Agnes intervenes. 

They have their own internal dialogue, where Agnes persuades the Queen to stop assimilating the strong, but instead look to connect the weak, vulnerable and injured into a cooperative rather than a collective, which the Queen does - Seven is first.  The Borg Queen/Agnes commandeers the Sirena, and takes off for the Delta Quadrant, to remake the Borg in a new, slightly more charitable form than it was previously.  As she says, "The Federation will have no need for a Borg-slayer - at least not from us."

The Sirena crew realise their mission must be to protect the launch of the Europa mission, as it was all along (the rest, including the extended flashback scenes, are irrelevant) and head off from central France back to the USA (presumably with Tallinn's transporting device).

This could be covered in 20 minutes, maybe 30, but it was stretched - painfully - over 45 minutes as Picard kept having his flashback sequences, and the Borg played hide and seek through the chateau (with the ridiculous plot design that they had to shine their green laser beams wherever they were looking, which immediately gave away their position, direction, and where they were looking).  These Borg were scariest - and they managed it once in the episode - where they leapt into the heroes' path without shining their beams first.

I'm not saying that the flashback scenes weren't poignant, upsetting or lacking emotional impact - they were.  But they were thrown into the episode at such unexpected moments that they lacked the kick of an emotional reveal, because it was hard to keep up with what was happening.  Most of it I'd guessed previously, but it was certainly saddening Jean-Luc's mother's suicide, and to see that Jean-Luc's best efforts to help his mother were what finally made it possible for her to end her life.  But this is all swept away because here come the Borg and their insidious ally, Adam Soong.

And I'm not buying the whole 'Q planned this all so that Picard would have to face his past' nonsense.  Q did not plan for Picard to make his own way back to the 21st century; did not anticipate Picard bring the Borg Queen along, or landing in the grounds of his own castle.  No.  Q may be a lot of things, but he's not capable of predicting the future, or Picard's actions.  Sorry, no, I'm not buying it, especially not in an episode which is so cliche-ridden as to be set during a dark and stormy night.

Instead, it's interesting (worrying?) to note that Picard and the crew have been relegated to passengers or followers of the plot for most of the time since it was put into effect in the first episode.  

1.  The Borg summoned Picard to the spatial anomaly; Picard went running along on the Stargazer, straight into a fleet-destroying battle with the Borg.  

2.  Q whips Picard over to the alternate timeline, Picard has to work out what's happening.

Ok, Picard and crew kidnap the Borg Queen and she agrees to transport them back in time, but since then, they've been doing nothing but chasing along - 

3.  chasing Q and trying to stop him preventing the launch of the Europa (their one success to date); 

4.  chasing Rios when he got hospitalized; arrested and transferred (wild goose chase, almost, since Picard found Renee and Tallinn single-handedly) 

5.  chasing the Borg Queen across LA (total failure);  

6.  attempt to prevent the Borg Queen taking over the Sirena (again, failure)... 

It seems to me that they're on course to fail:  Soong's plan to stop the Europa mission will succeed, and they'll all get trapped in the 21st century.  Their track record in this series has not been good. 

But, and here's the question: if they succeed in getting the Europa to launch, how will they get home?  The Borg Queen has commandeered their spaceship - we see it go to warp off to the Delta Quadrant (again, another nice touch - this is the Borg's home in The Next Generation) - so they are well and truly stuck on Earth, in the past.  I fear I'm going to be very unimpressed by the resolution in the next and final episode, because something's going to have to appear out of thin air; Q has no powers either, and Guinan is only your typical alien.  No, I can't help feel slightly uneasy regarding next week's episode, especially since we're catapulted into it with the Borg Queen's annoyingly cryptic message: "The mission must succeed.  There must be two Renees - one who lives, one who dies."  Ok, parallel universes it is then, folks.  I just wish the Borg had tried to assimilate Q, but that's just me, right?