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.
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