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.

Season 2 Episode List

Preview Trailer
Episode 1: The Star Gazer
Episode 2: Penance
Episode 3: Assimilation
Episode 4: Watcher
Episode 5: Fly Me to the Moon
Episode 6: Two of One

Episode 7: Monsters
Episode 8: Mercy
Episode 9: Hide and Seek
Episode 10:  Farewell

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 us 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 to see 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?

Season 2 Episode List

Preview Trailer
Episode 1: The Star Gazer
Episode 2: Penance
Episode 3: Assimilation
Episode 4: Watcher
Episode 5: Fly Me to the Moon
Episode 6: Two of One 
Episode 7: Monsters

Episode 8: Mercy
Episode 9: Hide and Seek
Episode 10:  Farewell

Star Trek Picard Season 2 Episode 8 Mercy

CONTAINS SPOILERS

I can't quite believe I missed the single biggest plot development from last week's episode - namely that at the end of the episode, Picard and Guinan were arrested by the FBI after Picard's beam-in to Forward Street was picked up by a CCTV camera.  Well, it's time to correct that oversight, because this episode features the subsequent interrogation by an FBI agent who really doesn't seem to know what he's doing.

The pre-credits sequence at the start shows a young boy (I guessed Picard again, still running from some monsters or other) running through a forest night, chased by apparently imaginary but actually real monsters.  Neither the boy nor the pursuers are fully revealed at this point, but fortunately we don't have to wait too long to find out.

FBI Agent Martin Wells seems out of his depth and incoherent in his line of questioning; there are veiled threats, circumstantial evidence and bits and pieces (some photos from the gala; the video of Picard's transporter beam) and this would be trivial except that the Europa flight is now in jeopardy again, and Picard and Guinan are imprisoned in an unknown cellar somewhere in an FBI facility in LA.  I never watched The X Files and I have no desire to now, and this aspect of the episode frustrated me.  Still, it does get moving fairly quickly - there are no drawn-out conspiracy theories, just story development.  Agent Wells reveals that somebody transcribed Rios's outburst while he was in the immigration detention centre, and hearing Picard read out these words while in detention with the FBI makes the story seem very plausible, and neatly draws out that thread from the earlier episode.  

Guinan is taken from the interrogation room so that Wells can continue his interview with Picard one-to-one.  While Guinan is waiting in a separate room, Q enters - having been 'summoned' by Guinan in the previous episode.  Q, now wearing FBI garb, reveals that not only has he lost his powers, but he's actually dying.  This is indeed an opportunity for Picard to learn about Q, but it's not gone as Q intended (because he's still a poor judge of Picard's character).  Q hasn't trapped Picard in the past; Picard did that himself, and Q declares: "The trap is immaterial, it's the escape that counts."  Guinan projects herself back into Picard's interrogation room, with the message, "All humans are stuck in the past," which Picard repeats to Wells, as Wells explains his own back-story.

Agent Wells is the boy we saw in the pre-credits sequence, who had been out looking for his missing dog in a forest after dark.  The story is very reminiscent of Flight of the Navigator and E.T., but it's passable (both films are worth watching, if for some reason you've never seen them before).  While searching for his dog, he happens upon two Vulcans who are carrying out a study on Earth (we've seen Vulcans on Earth in First Contact, and in the quiet but very engaging Star Trek Enterprise episode, Carbon Creek. If you've not seen it, do - it's very, very clever).   The Vulcans realised they'd been discovered, and attempted to chase Agent Wells, in order to mind-meld with him and erase his memory.  The Vulcan was beamed out before he could carry out the mind-meld, and hence Agent Wells now has a fascination - obsession? - with extra-terrestrial life.  The conversation between Wells and Picard is well-written once they get past the veiled threats and conspiracy theories, although some might think it was resolved a bit quickly.  Picard demonstrates a Vulcan mind-meld (he's participated in them in his past), and explains: he needs help from Agent Wells, who subsequently agrees to let Picard and Guinan go free. It worked for me, but I do hope that Wells (or one of his descendants) turns up in the 25th century with a key role in history. 

Seven and Raffi have finally put some urgency into their search for the Borg Queen.  Too little, too late, however, as Agnes is now almost completely assimilated by the Borg, due to a diet of endorphins, lithium and other trace metals which Agnes is compulsively eating.  Seven and Raffi even manage to track down Agnes, using Seven's intuition, but it is, dare I say, futile.  Agnes is now almost entirely Borg, and consequently is very strong, incapacitating Seven with a single blow that sends her flying across a car park, and then preparing to strangle Raffi with a single hand (Darth Vader style).  Agnes, however, is able to assume control and release Raffi, but there's no way that the two of them alone would be able to provide sufficient resistance to stop her.

There's a surprising amount of bickering between Raffi and Seven - yes, Raffi is manipulative (and even persuaded Elnor to join Starfleet security, a decision which ultimately led to his death in this parallel universe) and yes, Seven is the epitome of cold and aloof, but their relationship has clearly left them both scarred.

Rios, meanwhile, is embarking one on of the most ridiculous relationships in Star Trek history since Kirk fell in love with Edith Keeler in The City on the Edge of Forever (a time-travel episode that's regarded as one of The Original Series' best).  There's no way his relationship with Teresa is going to work, for a whole host of reasons (the temporal prime directive being one of them), but here they are, eating replicated cake while Rios fixes the Sirena and removes the Borg subroutines from its main computer.  Is there much more to say here?  Not really, except he'd better get fixing those routines quickly.

Dr Adam Soong has been a busy man.  As his latest 'daughter' Kore is discovering, Soong has been attempting to manufacture a genetically pure human clone.  Attempting, and failing.  Kore discovers that she is the last in a depressingly long line of at least a dozen failed "experiments", and that she has outlived many of her predecessors by a significant amount.  I'm not sure if this was meant to be a great reveal, or a plot twist, but it seemed obvious to me that she was genetically manufactured, and was the latest in a line of clones.  I'll acknowledge, though, that I hadn't realised that Persphone (and the alternative name Kore) was the daughter of Zeus (even though I caught the name in the previous episode, I didn't work out its significance).  Soong is as proud as he is delusional.

Kore activates Soong's virtual reality device, and in doing so, triggers a subroutine that Q had implanted in it.  This subroutine is basically a plot device that enables Q to speak directly with Kore, and show her (a) that she is a clone, or at least genetically created instead of conceived, and (b) that Q can send a cure for her genetic disorder.  He sends the cure in a little vial with a label.  I was expecting it to say "Drink me" in Alice in Wonderland style, but instead it was labelled "Freedom".  

How does this all fit together?  The answer is 'exceptionally well'.  Kore confronts Soong about his work, questioning if he loves her at all, and if he does, then is it because she's a living person, or just the fulfilment of his lab work.  Tough question.  He can't answer convincingly, and she steps out into the previously-toxic sunlight.  She's taken Q's cure, which is completely effective, and she walks out of his house, his garden and his life.  This leaves Soong broken, frustrated, weak and very vulnerable.

Raffi and Seven, meanwhile, are using their tricorder-box-of-magic to tap into Agnes's companion's mobile phone  Agnes left the bar with him in the previous evening, attempted to find a connection with him (as Borg are wont to do), failed, killed him and then consumed the lithium from his mobile phone battery, in order to speed up Agnes's assimilation process.  Raffi and Seven connect his now-flat mobile phone to their tricorder in order to deduce Agnes's/Borg Queen's next step.  And deduce it, they do, by reviewing the internet search history on the phone.

The Borg Queen realises that she needs help to speed up the assimilation of Agnes, and to produce her own nanoprobes and begin assimilating the 21st century, and turns to an expert in biology and human genetics:  Dr Soong.  The sight of her arriving at Soong's house was one of those 'eureka' moments - suddenly all the convoluted and seemingly irrelevant plotting made sense.  

"I assume a lecture on the resistance of futility is not going to be necessary."
"Am I dreaming?  Or is this a nightmare?"
"Ultimately, that's up to you."

Nightmare, obviously.

She offers to make him immortal - figuratively - with a long legacy of being the father of the future of the human race.  This is exactly what he's searching for, and knowingly or otherwise, the Queen plays to his insecurities and desires, telling him how he'll be famous, but only if he can stop the Europa mission (otherwise it's alcoholism and obscurity).  In another case of stories coming together, the Borg Queen reveals that the Europa mission will uncover microbial life in one of Jupiter's moons that will render his genetic research obsolete (and presumably remove all funding from his work).  So that's why the Europa mission must succeed.  All the pieces that have been in play are now starting to come together and make sense.  Soong can provide the "raw ingredients" that the Queen requires to complete her nanoprobe assembly process (and further the assimilation of Agnes, presumably), and gain access to the security forces; the Queen can use them to prevent the Europa mission from happening... by storming the Sirena and preventing any further interference from Picard and his team.

The story wastes no time:  Soong and the Queen make their deal, and then we see the Queen start adding the security forces' biological and technological distinctiveness to her own... she's assimilating them into a very dangerous squad of Borg drones.  Rios, meanwhile is oblivious, making cake and trying to fix the transporters.  The condition of the transporters is now reaching joke level:  they only work when it's not urgent... Rios beamed himself and his girlfriend into the Sirena without any problem last time:  this time, when the crew need the transporters - they're offline.  Picard, Seven and Raffi meet up, and will use Tallinn's transporter to return to the Sirena... battle lines are drawn, and the next episode should be a good one!

Season 2 Episode List
Preview Trailer
Episode 1: The Star Gazer
Episode 2: Penance
Episode 3: Assimilation
Episode 4: Watcher
Episode 5: Fly Me to the Moon
Episode 6: Two of One
Episode 7: Monsters
Episode 8: Mercy
Episode 9: Hide and Seek
Episode 10:  Farewell

Star Trek Picard Season 2 Episode 7 Monsters

CONTAINS SPOILERS

There are a few episodes of Star Trek where nothing much happens.  They aren't particularly memorable, and in fact, you'd be hard-pressed to think of them.  They aren't "bad" episodes, but they're often under-rated psychological thrillers where the activity is secondary to the motivations of the characters.  (One example I can think of is the one where Riker doesn't go crazy, Frame of Mind).  The latest episode of Star Trek Picard is mostly one of those episodes, and at a time when the main story should be gathering pace, it's a little frustrating to see it go on a lengthy detour while the secondary storylines get more time (that's my opinion, other opinions are available).  Still, I've got plenty to say about it.

In the previous episode, we saw Agnes/the Borg Queen heading towards downtown Los Angeles, full of intent and suspense.  Does this episode move her story forwards?  Only in one small scene, more than half-way through the episode.  She enters a jazz club, where Patrick Stewart's wife plays the lead singer, singing, "I know what people see; and I know what they say; no-one's stopping me, and no-one's leaving today."  That would be the jazz translation of "Resistance is futile," then.  The Borg Queen is attempting to push Agnes's endorphin levels up so that she can complete her assimilation more quickly, and to be honest she seems to be winning.  Seven and Raffi are about 8-10 hours behind, in a large city, and with very little clue of where she is heading next.

Seven and Raffi's contribution continues to be relegated to the comic subplot.  Upon learning that Agnes kissed Rios at the gala, they go off on their own little dialogue about their own relationship - this is largely uncharted territory for Star Trek, and it comes off well ("We're the main event, and Agnes and Rios are the side story...." with an unseen wink to the audience).  The humour turns serious as they realise that The Queen (via Agnes) has infiltrated the Sirena's computer and locked out all access - they can't track Agnes's com-badge or her location, and instead must rely on 21st century surveillance cameras and their tricorders (which seem to be little bundles of magic).

Well over half of the episode is spent inside Jean-Luc's coma.  Tallinn the Supervisor has a neural interface device that enables her to mind-meld with Jean-Luc and actively participate in his dream.  "They all woke up and it was all a dream" is a huge cliche to avoid here, and the story barely manages it.  We see Picard's nightmare from two perspectives - his first as a child in the labyrinth of the cellars of Chateau Picard, where Tallinn is able to intervene, and the second in his current position as a Starfleet Captain, in a psych evaluation with a therapist.  The episode starts here, and it was a moment of comedy to see that the therapist is played by James Callis, who was Doctor Gaius Baltar on Battlestar Galactica (I can recommend it, but it's a long story).  Baltar was an opportunistic fraudster who was always trying to covemr his own tracks, and he's perfect for this role.  Is he real?  Is this a dream?  A memory?  What's his motivation?  

To cut a long, long story short:  Picard's mother suffered fom depression, and these are manifest in Picard's dreams as monsters who were taking his mother away from him.  Picard's father locked the mother, Yvette, in one of the cellars, where she would bang on the door and plead to be released.  And in the key twist in this story, Picard's subconscious has placed his father in the role of the therapist.  As Picard pieces all this together, with his adult experience and the assistance of Tallinn in the nightmarish cellar scenes, he realises that there was nothing he could do to help his mother when he was merely a child.  

That's a very short version of a considerably more complex situation, but the takeaway that Picard gets is not only should he know himself (ancient Greek wisdom) but that he should also acknowledge that his greatest teacher is his enemy, and therefore he needs to learn more about Q.  It's a stretch, but it also points back to Q who has recently lost all his powers - something has happened to Q, and it's something he's not in control of.  Maybe the Q continuum has internal strife again (see the Voyager episode Death Wish for more on the Q continuum).  Tallinn sums it up when she ask if Q really set all this up so that Picard would learn about him? The implied answer is yes, but how would Q set things in motion, then lose his own powers, have to counsel Renee, then get found by Picard, who would in turn have to meet Tallinn, then Picard would have to push Renee out of the path of a volatile and unpredictable Soong in his car, and end up in a coma... no. Q did not plan all this out.

Apart from Picard, the character who sees the most plot development in this episode is Rios.  Raffi commented last week that he seemed to have a slightly goofy smile, as if he was in love; she also warned him not to get involved with anybody in this timeline.  Is he paying attention?  Nope.  He's falling alarmingly quickly for Teresa, who runs the clinic - and he has to break the temporal prime directive to save Picard while he's in his coma.  Rios shows Teresa some 24th century medical tech - he doesn't know how to use it (as if she would?) and she knows for certain that he's not exactly safe.  He's locking doors in her clinic; he shows her Tallinn and Picard in their crazy alien mind meld; and that's before he beams in a medical device.  Line of the episode goes to Rios:  "I'm not from outer space.  I'm from Chile; I only work in outer space."  Kirk said the same in Star Trek IV (in his case it was Iowa, but the principle is identical and very funny).  Yes, Kirk broke the temporal prime directive to get his hands on two whales and save humanity; I'm not sure what Rios's excuse is, but by the end of the episode he's beamed himself, and Theresa, and her son onto the Sirena.  

And yes, Kirk beamed Gillian onto the spaceship in Star Trek IV, but that was not entirely his fault (she jumped into his transporter beam while he was transporting).  This disregard for the temporal prime directive, butterflies and all that had better have some repercussions, or I will be annoyed.  The rest of the crew are busting a gut to keep time on track, and Rios just flaunts the rules to impress his would-be girlfriend:  not impressed.  And how come Raffi can beam the medical device directly into Rios's hands, when two days ago, they couldn't even beam Rios safely onto the ground, and they missed by about three metres - vertically?

Picard needs to find Q, and in order to do that, he revisits Guinan in her bar at 10 Forward.  There is an established uneasy relationship between Q's people and Guinan's (see Q Who) but it's not been unpacked in detail before - it was a nice touch to expand on this here.  Anyway: Guinan attempts to contact a Q (any Q will do), but fails:  our Q doesn't register as a Q because he's lost his powers.  Something is definitely wrong.

So, the crew have completed their primary mission - to get Renee Picard into pre-flight.  However, they've trampled on so many butterflies and released so many more that they've still got their hands full.

Agnes is now wandering around LA with a head full of Borg, which is both a blessing and a curse:  the Borg Queen is the only one who knows the way home.

Picard has a head full of 'must find Q'.  His 'mission' seems the weakest and less relevant at the moment.

Rios has a head full of hormones, and he needs it examining, pronto.

Seven and Raffi need to find Agnes before the whole timeline goes to pieces.  Their mission is the most critical, and surely must succeed: however, I can't see Agnes surviving - how do they save the ability to get home without fully saving Agnes?  The answer will be a sci-fi fix, and it had better be a good one, or I will be annoyed (again).

Overall, this episode didn't do as much as the previous ones - there was a lot of movement in the tangential side stories, and not much actual forward movement - hopefully we'll see more next time. 

Season 2 Episode List

Preview Trailer
Episode 1: The Star Gazer
Episode 2: Penance
Episode 3: Assimilation
Episode 4: Watcher
Episode 5: Fly Me to the Moon
Episode 6: Two of One
Episode 7: Monsters

Episode 8: Mercy
Episode 9: Hide and Seek
Episode 10:  Farewell

Star Trek Picard Season 2 Episode 6 Two of One

CONTAINS SPOILERS

 The Borg are infamous for one thing. Right back in "Q Who?" and at every meeting since then, it's always, "Resistance is futile."  And so it is with this episode: the end is so very inevitable that the episode starts with the conclusion and then cuts to "42 minutes earlier."  The only question is how much damage will be done to the Starfleet crew's plans, and what (and who) will survive?  Will Picard survive the critical injuries he's sustained?  I would imagine so; after all, this series isn't called Star Trek Agnes.

The episode is entitled Two of One, which accurately sums up Agnes's plight. After shooting the Borg Queen last time, she stood too close for too long and is now slowly being assimilated. She's resisting assimilation, but resistance is...   She makes a series of small concessions to the Borg Queen now inside her mind, in order to further the overall mission - to get Renee Picard safely through the gala evening and into pre-flight quarantine.

It all begins in the security office, where Agnes had deliberately allowed herself to be arrested, in order to access security and let the rest of the team in... except she needs the Queen's help to break the handcuffs she's wearing.  And so it begins.

Picard and Tallinn keep close tabs on Renee, who is texting her therapist - Q, no less - about her doubts over the upcoming mission.  Picard attempts to follow her as she heads off to find somewhere quieter to think... and he's intercepted by Adam Soong (the current incarnation of the Soong crackpot dynasty).  So this is what Q demanded from Soong as payment for the cure for his daughter's disease - an attempt to keep the Picards apart.  And this will require further intervention from Agnes and her alter ego.

Picard (Jean-Luc) is able to find Renee and give her a much-needed pep talk.  What does he know about travelling in space? Pushing the boundaries of human knowledge and experience? A little, even if he is a little old to be a security guard.  His talk is inspirational and supportive without being patronising, and Renee agrees to proceed with the flight, commenting that there is something very familiar about him (if this was Back to The Future, she might comment that talking to him feels a lot like she's talking to her brother).

Jean-Luc: "You're Renée Picard, astronaut of the Europa Mission. You must be capable of such great things to have come this far."

However, as Picard escorts Renee back to the gala, we see Dr Soong sitting in the driver's seat of his car, with murder in mind: "Prepare for ramming speed!"  (Worf, Star Trek First Contact).  Picard sees the car coming, pushes Renee aside and takes the impact...  this is very Back To The Future (although to be fair, Picard wasn't a peeping tom who'd just fallen into the path of the car).  The rest of the crew - minus Agnes - appear and take Picard to Teresa's clinic, which ties in nicely with Rios's arc and mini-adventure in the previous episodes.  

Now, Picard is a synthetic life form: how will he respond to 21st century medical treatments?  Good question.  

Teresa: "Does he have any conditions?"
Seven: "He's... had some transplants."

Teresa:  "Some? How many?"

Seven: "All of them."

Teresa hooks him up to a defibrillator, shouts 'clear' and zaps him.  The defibrillator explodes in an array of sparks.  Good answer.  

Nevertheless, Picard's vitals all settle down, but he remains in a coma.  Tallinn has some wondrous brain-scanning gadget which shows Picard reliving a childhood event, and suggests that she enters his brain and helps him live through it and escape from it.  It's all a bit circumstantial but it works.  Raffi thinks it's a crazy idea - I'm inclined to agree - but that's what the story calls for.

Dr Soong, meanwhile, heads home after his failed attempt to kill Renee, where he is quizzed by his daughter Kore.  She's entirely unconvinced, and then revisits his lab to find out more about what he's doing and what he's up to... and the answer is much bigger than she suspected.  We know from previous Star Trek stories (in particular Space Seed from The Original Series, Star Trek II and the Star Trek Enterprise episodes Cold Station 12 and The Augments) that the Soong family have been involved in genetics and eugenics (deliberately making genetic enhancements with dangerous results) for years.  

However, Kore is learning all this for the first time, and - by the looks of it - she herself is the product of genetic manipulation, and the last in a long line of failed experiments (there are various names for the previous children, including Persephone, the goddess of the underworld, but no other names that seem especially significant or important).  Not sure how this will play into this wider series, but it will be interesting to see.

So, with the crew all gathered around Picard in a 21st century clinic, and Tallinn preparing to enter his mind, that just leaves Agnes.  Agnes, all alone once again, and despite her resistance, finding herself succumbing to the Borg Queen's slow and inexorable advance.

Borg: "Oh, I am proud of you, Agnes. Thank you for the flood of endorphins, by the way. Those nasty little stress hormones were getting in my way."

Agnes: "What's happening?"
Borg:  "This was my plan all along. Finally, the endorphins I needed. I think I'll steer this ship for a while."
Agnes:  "No, wait. I-I'm in control."
Borg: "Not any more."

And with a very clever wry smile, and a subtle flick of black in Agnes's irises, we know that the Borg Queen has taken over; the episode concludes with the Borg Agnes heading towards the skyscrapers of LA, preparing to take on (or take over) the entire city.  

And since the Borg Queen no longer needs the Starfleet crew, or their ship, they no longer have a way back home.  Things are looking decidedly dark, and I genuinely fear for Agnes's long-term survival - will she become a new Borg Queen (it's happened before, and I can recommend two Star Trek Voyager novels, Homecoming and The Farther Shore for more details).  I'll let Raffi wrap it up in her own style:

Raffi:  "What could go wrong?  I mean tons, obviously.  But statistically, odds-wise, given everything that's happened to us since we crashed into this planet, how much worse could it possibly get?"

Season 2 Episode List

Preview Trailer
Episode 1: The Star Gazer
Episode 2: Penance
Episode 3: Assimilation
Episode 4: Watcher
Episode 5: Fly Me to the Moon
Episode 6: Two of One
Episode 7: Monsters

Episode 8: Mercy
Episode 9: Hide and Seek
Episode 10:  Farewell

Star Trek Picard Season 2 Episode 5 Fly Me to the Moon

 CONTAINS SPOILERS

Mark Twain once said, "There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope."  And so it is with this episode of Star Trek Picard - there are a large number of recycled story elements here, which fit together but somehow feel as if they've been cut and pasted together rather clumsily.

We catch up with Picard, who's met the Watcher, or The Supervisor.  She isn't Laris, although she looks like Laris - and we'll see more of this "Character A who looks like Character B" in this episde.  Here, her name is Tallinn, and she's a supervisor in the same way as Gary Seven.  Gary Seven was a character in the Original Series episode "Assignment: Earth", where he was Supervisor 194, responsible for watching, or overseeing, the human race and ensuring that it didn't wipe itself out with nuclear weapons.  Tallinn, however, is responsible for watching over one of Jean-Luc Picard's ancestors, the astronaut Renee Picard.  This is classic Back to the Future content - there's nothing quite like a family connection to make time travel personal.  

Renee Picard is the character we saw at the end of the previous episode, whom Q was intending to influence into backing out of flying on an upcoming space mission - his finger-click didn't work, and now he is resorting to more mundane methods to persuade her to drop out.  We meet her in this episode in a rocket simulator, practising dangerous scenarios and, by all accounts, failing.  It's quite possible that Q has set these up - he will stop at nothing to keep her out of the mission. 

Why aren't Q's powers working?  Plot device?

Meanwhile, the Borg Queen (who reminds me of one of the Hybrids out of Battlestar Galactica with her ongoing babbling) has assimilated communications on board the Sirena.  Obviously, she doesn't need ship-to-ship comms, but she is able to tap into the local mobile phone network and place a call to the local police department.  A sole, unfortunate police officer attends the call, and is lured to the Borg Queen.  Is she going to assimilate him and turn him into her first Borg drone here?  That was my first thought, but for some strange reason, she doesn't.  I'm confused - I know that these are unusual times and that she's missing some key components (a collective and a pair of legs, for example), but her change is tactics surprised me.  She takes the police officer hostage.

Seven and Raffi continue their Thelma and Louise routine - with ongoing undercurrents of their recently-ended relationship - and find a way to stop the bus that Rios is being deported on.  Seven uses a tricorder to generate an EMP blast and stop the bus - no butterflies, no phasers.  The men on the bus immediately work out what's happening - even before the guards - and the rest of the escape/rescue is largely without incident (except Raffi is still suffering trauma following Elnor's death).  It seems that the away team's mission has largely been a wild goose chase and a commentary on 21st century life...  police car chases, immigration control in the USA and bureaucracy.  They're all beamed back to the Sirena without any further incident.

Picard and Tallinn, meanwhile, swap notes on the life and history of Renee Picard.  Tallinn is maintaining a constant surveillance of Renee, and is able to monitor her conversations with her pyschotherapist - all astronauts and astronaut candidates must have a psych evaluation.  Tallinn identifies a key conversation between Renee and her therapist:  I recognised the therapist's voice before Picard did, by the looks of it.  Q is manipulating Renee by posing as her therapist to talk her out of the flight.  

Q, meanwhile, is also pursuing a parallel plan involving one Dr Adam Soong.  Dr Soong looks like Data from The Next Generation, and all the other various Dr Soongs we've seen since (including the Dr Soong who created him; the Dr Soong who was fiddling about with genetics and eugenics in the Enterprise series, and the Dr Soong we met in the first series of Picard who solved the puzzle of AI in flesh-and-bone bodies).

This incarnation of Dr Soong is the earliest (in chronological order), and he's working on genetics.  His descendants will go on to create a race of super-humans through genetic modification/engineering, and we see how this starts.  Interestingly (or lazily), this will go on to cause the creation of the genetic superhuman, Khan.  In the recent Star Trek: Into Darkness film, Khan blackmails a Starfleet officer into setting off a bomb by providing a cure for his daughter's terminal incurable illness.  In this episode of Picard, it's Q who has the cure, and Soong who has the daughter with the rare incurable disease (which turns her blood into poison whenever she is exposed to direct sunlight).  Mark Twain was right, there are no new stories.

Dr Soong is cynical, weary and desperate.  He presents his arguments to an ethics committee - he wants to pursue human genetic modification, and they are having none of it.

I should say at this point (because I didn't last time), that the previous episode of Picard was directed by none other than Lea Thompson, who played Marty McFly's mother Lorraine in the Back to the Future film series.  Well, she definitely has experience of time-travel stories; and she features in this episode as the chair of the ethics committee.  She did a good job last week, and was great this week too.

Anwyays: Dr Soong (who looks a lot like Data) can't cure his daughter (who looks a lot like Soji), and is approached by Q (who looks and acts the same as usual: dangerously selfishly).  Q offers to help Dr Soong cure his daughter, but there will inevitably be a cost for this 'help,' and I suspect it will be something truly costly.  Why is Q meddling here? It seems a bit superfluous at this stage, so I hope it has a decent tie-in with the main story.

The crew of the La Sirena are reunited, in a scene which shows what a wild-goose chase Raffi, Seven and Rios went on - Picard found the Watcher/Supervisor by himself.  

Now that the crew know what they must do - get Renee Picard to fly her space mission - they send Agnes as an advance party to the astronauts' gala, to watch over Renee in her last few hours before pre-flight quarantine. Agnes has the prerequisite skills in 21st century computing; the character to pull it off, and a growing case of Borg assimilation virus.  After shooting the Borg Queen to free the French police officer, Agnes spent too long, too close, talking to her and the Queen was able to scratch Agnes's face and introduce the Borg virus into her bloodstream.  Agnes gets picked up by the gala security before she's even made a start on hacking the system... either because she was genuinely unlucky and the least suited to an espionage mission, or because the Borg Queen inside her head is sabotaging Agnes subconsciously. 

Either way, Agnes now has the Borg Queen in her head.  The crew has no way home (unless they can use the Borg know-how in Agnes's brain and then reverse the assimilation process... it's been done before, as Picard will confirm). Things are looking bleak, as Q continues to meddle infuriatingly with the timeline. 

This episode recycled so many previous stories I lost count; showed up the Raffi/Rios/Seven subplot as a waste of time (apparently) but put the Borg Queen in Agnes's head (so Agnes is alone and the victim... again). Good, but not great.

Season 2 Episode List

Preview Trailer
Episode 1: The Star Gazer
Episode 2: Penance
Episode 3: Assimilation
Episode 4: Watcher
Episode 5: Fly Me to the Moon
Episode 6: Two of One
Episode 7: Monsters

Episode 8: Mercy
Episode 9: Hide and Seek
Episode 10:  Farewell

Star Trek Picard Season 2 Episode 4 Watcher

CONTAINS SPOILERS

Finally, the tempo of Star Trek Picard has slowed down.  There's been transwarp; old adversaries; phaser fights; semi-controlled landings; bloodshed and fist-fights.  Episode 3 left us on a cliff-hanger as Rios was taken into custody by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), while the Borg Queen kept staring menacingly at Agnes.

We start at a slower pace:  Picard has indeed taken the Sirena 'home' - he's parked it in the grounds of the currently-abandoned Chateau Picard.  Nice touch; I'm sure this will become a significant plot point in the future (instead of just providing Picard with flashbacks).  However, his attempts to contact the rest of the team are futile.  In the meantime, however, Picard engages the cloaking device and makes sure he remembers where it's parked (Kirk did the same with a Klingon Bird of Prey in Star Trek IV).  He and Agnes visit Chateau Picard, and while he reminisces about the old times, Agnes's subconscious keeps throwing up the number 15.  Data's 'subconscious' did something similar in a time loop during an episode of TNG - Cause and Effect  - I won't spoilt it, it's a great episode.  This all seems a bit heavy-handed - the last thing Agnes said while she was connected to the Borg Queen was 'fifteen', but still, Agnes's subconscious is going to become a key part of this extended plot.  So, since the team landed on 12 April, they have until 15 April to find and fix the timeline problem.

It's all a bit arbitrary, but it makes sense.  A lot of the activity on the Sirena follows this pattern in this episode.

Raffi and Seven track down Rios's comm badge (I am slightly concerned that they didn't actually find it and collect it, but hey, that's only a minor detail that was hammered home repeatedly last episode).  There is a wonderful scene played out on the bus in Los Angeles, with a punk playing a song called "I Hate You" - it's a little-known tune recorded by Edge of Etiquette, their only song in fact, which featured in an almost-identical scene in Star Trek IV with Kirk and Spock.  I howled with laughter throughout the scene (which went in a very different direction than it did with Kirk).  They eventually get to the LA Police Department, where Raffi and Seven form a comedy double-act as they clash with the bureaucracy of 21st century law enforcement.  They aren't successful in their discussions with the LA PD, but they get directed to ICE.

Comms are offline, but the transporter is working... but only well enough to transport Picard.  With Picard gone, the Borg Queen wastes no time in starting on Agnes's mind.  That really isn't going to end well, and I fear Agnes is going to be the victim, again.

Agnes beams Picard to the location provided by the Borg Queen, and he finds himself transported to San Francisco, and to Number 10, Forward Avenue.  The bar lounge on Picard's Enterprise D was called Ten Forward.... nice touch.  The barkeeper was none other than Guinan, one of Picard's crew, and an El Aurian who can detect major shifts in the timeline (as seen in previous TNG episodes, notably Yesterday's Enterprise).  This is a younger Guinan, cynical, uneasy, edgy and unsettled - unsettled by time-travelling old men who appear out of nowhere.  Picard knows he has to convince Guinan to help him, but he also knows that he can't pollute the timeline by telling Guinan too much.  Guinan, for her part, is going through a particularly cynical time, and is preparing to leave (the planet, or LA, or whichever) and is mourning humanity's misuse of its planet: "They got one tiny ball in the entire galaxy, and all this species want to do is fight."  Picard tries to convince her to stay and help: "Distance offers no protection from time."

Rios, meanwhile, is also clashing with the rough end of the bureaucracy of 21st century law enforcement, having been arrested and now incarcerated (and tasered).  

Seven and Raffi (Thelma and Louise?) decide to step up their efforts to track down Rios, and Raffi has an interesting idea: as Seven describes it:  "You're proposing we steal a vehicle from the same people whose job it is to prosecute theft?"  Yes, they're going to steal a police car (with a phaser, no less) - in order to obtain the data from the computer inside it.  They access the car and the computer, and find that - interestingly - there are a very large number of tall, dark Hispanic men in the system.  They're able to contact Agnes (comms are back up, transporters are down) to get a location and start their pursuit of Rios.  We get more of the fish-out-of-water comedy that served so well in Star Trek IV, culminating in "Do you want to drive and I'll hold the map?"  Seven can indeed pilot a shuttlecraft... but there aren't other cars blocking the way in space.

So now, it's transporters down, comms up.  It's like there's a ghost in the machine or something... and there is; it's the Borg Queen, who is most definitely manipulating the ship's systems to her own ends, and thereby manipulate the entire plot.  It feels somewhat bit arbitrary, but I am sure that the Borg Queen is working everything to suits her ends.

Rios, after an unpleasant discussion with an ICE guard, and a lengthier discussion with Teresa, the senior doctor from the clinic, finds himself being transferred.  Rios is playing for time, hoping that the rest of his 'rag-tag' crew will find him eventually.  And they are tracking him down:  Raffi's access to LA PD laptop shows his updated status and location.  Although it seems like Rios is out of time, Agnes (after some tense and dangerous negotiation with the Borg Queen) is able to restore transporters, and beam Seven and Raffi to a position where they can intercept Rios's transport bus.  (Naturally, they have to bring their stolen police car to a screeching halt before they can beam). Except that now they've beamed, they're stationary pedestrians, about to face a 55 mph bus on a freeway.  I wonder if Raffi will have to use her phaser again?  We'll find out next time.

Picard continues his negotiations with Guinan, who sees nothing but despair and hatred among the human race.  "The hatred here doesn't go away, it just swaps clothes."  Eventually, Picard reveals his name and identity to Guinan.  Guinan still doesn't know him, but recognises his name (for some reason).  and agrees to take him to the Supervisor, otherwise known as a Watcher.  I sincerely hope that this doesn't turn into The Matrix, where there's the Architect, the Key Maker, the One, the this, the that... it was all overly complicated.  

Anyway, I digress:  Guinan (who is wonderfully acted and conveys all the character of the Whoopi Goldberg incarnation, in a youthful version) is not The Watcher.  She agrees to take Picard to a Watcher for a face-to-face (sort of) meeting.  It seems The Watcher will want to meet Picard (perhaps somebody's been forewarned).  The Watcher meets Guinan and Picard by possessing various passers-by who direct Picard to the Watcher.  This looks about as weird as you can imagine, as people with white eyeballs take turns to guide Picard through the local park.  

And who is The Watcher?  Well, she looks like Laris, who was Picard's Romulan assistant back in his present time.  Except she's human, and in the 20th century.  The two of them disappear in a box of smoke.

Meanwhile, Q, instead of making trouble, appears to be having trouble of his own.  It seems that he was intending to prevent a human spacecraft from launching by persuading one of its lead astronauts that she isn't capable of commanding the flight.  He commments to her, 'You can't do it.  People are going to die.'  Q's trademark click of the fingers has no effect - the astronaut laughs out loud - and he declares 'That's unexpected.  And most unfortunate'.  Was Q trying to save humanity?  Or back it into a corner?  He is so unpredictable and confusing that it's hard to say what his motivation was, and what his comments mean.

This episode has been full of confusing comments, intrigue, far more dialogue and less action than any of the previous episodes (apart from the police car chase, which was action comedy) and has benefited from the change of pace.  As I said, I hope the Watcher/Supervisor doesn't descend into existential twaddle, but otherwise I was very impressed with this episode.

So:  Seven and Raffi have to stop a coach (I strongly suspect the use of a phaser, because acting like hitch-hikers isn't going to work).

Picard has to get his instructions from Laris The Watcher.  Why is Laris being so secretive?  And, just out of interest, why did the Borg Queen direct Picard to Guinan instead of the Watcher?  Just curious.

Agnes has to keep the Borg Queen out of her mind.  I really don't rate her chances.  Sorry, but I don't.

And all Rios has to survive his rescue attempt!

Have we seen the last of Guinan in this series?  I doubt it.

And how has Q come to lose his powers?  Who's caused that?

All will be revealed... (I hope).

Season 2 Episode List

Preview Trailer
Episode 1: The Star Gazer
Episode 2: Penance
Episode 3: Assimilation
Episode 4: Watcher
Episode 5: Fly Me to the Moon
Episode 6: Two of One
Episode 7: Monsters

Episode 8: Mercy
Episode 9: Hide and Seek
Episode 10:  Farewell