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| Picard and Q share an emotional farewell. |
Original Air Date: May 5, 2022. Written by: Christopher Monfette, Akiva Goldsman. Directed by: Michael Weaver.
THE PLOT:
The Borg Queen-possessed Jurati has gone, departing for the Delta Quadrant in La Sirena and leaving the others on 21st century Earth. They have no way to get home; but with Renée Picard ready to launch in the Europa mission in a matter of hours, at least the future seems to be back on track.
Except for Adam Soong...
Soong remains determined to stop Renée and to secure his legacy as the hero of a dark and twisted Earth. Wielding outsized financial influence like a weapon, he demands "face time" with Renée before launch - a one-on-one conversation that he will make sure is her last.
Picard and Tallinn beam to the launch site to stop him. Meanwhile, the others discover that Soong has a back-up plan: weaponized drones that are set to target the shuttle on lift-off!
CHARACTERS:
Picard: Accompanies Tallinn against her wishes, in large part because of his fear of losing someone else. On that mission, he proves to be approximately as useful as a spare tire with a nail through its center. Thankfully, he gets some good material in the back half of the episode: an emotional final scene with Q, then a return to the Borg confrontation that started all this, with him exhibiting both patience and authority.
Seven: There's a nice follow-up to her conversation with Raffi in the last episode, when she recalled her rejection by Starfleet - something that Picard effectively fixes with a single order. She's open to rekindling her relationship with Raffi. Not that she's blind to Raffi's flaws: When Raffi starts overthinking a kiss, Seven tells her to just "let it breathe" with a mix of exasperation and amusement.
Tallinn: "You won't let me? It's not up to you!" Finally, a spark of Tallinn's original characterization returns when she snaps at Picard after he insists on accompanying her. Not that one can blame Picard for assuming that he has a say in Tallinn's actions, given that Two of One was the last episode to see her do anything other than tag along after him. Tallinn finally comes face to face with Renée, the assignment who has become a surrogate daughter to her, in a well-written and heartfelt exchange. Her final scene with Picard, however, goes on far too long, with (yet another) speech that retreads a lot of the ground as her speeches in Monsters and Hide and Seek.
Adam Soong: He was introduced as a disgraced scientist who was begging for more funding. Um... why? Based on this episode, he must have enough money to make Elon Musk jealous. I'll ignore the military drones, as those presumably came from the Borg Queen - but he's somehow donated enough to the Europa mission to be able to demand "face time" with astronauts, violating protocols that even American Presidents are expected to follow and with not so much as a security escort. In reality, I'd fully expect his demands would end in "face time" with large, uniformed officers walking him to the nearest exit.
Guinan: Whoopi Goldberg returns to bookend her appearance in the season opener. She fills in the blanks for Picard's crew about what happened after they returned home, since she lived through all of it. She also has a good moment when she thanks Picard for "setting (her) straight" in the past when she was ready to give up on humanity.
Q: "Even gods have favorite, Jean-Luc, and you've always been one of mine." If this does end up being Q's last appearance, at the very least the character is well-treated. His interactions with Picard are emotional, but never too emotional for this mischievous god of sarcasm. He refuses to accept blame for Elnor's death, pointing out that he didn't kill the young man; Seven's "idiot husband" from the alternate timeline did. He also cleans up his mess. As was true in Q Who?, he transports Picard back to where he belongs, making sure his old friend is just a little wiser for the experience.
THOUGHTS:
"Must it always have galactic import? Universal stakes, celestial upheaval? Isn't one life enough? You ask me why it matters. It matters to me!"
-Q reveals the very personal reason behind his actions.
There is much that is good in Farewell. The scenes with Q, and the end scenes with Picard dealing with the Borg back in present, are excellent. Character material is generally strong - again, particularly in the second half, once the plot mechanics are out of the way.
Too bad there's roughly half an episode of crap to wade through to get to the good stuff.
Given that the midseason features so much wheel-spinning, why does all of the activity surrounding the Europa launch feel so rushed? It plays very much as if a full episode of material was condensed into about twenty minutes.
No character in this section of the episode faces any serious obstacles. Soong swans around (a startlingly empty) Mission Control like he's Madame Empress, sneering at actual officials for being "disrespectful" and making demands even though he has exactly zero official standing. I'd immediately give this episode two additional points if they'd thrown him out, forcing him to evade security and improvise in order to reach Renée. This would have created some suspense and would have made the worst part of the episode feel at least a bit more convincing... but it also would have taken time; and after deviations like an entire episode devoted to Picard's bad dreams, time is now a luxury the season just doesn't have.
The lack of obstacles applies equally to our heroes. Picard and Tallinn encounter the same absence of security - or any other staff - that Soong does. Tallinn steals a flight suit from one room, then walks right in on Renée in another. Convenience stores do more to guard chocolate bars! The episode at least pretends that it's hard for Rios, Raffi, and Seven to stop the drones... but it's still the work of a few minutes, with Raffi punching some buttons to gain manual control before Rios saves the day by essentially playing a video game.
The showrunners should have cut some of the fat out of the mid-season and used that extra time to develop the Europa launch into a full episode. Then the finale could have just been epilogue, which would have been a match for the premiere being the prologue. The Q/Picard, Seven/Raffi, and Picard/Borg scenes are the bits of the episode that work, so I certainly wouldn't object to there being a bit more of it. Maybe we could check in on Soji, who seemed to have a firm friendship with Jurati in the first episode. It wouldn't even have cost much extra, given that Isa Briones is already in the episode, and this might have shown Jurati's change affecting someone on an emotional level.
Oh, and I will give points to a surprise cameo by a TNG character. I did not see that coming, and I rather liked how this appearance was woven in.
OVERALL:
Farewell is an episode of two halves. The first part is mostly terrible, unconvincing and inexcusably rushed. The rest almost makes up for it with some excellent character material. Unsurprisingly, the scenes between Patrick Stewart and John de Lancie are the highlights, but there are good moments for almost everybody.
This episode is much like the season it closes. There are plenty of elements to enjoy... but enjoying the good requires having a fair amount of patience with the bad. In the end, I'd have to rate both this finale and the season itself as a disappointment.
Overall Rating: 5/10.
Previous Episode: Hide and Seek
Next Episode: The Next Generation (not yet reviewed)
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