Thoughts on Season Two.

Picard gives a speech about second chances.

THOUGHTS ON SEASON TWO:

Fair warning: This is a look at the season as a whole. If you haven't seen Season Two yet, know that there are spoilers throughout!

I mostly liked Season One of Picard, which felt like a legitimate attempt to do what good science fiction has always done: Used the idea of the future to reflect on the present. The show opened with Picard disillusioned and resigned to a world moving in the wrong direction, with the story gradually bringing him back to his old self over the course of the season.

There were certainly flaws. Not all the characters were well used, and the general idea of a Starfleet suffering from moral decay seemed to vanish midway through. Even if I didn't like every creative choice (such as Picard's synthetic body), I still enjoyed the story and at the very least respected the ambition.

I found Season Two to be more of a mixed bag. It fixes many of the first season's problems, but it replaces them with all new missteps. I found most of it to be entertaining, and even the worst episode remains watchable... but I didn't find the story to be as interesting. In the end, I was left feeling underwhelmed.

But before I explore the reasons for my disappointment, let me start with what the season did well...

Seven and Raffi struggle to reconnect amidst an ocean of personal issues.

FORWARD PROGRESS - CHARACTERS:

The cast is much better used in Season Two than in Season One. Every member of the ensemble gets at least a few moments in the spotlight, and the scripts allow them some enjoyable and well-written interactions.

Now, this is likely helped by the early episodes culling a couple of "extra" characters. Soji, the central character of Season One's story, is seen in the first episode just long enough to establish that she's on a diplomatic mission and won't be joining the rest of the characters. Elnor is present for the first stage of the mission, but he gets killed in Episode Three.

I think this was a good choice. Had both characters been retained, they would have just been additional crew members in need of things to do. Removing them makes it more viable to give quality material to the other regulars. Elnor's death also fuels Raffi's character arc, while Isa Briones gets a decent supporting role through the magic of time travel doppelgangers.

I complained about the Season One finale just establishing Raffi and Seven as a couple without having ever shown any interaction between them. Season Two takes this clumsily created relationship and makes it work. Having missed the chance to show their initial connection, the writers do the next best thing. They start the season with them estranged, broken up by the multitude of personal issues each of them has. Then the rest of the season sells them as a couple by showing them overcoming those barriers. It even ties in with the season's theme of revisiting the past. As Picard observes in a graduation speech early on, second chances are rare. Seven and Raffi get one, because although their relationship already failed, their feelings for each other remain.

Finally, there's Agnes Jurati. Despite second name billing and a role in the story that should have made her central, Season One often shunted Alison Pill's neurotic scientist to the periphery. She gets a much stronger role in Season Two. Like Seven and Raffi, her relationship with Rios has failed between seasons, but she is not looking to reconnect. She's alone - and despite an apparent yearning for connection, she seems determined to stay that way.

This not only makes her vulnerable to the Borg Queen's manipulations, it also allows the scripts to thematically parallel her with the Borg. Many of the season's best moments come from this: the connection with the Borg Queen in Assimilation, Jurati's attempts to co-exist with the Queen in Two of One, and her appeal to the Queen in Hide and Seek. Alison Pill is excellent throughout, and she plays particularly well opposite Annie Wersching's Borg Queen.

There's really only one character whose arc didn't work for me in Season Two. Unfortunately, it's kind of a big one...

Picard struggles to learn lessons he already learned before.

PICARD'S JOURNEY:

I see what the writers were attempting with Picard. Q takes him and his crew into the past to save the future, while at the same time Picard is forced to confront his own past to overcome emotional issues interfering with his happiness in the present. On paper, it sounds fine, even clever.

Other opinions are certainly available, but I didn't think the execution of it worked at all.

One problem for me is that much of the material regarding Picard's past has no real connection, either in terms of plot or theme, to the external threat he's dealing with. Only Hide and Seek manages to overcome this problem, thanks to Picard using the tunnels from his childhood against the villains. Monsters, on the other hand, resorts to dream sequences/flashbacks that feel thinly motivated at best.

The other problem is that those are the only two episodes that significantly address his past and his need to confront it. This is the basis of his arc, and yet aside from these two episodes it is only occasionally even mentioned. It's hardly surprising that, in a ten-episode season, an arc that's ignored for full episodes at a time doesn't get a chance to properly build.

My final complaint might also be my biggest issue: TNG already trod a lot of this ground, and frankly in better episodes. Picard's strained relationship with his family was at the core of Season Four's Family. There, he (somewhat) mended his relationship with his brother. Here, he comes to realize that his late father wasn't the stern monster of his memory but was actually dealing with considerable emotional pain himself. It's a worthy enough lesson... but I can't escape feeling like we've done this already!

The other lesson Picard must learn is that, however badly he may wish to, he cannot change the most painful moments of his past. Even if he could change them, the results would probably not be to his liking. Again, he's already had this realization - thanks to Q, no less! - in Tapestry. Now, it's fair enough to echo past episodes. Given how much Star Trek was cranked out in the 1990s, some echoes are inevitable. But if you're going to retread old ground, maybe don't make it some of the old series' very best episodes?

For the record, none of this keeps Picard from working as a character the bulk of the time. When the scripts aren't laboring to make him (re-)learn a Very Important Lesson, both Picard and actor Patrick Stewart are a joy to watch. I loved his protectiveness of Jurati, or his wonderfully scripted pep talk to  Renée at the gala. The character was at his best in these scenes, or when ultimately choosing to deal honestly and compassionately with the FBI agent holding him and Guinan prisoner. At the end of Hide and Seek, I almost got chills from his vow not to accept a bad outcome before it happens.

So yes, the character still works splendidly when Picard is simply being Picard: literate, obstinate in ways sometimes good and sometimes not, compassionate, and with the ability to turn hopeless situations to his advantage. Problems only sneak in when the writers try to force him into an arc that fails to convince.

Rios gets arrested by ICE. I'm glad the show has time for this,
and that the actual plot won't get badly rushed later on...

A PROBLEM OF PACING:

Season Two opens extremely well. The first three episodes are quite good, and they set up almost everything that the rest of the season will follow.

The opening episode efficiently shows how the characters have progressed since Season One. The bulk of the episode establishes character arcs and relationships. Then, at the end, Picard encounters a crisis involving the Borg, culminating in the sudden intervention of Q. Episode Two expands on Q's role, as he angrily declares that this not a test or lesson, but rather a "penance" for Picard. The rest of the episode follows the character in a dystopian alternate reality. By the end of the episode, we know that this reality is the result of a single change Q made to the timeline in the year 2024. Episode Three brings the characters to their past/our present and starts the main plot moving, while at the same time establishing Rios's relationship with Teresa and drawing parallels between Jurati and the Borg Queen.

The alternate future is a bit of a generic "evil future"; that aside, this opening Act is pretty close to impeccable.

Too bad that the midseason is the opposite of that.

The middle four episodes do an awful lot of water treading. Watcher, my pick for the season's weakest episode, devotes half its running time to pointless side trips. Rios has an extended misadventure with ICE while Seven and Raffi steal a police car and essentially play real life Grand Theft Auto to try to rescue him. None of this even particularly goes anywhere; once Episode Five rolls around, Seven and Raffi rescue Rios with all the effort of pressing a button, and the whole incident receives only a single mention later. A mention that makes Rios look like an imbecile, at that... though the overall treatment of Rios this year makes me wonder if he hit his head really, really hard between seasons.

The final three episodes pick up the pace again. Episodes 8 and 9 see a welcome return to the high quality of the early episodes, and Episode 10 ends by bringing the story full circle with some excellent character epilogues.

Unfortunately, those character epilogues come after some final plot mechanics that are badly rushed. Episode 10, Farewell, opens with Picard and Tallinn trying to stop the villainous Dr. Soong from interfering in the launch of a very important space mission. This should be tense and exciting, with Picard and Tallinn relying on their wits to evade security to beat Soong to the goal while the not-so-good doctor just as desperately tries to bluff his way through using his credentials and attitude. Because it's all crammed into about twenty minutes, though, neither heroes nor villains experience any obstacles. This should be a highly secure area in the midst of enormous activity, and yet we barely even see any evidence of basic staff. Meaning, yes, the pre-launch party was locked down like Fort Knox while the launch itself has less security than a 7/11!

Ideally, this should have been the focus of one full episode, with the character epilogues and resolution of the initial Borg contact left to be an episode in itself. But I guess we really needed that big car chase and that episode about bad dreams, even if it left the actual season climax feeling like a tacked-on afterthought.

Elnor dies. But don't worry - He gets better.

CONSEQUENCES ARE FOR REDSHIRTS:

Something unexpected happens in Episode Three: Elnor dies. This sends Raffi into a season-long spiral of guilt and anger, with her clinging to the gossamer-thin hope that if they fix the timeline he'll somehow be brought back to life.

I really hoped that the death would stick. Not because I don't like Elnor; I've actually liked the character since his introduction. However, I am a believer that, with only the rarest exceptions, dead characters should stay dead. In my review, I observed that Elnor's death was a vastly more effective unheroic "pointless death" than Tasha Yar's in TNG, and I appreciated the way it was used to kick off Raffi's character arc. I even liked the ways Elnor was used in the later season, with a flashback in Episode Eight and a hologram in Episode Nine developing Raffi's guilt and, finally, resolving it as much as such issues can be.

Then Q brings him back to life in the finale, because why should there be any lasting consequences? I'm reminded of Q Who?, another story in which Q whisked Picard's crew away from familiar surroundings and put them in danger, as the Enterprise experienced its first contact with the Borg. Eighteen crew members died. When an outraged Picard confronted him about that, Q responded perfectly:

"It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross - but it's not for the timid."

But it turns out that Mr. Magic will resurrect the dead - provided they are people close to Picard and provided Q is in a sufficiently sentimental mood. So Elnor gets to live! But it sucks to be one of those eighteen redshirts.

The hilarious thing? I'm pretty sure Elnor isn't in Season Three, so there wasn't even a contractual reason to do this. With regard to the larger series, the resurrection appears certain to end up being less than pointless. And had the group been remembering Elnor in that final scene with Guinan, I think it would have been considerably more effective.

Starfleet faces a threat that isn't exactly as it seems...

SEASON THREE WISHLIST:

As was true when I made up my "Season Two Wishlist," I'm not going to pretend not to know what was in every single promo for Season Three. I already know that Season Three is, to all intents and purposes, TNG Season Eight.

This is not my preference. One aspect of Picard I've consistently appreciated is that it's balanced nostalgia against being its own series with its own set of regulars. I would have preferred that the series continued doing that. Yes, I enjoy guest appearances by members of the old cast where appropriate - but I would have liked them to remain guest appearances.

Still, the producers made their choice, and overall reception to Season Three indicates that it was the correct one for a lot of fans. Knowing that, my main hope is that the characters are properly utilized. Let's not repeat the mistake of Enterprise's These Are the Voyages, please, in which years had passed but all the characters were still exactly the same. It's been a long time. I hope the show acknowledges that by showing that the characters have moved on in various ways in the interim.

I also hope that the background set up by Picard's first two seasons is not forgotten. Synthetics are now a part of the Federation, though that has come after more than a decade of their mere existence being outlawed. This is an issue that deserves some follow-up. Picard has a synthetic body, which received only a couple of references during Season Two. I don't expect any meaningful follow-up, but I consider the lack of follow-up to have been a missed opportunity. There have been references to a mysterious threat in both seasons, and that absolutely should be addressed.

But my biggest hope is just that Season Three is good. Season One had plenty of flaws, but I liked it overall. I found Season Two to be a bit disappointing, but I still enjoyed more of the episodes than not. In all likelihood, Season Three will be the last time we ever see all of these characters together again, much as was true of Star Trek VI and the TOS cast. As such, I hope it follows in Star Trek VI's footsteps by delivering a final adventure that's worthy of them.

If nothing else, it's almost certainly going to be better than Nemesis. And I say that as someone who mostly liked Nemesis on its own terms.

Q and Picard say farewell.

IN CONCLUSION:

"Potential" was my keyword for Season One of Star Trek: Picard. The season was swimming in interesting ideas, intriguing elements, and enjoyable characters. It didn't always use them as well as I'd have liked, but it was clear that there was the foundation for a legitimately interesting series that went beyond just "TNG nostalgia."

Unfortunately, my keyword for Season Two is "disappointment." I don't think Season Two is bad in the way its worst detractors insist. There are several good episodes and a few very good ones, and even the weakest entries remain watchable (something that wasn't always true of TNG). But the whole ended up feeling like less than the sum of its parts, and I came away feeling... honestly a little discouraged by it.

I'm hopeful that Season Three will stick the landing, and will manage to do so in a way that fits Star Trek: Picard and not just Star Trek: The Next Generation - Reunion. But I have to admit that, even though I enjoyed it well enough on an episode-by-episode basis, Season Two has left me feeling just a bit hollow.


Previous Season: Season One
Next Season: Season Three

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2-10. Farewell.

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

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2-08. Mercy.

Jurati, possessed by the Borg Queen, attacks Raffi.

Original Air Date: Apr. 21, 2022. Written by: Cindy Appel, Kirsten Beyer. Directed by: Joe Menendez.


THE PLOT:

Picard and Guinan are in the custody of FBI Agent Martin Wells (Jay Karnes). It's not an official arrest. Wells has taken them to a basement in an FBI field office. He has nursed a lifelong obsession with the existence of extraterrestrials, and now he has evidence: surveillance video of Picard beaming onto the street outside Guinan's bar, photos of Picard and his crew infiltrating the gala, Picard's communications badge, and the scornfully true statement that Rios provided to ICE. It's enough, as Wells said, to bring agents who will make Picard and Guinan disappear forever!

Meanwhile, Seven and Raffi continue to track Jurati, who has been taken over by the Borg Queen. The Queen has a plan. She will build off Q's disruption of the Europa mission, enlisting the help - willing or not - of Dr. Adam Soong. Only her end game is not to create a future of mere human fascism. She will use the disrupted timeline to create the foundations for a galactic Borg Empire!


CHARACTERS:

Picard: There's a moment in this episode that showcases exactly what Patrick Stewart brings to this franchise. Picard has to persuade a man who has devoted his entire life to proving that aliens exist. All he has at his disposal are words. Give this same scene, with no changes, to a lesser actor, and it would fall ridiculously flat. Stewart, however, brings the right amounts of authority, empathy, and conviction to the moment that I actually believe it when it happens. 

Jurati: The Borg Queen is in full control... almost. When Raffi and Seven find her, she bats Seven away like a fly and is ready to kill Raffi - only to abruptly let her go before fleeing. As Seven observes: "Mercy is not a Borg quality." Jurati is still fighting the Queen on some level, and she manages in that moment to stop Raffi from being killed. I have no doubt her influence will come into play later.

Raffi: A flashback reveals the reason for her guilt over Elnor's death. He was considering delaying Starfleet Academy for a year to return home. Raffi was already losing Seven and couldn't stand the thought of being completely alone, so she passive/aggressively persuaded him to stay. In its way, her guilt is a kind of arrogance, an assumption that she had more control over Elnor's actions than he did. After all, within the same flashback, he observes how transparent her manipulations really are. Still, this makes sense for who Raffi is.

Seven: She's finally getting a taste of feeling truly human for the first time in her adult life. Her first scene sees her continuing to enjoy the sensation of people just naturally trusting her. Then circumstances force her to think like a Borh again. When Raffi is impressed at her ability to analyze the Queen's actions, Seven responds with bitterness: "You could be just a little less happy that I'm defective." These scenes allow Jeri Ryan, who has been pushed far too much to the background during the midseason, to remind us that she can actually act.

Capt. Rios: His relationship with Teresa doesn't so much move as get shoved forward in a forced scene midway through. Meanwhile, in Picard's strand, we learn that Rios is apparently much stupider than he's generally seemed. He didn't merely troll the ICE agent by telling him he was from the future - he gave details about the Borg Queen. This is like Jurati leaving the Queen unguarded - a generally competent regular suddenly losing their brain in order to advance the plot.

Adam Soong: Remember what I said about him being more sympathetic than other Dr. Soongs? Yeah, forget about that. In the space of this one episode, he makes himself the worst Soong - and given that his competition includes a guy who collaborated in an Augment revolution and another who was happy enough to see all organic life in the galaxy wiped out, that's saying something. The Borg Queen doesn't have to do much to get Soong to agree to help her. She teases him with a future that's better for him but dreadful for the rest of humanity, and he jumps at it. What matters to him is that he's remembered as a hero, with the actual welfare of humanity an absolute irrelevance.

Guinan: Ito Aghayere keeps getting better with each appearance. She quickly takes in the basement that's being used for her and Picard's interrogation and the unplugged camera and realizes that this is not a legitimate arrest. Her reaction to Wells's accusation of being an extra-terrestrial? "This guy is buckets of crazy." As much fun as she is with Picard and Wells, her best scene (and the episode's) comes when she meets Q. She matches John de Lancie's energy beat for beat, making for a memorable encounter.

Q: "We're all trapped in the past." In his scene with Guinan, Q finally reveals at least some of what's driving him. There is some terrific acting from de Lancie as Q moves between his accustomed scorn and sarcasm, a hint of anger, and even reflection and regret. The humor is also still there, such as when he snaps his fingers ineffectually while telling Guinan that he is sincerely trying to vaporize her right now - a bit that's all the funnier because I don't doubt for a second that he's telling the truth.


THOUGHTS:

"I know a haunted man when I see one. The things we hold onto, the pieces of emotional shrapnel that drive us all our lives."
-Picard gets into the head of his captor, FBI Agent Wells.

After a lackluster midseason, Picard finally delivers a good episode again! Mercy offers strong roles for all the regulars. It balances emotional material with plot movement, and it even finds time for a moment of danger when the Borg-possessed Jurati has Raffi literally by the throat.

In my last review, I complained that too many of the season's episodes seemed to be just setting characters up to do things later. Well, they finally start doing things here. Mercy fairly zips along. We get payoffs to Kore Soong (Isa Briones)'s discoveries about her father and Raffi's guilt about Elnor, we learn much more about the Borg Queen's plans and Q's changed situation, and we even get to see how Adam Soong fits in. There's very little dead space, with only the Rios/Teresa scene slowing things down.

I'll admit that I was not happy when Monsters ended with Picard being arrested, which just felt like a rerun of the Episode Three cliffhanger. This pays off much better, though, because it forces Picard to remain still. That leaves him in the right state of mind to process Guinan's revelation about Q, which equally applies to Wells: that people tend to get stuck in the past, wherever they were broken, until their minds find a way to resolve the problem. Picard the character is consistently at his best when he uses his intellect and empathy to solve problems, as is particularly shown by the scene in which he resolves the conflict with Wells simply by being open and honest.

This also creates some thematic unity in what might have been a fractured episode. "We're all trapped in the past." In addition to Wells and to Q, this applies across the various strands: Raffi, guilty over Elnor; Seven, haunted by her past Borg assimilation; Adam Soong, unable to move on from his research; his daughter, whose discoveries are forcing her to reevaluate her entire life; and Jurati, the most isolated of the crew, striving for connection only to have found the worst one possible. In a handful of lines, the script takes all these threads and makes them feel all of a piece.

It all ends with one of the season's most effective cliffhangers, leaving me very ready to see what happens next.


OVERALL:

Mercy is a legitimately good episode, arguably the first such one since Assimilation. It moves quickly, everyone gets something to do, and it all feels of a piece. Even better, there's a sense of the various threads coming together.

I wouldn't say it makes up for the weaknesses of the midseason. Still, this installment finally puts Picard's second season in place to be back on track. The season opened well, after all; and if the remaining two episodes follow through on the successes of this one, then there's a solid chance that the season can close as well as it started.


Overall Rating: 8/10.

Previous Episode: Monsters
Next Episode: Hide and Seek

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2-05. Fly Me to the Moon.

Picard and Tallinn discover Q trying to manipulate an astronaut into quitting an upcoming mission.

Original Air Date: Mar. 31, 2022. Written by: Cindy Appel. Directed by: Jonathan Frakes.


THE PLOT:

The Watcher, who looks exactly like Picard's housekeeper/would-be lover Laris, is actually Tallinn (Orla Brady). She is wary of Picard and doesn't like time travelers in general. When Picard introduces himself by name, however, her attitude changes. She has been sent to protect the timeline as it relates to one specific person: Picard's ancestor, Renée (Penelope Mitchell).

Renée is an astronaut assigned to the upcoming Europa mission. Picard isn't sure what role she ends up playing, as records for the century before First Contact are fragmented. All he knows for sure is that Q is trying to manipulate her into dropping out of the mission, and that he's close to succeeding!

Q has also made contact with Dr. Adam Soong (Brent Spiner), a geneticist whose daughter (Isa Briones) suffers from a rare condition. Q offers a cure... at a price. Meanwhile, Jurati lets her guard down, giving the Borg Queen the very opening she's been waiting for...


CHARACTERS:

Picard: Despite the shock of Tallinn's resemblance to Laris, he quickly realizes that this is a different individual and focuses on winning her trust. He is outraged when he sees Q acting as Renée's therapist, and that spark of anger fans his determination to take action.

Dr. Jurati: I've been expecting her to make a mistake with the Borg Queen, but I anticipated a tiny lapse, a letting down of her guard at the worst possible moment. Instead, Jurati's brain falls out. She sleeps in Chateau Picard, leaving the ship unguarded and the Queen free to work her mischief. This is the exact type of bad writing that annoys the heck out of me, as Jurati is transformed into a complete imbecile so that Plot can happen.

Raffi: While rescuing Rios, Raffi briefly mistakes one of the detainees for Elnor. The young man does resemble Elnor, but she has a split-second full-on hallucination (which conveniently allows Evan Evagora to get paid this week). Guilt and stress has pushed Raffi to the edge of snapping, something that's not going unnoticed by Seven.

Tallinn: The Watcher, who has been sent to Earth to protect an aspect of the timeline - in her case, just one specific individual of importance. Picard connects this to Kirk's encounter with Gary Seven in the TOS episode Assignment: Earth. Orla Brady remains terrific, and she makes Tallinn a different character than Laris. Tallinn is nothing but brusque and businesslike until she starts talking about Renée - and then, as she speaks of her accomplishments, her voice warms and a smile appears, conveying maternal pride.

Renée Picard: At the end of the last episode, we saw Q try and fail to affect the mind of a young woman. Renée is that person, and she's apparently the figure at the heart of the season arc. She's decidedly life-sized, anxious about the mission and fearful that she isn't ready for the responsibility, and it's those anxieties that Q seems intent on preying upon.

Adam Soong: Brent Spiner returns as yet another member of the Soong dynasty. Adam has that Soong arrogance. Speaking before a board that's in the process of judging him, he's imprudent enough to demand that they think of him as a god, which goes over about as well as you'd expect. Still, he's more relatable than the various other Dr. Soongs the franchise has introduced. He's amusingly cranky and impatient, and he's motivated by his daughter's genetic illness. When Q dangles a cure for her condition, he resigns himself to doing whatever is asked, stating: "I am a hostage to you, sir."

Kore Soong: Soong's daughter, played by Isa Briones. While this is a lot of doppelgangers for one episode, I can just about handwave it: Soji was designed to be Data's daughter, after all, and it's not beyond reason that Data's design was based on the actual daughter of one of his creator's ancestors. In this episode, Kore is more plot device than anything else, existing as a motivator for her father. Still, the episode shows that father and daughter have a close relationship, with her teasing him over the very elements of his speech that guaranteed him a frosty reception.

Borg Queen: She has nothing but patience as she meticulously probes the security on the ship until she finds a gap. Then she takes pleasure in calling Jurati to her. Her interactions with Jurati remain those of a toxic lover, as she insists that the other woman will always be alone without her and that she is her only hope. The result... likely isn't what she expected, but she improvises quickly.

Q: His powers may be diminished, but that doesn't mean that he isn't dangerous. He retains a universe's worth of knowledge and a knack for manipulation, and he uses these against both Renée and Adam. It's still not clear what end he's working toward, but he clearly feels as much urgency in achieving his goal as Picard does about stopping him.


THOUGHTS:

We're all hostages to what we love. The only way to truly be free is to love nothing. How meaningless would that be?"
-Q seems to be talking about more than just his coercion of Adam Soong.

Right now, my big question is what Q is actually doing. This episode strongly indicates that he altered history by stopping Renée from joining the mission. But what if that's exactly wrong? What if her doubts about being ready are correct, and Q's original interference was getting her to go on the mission when she should have stayed? Picard admits that the records about her career are incomplete. Sure, she went into space - but what if that was a later mission and not this one? It was just a thought that sprang to mind while I was watching this episode.

Fly Me to the Moon sees the season arc starting to come into focus. Renée is officially introduced, with her upcoming mission made the focus for both Q and Picard. Adam and Kore Soong are introduced; exactly how Q plans to use them is not yet clear, but at least the building blocks are placed. Tallinn is introduced as a new ally (at least for now), and by episode's end the plot seems ready to start properly moving.

The most intriguing thread of the past few episodes has been the interactions of Jurati and the Borg Queen. In this episode, their scenes end up being the weakest element. Director Jonathan Frakes has some fun evoking horror movie vibes with the Queen, but the script gets there by having Jurati behave with implausible stupidity. Couldn't the same end have been reached without the script undermining the very intelligence the Queen finds so fascinating?

My issues with that thread aside, Fly Me to the Moon is a much better episode than Watcher. Transitions are smoother and, save for the rescue of Rios that ties up the dangling threads from Watcher, the rest ends up linking to Renée and her upcoming flight. Where Watcher felt choppy, this episode's parts feel like they're working together.

It certainly doesn't hurt that this episode brings Orla Brady back to the show. Even in a new role, she and Patrick Stewart retain strong screen chemistry, and their scenes together are enjoyable. This episode also sees Q's most substantial role so far this season, and John de Lancie is excellent as usual. I particularly enjoyed his scenes opposite Brent Spiner, whose Adam Soong promises to be an interesting character in his own right.

The episode ends by setting up a Mission: Impossible style infiltration of a high-security event, which promises some fun for the next episode. But lest things go too smoothly for our heroes, there is a last little wrinkle that takes us to the end credits.


OVERALL:

Jurati leaving the Borg Queen unguarded is enough for me deduct one point from the episode's score. That aside, I enjoyed Fly Me to the Moon. It's still an episode mostly concerned with setting up plot pieces, but it feels very much as if the season arc is kicking into gear. Most importantly, I found this episode a lot more entertaining than the previous installment.


Overall Rating: 6/10.

Previous Episode: Watcher
Next Episode: Two of One

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2-02. Penance.

Q transports Picard to an alternate reality in which he's a bloodthirsty, xenophobic conqueror.

Original Air Date: Mar. 10, 2022. Teleplay by: Akiva Goldsman, Terry Matalas, Christopher Monfette. Story by: Michael Chabon, Akiva Goldsman, Terry Matalas, Christopher Monfette. Directed by: Douglas Aarniokoski.


THE PLOT:

After activating the self-destruct on The Star Gazer, Jean-Luc Picard is dead. Or at least, he should be.

Instead, he is back at Chateau Picard, and he has company: Q (John DeLancie), who portentously announces that Picard is at "the very end of the road not taken." Q shows him around the chateau as it is now. Picard has robotic servants. The work is still being done by displaced Romulans - slaves taken during the human conquest of Romulus. "General Picard" has a trophy room with the skulls of his enemies, including Gul Dukat, Martok, and Sarek.

It is an alternate reality, one in which the Earth is governed by the warlike and xenophobic "Confederation." Q has transferred all of Picard's crew to this new reality. Seven is Earth's President; Raffi, a security chief; Elnor, a dissident; Rios, a starship captain; and Jurati... well, she's pretty much herself - save, as she notes, for an upgrade in torture devices.

Today is Eradication Day, a holiday celebrating humanity's supremacy through the execution of "dissidents, alien sympathizers, (and) terrorists." Among the condemned is a Borg Queen (Annie Wersching), who is able to sense the changes to the timeline. Under questioning, the queen reveals that this reality resulted from a single change to the past. Picard and company will need to go back in time to set things right - but first they will need to escape the watchful eyes of the Confederation!


CHARACTERS:

Picard: Q gives him a head start in grasping the type of reality he's now in, but he still gathers his composure and plays the part of his Fascist Universe Counterpart faster than any of the others manages. Then again, he has a bit of experience at finding himself suddenly living an unfamiliar life. He shows his leadership qualities as soon as he starts meeting the others, improvising quickly but authoritatively to keep Raffi and Elnor out of trouble, then focusing the group on what needs to be done to return to their own timeline.

Seven of Nine: When she wakes up in the Presidential bedroom without her Borg implants, she runs a series of quick sensory tests to make sure that what she's experiencing is real. She tests pain by burning herself, but the most convincing result is smell: "You can't smell in a dream." She recoils at the sight of the Borg Queen. When it becomes clear that they will need the Queen to help them, she is brutal in confronting her, almost gloating at the "pitiful end to the Great Borg Empire."

Dr. Jurati: Though her circumstances are the least changed, she does the worst job of fitting in. The way she stammers and babbles... Well, let's just say that if the Confederation Magistrate didn't already suspect something was "off," then he certainly did after meeting Jurati. She's more effective when actually working a scientific problem, taking down Confederation defenses so that Rios can beam them all safely away. Even then, she can't quite resist having what feels a lot like a marital dispute mid-crisis: "I would hang up on you right now if it wasn't going to get us all killed."

Raffi/Elnor: They make an entertaining duo, with Raffi playing the part of Elnor's captor. Her story about exactly what intelligence she's hoping to extract keeps changing just a little with each new guard she speaks to. At one point, she uses him as a distraction, allowing a couple of guards to beat him while she accesses their security - only to tell him, "Elnor, they're yours," once she has what she needs, at which point he takes great pleasure in demonstrating his martial skills.

Pompous Earth Bureaucrat of the Week: Jon Jon Briones, father of Sonji actress Isa Briones, is the Magistrate - Seven's husband in this reality. The marriage doesn't appear to be overly burdened by love or affection, and the "dear" he punctuates his sentences with sounds more artificial than anything the androids in the show have ever said. He's a weasel, and it isn't hard for either Seven or Picard to bully him into granting them privacy. That said, he does not appear to be stupid, and his facial expressions show that he senses something not quite right about his wife by the end of their first scene together.

Borg Queen: I'll allow that there are still a few Voyager Borg episodes that I haven't seen. Even so, this is the first time I can recall seeing a Borg Queen in a position of helplessness. Her people have been eradicated, leaving her isolated and alone - and as Seven's early Voyager appearances showed, "alone" isn't something Borg manage well. She is able to sense the timeline disturbances, however, recognizing Seven both as Borg and not and Picard as both "Locutus" and not.

Q: Picard wonders if he's unstable. To me, it looks like he's suppressing rage. He talks about how this world is a result of Picard and/or humanity's own choices. "Show them a world of their own making, and they ask what you've done." Picard, confronted with his counterpart's slaves, protests, "I would never" - and Q cuts him off, sneering at these words as "the luxury of the victors" before taking glee in showing off the alternate Picard's collection of gruesome trophies: the skulls of such adversaries as Martok, Sarek, and Gul Dukat. I bet Sisko wouldn't have minded adorning his office with the last of those...


THOUGHTS:

"You're welcome to remain here, in the body of a madman, in the world of a madman - to attempt, like Macbeth, to wash the blood from your hands. But I assure you, Jean-Luc, it's un-washable."
-Q demands penance from Picard.

After The Star Gazer set up the characters' new places, both professionally and emotionally, it falls to this episode to kick-start the plot. An alternate reality/time travel plot - which makes me a bit nervous. Alternate reality and time travel shenanigans can be fun, and Star Trek has delivered some corkers in both areas. But a full season? I worry that it will get... old.

My reservations about the season aside, Penance does its job well. This is an efficient script. The Picard/Q scene sets up the new universe while at the same time giving both Patrick Stewart and John DeLancie to show that time has not diminished their screen rapport. The next Act establishes the new existences of each of the crew. Then the meat of the episode centers around them having to keep up appearances while finding a way to escape from Eradication Day (which really should have been the title of the episode).


AN UNCREATIVE TIMELINE:

My biggest gripe is that the alternate timeline isn't particularly interesting.

Star Trek has shown plenty of alternate realities before, often with memorable results. Mirror, Mirror was a "pure evil" timeline, but there was still a sense of character relationships and power dynamics, and enough of a sense of a society for future books and spinoff series to revel in. Yesterday's Enterprise presented a changed reality in which all the regulars were recognizably themselves, but were altered by living in a militaristic environment.

Penance presents... "The Fascist Future." And there's really nothing more to it than that. The only thing I could truly tell you about this society is that its xenophobic. There aren't even any memorable guest characters. Seven's husband is the only one whose screen time goes beyond "walk-on," and he's pretty much your standard issue weasel. Aside from Picard himself, I had little sense of how the regulars' alternate timeline personalities differed from their regular ones. Never mind the actual alternate timelines I mentioned above: This episode's society feels less lived in than the deliberately over-the-top "fake history" of Voyager's Living Witness!

None of this makes the episode bad. It's well structured, it moves quickly, and it's never less than entertaining. I just wish its alternate reality had a bit more to it.


OVERALL:

Despite the generic setting, Penance does what it needs to do. It sets up the season arc while at the same time giving the characters an episode-specific situation to overcome. It even ends on a pretty decent cliffhanger.

I am worried that the overarching story seems to be focused on time travel and alternate universes, as such stories are usually best reserved for one or two-parters. On its own terms, though, Penance is... well, it's much like Picard itself. It was good, and I enjoyed it - but I couldn't help but feeling that with a bit more creativity, it could have been better.


Overall Rating: 7/10.

Previous Episode: The Star Gazer
Next Episode: Assimilation

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