The third episode of Star Trek: Picard oddly opens with a quick montage of the Mars attack from last week, which almost plays like a dream sequence but turns out to just be there to catch us up in case we missed the last episode (which is what the “previously on” segment is there for, but O.K.). It then slides into a different flashback: the day 14 years ago that Picard resigned his commission in the wake of those attacks. In a fine bit of story back-filling, we also meet Picard’s former First Officer Raffi (Michelle Hurd), and get a real sense of their dynamic and how things went wrong between them.
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These two approaches — replaying or re-explaining stuff like the Mars attack, and cool scenes between Jean-Luc and some new character — tend to be the way Picard has been rolling so far this season. The result is a frequently appealing and exciting return to the character that alternatively turns into an exposition-laden slog for half of its running time, as if the writers don’t trust us to be able to keep up — or don’t trust that they’re getting their ideas across.
In this week’s segment, “The End Is the Beginning,” it’s Isa Briones’ Soji Asha who takes up a lot of our time talking about the same thing over and over again. The episode keeps cutting back to her on the former Borg cube now known as the Artifact, where she’s working to help former members of the Borg ease back into their lives. But she’s also looking, we learn here, to employ the “therapeutic utility of a shared mythical framework” with the ex-Borg. Basically, she wants to use their mythology to connect with them… or something.
But that’s the thing, because even though so much time this week is spent with Soji and this idea, we still don’t really understand what it all means by the end of the episode — despite going back to Soji and her Romulan ex-Borg patient several times.
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Also frustrating is the fact that another classic character made his debut this week and yet we learned virtually nothing about what he’s been up to for the past 30 years. Jonathan Del Arco played a Borg named Hugh who Picard’s crew freed from the Collective back on The Next Generation. He was only in two episodes, so even fans of the old show might not recognize him here in his more human form, sans cyborg implants. Surely we’ll learn more about him eventually, but it seems an unnecessary tease to drop him here with absolutely no explanation.
Meanwhile over on “current day” Earth, Picard is trying to get Raffi’s help in finding a ship that can take him offworld in his search for Soji, but he finds that his former officer is now a space-weed-vaping, hard-drinking burnout who resents him for ruining her career all those years ago. It’s an interesting idea to give us a less than perfect ex-Starfleeter like this, but the show seems to be laying it on a bit thick, particularly when it comes to Raffi complaining about the economic gap between her and Picard. Why exactly is she crying about money in a post-money society, anyway? Can’t she just have a vineyard too if she wants one?
Anyway, Raffi puts Jean-Luc in touch with another ex-Starfleeter in Cristóbal Rios (Santiago Cabrera). He has cool ship — it’s even got a slick paintjob! — and a fun EMH (also played by Cabrera) who is like Batman’s butler Alfred, only if he got less respect from his master. Rios runs the risk of becoming a stereotype very quickly with the whole shrapnel in the shoulder/I don’t need a dermal regenerator shtick, as well as the dead-captain back story… and yet, when the EMH calls Rios on his “angsty teenage moral relativism,” you have to chuckle.
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So Picard finally has his ship and his crew — Allison Pill’s Dr. Jurati is also tagging along — but before he takes off for the great beyond, there’s a nicely choreographed fight scene in his home as more Romulan baddies show up. Fortunately my favorite non-Jean-Luc characters Laris (Orla Brady) and Zhaban (Jamie McShane) are on hand to exercise their Tal Shiar training, though Picard keeps a couple of phaser pistols hidden under the coffee table for just such an occasion, so he’s able to help out as well. I continue to worry for Laris and Zhaban — they aren’t main cast members, and therefore could be expendable. And yet there’s just something about them that works. When Zhaban is about to deliver a death blow to the sole surviving attacker, Laris scolds him in their native tongue, “We are not like them anymore.” Damned straight you’re not.
By episode’s end, we’re seemingly, hopefully on our way to a less leisurely adventure than these three episodes have so far given us. Listen, I’m all for a good Picard speech — I practically minored in that s#!t in college. But at a certain point you have to make it so already.
Questions and Notes from the Q Continuum:
- The Romulan baddies whispering in a dark hallway with canted angles is just too much.
- Soji is “the Destroyer,” eh? Sounds… bad.
- Next stop: Freecloud (whatever that is) and Bruce Maddox?!
- The EMH nailed it when mentioning several of Picard’s greatest achievements: “Chief contact with the Q Continuum, Arbiter of Succession for the Klingon Empire, savior of Earth from Borg invasion, captain of the Enterprises D and E, the man even worked alongside the great Spock…”
- I neglected to mention last week that Raffi’s home is at Vasquez Rocks, which of course has been the real-life site of many Star Trek adventures in the past, including the fight between the Gorn captain and James T. Kirk.
- We now understand what Soji’s take is on the Romulans harvesting Borg tech: “I hate it,” she says. Hugh agrees.
- Where was Picard when Raffi needed him, anyway?
- So Picard is aware that there must be Federation complicity in order for the Romulan attack squads to be operating on Earth, but when Raffi says she has evidence about the Mars attack he’s skeptical and doesn’t seem interested in even looking at it?
- Commodore Oh popped in again this week and she’s wearing… sunglasses (also, her ear prosthetics were really sticking out in that scene). As my colleague Jim Vejvoda points out, Mirror Universe inhabitants are very light-sensitive. Hmm…
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