Feb 2020 – Trekking with Dennis

Star Trek: Picard review – Season 1, Episode 6: The Impossible Box

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for The Impossible Box – the sixth episode of Star Trek: Picard – as well as for the rest of Season 1. There may also be spoilers for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

After last week’s bombshell ending, I really had no idea what to expect from The Impossible Box. One great thing about online streaming, when compared to broadcast television, is that episodes can be adjusted in length to suit the story – they aren’t constrained by a set runtime to fill a slot. And The Impossible Box was the longest episode of Star Trek: Picard to date, clocking in at almost 55 minutes – ten minutes longer than any other episode we’ve had so far this season.

It certainly made full use of its extended runtime! The Impossible Box was an edge-of-your-seat ride almost the whole way, and the tension ramped up to an amazing climax as Picard finally met Soji. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Soji with Picard in *The Impossible Box.*

The Impossible Box gave me that same feeling of “wow, what have I just watched” that I got during Remembrance at the beginning of the season. It was everything I’m looking for in an episode of Star Trek in 2020 – visually beautiful, tense, dramatic, exciting, and seasoned with little throwbacks to the past that complemented the plot without being overwhelming. I know I’ve said this before, but Star Wars really should sit up and pay attention to how Star Trek: Picard – and, to a lesser extent, Star Trek: Discovery – have used the theme of nostalgia, because it’s been pitch-perfect.

After a recap, The Impossible Box opens with a young Soji, carrying the stuffed animal we’ve seen in her room on board the Artifact. She’s had a nightmare and she’s looking for her father on a stormy night. This is, of course, a dream sequence, and Soji awakens from it abruptly. After Narek had essentially accused her of lying about her background and whereabouts in Absolute Candor a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised that the two of them are still intimate. Something about the way Narek presents himself clearly causes her to let her guard down – he’s either very well-trained in the art of android seduction, or he got lucky with Soji. He presses her about the dream – finding out what she was dreaming about is clearly important to him as part of his mission.

For me, the Narek and Soji storyline has been interesting. But it does feel, in this moment, as if it’s run its course. We’ve seen the same basic scene play out several times now, and while a one-week break definitely helped (Narek and Soji were absent from last week’s episode) the formula is close to overdone by this point. Breaking this cycle – as will happen from this point on – is going to be to the benefit of the series because there was definitely a danger of it becoming repetitive and thus less interesting. I’m glad, then, that this episode breaks up Narek and Soji and they’ll be able to go their separate ways, at least for the time being.

The action jumps to more or less where Stardust City Rag left off last week. Dr Jurati and Picard are discussing Maddox. The crew are aware that he’s died, but Dr Jurati has – at least so far – managed to keep her involvement secret. Given that La Sirena’s EMH caught her in the act, I’m sure she won’t be able to maintain her cover for long, though. Perhaps they’re saving that revelation for later because Dr Jurati still has something to do for the story, or perhaps it was simply to keep the already-long runtime in check, but either way it was a surprise to see her not only not get caught but brazenly talking about Maddox and lying about his death. Dr Jurati is clearly better as a spy or undercover operative than I previously gave her credit for. It seemed for a moment that Elnor might have caught on to what was going on, but he didn’t, at least not in this moment.

Elnor listens to Picard and Dr Jurati talk about the Borg.

I’m glad to see Elnor back in this scene. After all the trouble Picard went to to recruit him in Absolute Candor, he was almost entirely wasted last week. He’s such an interesting character – as well as being good comic relief at times – that it was a shame to see him underused, and I had hoped we’d see more from him.

It’s in this sequence that we get a glimpse at the kind of fearful anger that Picard demonstrated in Star Trek: First Contact – as well as to a lesser extent in the episode I, Borg from the fifth season of The Next Generation. The latter episode introduced Hugh – who we saw briefly with Soji in The End is the Beginning. Picard’s assimilation experience, while a long time ago by now, still haunts him, and colours his feelings toward the Borg in this moment. As he said in First Contact, he wants to kill them all – and not just to put assimilated people out of their misery.

Dr Jurati seemed to push him here – whether it was accidental or on purpose isn’t clear. But what is clear is that people who study synthetics know a lot about the Borg – could this tie into my theory from last week that there’s Borg technology involved in the creation of synthetics? Again something we’ll have to look at in my next theory post, so stay tuned for that.

Did Dr Jurati push Picard in this scene?

Clearly disturbed by their destination, Picard retires to his study. After regaining his resolve, he asks the computer for information on the Artifact, treaties, and the Borg. We’re then treated to some great camera/effects work as Picard scrolls through a few images of his past engagements with them. There was a still from the Battle of Sector 001 from First Contact in which the Enterprise-E could be glimpsed, a picture of the Romulan Senate that may be new or may have been from Deep Space Nine or Nemesis (I’m not sure on that one), an unnamed Borg drone which may have been from Voyager or First Contact, Hugh as he appeared in The Next Generation, then again as he appears in the current series, a shot of Paris which is where the Federation has its main government offices, a couple of shots of ex-Borg being de-assimilated, and finally the picture Picard didn’t want to see: himself as Locutus. The image lines up perfectly, shot from behind the holo-screen, it’s as if Picard were again Locutus of Borg – a reflection, no doubt, of how he feels as he’s forced to confront his most feared adversary – and his own memories – once again.

Picard is still haunted by his memories of being transformed into Locutus.

We then get the opening credits, and I have to say that the Star Trek: Picard theme is really growing on me. Aside from Enterprise, every Star Trek series has had an instrumental, orchestral opening. What we know of today as The Next Generation’s theme was actually written for The Motion Picture almost a decade earlier, but it’s now firmly associated with the series not the film. The Picard theme has, at the very end, a callback to that theme, and I think because we associate that piece of music very strongly with Picard himself, it works really well. It’s definitely a halfway house, somewhere between the theme used for Discovery, which I’d argue is quite toned-down and minimalist by Star Trek standards, and the theme from The Next Generation. Music is incredibly subjective – even more so in some regards than film or television – but I’d rank the Picard theme somewhere in the top half of my list of favourite Star Trek themes. It’s definitely one I’d like to come back to and I could see myself listening to it just as a piece of music.

One of the downsides presented by a shorter series is that character interaction and development can feel rushed. And while Dr Jurati and Capt. Rios had spent some time together by now, their on-screen interactions had been limited; I think there’d only been one scene so far with just the two of them. So when, after the credits, they hook up it seemed to come a bit out of left-field. It does make sense in-universe, given what Dr Jurati is going through in particular, but I’m not sure it was set up especially well as a story point. However, I can understand Dr Jurati looking around for distraction and comfort – and also, if we put our cynical hats on for a moment, a potential ally. Remember that, as far as we know, she’s the only one on La Sirena who knows this horrible Zhat Vash/Commodore Oh secret, one worth murdering for. Seeking an ally in the midst of all that seems at least plausible. Her decision to remain on board La Sirena means she’s in incredible danger of getting caught. The next time someone uses the EMH she could conceivably be found out. So there must be a reason why she’d stay aboard – perhaps to kill Soji? We’ll explore that in more depth in my next theory post.

Seeing Capt. Rios practising with a football (soccer ball if you’re out in the USA) was a nice little character moment, though. He’s someone who spends a lot of time on his ship – aside from the mission on Freecloud he hasn’t left La Sirena at all – so it makes sense he’d want things to do to fill his time. Kicking around a football is exercise and it’s also something to do during the long hours warping between systems! The fact that he was playing alone, instead of with one of his holograms or with a crewmate, also shows us that he’s a pretty self-reliant person. Football is a team sport, yet Rios is content to kick the ball around on his own. There’s an individualism to doing that, and Rios has been an isolated figure since leaving Starfleet.

Rizzo pays a visit to Narek back on the Artifact, and they discuss Soji’s dream. Rizzo seems uninterested, feeling Narek has not made sufficient progress. Narek uses a Romulan toy – similar to a rubix cube – as an analogy. This is the titular “impossible box”, and he says that he’s carefully manipulating each piece in order to unlock the prize inside – referring, of course, to his interactions with Soji.

The question of why Soji dreams was interestingly addressed. Narek speculates that it’s part of her programming trying to reconcile the two different aspects of her personality – her true synthetic nature and her programmed belief in being human. Narek intends to use Soji’s subconscious and dreams to get her to reveal where she came from – which is still the objective of their mission. Given what we learned last week about Bruce Maddox’s lab being destroyed, this was a bit of a surprise. It’s obviously possible that Maddox had more than one lab, but given the ban on synths and the fact that he was clearly out of options when he went to see Bjayzl, I’m not sure that makes a lot of sense. Basically the fact that we know Maddox’s lab has already been destroyed threatens to open a plot hole: Narek and Rizzo are trying to get Soji to tell them where she came from so they can go there and destroy the lab used to create her, and any other synthetics they might find there. But if Maddox’s lab is already gone, what’s the point of their mission, exactly?

Picard and the crew of La Sirena are discussing how they could blag their way aboard the Artifact. There is a treaty in place which means that the Borg Reclamation Project – the de-assimilation of Borg spearheaded by Hugh – is neutral and not fully under Romulan jurisdiction, even though the cube itself is. Dr Jurati suggests using her credentials as a synthetic researcher, but all of the plans have an undoing in that Picard is instantly recognisable to the Romulans – and, he believes, also to the Borg. Picard is clearly struggling with the idea of being back on a Borg vessel – despite the fact that the cube has been disabled for well over a decade, he believes that the ship or the ex-Borg will recognise him, compromising the mission.

Raffi ends up saving the day – and we learn her last name, Musiker, in the process. This had been widely reported in pre-release material, but as far as I remember at least, it was the first on-screen use of her surname. She contacts a friend at Starfleet – a captain, judging from the rank pips on her uniform – and manages to talk her way into getting Picard diplomatic credentials to visit the Artifact. This was a fun scene as Raffi talks her way around this Starfleet captain, but we see that she’s slipped back into her snakeleaf and alcohol addictions in the aftermath of her disastrous meeting with her son last week. I’m sure getting Raffi clean is going to be a feature in later episodes – but showing how addicts can relapse ties into the theme of Raffi’s story. We saw her paranoid, we saw her manage to get clean enough to try to reunite with her son, and now we’ve seen her undo that and slip back. It will be a familiar story to anyone who’s known an addict; the pattern of breaking the habit and slipping back into it is all too common. We’ve seen Star Trek look at the theme of addiction in the past – notably in Enterprise with T’Pol – and given the current opiod crisis in the United States and elsewhere, it’s a timely issue to look at. I hope Raffi’s story will have a happy ending.

Soji tells Narek about her dream, and Narek still tries to push for more details. He suggests she call her mother – we know, thanks to Maddox last week, that the “mother” is in fact part of her AI subroutines, and not a real person. Narek then drops a bombshell on her – every single call she has with her mother lasts the exact same length of time – seventy seconds. He offers to show her the logs, but really what he’s doing is attacking her sense of self. He’s trying to undermine her self-belief so that he can start extracting information from her.

After a short scene with Rios putting a drunk and drugged-up Raffi to bed, in which we see a more caring, kind side to La Sirena’s captain than we have thus far, we’re back on board the Artifact where Soji contacts her “mother”. During the call, we seem to see a bug or glitch in the “mother”, and then Soji collapses. Clearly this part of her programming – calling her “mother” – is designed to put her to sleep.

La Sirena then arrives at the Artifact and we get confirmation that Raffi’s friend was able to get Picard the diplomatic credentials needed. How she managed to pull that off given Picard’s bust-up with the head of Starfleet wasn’t shown on screen! But evidently the captain was able to issue Picard a one-day permit to access the Artifact. However, the catch is that the permit is valid only for Picard himself – no one else is allowed to go. I loved this setup, because it provides a perfectly valid reason for why Picard couldn’t have anyone else with him – forcing him to face his return to a Borg cube alone. In First Contact and in later Borg stories in The Next Generation, Picard could always count on his crew to help him get through a Borg encounter. This time, however, he has to head into the heart of a Borg vessel on his own – and it’s clearly a frightening prospect.

I didn’t like, however, Picard’s treatment of Elnor in this scene – and indeed at several other points since Elnor pledged himself to Picard’s cause. He seems to snap at him and treat him like a servant, dishing out orders as though he were an upstart ensign. Given their history, and that Picard had seemed to want to make amends, I just feel that the way he treats him isn’t appropriate. Elnor didn’t have to join the mission, after all. He could have stayed on Vashti, and despite that he seems to get little by way of thanks.

Soji awakens in her room on the Artifact and realises she has once again fallen asleep while talking to her mother. She starts rummaging through her possessions, scanning them all in turn only for the scanner to tell her each one in the same age: 37 months. This ties into what Dr Jurati said about Dahj’s background being faked before the three-year mark, and with what Narek said about Soji studying the Romulan language “some time before May 12, 2396.” 37 months is three years and one month, which gives us an approximation of how long Soji has been active. Devastated, Soji scans her necklace too – her most prized possession – and it too is only 37 months old. This scene was the culmination of Soji’s story since we first met her at the end of Remembrance. She tears apart her room, desperately looking for anything in her possession that might disprove what she now thinks about herself – that her life has somehow been faked.

She’s also a victim of Narek – his manipulations and gaslighting led her to this point. I’m not sure if the gaslighting aspect of the Narek-Soji relationship was intentional – Narek is, after all, revealing the truth to Soji in a way, as opposed to tricking her into believing outright lies – but I certainly picked up on that aspect of the relationship, and it can definitely be interpreted that way. The term gaslighting, if you are unfamiliar with it, comes from the 1944 film Gaslight, and means a person is manipulating someone else – often, but not always, a romantic partner – into questioning reality and ultimately believing themselves to be losing their mind. Narek and Soji have this aspect to their relationship, and especially in the days of online relationships, gaslighting has become increasingly common.

Picard beams aboard the Artifact, alone and in an unoccupied section. The trauma of being back on board a Borg cube is overwhelming for him at first, and he starts to think he can see and hear the Borg, including the Borg Queen. We get an updated shot of Picard as Locutus – albeit very briefly – and something about the combination of the whole Picard-Borg sequence, the music, and the digital effects used on this new look at Locutus was incredibly creepy. By the time Hugh arrives to save the day, the short sequence has us feeling almost as unsettled as Picard.

If Soji’s storyline at this point is an analogy for gaslighting in relationships, then in this moment, Picard’s is analogous to post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD victims can suffer flashbacks when exposed to sensory triggers – which is why some war veterans, for example, greatly dislike fireworks. In Picard’s case, the sights, sounds, smells, and overall sensation of being back at the scene of his worst moment – his assimilation, where he lost part of his humanity and was forced to do horrible things – was too much. He suffers auditory and visual hallucinations, flashing back to those moments where he was under Borg control. Some PTSD sufferers will tell you that they never really “got over it” – even years or decades later, they can still suffer this kind of a reaction. Picard had been away from the Borg since the events of First Contact, living quietly at the vineyard for fourteen years. But his Borg experiences still traumatise him, and we see in this moment the result of that.

Hugh and Picard share a touching reunion, and seeing an old friend seems to snap Picard out of the flashbacks. They catch up as they stroll through parts of the cube, and when Picard enquires about Soji, Hugh reveals he’s aware of Narek – the “Romulan spy”. In Soji’s quarters she’s called Narek – turning to him for comfort and reassurance as she has no one else to share her feelings with. He pretends to comfort her, and offers her a Romulan meditation technique to unlock her dreams and memories – suggesting disingenuously that she may have been hypnotised or had false memories implanted in her. Again this ties into the theme of gaslighting in relationships; manipulators like Narek want their victims to have no one else to turn to for help and support, allowing them to sink their claws in further.

Picard, alone aboard the Artifact, deals with his past trauma.

On their way to find Soji, Hugh takes Picard on a detour through one of the Artifact’s de-assimilation areas. Unlike the medical facility where we saw Soji at work on unconscious Borg, the ex-Borg here are very much awake. Many are voiceless, still processing what’s happened to them, but they are having some of their implants and technology removed. Picard is shocked that de-assimilation can take place on this scale – and crucially expresses even greater surprise that it’s the Romulans who have managed to accomplish it. Again, spoilers for my next theory post, but this does tie into one of my theories regarding the Romulans and the Borg.

Aboard La Sirena, Raffi has awoken from her blackout and is recovering with Rios. He shares with her the news that Soji is still alive – but they both wonder why that is. “What does the Tal Shiar need from a synth?” asks Raffi. And it is a good question – but we already know that Rizzo wants to find out where Soji came from so the Zhat Vash can travel there and destroy any other synths and synth research that may be ongoing. Again, though, this ties into what I said earlier about Maddox’s lab already being destroyed – could there be more to it than that?

Raffi and Rios ponder what the Romulans might be after.

Narek takes Soji to the meditation room, and on the wooden floor, a twisted path is mapped out. Soji must close her eyes and walk the path to uncover the meaning behind her dreams. This is the moment Narek has been building toward – an unactivated Soji who trusts him completely and is willing to tell him everything she sees and learns.

While Rizzo watches on from a hidden room, Narek guides Soji through the walking meditation. He’s pushing her not to wake up, not to open her eyes, no matter what she sees or thinks she sees from her dream. This is the culmination of everything he’s been working toward, but Narek is clearly nervous. Part of that is of course to do with his mission – he doesn’t want to fail. But part of it is clearly do with how he feels about Soji; he’s never quite been able to reconcile the part of himself that cares for her with the part of himself loyal to the cause. Soji has changed his attitude to synths, in much the same way that spending time with Data changed Maddox’s view on the subject in The Next Generation episode The Measure of a Man. Despite what he’s doing – and will continue to do – Narek is conflicted.

Narek guides her through the dream that we saw in the beginning of the episode, up to the moment Soji’s father shouting at her snaps her out of it. He pushes her to continue, to look beyond what she can see in the room. Picard and Hugh are alerted to Soji being “missing”; Hugh suspects that someone – i.e. Narek – has managed to conceal her from his scans. They visit her room, seeing the mess she made while scanning. Picard could – and probably should – have explained to Hugh who she is. It wouldn’t have taken very long at all to say “she’s Data’s daughter”, and Hugh was Data’s friend too, so if anything he’d be even more motivated to help. It’s possible, however, that owing to the ban on synthetic life, Picard isn’t sure who he can trust with Soji’s secret – and he hasn’t seen Hugh in a long time.

As Soji pushes through the moment her dream should end, we get two pretty shocking scenes in quick succession. First is that Soji’s “father” has no face – or rather, his face has been digitally erased in her memory such that she cannot remember or describe it. This is clearly something done by Maddox to keep himself safe – but the figure in the dream may not have actually been Maddox. Next, Soji sees a wooden doll on her father’s workbench, only partly assembled, with her own face. This is the secret that the dream was keeping – she is aware of her synthetic nature somehow.

Soji’s faceless dad. It could be Bruce Maddox – but maybe it’s someone else? Hard to tell.

Rizzo and Narek don’t care, of course; they already know Soji is a synth. What they’ve been looking for is what Soji sees next – she looks up through the skylight in her dream and sees two red moons.

If I were to nitpick – and you know I must – this isn’t a lot of information to go on. Narek ends the meditation at this point, and Rizzo calls someone to ask them to find a planet with “constant electrical storms and two red moons”. Firstly, how many planets and other celestial bodies (moons, dwarf planets, and asteroids can have their own moons) must fall into that category? Even if we were to limit it to M-class worlds – and again, Soji provided Narek so little information that that cannot be assumed – there could be dozens or even hundreds of possibilities. Secondly, nothing in Soji’s dream suggested that storms are a “constant” presence on this planet. Most places on Earth suffer occasional lightning storms, and the fact that one was occurring in Soji’s dream does not mean they are a permanent fixture on that planet. Thirdly, many factors could cause the moons to appear reddish in hue from the surface of a planet that aren’t present in space. On Earth we get the “blood moon” phenomenon, a result of the lunar eclipse. In short, Soji gave Narek and Rizzo a clue – but only one single clue. While it could somewhat narrow down their search, they could still easily have lots of planets to visit, spread out across vast distances. The information Soji gave them is not conclusive and, in an area the size of the explored galaxy, surely won’t be able to pinpoint one single location. I mean it will be able to, because plot, but logically it shouldn’t be able to.

Narek abandons Soji, leaving her in the meditation chamber with his “impossible box” toy from earlier – which he has rigged to be a weapon. The box opens, releasing a cloud of red vapour – Narek describes it as “radiation”. Soji begins to choke as she tries to escape, but the radiation has the unintended consequence of causing her to activate – we now know this means her self-defence subroutines are activating – and she smashes a hole in the floor to escape the chamber.

Narek sheds a tear – he did really care for Soji. And he really had to force himself to conclude his mission, as doing so broke his heart. However, he did it – he tried to kill her. His failure in that regard is not because of anything he deliberately did to help her escape – his actions triggered her self-defence activation.

After escaping the meditation room, Picard and Hugh can detect Soji on their scanner again and race to meet her. Narek has alerted the Artifact’s Romulan guards – so it’s a race between them to get to Soji first. She breaks through the ceiling of a chamber and Picard and Hugh are there. Picard implores her to trust him, even showing her Dahj’s necklace. Having nowhere else to turn, and realising the Romulans are not safe to be around, Soji really has no choice. The three of them escape – Hugh using his knowledge of the Borg cube’s layout to lead them to a room called the “queen cell”. Here we got a nice little throwback to the Voyager episode Prime Factors from its first season. The species in that episode, the Sikarians, are mentioned, as is their “spatial trajector” technology – which they had refused to share with Voyager’s crew. The Borg have evidently expanded at least as far as Sikarian space, incorporating the spatial trajector into their vessels thereafter. Hugh is familiar with this technology and knows how to operate it, and Picard seems familiar with the queen’s chamber despite never having been in one. Here we get a look at how the Borg’s hive mind works, and how knowledge, information, and even memories and sensations can be copied and distributed to the entire collective. The Impossible Box has looked at how subconscious works with the Soji and Narek storyline, but here we see how the Borg also make use of the subconscious. Picard instantly recognised the room – that information was stored somewhere deep in his memory from his assimilation. I found that aspect to be interesting; I wonder what other Borg secrets Picard, Seven of Nine, Hugh, and other xBs could be hiding without even realising it?

Raffi and Rios are following what’s going on aboard La Sirena, and Soji uses her now-advanced hearing to let the others know that more guards are en route. Before the guards can harm her, however, Elnor intervenes – he apparently beamed aboard while no one was looking. Picard finally shows Elnor some gratitude – despite first berating him for beaming over. There was a touching moment between them as Picard says he doesn’t want to leave Elnor behind again, but with more guards on the way he has no choice, and he and Soji escape through the spatial trajector to a place called Nepenthe – which is also the name of next week’s episode. Hugh and Elnor remain behind to shut down the trajector and conceal where it sent them. Elnor should be fine thanks to his skills, but Hugh may be in serious danger from Rizzo and Narek. Has he just compromised the entire Borg Reclamation Project?

So that was The Impossible Box. As I said, I loved the episode – despite my little nitpicks. The way it approached complicated topics like abusive relationships and PTSD was classic Star Trek, using its science-fiction setting to tackle real-world topics. Seeing Hugh back again, getting the chance to reunite with Picard, was also great to see. And finally Soji and Picard are together – but without the rest of the crew, I wonder what will happen to them on Nepenthe.

Admiral Picard had to face his Borg trauma.

There were some great little callbacks to previous iterations of Star Trek: Soji had a “Flotter” lunchbox or container in her room, which is a reference to the childrens’ character who debuted on Voyager; Rios mentioned “slips of latinum”, which was of course a callback to Ferengi currency that was prominent in Deep Space Nine; we again saw the blue drink that must be Romulan Ale; and as mentioned above, there was the reference to the Sikarians and their spatial trajector. None of these points overwhelmed the episode. Even Hugh’s inclusion was well done, and crucially made sense from a story point of view. The episode flowed naturally, and we’re one giant step closer to getting to the bottom of some of Star Trek: Picard’s mysteries.

I was on the edge of my seat with The Impossible Box, and after the episode drew to a close, fifty-five minutes seemed to have flown by. The editing and the music contributed massively to this, taking what was already an amazing story up a notch or two.

Picard and Soji managed to escape, but their escape came at the cost of Hugh, Elnor, and the rest of La Sirena’s crew. Yes they have a rendezvous point, but first they need to get Elnor back – and perhaps rescue Hugh as well – before they can even think about travelling there.

It seems like next week we’ll get to see Troi and Riker, and I absolutely cannot wait for that reunion. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed for Elnor, Hugh, and the others, because Star Trek: Picard has learned a lesson from shows like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead in that it isn’t afraid to kill off characters. With practically the whole crew in danger, I’m genuinely not sure at this point if they’ll all make it out alive.

The Impossible Box – along with the rest of the first season of Star Trek: Picard – is available to stream now on CBS All Access in the United States, and on Amazon Prime Video in the United Kingdom and other countries and territories. The Star Trek franchise – including Star Trek: Picard – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Netflix series review – Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak

Thu 27.02.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

If you’ve been a reader for a while, you’ll know that I love documentaries. There have been some really interesting documentary films and series made over the years that I’ve been lucky enough to see, including many whose subject matter I would never have thought to explore otherwise. Netflix is actually a great platform for documentary content. I don’t know how many films and series they have available in the genre – and unfortunately it will vary somewhat depending on where you are in the world – but there are a lot of interesting ones to check out, including some that have been nominated for major awards.

It was with all of the above in mind that I decided to try Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak, which was released in January 2020. I’ve always had an interest in things like disaster preparedness and emergency planning, so it definitely piqued my curiosity when it appeared on my list of things to watch that Netflix recommended. I’d been meaning to check it out ever since, but as always, there were other things to see and do!

Pandemic follows a few different individuals, mostly medical professionals, in a number of places around the world as they work on various aspects of disease prevention and treatment. It’s actually incredibly ambitious in that regard, telling the narrative from different places and different perspectives. The filmmakers visited such diverse places as the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Egypt, Guatemala, and various locations in the United States – a truly huge amount of travelling that must have massively inflated the budget of the series. And the end result is definitely the better for gaining different perspectives.

Some of the locations visited – like Rajasthan in India and Cairo in Egypt – are incredibly densely populated, and as Pandemic goes to great lengths to show, are much more vulnerable to influenza – the disease which is the focus of the documentary – as a result. Seeing those places, and the overcrowded buildings and streets, instead of merely reading about them or having them explained in a voiceover, was definitely an interesting aspect, one that the filmmakers have clearly wanted to convey.

Given that a pandemic of a disease like influenza is a global problem, I think it’s important that any attempt to cover the subject matter should be global in scope. Only seeing a European, American, or western perspective would be more relevant to Netflix’s core audience, perhaps, but would be limited in its messaging and understanding of the topic. The truth is that, in a lot of cases, it’s places in the third world that are worst-hit when a disease outbreak occurs because the infrastructure and medical facilities aren’t present in the same way, and the level of preventative care – like inoculations – and post-infection treatment is of lower quality. That’s not meant to be a criticism – there are clearly people in those regions working incredibly hard. But it is the reality that millions of people in some countries aren’t vaccinated against, for example, tuberculosis – despite the vaccine having existed for decades.

As well as looking at some of the history behind disease prevention, and the scientific research that is ongoing, Pandemic is also a series of personal stories. We spend time with many of the documentary’s subjects as they go about their lives, interact with their families, and discuss the impact that their work can have on their life and those around them. In that sense, it was a much more personal look at the subject than a documentary that focused on facts, figures, and interviews staying on-topic would have been. While I enjoyed that aspect of Pandemic most of the time, there were some moments that were awkward and clearly scripted, or at the very least set up to get the exact shot and line that the filmmakers wanted. There’s a line that a documentary filmmaker has to walk when doing something like that, and at times Pandemic was on the wrong side, as some of these scripted moments ended up feeling like the film was being dishonest. By presenting a scene through the camerawork and editing as if it were a genuine, spur-of-the-moment conversation when it clearly was not, some of these sequences ended up feeling forced and fabricated. While there weren’t too many of these moments such that the series was overwhelmed by them, it did suffer as a result.

When considering Pandemic, we do have to talk briefly about the current coronavirus outbreak. Pandemic was made last year, before this current outbreak had begun, but how we approach it – and indeed the fact that more people have been interested in it – can’t be completely detached from the current situation. Coronavirus is not influenza; the two viruses are very different and thus will have to be approached differently by governments and medical staff. But much of Pandemic’s subject matter is applicable to the current outbreak – most notably how easily it can spread and how it can take root in some of these densely-populated areas in the third world where healthcare and hygiene are worse than here in the west. In that sense, Pandemic is a timely release – with all the fuss in the news at the moment about the spread of coronavirus and the various quarantines and other steps being taken to stop and prevent its spread, there are lessons to be learned from this series.

Politics is at play in Pandemic; it is a deeply political series at times. For some people that will be offputting, especially because the way some political issues – like migration – are handled are very one-sided. There are numerous swipes and digs at Donald Trump and his administration in particular, as well as interviews with Democratic Party politicians, legislators, and supporters. It would have been worth the filmmakers including some kind of statement at the end of the episodes where these people appeared to say that they did ask Republicans to join in with the series – if indeed they did ask. That would have shifted the blame for the lack of political inclusion to those who refused to participate.

Oregon State Senator Elizabeth Steiner Hayward was interviewed in *Pandemic*.

Healthcare is a political issue. The inclusion of politics is thus unsurprising, and Pandemic does not claim to be a balanced, all-around look at the subject matter. Many documentaries are incredibly subjective in the way they handle their subject matter – look at Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine or Fahrenheit 9/11 as examples of that. This doesn’t make Pandemic worse, but it does mean that as the audience we have to be aware of the filmmakers’ leanings and biases and remember to treat it as a subjective piece. In 2020, there really isn’t such a thing as a truly objective piece of reporting or filmmaking, but even so, there will be numerous points where I’m sure that people who don’t fully subscribe to the filmmakers’ politics will be at least a little uncomfortable in the way some of the material is presented – I can tell you that I certainly was.

Staying with contentious political issues, one of the most interesting aspects of Pandemic for me is that the filmmakers went out of their way to track down and speak with anti-vaccination families and campaigners. The anti-vaccine movement has been growing for some time, and is widely blamed for a resurgence in diseases like measles which had once been essentially eradicated in the western world. It’s likely that, as we go forward into the new decade, decisions will have to be made about what rights people do and don’t have when it comes to issues like vaccination, and by letting the anti-vaccine campaigners speak for themselves, Pandemic did a good job of presenting both sides of the argument – even though it was clear from the way some of those sequences were edited which side the filmmakers were on.

Overall, I’d say that Pandemic approaches an incredibly broad topic in a personal way. The decision to present it through a series of separate, individual stories rather than as a more general overview of the topic definitely shows off different angles of how organisations around the world approach disease prevention, but at the cost of having a narrower focus than some documentary series covering the same subject might. I enjoyed it, it was interesting and informative, but certainly not comprehensive. However, given the position we’re in when it comes to the current coronavirus outbreak, I would recommend it – just so long as people remember to keep their fears in check. Some of the interviewees can stray into “doom-and-gloom” territory at times, and again considering our current situation in regards to coronavirus, this might be offputting for some. Regardless, I had a good time with the series. Netflix has both created and hosted a number of good documentaries, and Pandemic is a solid addition to its lineup.

Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak is available to stream now on Netflix around the world. The series is the copyright of Netflix. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

“Old” versus “New” Star Trek

Tue 25.02.20Mon 21.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: While this essay doesn’t go into many plot details, there may be minor spoilers ahead for the Star Trek franchise, including for Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Discovery.

I’ve seen a number articles and videos over the last couple of years, really since Star Trek: Discovery premiered, looking at how the Star Trek fanbase has become divided into fans of “old” Star Trek and “new” Star Trek. However one may feel about the various films and series, it’s undeniable that there are many Trekkies who have jumped ship over the years and do not consider themselves fans of the franchise’s newer iterations – as well as plenty of casual viewers who have seen one series but not others. Given that the franchise is well past its fiftieth anniversary, perhaps that’s fair enough. But I did want to take a look at the phenomenon for myself and give my thoughts on how the franchise is split, some of the possible causes, and what that split could mean for the franchise going forward into the 2020s and beyond.

True hipster Star Trek fans *only* watched Star Trek when Jeffrey Hunter was in it. William Shatner? Pfft. Newbie.

Firstly, the question often asked in these articles is “how can everyone come back together?” Writers will often set up that question, pretending that they’re going to answer it fairly, only to basically end up saying “everyone will come back together if Star Trek does everything my way and gives me everything I want.” That just isn’t realistic, I’m afraid. And as with many cases of division, the reality is that there may not be a way to bridge the gulf and reunite everyone around one new Star Trek series or film. That may sound depressing, and it is in a way. But we have to be realistic – there are some people now who are literally making money from running anti-Star Trek groups online, and if anyone expects someone in that position to suddenly turn around and say “hey guys, I just saw the latest episode and it was amazing!” well, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. The truth is that some people aren’t interested in fair criticism. They have decided they want to hate, and just like fans of a football team could never support a rival club, no matter what, their hatred for the current and upcoming lineup of Star Trek shows and films will continue. It’s part of the tribal mindset that we as human beings all end up subscribing to in one way or another: “I support X, which is opposed to Y. Therefore, I can never ever like Y, because it would go against how I define myself as a person”. That’s true in sport, it’s true in politics, and it’s true in entertainment as well.

But before we can look at divisions in the fanbase, we need to examine the basic concept: what is “old” Star Trek, and what is “new” Star Trek? It’s a far more complicated question than it seems, and the answer will vary depending on how old a person is, and when they first encountered the franchise.

The bridge of the original USS Enterprise in the episode *The Corbomite Maneuver.* For many fans, *The Original Series* and its crew were irreplaceable.

There are several “turning points” in the history of Star Trek where fans jumped ship, and the easiest way to look at them is in chronological order. The first one was in 1987, when The Next Generation premiered. Until this point, Star Trek had been The Original Series with Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the rest of the 1960s crew, and while there was excitement for Star Trek’s return to television – just as there was in 2017 – that was countered by a vocal number of fans who believed ardently that the original characters were the beating heart of Star Trek – and were irreplaceable. These people may have watched The Original Series and the first four Star Trek films (The Final Frontier and The Undiscovered County were released after The Next Generation premiered) but simply had no interest in a new crew, a new ship, and a new century. Indeed, Sir Patrick Stewart himself has said many times that he believed The Next Generation would not be a success – and would run for perhaps two seasons at most.

The NX-01 Enterprise leaves its dock in *Broken Bow* – the series premiere of *Enterprise.*

The second turning point is the one I’m most familiar with – because it’s the point I came very close to jumping ship myself: 2000-2001, when Enterprise was announced and entered production. In the aftermath of the disaster that was Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 1999, a prequel was just something that many fans, myself included, had little interest in. Star Trek – as I have often written here on the blog – had always been about pushing forward into the future, and yet here was a show that wanted to look back at its own past. This kind of navel-gazing just didn’t feel like a good idea, and the aesthetic of the show, with its boiler-suit uniforms, clunky starship design, modern (for the time) computer screens, and overreliance on not-quite-good-enough early-2000s CGI was not inspiring. There had been some real stinkers in the Star Trek canon when it came to individual episodes and stories – Spock’s Brain, Angel One, Shades of Grey, Threshold, and Move Along Home to name but a few – but this was the first time that the premise of a series itself seemed unexciting, at least for me. The introduction of Scott Bakula as the captain did go some way toward lifting the show for some fans who had been on the fence, but I confess that during Enterprise’s original run here in the UK I only tuned in sporadically, and it was only when I got the series on DVD a few years after it went off the air that I watched it in its entirety. Nowadays I often cite Enterprise as an example whenever I hear the argument: “nobody asked for this”. Nobody in 2000 was asking for Enterprise, yet it actually told some interesting stories and had a great cast of characters. I’m glad to have seen it, I’m glad it existed, and ultimately I feel its strengths far outweighed its weaknesses. Giving it a second chance was a good decision – even if the only reason I bought the DVDs was to complete my Star Trek collection!

The 2009 redesign of the USS Enterprise – and re-casting of the original crew – was too much for some fans.

Next comes our third turning point: when Enterprise went off the air, a spell was broken. Star Trek had, in some form, been in continuous production for almost two decades, beginning with pre-release work on The Next Generation in 1986 running all the way through to 2005 when the final episodes of Enterprise were produced and released. The cancellation of Enterprise was symbolic – the end of an era. And in that moment it seemed as though Star Trek was dead and not coming back. But it didn’t stay that way for very long at all, and within a year or so of Enterprise’s cancellation, word started going around about a new film – one which would be a reboot, recasting iconic characters like Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. For many long-term fans – including some friends of mine – that was a bridge too far, and they were never interested in what would become 2009’s Star Trek and the “JJverse” or Kelvin timeline that it spawned. For others, Star Trek was too much of a departure from the rest of the franchise, with its visual overhaul and action-heavy story, and some fans who did give it a go were underwhelmed and didn’t come back for more.

The USS Discovery, as seen in the first official teaser trailer in 2016.

So we’ve reached the final turning point. 2017, and the premiere of Star Trek: Discovery is the moment that many of these articles and videos use when dividing “old” Star Trek from “new” Star Trek. Discovery had a somewhat troubled production, with Bryan Fuller departing before the show aired, and controversy surrounding CBS All Access as a platform for the show in the United States. There was also the “prequel problem” that plagued Enterprise, and as more details came out about the series, the visual style being more in line with the JJverse than The Original Series also became a bone of contention. As with each of the three previous turning points, a number of fans decided that Discovery just wasn’t for them and simply opted out.

The point of recounting this history of the Star Trek fanbase and the points at which some fans chose not to continue with new iterations is simple – this is not a new phenomenon. It has happened before in Star Trek, and, if we’re lucky enough for the franchise to continue into the future, it will undoubtedly happen again sooner or later. None of these moments destroyed the franchise or ruined the fanbase, nor drove Star Trek’s creators and promoters out of business for the simple reason that the fans who jumped ship were in the minority. A vocal minority, perhaps, but a minority nevertheless. And it’s the same with those who haven’t watched Discovery and Picard – and of course, those who make a big fuss about not supporting “new” Star Trek in online groups and on YouTube channels: they’re a minority.

“Real” Star Trek fans love *The Final Frontier.*

Trekkies have always been a minority of Star Trek’s audience. It’s a commercial product; a series designed to have appeal beyond a small niche of convention attendees. If it didn’t appeal to casual viewers it would never have survived or been reborn in the first place, at any of the points mentioned above. So to say that because a small number of Trekkies who liked the TNG-era shows don’t like Discovery there’s somehow a massive problem and that Star Trek today is fundamentally broken is nonsense. A minority of a minority, no matter how vocal they may be with their criticism and hate, don’t matter to ViacomCBS’ bottom line in any material way.

But do they have a point?

It’s a tough one for me to answer, and if you’ve been here before you’ll know why: I’m a big fan of “new” Star Trek, just as I’m a fan of “old” Star Trek too. I can see the point of view that says the newer shows and films are bad, but generally I don’t agree, so from my perspective they don’t have a point. Especially to those people who pre-judged Discovery and Picard based on what they read in anti-Star Trek groups online and never even watched the shows in the first place I’d really say they don’t have a leg to stand on in this argument. How can they possibly sit there and say something is bad when they haven’t given it a try for themselves? The biased “reporting” of some anti-Star Trek YouTuber is not the same as experiencing the film or series for themselves, and I’d really encourage everyone who falls into that category to at least stick with Discovery beyond its opening two episodes, which I fully concede were especially weak.

This actually ties into another point – most Star Trek series, with the exceptions of Deep Space Nine and Picard – opened quite underwhelmingly. And it took more than a few episodes for all of the Star Trek shows to really find their feet. The Next Generation’s first season isn’t anywhere near as good as its third, fourth, or fifth, for example, and Voyager similarly took at least a full season to get up and running. Even the beloved Original Series got off to a rocky start – so giving up on Discovery or Picard after one or two episodes isn’t really giving those shows a fair shake.

Lorca and Saru in *Star Trek: Discovery.*

Part of this is to do with binge-watching culture. For many Star Trek fans – and I include myself in this category to an extent, especially when it comes to Enterprise – they missed out on seeing most or all of “old” Star Trek when it originally aired. They could pick and choose which episodes to watch from DVDs or on streaming platforms, and watch them anytime they wanted to. Star Trek, to many Trekkies, was a complete product. Seven seasons of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, as well as three of The Original Series and four of Enterprise is a lot to wade through, and an individual bad episode is just a blip when you don’t have to wait a week for the next one and can skip ahead to another episode on the disc.

But there are changes in the way Star Trek has told stories over time, and we do have to acknowledge that. There has been a move away from episodic storytelling (aka the “monster-of-the-week” format) in favour of season-long story arcs and a serialised format. I confess I have a preference, in some cases at least, for episodic television. It’s nice to be able to jump into a random episode of a series without needing to know or remember everything that happened leading up to that point. It makes Discovery and Picard season-long commitments, instead of something fans can jump in and out of. And because, as mentioned, a lot of folks are used to Star Trek shows being complete products and in addition are used to binge-watching, having to wait a week between episodes of a partially-complete story can be annoying I suppose.

There has also been a shift away from the more ethereal, philosophical, and thought-provoking storylines that Star Trek used to do. Ironically, many of those stories and episodes are less popular among fans – The Motion Picture is always considered a poor relation to films like First Contact and The Wrath of Khan, which are both much more in the action-sci fi genre, just to give an example. I discussed this in a little more detail in my 40th anniversary look at The Motion Picture if you’re interested to read more. But there’s no doubt that Discovery and especially the JJverse films have gone in a much more action-centric direction, and for people who wanted to see more of the slower paced, thought-provoking stories, action-sci fi maybe doesn’t “feel like Star Trek” in quite the same way.

Kirk and Scotty in *The Motion Picture* – a less popular film than its sequel with many Trekkies.

Now we come to what is the single biggest point: nostalgia. People like what they grew up with. Heck, the whole reason Star Trek is being made again now, more than fifty years since it was first created, is because nostalgia is incredibly powerful and there’s money to be made from it. But nostalgia is a double-edged sword. Some people don’t want to see an “updated” version of the franchise they loved from childhood or young adulthood. If they want more of it in the first place, they want to see it exactly the same as before. No changes, no iterations, no modernising – a carbon copy of what came before. And that isn’t realistic.

Television storytelling has moved on since the 1960s and the 1990s – which are the two “golden ages” of Star Trek, depending on which fans you ask. Expecting to see The Next Generation Season 8 in 2020 was an unrealistic expectation. The way stories are told, and what television audiences expect from their shows, are just different nowadays. For fans of episodic television that might seem disappointing, but as with Trekkies in general we’re in a minority there. Shows like Lost, Breaking Bad, and of course Game of Thrones had such a huge impact on television that they fundamentally changed the way audiences approach their favourite franchises – and in order to stay competitive, Star Trek has to recognise that and keep up.

There are undeniably a lot of positive feelings attached to a franchise from childhood. The return of Star Trek (and other franchises too, like Star Wars) was designed to play on those positive feelings to sell a product – that’s basically the point of resurrecting franchises in the first place. For a minority of fans who only liked things when done the old way, that hasn’t worked and the updates and changes mean they don’t get the same feelings that they do when re-watching an old episode or film. But for a lot of people, these shows have been a hit. They hit the mark where it mattered and got many fans clamouring for more. And in a few years or a few decades from now, Discovery-era fans will be just as excited for the return of Burnham and Saru as I have been to see Picard and Seven of Nine.

Seven of Nine returned in *Star Trek: Picard.*

In fact, one of the things I was genuinely concerned about with Star Trek: Picard is that they were going to fall into the Star Wars trap of overplaying the nostalgia card. I didn’t want The Next Generation Season 8, because that show has ended. It’s over. What Picard represented is something practically no other series or franchise will ever get – a new iteration. Picard is the same man, and he’s the core of the show as he was in The Next Generation. But surrounding him are new characters, and I wanted to make sure that they would have the chance to become fan favourites for the next generation (pun absolutely intended) of Star Trek fans.

My introduction to the franchise was The Next Generation. And it wasn’t until a few years later – probably in the mid-1990s – that I got around to watching any of The Original Series. For some people, Picard and Discovery will be their first port of call as Star Trek fans, just as The Next Generation was for me. Those of us who’ve been around Star Trek for twenty-five years or more still have a place in the fandom, but things are changing. With new shows in production, new fans are coming on board who may not be aware of Picard’s top-secret mission to Celtris III, or that Kirk and his crew once visited a parallel universe where magic is real. If we try to be gatekeepers and say “you aren’t a real Star Trek fan because Discovery isn’t as good as the show that I like” then the fandom isn’t just going to be divided, it’s going to become toxic. Instead of being a “big tent”, recognising that the franchise means different things to different people, some folks seem to want to claim the fandom for themselves and exclude anyone who doesn’t share their belief about what Star Trek means.

And frankly, that’s just sad.

Star Trek has always tried to use its science fiction setting to tell stories that reflect contemporary issues. There are countless examples, and this could be an essay in itself, but suffice to say many of those stories resonated with fans in the past. The Original Series challenged the Cold War concepts of superweapons and mutually assured destruction in the episode The Doomsday Machine to great effect, and fans will laud that. But when Discovery uses Ash Tyler’s trauma as an analogy for underreported male sexual abuse, those same folks scream about “too much politics”. As I’ve said before, to anyone who says there’s “too much politics” in modern Star Trek I’d ask one simple question – “have you seen Star Trek before?”

Spock and Kirk at the end of *The Doomsday Machine* from Season 2 of *The Original Series*. They talked about nuclear weapons – a massive issue in the 1960s.

The problem here is that, when it comes to The Original Series and the shows of The Next Generation’s era, we’re watching them decades on from their original release. Many of the people complaining about politics in modern Star Trek weren’t even born when The Next Generation and its sister shows were first on the air. And very few people now can remember watching The Original Series when it was new. The political themes in many of those episodes are less prickly and less relevant today, and though they would be instantly recognisable to contemporary audiences, watching them today fifty years later or thirty years later, they’re harder to spot. And if someone is watching an episode for the tenth or twentieth time, an episode they first watched at age five or six, it’s even harder to be objective and pull the themes and messaging out of the drama and presentation. Taking a step back and looking at a favourite show or episode objectively is very difficult. I made an attempt to do so when I re-watched The Measure of a Man from The Next Generation’s second season, but it wasn’t easy.

Star Trek has always been a political show, even if as kids we didn’t realise it. And it has always taken a “progressive” political position on contemporary issues. If an individual can’t stand that, and is only content to watch entertainment that is either wholly politically neutral or agrees entirely with their own political biases, then that’s okay. No one is forcing anyone to watch a television show that they don’t like. And if they don’t like something, it’s easier than ever to change the channel. They can pick a new show on Netflix or Amazon Prime or CBS All Access and watch that instead, or go back to a previous Star Trek series that they do enjoy. Modern Star Trek is not mandatory viewing, and from my own point of view I can tell you I’m pretty brutal when it comes to switching off a show that I find boring or that I’m not enjoying for whatever reason.

In 2020 we live in a world where there is an insane amount of entertainment available to watch – and much of it can be found online for free with a basic knowledge of computing. So I don’t really understand why people would want to spend a lot of time watching a show that they don’t enjoy, then jump online to share their dislike with others – not when there are so many other things to watch. A few people who run websites, groups, or YouTube channels, make money by doing this. And I guess that’s fair enough – if people will pay for it, and you can make money at it, that’s okay. But for everyone else, I don’t really see what they gain from it – aside from the feeling of inclusion being part of a “tribe”, or perhaps a feeling of superiority to think they know better than the show’s creators?

Some people have been unhappy with *Star Trek: Picard*.

To get back on topic, and draw this essay to a conclusion, there are differences between Star Trek today and Star Trek in the era of The Original Series and The Next Generation. For some fans, the difference is too stark and they don’t want to watch whatever they consider to be “bad”. I’m okay with that – we can all have our own opinions about the franchise. I just don’t like the toxicity and gatekeeping that has plagued some – thankfully small – groups within the fandom.

Speaking for myself, I’ve enjoyed Star Trek’s return to television. Star Trek: Picard has been the better of the two offerings so far, but I’m genuinely excited at the prospect of a Capt. Pike series and at Lower Decks’ different take on the franchise. It’s a great time to be a fan right now, simply because there’s so much Star Trek – and sci fi/fantasy content in general – in production. We won’t always be so lucky to have this, and even though I wasn’t a big Enterprise fan during its original run, I was still sad when it went off the air and there was just a big void of nothing. That isn’t a scenario I’m keen to see repeated, and while I admit there have been hits and misses in modern Star Trek, I’d rather see it continue to be made than simply scrapped. By diversifying the kind of stories it tells – Picard and Discovery are very different in tone, for example, and Lower Decks will be something different again – hopefully Star Trek can build on what has been accomplished already and bring in more people. If some people decide not to stick with it because of the changes, that’s okay. But I firmly believe that the core or the heart of Star Trek is the same as it was in the 1960s – and that it has remained that way for its entire run.

Star Trek is a complicated franchise that means different things to different people. But there is room in the fandom for everyone – at least, everyone who wants to participate. If someone dislikes Picard or Discovery but loves The Next Generation, as fans and as people who know how to behave civilly, we can still have a great conversation about Star Trek without treading on each others’ toes. And it’s my hope that there’s more that unites us as fans of this great franchise than divides us – after all, Discovery and The Next Generation have much more in common than The Next Generation does with, say, the latest iteration of some celebrity reality show. At the end of the day, I’m happy to share a franchise and a fandom with some very passionate people – even if we can’t agree on a lot of things.

The Star Trek franchise – including all series and films mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Picard theories – week 5

Sun 23.02.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There will be spoilers ahead for the first five episodes of Star Trek: Picard, as well as for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

Stardust City Rag was a great episode – definitely my favourite of the two episodes directed by Star Trek legend Jonathan Frakes this season – though I was surprised not to see Riker and Troi appear, as we saw them in the trailers before the series premiered and I had assumed that they might appear in the episodes he directed. Regardless, I had a great time with Stardust City Rag, and several new theories have emerged as a result of what we saw on screen in that episode.

There’s also one debunked theory from last time, as well as – for the first time – a theory that was confirmed on screen! Let’s look at those two first, then take a look at the new and returning theories for what may happen as we head into the second half of the season.

Debunked theory: Seven of Nine is working for Section 31.

Last week, I speculated that Seven of Nine could be working for the covert branch of Starfleet Intelligence known as Section 31. This was because of the way in which she saved Picard and the crew of La Sirena when they were under attack – her small ship was incredibly powerful, and seemed to come from nowhere.

Whether she’d been following and tracking La Sirena, and how long for, she seemed to know that it was Picard on board, addressing him by name when she beamed aboard. It seemed too coincidental, so I wondered if Seven of Nine might have a motive for following Picard and his new crew.

There’s a new Star Trek series in the works based around Section 31, so I feel certain that the organisation will feature in some form in Star Trek: Picard. But as Seven of Nine works for the Fenris Rangers, it doesn’t seem like this is the way the show’s creators will bring in Section 31. I also got the impression that this is the last time we’ll see Seven of Nine in the show – at least in any major capacity. So we can consider this one debunked.

Confirmed theory: Dr Jurati is a double-agent of some kind.

Dr Jurati murdered Bruce Maddox in *Stardust City Rag.*

When Dr Jurati first joined the crew at the end of The End is the Beginning, Raffi seemed shocked at her inclusion – Picard had never mentioned her, and Raffi hadn’t been able to subject her to a security check, “not even the most basic!” That line set up this theory for me, and it didn’t take as long as I might’ve expected for it to pay off.

Dr Jurati had opportunities to hurt Picard if that had been her goal. In Stardust City Rag she got her best shot – when Picard and the rest of La Sirena’s crew were on Freecloud to spring Maddox from custody, she was left behind to operate the transporter. She could have simply chosen not to – trapping Picard and his small team on Freecloud up against a small army of Bjayzl’s security personnel. So her goal doesn’t seem to be killing Picard or getting him killed – if it was that simple she could have shot him with the Romulan weapon when she had it at the vineyard, clobbered him in his sleep on board La Sirena, or used her technical expertise when he visited her at Daystrom to turn a deactivated synth on him. No, her mission was to target Bruce Maddox.

She did so ruthlessly – altering the settings on his bio-bed in La Sirena’s sickbay, triggering multiple organ failure that took place almost instantaneously, and causing him what looked like a rather painful death. Doing so has completely emotionally crippled her; there was no one around for her to put on an act for, so her reaction to killing someone she had worked for, admired, cared for, and may have been romantically involved with was heart-wrenching for her.

The question that remains is why? What was so dangerous about Maddox that she couldn’t leave him alive, even signing on with the Zhat Vash-Commodore Oh conspiracy in order to kill him? What is the horrible secret that she knows? And why does she feel that her invaluable contribution to the creation of Soji and Dahj is something she needs to “atone for”?

So those are the debunked and confirmed theories as of the end of Stardust City Rag. Now let’s take a look at some new theories, as well as returning theories that this week’s episode advanced.

Number 1: The Romulans experimented with AI and synthetics in the past – with horrible consequences.

It was Laris who first explained the Romulans’ fear and hatred of synthetic life.

What caused Dr Jurati to murder Bruce Maddox? It has to be something truly awful – likely something she was told by Commodore Oh and the Zhat Vash. Laris told us in Maps and Legends that the Zhat Vash keep a secret “so profound and terrible, just learning it can break a person’s mind”. Overly dramatic, perhaps – as we’ve seen Romulans can be – but if the Romulans had, at some point in their history, experimented with synthetic life and AI, that could be the secret that the Zhat Vash are keeping.

In a sense, the Zhat Vash have already won. The attack on Mars led to a “galactic treaty” which banned synthetic life, shutting down all research into synthetics. Dr Jurati claimed to still be working in a “theoretical” capacity, but after what she did I think we have to consider that claim to be at least somewhat suspect.

Bruce Maddox said that his lab was destroyed by the Tal Shiar – we’ll get on to the complicated relationship between the two factions soon. For some reason, according to Laris at least, Romulans in general do not work with or research synthetic life – but why? One possible explanation lies in the past – they worked with synthetics and something went horribly wrong.

1 A: The Romulans’ hatred and fear of synthetic life is related to the Control AI from Star Trek: Discovery.

The AI named Control used nano-technology to possess Capt. Leland in *Star Trek: Discovery’*s second season.

I mentioned in my review of Stardust City Rag that I saw some glimpse or echo of this storyline when Dr Jurari was watching Maddox die. And from a production point of view, I have no doubt that finding some way to tie Discovery and Picard together is something that the overall creative team behind Star Trek at the moment would love to do. This could be one way of doing that.

In thematic terms we’re there already. Both Picard and Discovery’s second season have touched on fears of out-of-control murderous AIs, and I’m sure that was not just a coincidence. If I’ve noticed it – amateur that I am – others will have too. There is a lot to say about the concept of artificial intelligence, especially as we, in the modern world, seem to be barrelling toward creating AIs without fully understanding the consequences. I explored this theme in a bit more depth in my essay titled The Borg – space zombies, and looked in particular at how it can make the Borg a truly frightening villain by playing on our own present-day fears. Scientists like Stephen Hawking have spoken out in the past about the dangers of human and super-human AIs, and it’s a theme both Discovery and Picard have used to great effect.

But could there be more to it than a thematic similarity? It’s possible that the Control AI from Discovery is a direct cause of the Romulans’ fears. This could be because they worked on their own AI around the same time – competing against the Federation in a mid-23rd Century AI arms race. Control went rogue, so perhaps the Romulan AI did too. Or it could be that Control actually attacked and “assimilated” Romulans, as we saw it do to Capt. Leland. There was a span of time before its defeat at the hands of the USS Discovery and the USS Enterprise where Control was in command of an armada of Section 31 ships, and could have crossed over into Romulan space – we just didn’t see any of that on screen.

1 B: The Romulans’ AI experiments directly led to the creation of the Borg.

Picard was once assimilated by the Borg – but did the Romulans accidentally create them?

The question of how and why the Romulans were able to capture the Artifact while keeping it intact is interesting – do they know more about the Borg than they let on? If they do, could it be because they are responsible for the Borg’s creation?

What kind of secret could, even metaphorically, “break a person’s mind”? I can’t think of many, but one that could might be the knowledge that your ancestors created the galaxy’s deadliest threat. I’ve written before that the Control AI storyline mentioned above seemed like it was designed to be a Borg origin story – but for some reason that aspect of it was cut out, leaving behind all of the pieces of the puzzle. There is a production-side reason that might account for it – while Discovery Season 2 was already in production, the creators of Picard came up with their own Borg origin story. Well, you can’t have two origins for the Borg, so a choice had to be made. And higher-ups at ViacomCBS and Secret Hideout picked the Zhat Vash and Picard rather than Control and Discovery. It’s a long-shot, perhaps even verging into conspiracy theory territory, but it makes sense.

The in-universe timeline for how this could work would fit, too. The Romulans left Vulcan around the 3rd or 4th Century AD – so they were capable of interstellar flight by that time. The Borg were known to be in control of “a handful” of systems in the Delta Quadrant around a millennium later according to the Voyager episode Dragon’s Teeth. So there is time for the Romulans to have messed up their AI research, accidentally created the Borg, and for the Borg to have left or been cast out, establishing themselves on the far side of the galaxy.

It could also explain something else – why the Romulans are dissecting all the Borg they can get their hands on and examining their components, despite seemingly being fearful of synthetic life.

1 C: There’s an inherent flaw in all synthetic life – or in the way organics treat synthetic life – that will always lead to rebellion.

Data went rogue during the events of *Star Trek: Insurrection.*

The Mass Effect trilogy of video games gave us a great example of this concept. The villain in that story was a race of synthetic beings called the Reapers. They would emerge in the galaxy every time a technological civilisation emerged to “harvest” them; preserving the DNA and essence of organic life in a synthetic form. Their reasoning for doing so was that eventually all organics will create synthetics – and those synthetics will always rise up and destroy them.

The question of why the synths attacked Mars is still very much open. It’s possible that it was the opening act in what was intended to be a synthetic rebellion – synths all over the Federation rising up and overthrowing their organic masters. We don’t know at this stage how many synths there were active in the Federation, but there may have been more than just those on Mars. Voyager touched on this theme in the two-part episode Flesh and Blood, which sees holograms rise up against their Hirogen hunters. And the premise of an AI rebellion is one that’s common across science fiction – often with no better explanation than “because that’s what AIs do”.

One thing that was really interesting when I re-watched The Measure of a Man from the second season of The Next Generation was how that episode tackled the idea of synthetic life being subjected to slavery. Guinan sat down with Picard and put that point to him, and it changed the whole way he approached the idea of Data having rights – if he didn’t, it would be the first step to creating a slave underclass within the Federation. Could the idea of a synth rebellion be akin to slaves rebelling against their masters? And crucially, is that what the synths were trying to do when they attacked Mars?

From the Romulans’ perspective, is a synth rebellion something that happened to them in their past? And could that explain the Zhat Vash’s militancy when dealing with synthetic life? I’ve noted before that they seem to fear synthetics as much as hate them, treating them almost with disgust at times. I wonder if that fear is borne from a rebellion in Romulus’ past, and if the series is going to end up saying that all synthetic life will ultimately rebel – if we try to treat them like slaves.

Number 2: The galactic trade in Borg components has only one buyer – and it’s related somehow to synthetics.

Butchered Borg body parts on the planet Vergessen.

There seems to be a roaring trade in the galaxy in Borg components, going back at least thirteen years to the time of Icheb’s murder. But would so many factions and individuals be interested in deactivated Borg technology? You could make the case that Starfleet, as well as perhaps other large military powers, would want to know all they could about the Borg, in preparation for a future conflict. But the Borg parts from the Artifact are over a decade old, so they aren’t up-to-date and may not be as useful as they first appear.

Furthermore, the USS Voyager brought back a ton of information on the Borg when she returned from the Delta Quadrant, including maps of Borg space and future technology like armour designed specifically to defend against them, so there may be less imperative than we’d think to gain access to a Borg drone’s eyepiece or a handful of nanobots. And that’s not even accounting for the danger in holding onto such technology.

It’s possible then that there’s one primary buyer of all of these components – one faction that is collecting as many components and as much information as possible about the Borg.

The Zhat Vash could very well be that faction – looking for weapons to use in their anti-synthetic crusade, as well as anything that would give the Romulans in general an edge over the Federation and others.

It’s also possible that synthetic life – and thus the creation of Soji and Dahj – was only made possible because of this exploitation of Borg technology. Thus it could be someone like Bruce Maddox who was buying up these components – though if that is the case he may have been unaware of where they were coming from, especially when considering Icheb.

Number 3: Bruce Maddox inadvertently caused the attack on Mars.

Picard with Bruce Maddox in La Sirena’s sickbay.

With no mention of this before Maddox’s death, you could make the case that this theory looks less likely this week than it did last week. But there was definitely something in the way Maddox spoke to Picard toward the end of Stardust City Rag that at least hinted at this.

I think we can firmly rule out the idea that he was deliberately involved in the attack and the conspiracy – not least because Dr Jurati, who seems to be connected to Commodore Oh and thus to the Zhat Vash, murdered him. If they’d been working together, that wouldn’t make a lot of sense. And from Maddox’s perspective, as someone who has always advocated for more synthetic research and development, why he’d want to be involved in an attack that led to the ban also makes no sense.

However, it’s possible that something he did or didn’t do led to the attack – perhaps a flaw in the androids’ programming, or a backdoor that led to them being easily hacked. Maddox – like Raffi – seemed certain of a Starfleet conspiracy when he spoke with Picard, and he sent Soji and Dahj out into the galaxy specifically to find out more about what happened – could that be because he feels guilty? Not just for the lives lost on Mars, but for the prohibition of synthetic life and the forced shutdown of surviving synths?

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the synths were described as suffering a “fatal code error” – as Maddox was the senior scientist in the Federation, could this have been his error?

Number 4: The synths who attacked Mars were hacked.

Picard was on Vashti when he received word that the synths had attacked Mars.

While we didn’t really get any new evidence for the hack itself this time, the trade in Borg components got me thinking about another possible culprit – if indeed we are looking at a hack of sorts.

For the last few weeks, the two biggest culprits behind the attack on Mars – and thus, hacking the synths – have been Section 31 and the Zhat Vash. Section 31 will, I’m certain, at least be mentioned before the series ends given everything going on on the production side of Star Trek, and the Zhat Vash have been set up as the show’s main antagonists.

But in my first theory post I also suggested that the Borg could be responsible for the hack – even though this doesn’t fit with their normal modus operandi. I dropped that aspect of the theory as we learned more about the Zhat Vash and their potential conspiracy with Starfleet Intelligence, but as we have learnt a little more in Stardust City Rag regarding the galactic trade in Borg components, I wonder if there could be a Borg dimension to the attack on Mars.

In short, if Bruce Maddox had used Borg components or Borg technology harvested from the Artifact or from ex-Borg in his work on the synths, it could be possible that they somehow had a dormant link to the Borg Collective – a link which could have been inadvertently activated, leading to the events on Mars.

It’s also possible that the same Borg technology was the backdoor that led someone else – like the Zhat Vash – to be able to easily hack the Mars synths.

Other pieces of evidence we’ve collected for the idea of a hack in previous episodes are: the Commodore Oh conspiracy, Raffi’s comments, F8’s eyes in the flashback sequences, the work crew with F8 describing him as “compromised”, the fact that all of the synths went rogue simultaneously, and the very particular way the attack was carried out. It was a deliberate strike against a well-chosen target, and rather than continue the carnage after Mars and the fleet were destroyed, the synths simply killed themselves.

Number 5: Picard’s decision to tell everyone that their enemy is the Tal Shiar – and not the Zhat Vash – will come back to haunt him.

Maddox tells Bjayzl that the Tal Shiar destroyed his lab.

Elnor is the most likely to be affected by the revelation that his and Picard’s opponents are the Zhat Vash. As a Romulan, and as someone who has spent his life with the secretive Qowat Milat order, he is the most likely to be aware of the Zhat Vash – and may know how to deal with them. But since Elnor was basically ignored in Stardust City Rag, we didn’t get any advancement on this angle this week.

What we did see, however, is Bruce Maddox and Bjayzl both discussing the Tal Shiar. Neither of them seemed to know about the Zhat Vash – not even Maddox, who has worked in the synthetic research field for decades. If there were a super-secret Romulan faction going around disrupting synthetic research, it’s at least plausible someone in his position would have heard of them. The fact that he doesn’t seem to know who the Zhat Vash are – especially since we can infer that they’re the ones who destroyed his lab – is remarkable.

For the crew of La Sirena, learning that Maddox is to be sold to the Tal Shiar fits with what Picard had told them – but it isn’t the full story. And I’m certain that the Zhat Vash will come back into play soon. Picard’s decision to frame the mission as one where he and the crew are opposing the Tal Shiar, without going into more detail about at least the possibility that the Zhat Vash exist, may come back to bite them.

Number 6: Rizzo and Narek have no reason to keep Soji alive any more.

Soji and Narek share a drink on board the Artifact.

Bruce Maddox’s lab was destroyed by the Tal Shiar. This happened around two weeks before the events of Stardust City Rag. We didn’t get any new scenes with Narek, Soji, or Rizzo this week, but last time Rizzo said she’d only give Narek a week to learn from Soji where she originated – so the Zhat Vash could travel there and destroy the lab, as well as any other synths they might find there.

Depending on how one interprets the timeline of the series, the destruction of Maddox’s lab may have taken place around the time we saw Rizzo and Narek have that conversation. Even if it happened a week earlier, there’s no guarantee that word of the successful destruction of the lab would have reached Narek and Rizzo so quickly.

Basically, now that Maddox’s lab has been destroyed, what purpose does Soji serve to Rizzo and Narek? The sole purpose of interrogating her gently, without causing her to “activate”, was to learn where she came from. With the lab already destroyed, Soji could be in much greater danger from Rizzo – she may well serve no useful purpose any more, meaning the agents can move into the final phase of their mission and simply kill her.

Number 7: Starfleet is conspiring with the Zhat Vash.

Dr Jurati murdered Maddox – is she part of a wider conspiracy?

Commodore Oh hasn’t cropped up for several episodes now, but her influence was clearly felt this week, as Dr Jurati killed her former friend. I think we can be almost 100% certain that Dr Jurati isn’t a Romulan agent – she’s a deeply troubled and conflicted person, doing what she believed was right based on the horrible secret she knows. But we know that Commodore Oh and the Zhat Vash are working together – but whether Oh is a Romulan agent or a Vulcan co-conspirator still isn’t clear.

Raffi absolutely believes that there is a Starfleet conspiracy, though. And her unwillingness to let go of that damaged and perhaps even permanently ruined her relationship with her son. Picard told us that Raffi had a unique talent for finding connections – so the fact that she sees a connection between the Romulans and Starfleet is significant.

We also have to consider the purpose of Bruce Maddox’s murder. Was it simply to stop him building more synthetics? If so, it’s probably a vain effort. He’s already invented the technology and process, and that will be documented somewhere, meaning that even though Maddox himself is dead, someone else could continue his work just as he continued Dr Soong’s work. However, it was clearly a Zhat Vash-inspired move. If Maddox had been flouting the ban on creating new synths, the Federation would have arrested him, put him on trial, and imprisoned him. They wouldn’t have sent an undercover agent to assassinate him. Thus, Dr Jurati’s actions lend more credence to the notion that there’s a collaboration between some elements within Starfleet and the Zhat Vash. However, if Commodore Oh is in fact a Romulan agent, Dr Jurati could conceivably be the only Federation citizen involved; a victim of manipulation by the Romulans rather than one part of a wider conspiracy.

So those are all of the updated theories after Stardust City Rag. In order to keep everything in one place, I’ll now briefly recap the other active theories I have for Star Trek: Picard that weren’t touched on in this week’s outing.

Number 8: There is some kind of Section 31 involvement.

Ash Tyler worked for Section 31 in *Star Trek: Discovery*.

This stems from the fact that Section 31 has featured prominently in Star Trek: Discovery and is set to be the subject of a new Star Trek series. Involving Section 31 in Star Trek: Picard’s story could drum up support for the new series, as well as serve as a useful point of reference for casual fans as they switch between shows.

8 A: Chris Rios used to work for Section 31.

Raffi and Rios on the bridge of La Sirena.

Rios served as the first officer aboard the USS Ibn Majid. After his captain was killed (we’ll look at that in just a moment) Rios left Starfleet – but not before the Ibn Majid was “erased” from Starfleet’s records. This is definitely something a covert organisation like Section 31 would do in order to cover their tracks.

8 B: Section 31 hacked the synths and attacked Mars.

F8’s eyes as he seems to receive a transmission or process new information.

I mentioned this in my theory above, but just to recap: it looks at least plausible that the synthetics who attacked Mars were hacked and didn’t act of their own volition. Section 31 are militant in their pro-Federation outlook, and if they believed helping the Romulans was a bad idea – as they conceivably might – they could have conducted the attack as a way to stop Picard’s rescue armada.

Number 9: Chris Rios’ captain on the Ibn Majid is a character we’ve met before in another Star Trek series.

Capt. Edward Jellico made an appearance in *The Next Generation* – could he have been in command of the Ibn Majid?

I don’t really have any evidence for this aside from a gut feeling! But Rios described his former captain as “heroic”, and there are several male Starfleet officers who could fit the bill. We can rule out people like Riker, Worf, and La Forge – they were mentioned by Zhaban in Maps and Legends so we know they are still alive. I picked Harry Kim and Chakotay as possible candidates from the past, but there are other side characters like Edward Jellico from The Next Generation who are in the running. Given that Star Trek: Picard showed with Icheb and Maddox that the writers aren’t afraid of killing off legacy characters, this theory remains in the running.

Number 10: The Trill doctor from Maps and Legends is going to get assimilated.

With no scenes taking place on the Artifact this week, we didn’t see this theory move forward in any way. And I have to admit that, as we get further and further out from the one episode in which she appeared, the likelihood of this theory panning out decreases. But there was so much horror film-esque foreshadowing that I’d be really surprised if this didn’t happen!

Number 11: Soji and Dahj’s necklaces were a deliberate symbol from Bruce Maddox to signal or communicate with someone.

Soji always displays her necklace very prominently… but why?

Soji and Dahj’s necklaces are an interesting idea. The symbol they depict is meant to represent a particular method of creating synthetics. Yet giving them a necklace with that symbol given the ban on synthetic life is a very odd choice on Maddox’s part – anyone in the know would recognise it and it would draw unwanted attention. For all we know, it may be how Starfleet and the Zhat Vash first became aware of Soji and Dahj. So why did he do it? My theory is that it was deliberate – an attempt to signal or communicate with someone, likely another researcher or creator of synths.

Number 12: Picard’s terminal illness is Iruomodic Syndrome.

Picard is dying – that was one of the biggest revelations from the second episode of the season. Dr Benayoun – who brought him the bad news – described the collection of diseases as “syndromes”, and Picard says he knew this was a possibility. Both of these are references to the finale of The Next Generation, All Good Things, in which Picard jumps to a future timeline in which he’s suffering from a condition called Irumodic Syndrome. I suspect we’ll get confirmation of this before the season is over.

Number 13: There are other Soji and Dahj lookalikes out there. The Romulans – or the Borg – have already encountered at least one.

Ramdha, before she was assimilated. How does she recognise Soji?

This stems from Ramdha claiming to recognise and know Soji in The End is the Beginning. She refers to Soji as Seb-Cheneb – a Romulan term for “the destroyer”, someone who is connected to a day called Ganmadan, which means “the annihilation”. Narek tells Rizzo that he too believes Soji to be Seb-Cheneb.

Ramdha’s character is concerned with history and folklore, so she may have encountered a Soji-type android when conducting her research. It’s also possible that she knows about Soji because she was assimilated by the Borg – and the Borg had previously encountered a Soji-type android and communicated that information to Ramdha while she was connected to the Collective.

Maddox himself only mentioned Soji and Dahj, and didn’t say he’d created any others, which may mean this one is less likely. But as we don’t know how or why Ramdha could have possibly known about Soji, nor why she and Narek believe her to be Seb-Cheneb, a figure from Romulan folklore, it remains a possibility. Could time travel be involved somehow?

Number 14: Narek is going to go rogue.

Narek works with the Zhat Vash – but could he turn on them to save Soji?

The story of a spy who falls for his target and turns on his allies to protect her isn’t new, it’s something we’ve seen before in the spy-fiction genre that has inspired the Narek-Rizzo-Soji storyline. But we’re getting hints that something like this may pan out, as Narek confessed his love for Soji and Rizzo scolded him for it.

Narek is quite taken with Soji, and with Rizzo clearly being aggressive toward him, I wonder if Soji might do something to save his life, winning his loyalty. Or whether he may simply fall for her and be inspired to turn on his allies to save her when she’s threatened.

So that’s it. Those are my current theories as we hit the halfway point! It was great to see a theory confirmed as Star Trek: Picard now begins the task of unravelling its expertly-established mysteries and story threads. I can’t wait to learn more and start crossing more theories of the list as we move into the second half of Season 1.

The first five episodes of Star Trek: Picard can be streamed now on CBS All Access in the United States, and on Amazon Prime Video in the United Kingdom and other countries and territories. The Star Trek franchise – including Star Trek: Picard – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Picard review – Season 1, Episode 5: Stardust City Rag

Sat 22.02.20Mon 01.05.23Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Stardust City Rag, as well as for the rest of Star Trek: Picard Season 1. There may also be spoilers for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

First of all, before anything else, I just want to say how much I love this episode’s title! Stardust City Rag is just such a fun episode name, quite possibly one of my all-time favourite episode names in all of Star Trek. It just has such a fun sound, which was reflected in parts of this episode’s tone. Jonathan Frakes (who played Commander William Riker in Star Trek: The Next Generation and had directed several episodes of Star Trek: Discovery) returned for his second and final stint as director this season, and I really enjoyed what he brought to the table. In fact I’d say this was definitely the better of his two episodes this season.

There was a dichotomy in Stardust City Rag between two very different tones that both played into the same story. There was the fun, somewhat campy tone present in some of the nightclub sequences, with Picard and his crew dressing up in over-the-top costumes, and then there was the deathly serious tone that followed Seven of Nine, Raffi, and finally at the end, Dr Jurati.

*Stardust City Rag* ended with a huge moment for Dr Jurati.

Stardust City Rag also gave us our first confirmed theory – if you look back at my theory posts, you’ll see that after Episode 3, The End is the Beginning, I called out Dr Jurati for her possible betrayal. And in this episode we got to see that theory bear fruit, though not quite in the manner I had expected. To have her exposed as a double-agent and betray Picard’s trust at only the halfway mark through the season was also a surprise – after what she did and the fact that La Sirena’s EMH witnessed it, she won’t be able to maintain her cover. What will happen to her next is an open question, and she notably did not feature in any of the clips shown in the trailer for next week’s episode.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves! The Dr Jurati revelation was only one of several huge story points that Stardust City Rag had to offer. And more so than any episode so far, I feel that this episode advanced the plot in a major way. From the scenes glimpsed in last week’s trailer, I wasn’t sure I would like Stardust City Rag, despite its fun name. The silly game of dress-up and the nightclub setting made it look like we were in for a kind of “Picard meets Ocean’s Eleven” jokey heist story, and honestly I was kind of uninspired by that concept.

“You son of a bitch, I’m in.”
From last week’s teaser trailer, I was worried that *Stardust City Rag* would turn into this episode of *Rick and Morty*!

While there was certainly that element to the episode, it was hardly all Stardust City Rag had going on; the “heist” portion of the story took up perhaps a third of the runtime. And that’s definitely a positive, in my opinion. I think if the whole episode had been dedicated to that, with Picard putting on an accent and the characters all dressed up, I think we could have ended up with a bit of a farce, and that’s really what I was concerned about heading in.

Stardust City Rag begins, as every episode aside from the premiere has, with a flashback sequence. This time, we’re on a planet called Vergessen – German or Dutch for “forgotten” – thirteen years before the events of the series. This places it around one year after the attack on Mars and Picard’s resignation, and three years before the supernova. The sweeping aerial shot of Vergessen shows what looks to be a largely uninhabited planet, with The Seven Domes occupying what appears to be a river delta or area of marshland. The sequence looks to be conveying that Vergessen is, as its name implies, forgotten about and hidden – somewhere out of the way, perfect for illegal activities.

And then we get what is probably the most graphic sequence to date in Star Trek: Picard – and arguably in the whole franchise. A young man in a torn Starfleet uniform is being hacked apart. Returning fans will recognise him as Icheb from Star Trek: Voyager – he was one of several young Borg who were taken on board by Capt. Janeway toward the end of Voyager’s stay in the Delta Quadrant. The implant by his eye – an inverted L-shape – was instantly recognisable, despite it having been removed. An unidentified woman pulls out Icheb’s eye, looking for his cortical implant. And the hacked-apart bodies of others, presumably drones, hang around the facility. After the brutal butchering, Seven of Nine arrives and kills the scientists, but it’s too late to save Icheb, and she is forced to put him out of his misery by shooting him – leaving her clearly devastated.

There was always a sense, I felt, that with television storytelling increasingly following a route trailblazed by series like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead, Star Trek: Picard was going to kill off characters sooner or later. The brutality with which Icheb was treated, and the fact that we really didn’t get to spend any time with him before seeing his demise, was genuinely shocking and unexpected, though.

The way the sequence was shot also did a good job of disguising that Icheb had in fact been recast for his role in Star Trek: Picard. I felt he was instantly recognisable – credit to the makeup and prosthetics teams, no doubt – and it was only after the credits rolled that I realised it was a different actor.

This sequence set up was was, at least in part, an episode about Seven of Nine. My relationship with Seven’s character has been somewhat complicated. In her initial appearances on Star Trek: Voyager, she absolutely did what the producers of that show had wanted, and shook up what was in danger of becoming a stale formula. Her background as an ex-Borg gave a different dimension to her character than any we’d seen until that point, and she played a very different role in the show than Kes had.

Seven of Nine during her *Voyager* days.

I’d argue that Kes, sadly, never really got her character fully explored and developed, especially as toward the end of her tenure as a series regular she’d started to develop her mental abilities. And I think it would have been very interesting to see how Voyager would have handled her as she rapidly aged – Ocampans had a very short lifetime of only around nine years. But we’re getting off topic. I felt that too many of Seven of Nine’s episodes – of which there were more than a fair number in the second half of Voyager – followed almost exactly the same formula. She’d learn some lesson or other about “what it means to be human”, overcoming her Borg-inspired nature to accomplish something for the crew, but then by the next episode she’d seem to forget it all and be back to her usual Borg self, only to learn another, very similar, lesson in humanity. It just felt like, having gone to all the trouble to swap out Kes for Seven of Nine, Voyager’s showrunners and writers didn’t really know what to do with her aside from that formula. And it got annoying and repetitive at times.

Fortunately, Seven of Nine has finally regained a lot more of her humanity, and been able to hold onto it. Even in the flashback at the beginning of the episode – which takes place around eight years after the end of Voyager – she’s much more expressive and emotional than I think we ever really saw her in that series. And it makes a lot of sense! She’s had a lot more time to work through her assimilation and de-assimiliation experiences, and build up her memories and personality than she had when we were familiar with her. For me, seeing Seven of Nine like this, finally embracing her humanity instead of constantly forgetting about it, was cathartic. It scratched an itch that I’d had since Voyager was on the air back in the late 1990s and early 2000s to really see some character development and to see her break out of her Borg past. It’s just a shame it had to come at the expense of Icheb! That’s not to criticise that story point – I think it makes a lot of sense for Seven of Nine’s story to see her lose Icheb, and honestly, I don’t think anyone really expected his character to be returning in a big way in Star Trek in future, so he fits the bill for someone to kill off. But as a fan, it’s always heartbreaking to see a known face killed off!

The action then jumps to the present day, or rather, two weeks before the present day. We’re on Freecloud, in a place called Stardust City, and the owner of a nightclub gets word that Bruce Maddox is here. She initially wants him killed, but changes her mind and meets with him. Maddox looks dishevelled with his messy hair and unkempt beard; a far cry from the Starfleet officer returning fans will remember. Again it’s worth noting that Maddox has been recast just like Icheb was, and for most people that wouldn’t even really notice, but having recently re-watched Maddox’s original appearance in The Measure of a Man in The Next Generation (you can see a write-up of that episode by clicking or tapping here) I did notice and while I wouldn’t say it took me out of it, it was a brief adjustment to get used to the new actor, because unlike Icheb in the flashback mentioned above, Maddox gets a lot of screen time.

It emerges that Maddox’s lab has been destroyed – raided by the Tal Shiar. He’s in debt to the nightclub owner, and she drugs him, hoping to sell him to the Tal Shiar to recoup the money she spend on him. It’s worth noting here that the Zhat Vash are never mentioned in this episode. I noted last time that I suspect Picard’s decision not to tell his crew – especially Elnor – about the Zhat Vash might become an issue. And given Maddox’s work in the realm of synthetics it seems at least possible he would have known about the faction. But no one from Maddox to Picard to the nightclub owner ever mentions the faction. While I understand they’re meant to be secretive, having a named antagonist and being consistent with that does help casual viewers in particular to follow everything that’s going on.

It’s at this point that I’d like to look in more detail at Maddox’s role in the story thus far from the production side, because I really think it’s been nothing less than a stroke of genius. Maddox fills two roles – he’s a signal to returning fans from The Next Generation era that this is one continuous story in the Star Trek galaxy, while at the same time being the kind of character that his presence in that one episode from 1989 is in no way something a new fan would need to know about. If we compare him to Dr Benayoun – the character from Maps and Legends who delivers to Picard the news of his illness – their roles are identical. Maddox, to the uninitiated new fan, is just a character from Picard’s past like Dr Benayoun, and seeing their interactions in the past isn’t necessary to know that. For returning fans, he’s someone we may remember from TNG and that ties the two shows together. Using a character like Bruce Maddox was completely unexpected, but it works so well. And I love it.

Bruce Maddox with Bjayzl in her club on Freecloud.

After the credits roll, La Sirena is in orbit of Freecloud. Picard is in his holo-study, looking at a video about the planet they’re visiting. Freecloud is presented as a neutral place, probably not under any jurisdiction other than its own. It’s the kind of place we’ve seen in Star Wars – a somewhat shady-feeling place where various transactions, legal and illegal, can take place without the intervention of the Federation or anyone else. The economy of the 24th Century has always been a little ambiguous, but Freecloud is a symbol of unchecked capitalism – seemingly anything can be bought and sold here, much like the Dark Web of today.

Seven of Nine joins Picard in his study, and it turns out she works for the Fenris Rangers – they were mentioned last time, and seem to be a kind of vigilante group, trying to maintain order in some of these fringe systems. It was pure coincidence that Seven of Nine met Picard when she did – or at least so it would seem. A very, very lucky coincidence, if that really is the case! They share a drink, and this is where we get Seven’s lines from the trailer about Picard “saving the galaxy”. She is definitely much more human than returning fans will remember from Voyager, and as I said already, I really appreciated that.

While Picard and Seven chat, we get some exposition from Raffi and Rios – no doubt meant to fill in new fans and those who don’t remember much about Picard or Seven because of how long it’s been! It was interesting to note that they both mention Picard’s status as a former Borg, especially given where they will have to head if they want to meet Soji in future episodes. Seven of Nine agrees to be dropped off on Freecloud, but asks Picard what he plans to do and he tells her, in a roundabout way, that he’s trying to help Soji. Intrigued, she stays to listen.

Raffi and Rios discuss Picard and Seven’s history with the Borg.

At first, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the change in colour and presentation of Seven of Nine’s Borg implants, most notably her eyepiece. I felt that it looked “wrong”, and not like it had done in Voyager. But the more of her I saw in this episode, the more I think it’s designed to look like the metal has been worn down over the years. Whereas it had been shinier in the past, by now she’s been out of the collective for a long time and the metal has seen a lot of wear and tear, giving it a duller, less polished appearance.

Dr Jurati is in her cabin, watching a holo of herself and Maddox from presumably before the ban on synthetics. They share a kiss at the end, and Jurati is emotional at looking back on this part of her life, which I think sets up nicely what is to come later. It was a very brief scene, but one which was important to their stories. We did get to see a little of Maddox’s post-TNG personality, too. I’d say that the scene showed him as a kind of stereotypical scientist, with an idiosyncrasy around the replicator. Maddox in The Measure of a Man had seemed, I would argue, much more confident than the version of the character we see here, though granted it is twenty-plus years later in this holo-recording. But for all intents and purposes, comparing Maddox’s role in The Next Generation to Star Trek: Picard is kind of irrelevant. As mentioned above, he could be subbed out for a new character and the story would be identical, so his characterisation here doesn’t matter – whether he’s the same as the Maddox we remember or not, his role is less that of a character and more a plot device.

Dr Maddox and Dr Jurati in happier times.

In the next scene, on the bridge of La Sirena, we get another example of the lighter, comic tone that was present in parts of the episode, as each crew member (except for Elnor, for some reason) gets their own holo-pop-up advertisement as they dock at Freecloud. This was a little bit of fun, and it seemed to give us the name of La Sirena’s ship class – apparently she’s a Kaplan F17 Speed Freighter. And although he was almost entirely in the background, it was one of Elnor’s three opportunities to have a line in Stardust City Rag. If I could criticise the episode in one way, it would be that, after all the fuss and trouble Picard and the crew went to last week to recruit Elnor, this week he was absolutely wasted and contributed nothing to the story or to the various storylines that played out.

After closing their little pop-up ads, the crew learn that Maddox is a prisoner, and that the nightclub owner is looking for someone to represent them in a deal with the Tal Shiar. Seven of Nine knows about the nightclub owner – her name is Bjayzl – and explains that, among other things, she “butchers ex-Borg for parts”. As we’ve seen with Soji’s work on the Artifact, there is apparently a roaring galactic trade in Borg components. Precisely why that is – and who the buyers might be – is unclear. I wonder if the parts may all be going to the same buyer, but we’ll save the theory-crafting for my theory post (keep an eye out for that in the next few days!)

Raffi discovers Maddox is being held by Bjayzl – and is about to be sold to the Tal Shiar/Zhat Vash.

Seven of Nine offers to be bait in a trap to rescue Maddox – offering herself up for “sale” to Bjayzl to get the crew close enough to spring him out. Because of what had happened with Icheb earlier, this was clearly a ploy on her part to get close to Bjayzl.

We’re then treated to a very pretty shot of La Sirena arriving at Stardust City, and I’m in love with the CGI work here. There was a real sense of a living, breathing, fast-paced gambling city – a futuristic Las Vegas. Yet at the same time, I was getting the impression that Stardust City was playing on Star Wars’s Coruscant and even Mass Effect’s Citadel in terms of presentation – there was a somewhat claustrophobic feel to its mass of neon-signed buildings and streets. I thought I saw another Ferengi Alliance emblem on first viewing, but when I went back and re-watched it I couldn’t spot it. There were a couple of nice references, though: Mot’s Hair Emporium refers to Mot, the Enterprise-D’s Bolian barber, whose name Picard once borrowed when dealing with mercenaries! And of course, Quark’s Bar can only refer to the Ferengi we all remember from Deep Space Nine! There was also a dancing girl seen as La Sirena flew in, and I have a feeling this is lifted from a previous iteration of Star Trek… I’m just not sure which one.

This next sequence cuts between the crew arriving in Stardust City and preparing for their roles back on La Sirena. This is the dressing-up part of the story that featured prominently in last week’s teaser trailer. Rios is taking point, offering Seven of Nine for sale, and he has to really convince Bjayzl’s “reptiloid”, who can apparently smell lying because of his enhanced senses. Picard and Rios get the best costumes, dressing very flamboyantly as apparently is custom on Freecloud. More so than on the bridge, Elnor was completely wasted here, and may as well not have been included. In fact, this episode could have taken place before the mission to Vashti and Elnor’s presence or lack of presence would have not mattered in the slightest. There was scope, too, for him to do something – even just as comic relief. His lack of understanding of the dressing up side of the mission was at least somewhat amusing, if a little “Vulcan” in the way it came across, but it was really just wasted and I would have liked to have seen more of Elnor both here in the preparation phase as well as down in the nightclub.

Dr Jurati is ordered to operate the transporter while the others rescue Maddox – and it felt like this was setting her up to either deliberately trap them away from the ship or mess up somehow and cause a problem. In that sense, I think it was a nice little misdirect given that it got a certain amount of attention during this sequence. The crew are given a transport enhancer – a much smaller device than the tripods from the TNG-era – and we also learn from Seven of Nine that, after the supernova, the Neutral Zone “collapsed” – the border between the Federation and Romulan space is now much less stable, hence the issues on places like Vashti. She and the Fenris Rangers are self-appointed police officers trying to keep order, but Picard says she is playing at being both “judge and jury”, and calls her a “vigilante”.

Getting dressed up in Picard’s study in preparation to spring Maddox out of custody.

There was definitely a “heist movie” feel to this sequence. But it wasn’t as bad as I had feared it might be, and was actually amusing in parts and tense in others. Each of them (except Elnor, really) is given a role to play. Rios is the point man, Picard is the con man, Seven is the bait, Elnor is… muscle? I guess. And Dr Jurati, operating the transporter, is the getaway driver! Raffi won’t be participating, as Freecloud was her destination and she plans to attend to her own business while the heist occurs.

Again, the sequence is cut in a jumpy way, cutting back-and-forth between before and during the heist. After Rios has convinced the reptiloid to meet Picard and Seven, and Picard has “given him his payment”, we get a scene between Picard and Raffi, as he sends her off to do whatever she came to Freecloud for. I never really got the sense that this would be the last Picard, or us as the audience, would see of her. That’s not to criticise what was a well-constructed scene, it just didn’t feel like a permanent goodbye to a character we only met three episodes ago.

Saying “goodbye” on the transporter pad.

We follow Raffi as she arrives at a family planning clinic on Freecloud, and tracks down a young man. He was too young to really be a love interest for her (no offence to Michelle Hurd) and it turns out that he’s her son. Due to a combination of overworking during the supernova crisis and her drug issues, she had become estranged from him some time ago. Star Trek has always been good at using its science fiction setting to highlight real world issues, and we got a great example of that here. As America, and much of the western world, faces an opioid epidemic, there will be many families who have seen someone disappear into a void of drug addiction, and Raffi’s story mirrors that. Family breakup due to drug abuse is not something that’s often front and centre on our screens, yet it is a real problem for a lot of people in a lot of communities.

The heartbreaking scene shows her son’s inability to forgive her – her attempt at getting clean and reconciling coming far too late, and her ramblings about the “conspiracy” to attack Mars seeming to indicate to him that she hadn’t really gotten over her problems anyway. Raffi is about to become a grandmother – her son and his Vulcan partner are having a baby, hence the family planning clinic. I doubt this will come back into play as a story beat, but it may be important for Raffi’s character going forward, and I suppose it could come back around next season in a bigger way. And we got a typical “Vulcan” haircut here for the first time in the series, I think. The Romulans used to style their hair similarly to Pel in this scene, but modern Romulans, like Narek, have abandoned that style. It was nice to see it back on a side character, as again this shows us a little of the Star Trek of old!

Standing apart – Raffi meets her son and his partner on Freecloud.

Raffi’s son – Gabriel – insists that she’s “just passing through”, and the couple depart, leaving Raffi clearly devastated. Back at the nightclub, Picard sees Maddox for the first time, and he is still alive, though clearly in somewhat of a bad state. The deal seems to be going as planned when Seven of Nine launches into a personal conversation with Bjayzl – alerting Picard and Rios to the fact that things may be about to go off the rails. Rios calls Dr Jurati on the ship, but her mental state has activated the EMH, who asks her about her “psychiatric emergency”. She confirms she still has a transporter lock, but that they haven’t activated the pattern enhancer. At this point, Dr Jurati’s state of mind could simply have been a result of nervousness about the important role she was assigned, but it definitely felt that there was something more – she was too anxious.

Seven of Nine disrupts the plan by grabbing Bjayzl, who orders her security people to stand down. Elnor, Rios, and Picard secure Maddox, and Seven is convinced to stand down and allow herself to be transported back to La Sirena with Maddox and the others – after being warned that if she harmed Bjayzl, it would put a target on Rios, Elnor, and Picard as well as on her. As I mentioned, this is the moment where I thought Dr Jurati could either turn on the crew or make a mistake, but the transport went smoothly and they were beamed back on board.

Seven disrupts the plot to rescue Maddox – but it all works out in the end!

Seven told Picard about what happened to Icheb, and that Bjayzl only knew about him because they had once been on friendly terms – and Picard, true to the way we remember him, gently tries to dissuade her from seeking revenge. I liked this moment; the interaction between two familiar characters, yet two characters who hadn’t before been on screen together, was a great way that Star Trek: Picard tied together two of the TNG-era series. The dialogue, and the acting performances by Jeri Ryan and Sir Patrick Stewart were absolutely on point, and sold this complicated tale of hate and revenge perfectly. Picard has always been diplomatic, and we see here that, despite being away from the action for a long time, he’s lost none of his edge in that regard.

Bjayzl, for her part, was actually fairly one-dimensional as far as villains go. If we knew more about her motivations for wanting Borg parts, or at least who her buyer was, maybe she’d come across a bit better. As it stands, because we don’t understand exactly how or why this trade in Borg parts operates, she reminded me of the villain from the film Solo: A Star Wars Story whose name I had to look up (it’s Dryden Vos). Despite being portrayed very well by the actress, Bjayzl just fell a little flat for me, and I would have liked to have seen more of her past, her interactions with Seven of Nine, and as I said, why she became so interested in ex-Borg.

This ties into something that has come across a couple of times in Star Trek: Picard so far. A slightly longer series – perhaps twelve or fourteen episodes, like Star Trek: Discovery – would have allowed for more screen time for some of these characters, and thus a little more explanation and depth. When Game of Thrones cut its final two seasons down in length it started having similar issues, and I think the same thing has happened in a way here. I know we’re only halfway through, but there have been several points, like the Bjayzl storyline, that would have been nice to see a little more of.

After the crew are beamed away by Dr Jurati, there’s a reunion between her and Maddox on the transporter pad. Seven of Nine departs to rejoin the Fenris Rangers, but takes two of La Sirena’s phasers on her way out. Picard activates the transporter, but she returns to Bjayzl’s club – finally completing her revenge. Again, Bjayzl felt quite one-dimensional, and the scene played out like many we’ve seen before, where a villain reacts with fear when cornered. However, from a storytelling point of view she was really just a foil for Seven, and a way to show to us as the audience how much Seven has grown since Voyager. In that sense, it was a success, and as I mentioned earlier, finally getting to see Seven of Nine really embracing her human side, after all the lessons she received from Capt. Janeway and the Doctor (and others) was great. I wouldn’t have expected that she’d show up in Star Trek: Picard when the series was announced, but I’m glad that she did. Though the episode leaves things ambiguous as to whether or not Seven made it out of the club after Bjayzl was killed, I think we can be confident that she did. Hopefully this won’t be her final Star Trek appearance.

“Picard’s Eleven” are beamed aboard by Dr Jurati after a successful heist.

Maddox is being treated in La Sirena’s sickbay – the first time we’ve gotten to see this set. It was nicely designed space, somewhat of a cross between sickbays we’ve seen in the TNG and Discovery eras, with a lot of holo-screens and less reliance on physical panels. Maddox is in a bad way, but it seems like he’ll recover, and he talks to Picard about Dahj. We get final confirmation here that Maddox is responsible for their creation, and that he sent them on a mission to discover what really led to the ban on synthetics. Dahj went to Earth to poke around the Daystrom Institute, and Soji is on the Artifact – so there must be something linking those two locations. Could the Borg be somehow tied to what happened with the synths on Mars? Maddox mourns Dahj as if she were his own daughter – which, in a sense, she was. And crucially, he tells Picard where to find Soji, setting the stage for the second half of the season.

Picard exits the sickbay, leaving Maddox alone with Dr Jurati. As they reminisce, it’s clear something is wrong. The way the music slowly changes was perfect here, building up Dr Jurati’s sinister intentions. Picard speaks to Rios about travelling to the Artifact, and also we get confirmation that Raffi is back on board – though she’s not coming out of her cabin after what happened with her son. Maddox tells Dr Jurati that her work with him was essential to Soji and Dahj’s creation, describing them as the product of his work, Dr Soong’s, and hers.

Jurati says that it’s “one more thing to atone for”, as she does something to the bio-bed, setting in motion Maddox’s death. La Sirena’s EMH tries to intervene but Jurati deactivates it, and tells Maddox that she knows too much about – presumably – the consequences of creating synthetic life. It seems as though she’s killing him because of what he represents: someone who can create these synths, and there’s something too dangerous about that. In that sense, she is fully subscribed to the Zhat Vash/Commodore Oh ideology about how synthetic life is inherently bad. And I got a hint – just a glimpse, really – that maybe this is related to what we saw in Star Trek: Discovery’s second season last year. That story dealt with a rogue AI that planned to wipe out all organic life in the galaxy – could this be what the Zhat Vash conspiracy is trying to prevent? Some existential threat caused by synthetics? It’s hard to justify Dr Jurati’s actions otherwise.

Maddox dies, and Dr Jurati is genuinely devastated by what she’s done. If this was her mission – to find and kill Maddox – then she’s succeeded, but her cover is surely blown now, as La Sirena’s EMH witnessed what she did. What will happen to her after this is now up in the air, but she clearly cannot be relied on or trusted by the rest of the crew again. Alison Pill’s performance as a conflicted person, yet ultimately able to perform her task despite her personal emotional attachment to Maddox, was pitch-perfect. She’s been phenomenal in the role of Dr Jurati this season so far, and I hope we get to see more of her – perhaps even giving Jurati a chance at redemption.

The way this moment was staged and shot was perfect, showing Dr Jurati alone with Maddox in the middle of the frame.

So that was Stardust City Rag, probably my second-favourite episode of the season behind Remembrance. There was so much going on, and everyone except Elnor was involved in a big way. We got a resolution to Raffi’s side-quest, and I think now she will be fully on board with what happens next, now that she no longer has that distraction. Devastating as it was for her to be unable to reconcile with her son, I think some of that energy that she has for getting to the truth of what happened on Mars can now be fully unleashed.

Dr Jurati is much more in question – will she be put in the brig, turned over to some authority, or dealt with somehow by Picard and Rios? Murder is a serious crime, and though there probably is no death penalty, it would be enough to see her imprisoned in the Federation, and she and Maddox were Federation citizens. I really want to know why she did it – what is this huge secret that she knows about synthetics? Is she allied with Commodore Oh? Surely she must be… but how? And why?

After all the work to find him, Maddox dies – murdered by Dr Jurati.

Picard now has a destination to find Soji – but getting on board the Artifact surely won’t be an easy task. Rios is up for it though, and at the end of the episode in his conversation with Picard, there was a hint at least that he’s starting to believe in the cause too.

The storyline has moved on in a huge way. With Maddox out of the picture, and Dr Jurati having committed a heinous crime, it’s now up to Picard, Raffi, Elnor, and Rios to save Soji. Only Picard is truly invested in this goal, but the others may be starting to come around.

It was a shame that Elnor was underused in Stardust City Rag. I would have liked to have seen him do something – anything, really – after the time and effort made to recruit him last week. But with limited runtime there’s only room for so many characters, and the main thrust of this episode was about Seven of Nine.

What could have been an uninteresting episode from my point of view has turned into one of the best so far, and I really enjoyed the shifting tones and multiple storylines presented in Stardust City Rag. It was a rollercoaster ride, and when the credits finally rolled, all I could think of is that I wanted more! It’s going to be an arduous wait for next week’s episode – The Impossible Box.

Stardust City Rag, and the rest of Season 1 of Star Trek: Picard can be streamed now on CBS All Access in the United States, and on Amazon Prime Video in the UK and in other countries and territories. Star Trek: Picard – and the rest of the Star Trek franchise – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

It’s been that kind of week!

Thu 20.02.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

I usually try to write at least two or three posts a week, and with Star Trek: Picard being so prominent on the website at the moment, I’ve been trying to manage at least one non-Picard article in between my reviews and theory posts. The latter has become an unexpected weekly series! But this week I’ve had some technical issues with my computer, and honestly it’s been so frustrating!

I’m not a tech expert. I dabble in the tech world, sure, but when it comes to the details of programming and such I’m well out of my depth, and I rely on Google searches to fix problems when they arise. The most frustrating thing is when something absolutely should work… but it doesn’t. This is the situation I’ve been in this week.

I use a television as my main PC monitor. I know that’s a little unusual, but I like to have things displayed on the biggest screen in the house – and since my PC is also my DVD/Blu-ray player, gaming device, and all-round entertainment centre, even a “large” PC monitor is too small for my preferences. Ever since I got this TV, though, I’ve experienced a certain amount of screen tearing and flickering. I tried changing my graphics card (currently an AMD Radeon 560; we’ll come to that in a moment) but to no avail. I eventually realised that the television will only display 50Hz and the graphics cards I’ve used were – for some inexplicable reason – set to 59Hz by default. So I scaled it down to 50Hz and some of the screen tearing and flickering, but not all, went away.

That was a few months ago and it had been ticking over more or less okay since, running in 4K at 3840×2160 pixels. But this week the flickering got worse, and eventually the graphics card I’d had – a GTX 1060 that was a couple of years old – crapped out on me and stopped displaying any picture at all. I couldn’t get it to work so I swapped in the Radeon 560 I mentioned above. The Radeon 560 is a slightly weaker card, and draws a little less power, but nevertheless should be able to output the same 4K picture. The key word there being “should”.

I can accept that components eventually break down, and while I was disappointed in my 1060’s demise, it’s not the end of the world. But the replacement card just isn’t working right, and despite hours of work and searching I just can’t find any solution.

Firstly, around half the time, the card just fails to display any picture at all. I get a blank screen when I turn on the display; the only solution being to forcibly restart my computer. Secondly, it stutters when switching to and from full-screen mode for videos. And thirdly, when it tries to display a 4K picture, it does so in a “letterbox” mode, with black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Nothing has fixed these issues. Uninstalling the card, uninstalling the drivers, reinstalling everything, rolling back the drivers to an older version, using AMD’s Radeon software, not using the software, and of course searching online for answers. The Radeon 560, for some reason, will not output a full screen 4K picture, and has those other issues. So I’m stuck with a downgrade to 1080p, which looks fuzzy on my large display – when it works at all. So frustrating!

Because I’m not an expert, when something doesn’t “just work”, and playing around with its settings and looking online doesn’t fix it, it really irritates me. As a disabled person, I rely quite heavily on my computer for contact with the outside world and obviously I need it to work right! It’s also very difficult to open it up and fiddle with components inside, despite me keeping the computer in an accessible place. And as someone on a fixed income, I don’t have money to waste on barely-functional components.

It is partly my fault for choosing a screen that was only 50Hz. I genuinely didn’t realise how much of a problem the television’s refresh rate would be for modern graphics cards. I hope to upgrade the screen later in the year – something similar in size, but I’ll make sure it’s a 60Hz panel instead of 50Hz. Having now essentially busted two different graphics cards with different chips from different manufacturers, the only consistent thing that could be causing these graphics problems is the television itself. I’m hoping a different model will lead to the situation improving.

This isn’t the only frustrating “shouldn’t-be-a-problem” that I’ve had in the last few months, either. I’ve had issues with my phone syncing to my PC and downloading photos and videos, problems with my mail app and client not sending push notifications, bugs in Windows 10 which, upon investigation, were reported to Microsoft up to three years ago and still haven’t been fixed, and others besides. When something has been working, and no settings have been changed, and then for some unknown reason it just ceases to work, I just have no idea why or what to do. The graphics thing is just the latest example – why on earth is it behaving that way? Why do I have to reboot my machine to get it to display a picture? Why does it stutter when going to and from full screen mode? Why can it only display 1080p properly?

Honestly, messing around with this has been so annoying and taken up so much time the last few days that I haven’t felt like writing much. I hope to get something sorted out at the beginning of March as a stop-gap to get me through to later in the year when I can perform some much-needed PC and television upgrades! For now I’ll soldier on, and try not to lose my temper and break the damn thing! I know, I know. First world problems. “My moderately expensive graphics card won’t display an ultra-HD 4K picture on my big screen TV” is not the worst thing in the world. And I’m grateful for what I have.

The internet has been absolutely huge in just my lifetime – I remember when I first got an email account having to ask people if they even had a connection to the web, and having to say to friends I could only be online at certain times because my dial-up connection was tying up the phone line! And now look at where we are, practically everyone has an internet-enabled computer-phone constantly connected via wireless or mobile data about their person at all times. My PC, even though fibre-optic broadband isn’t available, is still connected at speeds I couldn’t have dreamed of back then. And 1080p would have seemed amazing then too, even if it feels like a downgrade this week.

And again as someone with health issues, being able to stay connected and keep up to date with what’s going on in the wider world, as well as shop and organise aspects of my life online, are really important things. As disappointed and frustrated as I’ve been, I try to remember that! It could be worse, after all. And I’m lucky to have the knowledge of computers that I do, so that I can perform some tasks myself. I shudder to think how much it would have cost to have a computer repair person visit, or how inconvenient it would be to send the machine away for repairs. As things stand, it works in a roundabout way, and I know how to get around the bugs that are present. Hopefully in the next few days I’ll get my stop-gap solution up and running so that things can get back to normal. I just wanted to share this little “life update”, since it explains why there’s been more of a gap than usual between articles.

Until next time!

This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Picard theories – week 4

Mon 17.02.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There will be spoilers ahead for the first four episodes of Star Trek: Picard, as well as for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise, including Star Trek: Discovery Season 2.

Jonathan Frakes delivered a great episode with this week’s Absolute Candor, and as I mentioned in my review of the episode, it was the first time I felt that we were starting to turn the page from setting up mysteries and questions to exploring and beginning to unravel them. Picard has his whole crew assembled now, and we’ve finally met every main character. Absolute Candor also gave me several new theories for where the story could go next – as well as debunking two that I’d written about in previous weeks.

I’m absolutely okay when a theory turns out to not be true! Some people get overly attached to fan theories, but at the end of the day it’s the showrunners, writers, and creators who determine where a story will go. Theory-crafting is a bit of fun, allowing us to spend more time in a fictional world that we enjoy while we wait for the real story to unfold in the next instalment.

Let’s start by taking a look at the two debunked theories after Absolute Candor.

Debunked theory #1: Picard put together a new fleet after the attack on Mars to help the Romulans.

Laris and Zhaban’s relationship with Picard made me think he’d done more to help the Romulans.

Based on the steadfast loyalty Picard has from Laris and Zhaban – the two Romulan assistants he has at the vineyard – I extrapolated that he’d done something between the rogue synths’ attack and the supernova to help the Romulans, even if it was wholly without Starfleet’s support.

There’s a gap of around four years between the destruction of the majority of his fleet on Mars and the supernova, and I speculated that Picard could have taken action in that time to put together a fleet and save as many lives as possible – winning the loyalty of Laris and Zhaban along the way. It would have also tied into the line from the first trailer about Picard having commanded “the greatest rescue armada in history”. While he did technically command the very large armada, the majority of it was destroyed before it was ever used, and far from saving 900 million Romulan lives – the goal stated in Remembrance – we only know of 250,000 Romulans who Picard and Raffi evacuated to Vashti. There may have been others taken to other destinations, but it’s a far cry short of what was intended.

I theorised that Picard could have used his contacts with factions like the Klingon Empire, Tamarians, Bajorans, or others we know he had worked with in The Next Generation – calling in all of his favours to put together a new armada.

In Absolute Candor, it’s revealed that after Picard’s resignation, he simply gave up on the rescue effort. “Because you could not save everyone, you chose to save no one” – those were the words of the Qowat Milat nun, and Picard confirms it. He never returned to Vashti after the synths’ attack, and it seems most Romulans – at least those on Vashti – regard him with contempt, both as the face of Starfleet who betrayed them and on a personal level for failing to uphold his promises.

Debunked theory #2: Soji and Dahj are human augments and not androids.

This one was always a real long-shot, so I’m not at all surprised to see it collapse! I had theorised that Soji and Dahj might not be synthetics after all, mostly because they appear to be fully human. It isn’t just a case of their outward appearance – which obviously looks very different to Data or F8 and the other synths from Mars – but that they appear fully human on scans and sensors.

Soji in particular is allowed to access the Artifact – a restricted and heavily fortified derelict Borg cube under Romulan military jurisdiction. Given what we know about the Romulans, they must have pretty good sensors and scanners, and if Soji did not register as anything other than human, they’d have been immediately alerted to her real nature.

There was also a line in The End is the Beginning that caused me to bring this theory back last week. As Picard and the others are interrogating a captured Zhat Vash attacker, he says that Soji and Dahj are “not what you think” they are. Because everyone was, at that point, absolutely convinced that Soji and Dahj were androids constructed by Bruce Maddox, what did that line mean? I interpreted it as meaning that they may not actually be synths at all.

However, in Absolute Candor we saw Rizzo and Narek interacting on board the Artifact. Rizzo refers to Soji as Narek’s “robot girlfriend”, confirming that the Zhat Vash know that she’s synthetic. There are still questions about the exact nature of Soji and Dahj – particularly how they have been able to survive unnoticed and undetected for three years, as well as whether they may be some kind of organic-synthetic hybrid – but the idea that they’re wholly non-synthetic can be firmly debunked at this stage.

So those are the debunked theories. And not for the first time, there are several new ones to replace them! Absolute Candor gave me several new ideas, as well as advancing a few others.

Number 1: Picard’s decision to tell everyone that their opponents are the Tal Shiar – and not the Zhat Vash – will come back to haunt them.

Elnor in *Absolute Candor* – he doesn’t know who Picard’s enemies really are.

In Maps and Legends, Laris told Picard about the Zhat Vash for the first time. And Commodore Oh also used the name in that episode, feeling that Picard was getting too close to finding out about the faction. Yet in Absolute Candor, Picard tells his new crew that they’re facing off against the Tal Shiar. And crucially, he also tells this to Elnor when recruiting him for the mission.

There are suspected to be links between the Tal Shiar and the Zhat Vash. Laris described the Tal Shiar as a “mask” that the Zhat Vash wears – but Zhaban is also implied to have been a Tal Shiar operative, and he was unconvinced that they’re real, so it’s clearly not the case that the two factions are one and the same.

When it comes to Elnor in particular, knowing who his enemy is could be incredibly important – and the Qowat Milat seem likely to know something about the Zhat Vash, and may even have techniques for dealing with them. Knowing who Picard’s enemy is may have even been a factor in agreeing to join the cause – the Qowat Milat and Tal Shiar are said to be enemies. Would Elnor have joined the crew if he knew they were taking on the Zhat Vash?

Most importantly, will it come back to haunt Picard that he wasn’t up front with everyone? Does he simply not fully believe in the Zhat Vash’s existence, as they are such a secretive faction? He has, after all, only heard about them from one person – with the only other Romulan present dismissing them as a myth. Regardless of the reason, I wonder how Elnor will react if and when he learns about the Zhat Vash.

Number 2: Narek is going to go rogue.

Rizzo had to half-choke Narek to get him to tell her what he knows about Soji – despite them being on the same side.

Last time, I speculated that Narek will end up turning on the Zhat Vash out of love for, or loyalty to, Soji. The two have been getting close since we met them at the end of Remembrance, though Narek does have an agenda.

In The End is the Beginning, he told Soji that he was falling in love with her, and shortly thereafter was rebuked by Rizzo, his superior, for getting too close. She explicitly warned him not to fall in love with her. Two references to that in a single episode seemed like foreshadowing something to me!

We saw this theme developed a little during Absolute Candor. Narek tracks Soji to the medical bay where Ramdha, the Romulan who accused her of being “the destroyer”, is in stasis or undergoing treatment. They then share a drink, in which Soji seems to hint very clearly that she’s developing feelings for him. And he takes her to a deserted part of the cube where they play and share a kiss – before he pushes her too hard for information and she storms off in a huff!

Narek was also less than keen to divulge the small amount of information he’s gleamed from Soji so far when Rizzo visited him later; she had to half-choke him to get him to confess Soji could be “the destroyer”. As she threatens she will give him one week to get the rest of the information the Zhat Vash want, he looks genuinely worried.

It’s a trope we’ve seen before, especially in spy fiction which this side of Star Trek: Picard’s story is clearly borrowing from; an agent falling for his target and renouncing his loyalty to save her. And I feel that there are hints at that already in the Narek-Soji-Rizzo storyline. It could be an elaborate misdirect, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Number 3: Dr Jurati isn’t who she appears to be, and may be a double-agent.

Dr Jurati talking to Capt. Rios on the bridge of La Sirena.

In what was almost the final scene in The End is the Beginning, Raffi seems incredulous at Dr Jurati’s inclusion on the mission to Freecloud – saying that she hasn’t run any kind of security check on her. Because of her knowledge of synthetics, Picard considers her important to the mission – and I’m sure that on a personal level he values her company, as she’s the only person on the mission other than himself who’s genuinely invested in finding Maddox and Soji.

But what are her motivations for doing so? And should Picard trust her? I have to admit that Raffi’s line has me seeing Dr Jurati in a whole new light. And where I thought I saw an academic who was genuinely excited at the prospect of seeing her theoretical work brought to life, what we may instead be seeing is someone who has manipulated the situation to ingratiate herself with Picard. Her arrival at the vineyard mere moments after the attempted assassination of Picard, as well as her ability to use a Romulan weapon, were examples I cited in evidence for this last time, as was her insistence on signing up.

Absolute Candor, it’s fair to say, was not a Jurati-centric episode. But the one significant scene she featured in could lend some credence to this theory, depending on interpretation. During a conversation with Capt. Rios on the bridge of La Sirena, she appears bored by space travel, despite it being implied it’s either her first time in space or at least not something she does on a regular basis. Her chat with him, while it could be perceived as social awkwardness, might also be seen as probing him for information – in a deliberately disarming manner.

She also shows a keen interest in the Qowat Milat – again with the same semi-childish wonder that Alison Pill portrays so well. But again I’m left questioning her motivation for prying so much into everything going on. Is it genuine academic curiosity from someone who seldom gets to see the stars? Maybe. Is she tapping Picard and the others for information because she’s a double-agent?

If Starfleet wanted to get a spy into Picard’s group, they have all the facts they need to do so, and with Dr Jurati being Earth’s most senior researcher into synthetics, it would make sense that Picard would reach out to her – of all people – in the aftermath of what happened with Dahj.

There’s another possibility, which is that she’s being manipulated from behind the scenes, or spied on herself. Her conversation with Commodore Oh was almost entirely off-screen – could she have been threatened or manipulated in that conversation? We know she told Oh everything about Picard’s plan to track down Maddox – was that under duress or was it an operative being debriefed by her superior? Time will tell!

Number 4: There are other Soji and Dahj lookalikes out there – and the Romulans – or the Borg – have encountered at least one already.

Ramdha seemed to recognise Soji – and reacted with terror.

Why did Ramdha say she recognised Soji? Was it simply confusion due to her damaged psychological state; a hangover from her assimilation? That’s possible – Hugh and others on the Artifact would certainly seem to think so. Soji isn’t convinced, though, and neither is Narek. In fact, he uses the phrase “Seb-Cheneb” – “the destroyer” – to refer to Soji, which was the accusation Ramdha levelled against her too.

That can’t be a coincidence. In Absolute Candor, Ramdha (in a holo-recording from before her assimilation) said that Seb-Cheneb was related to a day called “Ganmadan” – or “the annihilation”. The only way this day could be in the future is if we’re dealing with premonitions and time travel, but maybe it’s a reference to something in the past.

The only way Ramdha could recognise Soji is if she’d seen her before – or someone who looks identical. Picard said that Soji and Dahj are “more than twins”; they should be absolutely indistinguishable in appearance. So if the Romulans encountered a Soji-type android in the past, or if the Borg did, that could explain Ramdha’s reaction. If the Borg had encountered a Soji-type android, their knowledge of her appearance could have been conveyed to Ramdha while she was linked to the hive mind. And if the Romulans met such an android, it could be something Ramdha was familiar with through her academic work. Ramdha may have even shared a spot on the transport ship she was on with a Soji-type android – Soji knew a lot about the ship and its crew, after all, and that information has to have come from somewhere.

Narek and Rizzo know Soji’s true nature, and Narek at least is convinced that Soji is this Seb-Cheneb figure. Given that their plan is to find out from Soji the location of her creator’s base of operations or place of origin in order to go to that place and destroy other androids, the Zhat Vash seem to believe that Soji and Dahj aren’t the only two out there. So there could be more – and they could have been flitting about the galaxy for a number of years.

Number 5: Section 31 is involved with the story… somehow.

A black Section 31 badge – held by ex-Terran Empress Philippa Georgiou.

I have several Section 31 theories kicking around, so I thought I’d roll them all into one. With the organisation having featured very heavily in Discovery’s second season, and with a new Star Trek series in production based around Section 31, it would make a lot of sense from a production point of view to include them in some way in Picard too. It would be a consistent thread running through the modern-day Star Trek shows that would tie things together and give casual viewers at least a basic point of reference.

There are several ways Section 31 could crop up, in my opinion, and we’ll look at them in turn.

5 A: Section 31 hacked the synthetics and attacked Mars.

Does this moment show F8 being hacked by Section 31?

There wasn’t any new evidence regarding the Mars hack this time, but to summarise from my previous theory posts, I consider Section 31 one of two likely culprits for the atrocity, along with the Zhat Vash. They have the means, the technical ability, and the callousness to pull it off. And in addition, if any faction within the Federation would be opposed to helping the Romulans, given the history of warfare and distrust between them and the Federation, it’s Section 31. They consider themselves above such things as law and ideology, and would do anything in order to advance their cause – even killing Federation citizens.

5 B: Capt. Rios worked for Section 31 when he was aboard the Ibn Majid.

Chris Rios has since left Starfleet… but did he once work for Section 31?

Again, no new evidence for this this week. Last time, Capt. Rios told us about his past service as the executive officer aboard the Ibn Majid. Aside from his captain being killed (which we’ll look at in a moment), the standout bit of information from this is that the ship was erased from Starfleet records. That isn’t something we’d expect to see – but it absolutely fits with Section 31’s modus operandi.

5 C: Seven of Nine is working for Section 31.

Seven of Nine had an incredibly powerful – if small – ship in Absolute Candor. It was able to disable the attacking bird-of-prey despite that ship being a lot larger and more powerful, and come to the aid of La Sirena, which on paper looked like a bigger and more powerful spacecraft.

In addition, she was able to track La Sirena while remaining hidden, and may have been tracking Picard since his earliest encounters with Dahj in Remembrance. One organisation that we know would be able to pull off a covert track-and-protect mission like that would be Section 31. Though why they’d want to protect Picard is unclear – and it wouldn’t make sense if they’re to be an antagonist.

However, Section 31 were always interested in technology and in unique individuals. As a human ex-Borg who spent a long time as part of the Collective, and who journeyed through the Delta Quadrant, Section 31 may well have wanted to have a chat with Seven of Nine after Voyager got back to Earth. Perhaps they recruited her.

Before the end of the season, with the Section 31 series on the horizon perhaps for early next year, I think we will at least hear some mention of the organisation, even if it isn’t in any of the ways listed above.

Number 6 A: The Romulans experimented with synthetics and/or AI in the past – with disastrous consequences.

A Zhat Vash assassin on Earth – why do they fear synthetic life so much?

Why do the Romulans fear synthetics and AI? And why do the Zhat Vash hate them with a burning passion? We saw the synths go rogue and attack Mars beginning with the Short Treks episode Children of Mars, so the idea of rogue AI is definitely a theme running through the series – one which plays on our own fears in the modern day.

The Zhat Vash have already won, essentially. A “galactic treaty” now prohibits the development of synthetic life, and while holograms seem to be exempt from that (for some reason), the Zhat Vash should be celebrating. Perhaps they see themselves as enforcers of the ban, or perhaps Starfleet turned to them when they believed Maddox was still alive and flouting the ban by continuing his work.

But the reason for their quasi-religious zeal, and for their crusade, is unknown. It doesn’t feel like altruism; like they’re trying to save the galaxy from something. It seems to be driven by a primal fear – they’re terrified of what could happen if synthetic life became commonplace. Why that is is the key question. In the past, did the Romulans try to develop some kind of synthetic that went rogue?

6 B: Could the Romulans’ experiments with synthetics and AI have been related to or stemming from the Federation’s work with Control – the AI in Discovery?

Control used nano-technology to take control of Capt. Leland.

Tying Picard to Discovery is something that I’m sure the creators want to do. It’s hard, given the 150-year time gap between the two series, but one possible way to do it would be to make the Romulans’ hatred and fear of AI be related in some way to the AI storyline from Discovery’s second season.

To briefly recap, Section 31 built an AI called Control in the mid-23rd Century, and after the Klingon war ended, Starfleet began to rely heavily on Control. The increased use led Control to develop an aggressive personality, and in its quest to become fully sentient it tried to gain access to data from an ancient lifeform that was stored in Discovery’s computer. If it had been able to do so, it would have chosen to wipe out all organic life in the galaxy, resulting in a bleak, lifeless future which Michael Burnham, Spock, and Burnham’s mother saw. The only way to prevent Control gaining this information was for Burnham and Discovery to travel into the future.

It seems logical to think that, if Starfleet were working on an AI at that time, other factions may have been doing so as well, leading to a kind of AI arms race in the mid-23rd Century. Starfleet’s AI went rogue, so perhaps the Romulans’ did too, if they’d been developing one at the same time. Or perhaps Control attacked Romulan ships and colonies in the same way it attacked Starfleet, and this is what led the Romulans to adopt their anti-synthetic position.

As Picard and Discovery were in production almost at the same moment, it would make sense to think we might see some story element cross over, and this could be one such possibility. We haven’t really seen any significant Discovery references thus far, at least not that I’ve noticed. Could they be saving it for a big reveal that Control is part of why the Romulans and Zhat Vash hate synthetics?

6 C: The Romulans’ AI/synthetic life experiments led to the creation of the Borg.

The Artifact is a Borg cube under Romulan control… but did they accidentally create the Borg?

One thing I’ve been wondering since the end of Discovery’s second season is why Control didn’t end up being a Borg origin story. All of the pieces were there, and right up to about two-thirds of the way through the final episode it seemed like a strong possibility. Could the reason be that Picard’s creative team stepped in while Discovery was already in production with their own Borg origin pitch, forcing the show to change tack?

Again tied into the Zhat Vash’s hatred and fear of synthetics, could it be that the reason they’re so determined to quash all synthetic life is because their own synthetic experiments culminated in the creation of the Borg? It may explain why the Romulans were able to disable a Borg cube while keeping it largely intact, a feat not even the Federation could manage. It could also explain why “all of the disordered are Romulans” – because something about Romulan physiology is present in the Borg and thus they’re affected differently and more severely when disconnected from the hive mind.

Laris says that the Zhat Vash are “far older” than the Tal Shiar. We know that the Romulans achieved interstellar spaceflight in the early years AD in our calendar, as that’s when they left Vulcan. We also know that a millennium or so later, the Borg only controlled “a handful” of systems in the Delta Quadrant, at least according to an episode of Voyager. So it’s possible, if somewhat messy, to fit it all together. Given the Borg’s unflinching nature, however, it raises questions of how the Romulans avoided total assimilation – as well as how and why the Borg ended up in the Delta Quadrant instead of somewhere closer to Romulus.

So those are all of the theories that are either new or were developed further in Absolute Candor. As I did last time, and for the sake of keeping everything in one place, I’m going to briefly recap the remaining theories I had from previous episodes that Absolute Candor neither advanced nor debunked.

Number 7: Picard is terminally ill with Irumodic Syndrome.

Picard is aware that his time is running out.

This disease was first mentioned in the finale of The Next Generation, which sees Picard visiting an alternate future timeline. Dr Benayoun in Maps and Legends brought Picard the bad news that he’s dying, and referred to the collection of possible diseases as “syndromes”. In Absolute Candor, Picard made reference to his declining health, saying he “may never pass this way again” when discussing the diversion to Vashti.

Number 8: Soji and Dahj’s necklaces are a deliberate symbol from their creators – designed to communicate with other synths and/or synth builders.

Soji, with her necklace on full display.

Setting aside my complaints about the necklace as a prop, why would Bruce Maddox give Soji and Dahj a very obvious symbol of their true nature to wear? Surely anyone in the know would recognise it – including anti-synth factions like the Zhat Vash. It’s the equivalent of painting a big bulls-eye on both of them – unless it was a deliberate, planned action to communicate with other synthetics or synth creators. Maddox may have said “look out for someone with this necklace”, and that would make it easier for others to make contact with Soji and Dahj – perhaps even to download or upload new information to them.

Number 9: The Trill doctor from Maps and Legends is going to end up assimiliated.

Soji’s new friend on board the Artifact.

There seemed to be a lot of foreshadowing of this in the only episode in which this Trill doctor has appeared so far, so I would not be surprised at all if she meets an unpleasant fate on board the Artifact.

Number 10: Bruce Maddox is somehow responsible for the attack on Mars.

Bruce Maddox preparing to give evidence against Data in *The Next Generation* Season 2 episode *The Measure of a Man*.

If this is the case it’s certainly an accident, but I suspect that something Maddox did or didn’t do led to the synths being easily hacked or reprogrammed, the result of which was the attack on Mars. This could be why he fled – not to avoid recrimination but to try to continue his work, hoping to undo some of the damage or alleviate his guilt.

Number 11: Starfleet is conspiring with the Zhat Vash.

Raffi is convinced that this is true, and that the conspiracy dates back to at least the attack on Mars. She didn’t know the Zhat Vash existed then, so she assumed it may have been the Tal Shiar or a rogue faction. But Commodore Oh is definitely working with the Zhat Vash, and though it’s possible she’s a Romulan agent herself, my money is on her being a Vulcan collaborator. Perhaps she enlisted their support to destroy the fleet because she felt helping the Romulans was a mistake, and the Zhat Vash were happy to collaborate as it would lead to the treaty prohibiting synthetic life. Or it’s possible her involvement is more recent, and she’s working with the Zhat Vash as they have the necessary experience when it comes to hunting synths.

Number 12: The captain Rios served under on the Ibn Majid is a character we’re familiar with from a past iteration of Star Trek.

Could Harry Kim or Chakotay have been in command of the Ibn Majid?

I gave a few names last time for who Rios’ captain might be. This character’s death is an important part of Rios’ story, as the death, and the brutal nature of it, scarred him and drove him away from Starfleet. The two main characters I think are contenders are Harry Kim and Chakotay, both from Voyager, simply because of Kim’s desire to become a captain and Chakotay’s command experience. There are other side characters it could be, but there are so many people we’ve met that meet the criteria – a male commanding officer – that there are too many to list!

Number 13: The synths were hacked.

The synths on Mars, prior to going rogue.

We’ve got a decent amount of evidence pointing to this. There’s the Commodore Oh conspiracy, Raffi’s comments, F8’s eyes in the flashbacks, the work crew with F8 describing him as “compromised”, and the very particular way the attack was carried out. It was a deliberate strike against a well-chosen target, and rather than continue the carnage, after Mars and the fleet were destroyed, the synths simply killed themselves. I mentioned earlier that Section 31 could be responsible, but it could very well be the Zhat Vash, who have been set up thus far as Picard’s primary antagonists, at least in this season.

So that’s it. Those are my extant theories at this point, four episodes in. It will be funny to come back to this series of posts when the series has ended and we have all the answers – I bet I got far more theories and ideas wrong than I got right! Absolute Candor was the first episode which I felt began to unravel some of the mysteries, and finding out more about Picard’s background in between Nemesis and Remembrance was both interesting and heartbreaking.

The next episode, Stardust City Rag, will be the second directed by Jonathan Frakes, and it looks like we might finally catch up with Bruce Maddox. Will he be able to help?

The fourth episode of Star Trek: Picard, titled Absolute Candor, is available to watch now on CBS All Access in the United States, and on Amazon Prime Video in the United Kingdom and other countries and territories. All previous episodes from Season 1 are also available to watch. The Star Trek franchise – including Star Trek: Picard – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Picard review – Season 1, Episode 4: Absolute Candor

Sat 15.02.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning – There will be spoilers ahead for Absolute Candor – the fourth episode of Star Trek: Picard – as well as for all previous episodes in Season 1. There may also be spoilers for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

What a wild ride Absolute Candor was! After a trilogy of episodes directed by Hanelle M. Culpepper kicked off the series, Star Trek legend and former Star Trek: The Next Generation star Jonathan Frakes stepped up to direct this outing for Picard and his new crew – and he’ll also be directing next week’s instalment too.

After the first three episodes set up a lot of story points and mysteries, Absolute Candor felt like the first episode so far to begin the task of exploring and unravelling them. That’s not to say it answered everything – we still have far more questions than answers right now. But some details are beginning to come into focus, especially regarding Picard’s history between when we last saw him in Star Trek: Nemesis and when we met him again in Remembrance at the beginning of this season.

As with the last two episodes, Absolute Candor opens with a flashback sequence. But rather than seeing Mars this time, as Maps and Legends and The End is the Beginning showed us, this time we’re with an out-of-uniform Picard on a planet called Vashti, in the Beta Quadrant. It’s clear quite quickly that this sequence takes place before the attack on Mars – Picard is still working very hard to relocate as many Romulans as possible with time ticking down to the supernova. He’s clearly very popular with many of the Romulans on Vashti, though if he’s working I’m not exactly sure why he’s not in uniform. Picard, at least as we remember him from The Next Generation, was quite a stickler for such things as uniforms – though perhaps as an Admiral he had more leeway in this matter.

Elnor hugs Picard in a flashback sequence.

Vashti is presented as a kind of “frontier outpost”; it’s dusty, it’s bustling with Romulans, and Picard is in his element here. At least, the town setting on Vashti looks like this. The next setting Picard visits – a convent or nunnery – has a very obvious Japanese inspiration. This blend of aesthetics keeps the two parts of Vashti distinct from one another, with the serenity and safety of the convent contrasting with the unpolished nature of the pioneer town. This contrast will come into play later, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We saw a Romulan using the same style of cards that Ramdha (the Romulan Soji wanted to talk to in the last episode) was using, and their inclusion was a nice way of tying things together, as well as adding to the “wild-west” vibe that the town on Vashti has going for it.

Picard has struck up a relationship with Elnor, a young boy who has been taken in by the nuns. He brings him a gift – a copy of the book The Three Musketeers – and promises to teach him how to fence. His dislike of children is referenced here by the nuns and Elnor, but he reassures the boy, saying he is “very fond” of him. There’s a grandfatherly element to Picard that we haven’t really seen before – obviously emphasised by his age. In The Next Generation, we saw him take on a semi-fatherly role to Wesley – after dismissing his “no children on the bridge” rule – so this is hardly out of character. He also kept the “Captain Picard Day” banner from his time aboard the Enterprise-D, again showing that his attitude to children has considerably softened over the years.

Midway through the promised fencing lesson, Picard gets a call on his combadge (the Generations–Deep Space Nine–Voyager style is back for this sequence) from Raffi. And we know what this must be before anything happens; she’s about to tell him of the attack on Mars. Because we knew this – it had even been included in the montage of previous episodes that played at the very beginning – I don’t think we needed Picard’s line in response. Shock like this can be hard to play right, and it’s no criticism of Sir Patrick Stewart that the line, in which he says “what do you mean synths have attacked Mars?” just fell flat and didn’t really work. A simple facial expression would have conveyed everything we needed to know; the line was unnecessary and detracted from the scene.

Everyone is concerned, and Picard promises to get to the bottom of it and return soon, saying that their work must continue, and then the credits roll. Having seen Seven of Nine feature prominently in the trailers, Jeri Ryan’s name being included in the credits wasn’t a surprise. But, given her role in the episode, it was a bit of an unnecessary spoiler – especially for people who may have skipped the trailers. Seven of Nine only shows up right at the end of the episode. She’s an anonymous pilot flying a small ship, and that whole scene is structured around keeping her identity hidden until the last possible moment, making her appearance on the bridge of La Sirena a surprise – but as this was the last scene in the episode, and we’d seen her name in the opening credits, the element of surprise was lost which was a shame, I felt.

Picard reacts with shock when he learns of the synths’ attack.

After the credits we’re back in the present day, and after a brief shot of La Sirena in space we get a conversation between Dr Jurati and Capt. Rios. It seems like this may be Jurati’s first time in space, and more than anything she just feels bored while the ship warps to their destination. I mentioned last time how the comment Raffi made at the end of last week’s episode about Dr Jurati not being subject to any kind of security check could be some foreshadowing of her being a double-agent, and this conversation, innocent though it may have seemed on the surface, could also be seen as her probing Rios for information in a disarming style. I’m not sure exactly why yet, but I have a feeling she isn’t to be trusted.

Raffi interrupts the awkward conversation to demand to know where the ship is going – apparently Picard wants to make a stop at Vashti before heading to Freecloud, though he seems to have only told Rios of this, as Raffi and Dr Jurati had no idea. The next scene was confusing for a moment, as Picard appears to be back on the vineyard – but apparently it’s just a holoprogram that Zhaban requested that the “hospitality hologram” on La Sirena recreate for Picard. As with every hologram on the ship, it’s been reprogrammed to have Rios’ appearance.

There’s a close-up shot of Dahj’s necklace on Picard’s desk – presumably a recreation as part of the holoprogram, but this isn’t clear. As I said in my review of Remembrance, I really feel this is a weak prop. The visually unimpressive design just makes it blend in, and for something that was supposed to be so noticeable, and that’s supposed to be a symbol for creating androids, it just looks bland. For a one-off item I could forgive that, and it would be little more than a minor costuming/prop nitpick. But the necklace keeps cropping up, as it did here in the close-up, and I wish it looked better given its role in the story thus far.

Raffi interrupts Picard’s conversation with the hologram, demanding to know why he’s insistent on going to Vashti. It’s clear Picard has been out of touch with goings-on in the galaxy for some time; Vashti will not be the way he remembers it. Rios and Dr Jurati join in as Picard calmly explains that he wants to return to the convent we saw in the flashback – because the nuns there are warriors, and he hopes one of them can be persuaded to join their crew for the mission. He suspects they are being tracked – though interestingly he refers to their opponents as the Tal Shiar, not the Zhat Vash. He will do so again later in the episode when talking to Elnor, and I have a feeling this will come back to be a point in future episodes. Whether Picard doesn’t believe in the existence of the Zhat Vash, or whether he simply doesn’t want to go to the trouble of explaining to everyone what they are isn’t clear.

Raffi attempts to persuade Picard to head straight for Freecloud and abandon the mission to Vashti.

We get two little hints in this scene that may come into play in future episodes. First is that Raffi makes a comment about how Picard’s decision to go to Vashti makes her “seriously question [his] mental state” – could this be a hint about the terminal condition that Dr Benayoun mentioned in Maps and Legends? Secondly, Picard calls Raffi out on her keenness to get to Freecloud, but Rios says she seems apprehensive about it. What is Raffi planning to do on Freecloud? We know she said at the end of last week’s episode that she’s going there for her own reasons, but here we get a hint that she may not be looking forward to it. Why that is isn’t clear at this stage either.

Vashti, according to Raffi and Rios, is in a bad way, seemingly outside of anyone’s jurisdiction with warlords controlling the planet and the space around it. Picard is surprised by this, and his lack of awareness of the situation shows us, as mentioned earlier, just how out of touch he is with the state of play. Rios mentions a warlord who has control of an “antique bird-of-prey” – and anyone who’s seen the trailers will have spotted that ship, sporting a design not seen since The Original Series.

The nuns, Picard says, are the best fighters he’s ever seen – and enemies of the Tal Shiar. The “Way of Absolute Candor” is mentioned here for the first time, and it appears to be almost the complete antithesis of Surak’s Vulcan teachings. The Qowat Milat, as the nuns are called, believe in “total communication of emotion”. Raffi makes one last attempt to convince Picard to ditch the Vashti idea and head straight for Freecloud, but Picard says that he “may never pass this way again” – another reference to his condition. While this is, in a sense, a side-quest to Picard’s main objective of finding Maddox and Soji, he is taking advantage of his return to space to travel to Vashti to revisit Elnor.

Travelling in space in Star Trek has never really been treated as a big deal. It was something routine, even if some individuals we met had never done so – like Joseph Sisko in Deep Space Nine. But in Star Trek: Picard we’ve had several instances that show us space travel is not just as easy as getting on a starship and taking off. Picard’s appeal to Admiral Clancy in Maps and Legends was brutally shot down, but not before she could say he couldn’t be trusted to take people into space. Next we have Dr Jurati, who is seemingly on her first space voyage, and now Picard himself, who, granted, has been a kind of self-imposed exile in La Barre, but it seems as though travel to Vashti isn’t easy. It took Picard contacting Raffi to track down a pilot who would even take them to Freecloud, when surely everything we’ve seen in prior Star Trek suggests that interstellar travel should be commonplace – and simple. It’s a surprise in terms of the way space travel has been handled thus far in the series, I think, and it’s less in line with past Star Trek and more like something we might expect to have seen in a different kind of science fiction series. I know there are perfectly valid story reasons for why Picard couldn’t just buy, rent, or otherwise acquire a shuttle or runabout – like how they have the Zhat Vash on their tail – but the tone is not what I expected, I have to admit. And it’s the kind of nitpick only some returning fans might have that doesn’t really detract from the story. But when you stop and think about it – surely it should have been easy for Picard and the others to go to Freecloud or Vashti or anywhere else they might’ve wanted.

Next, we get a scene aboard the Artifact, where Soji is watching a video of Ramdha from before she was assimilated, while playing with a similar deck of cards to those Ramdha was using in The End is the Beginning. Last time Ramdha called Soji “the destroyer”, and Soji hears that name again, this time in Romulan. Apparently “Seb-Cheneb” (which seems to be the Romulan name for “the destroyer”) is related to a day called Ganmadan – “the annihilation”. How this ties into Soji’s background and why Ramdha accused her of being Seb-Cheneb isn’t known at this point, but Soji is clearly disturbed by the implications.

Ramdha as she appeared prior to assimilation, seen on a holo-recording.

After this brief scene we’re back on La Sirena, now in orbit of Vashti but without permission to approach the planet’s defences. Picard says they should simply tell whoever is running the show down on the surface that it’s him – expecting that will allow them to transport to the surface. But apparently Raffi and Rios have already tried that, and it’s clear that the Romulans on Vashti don’t want anything to do with him any more.

After bribing the Romulans, Picard is able to beam down to Vashti. The atmosphere is so different from its appearance in the flashback; the once-bustling town is squalid and run-down, with hard-up refugees glaring at Picard. It’s clear that some of them recognise him, and one whispers something into a communicator. Given that Raffi becomes concerned later in the episode when Picard has been identified by the inhabitants, it makes very little sense as to why they’d let him beam down, alone and unarmed, into the middle of the town.

Regardless, Picard tries to speak to some of the locals, who all ignore him. I liked the use of the phrase “jolan tru”, which returns from its appearance in The Next Generation two-part episode Unification – which saw Picard and Data go undercover on Romulus to find Spock after he travelled there. While “jolan tru” isn’t as iconic in the franchise as the Klingon word “qapla!”, it’s nevertheless a neat little throwback. It would have been easy to disregard that and create a new word or greeting in Romulan, but I’m glad they brought back this element from Picard’s past adventures.

This isn’t the “homecoming” that Picard would have wanted, and despite repeated warnings from Raffi and Rios about the state of Vashti and his own lack of popularity there, the Romulans’ reaction to his presence clearly hurts and disappoints him.

In this scene, I feel like Vashti was channelling Star Trek V: The Final Frontier’s depiction of Paradise City on the planet Nimbus III. That settlement, in a barren desert, was supposed to be a symbol of “galactic peace” – cooperation between the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans. But, much like Vashti, it quickly fell into disrepair as the project was sidelined. There was great hope, both for Vashti and Nimbus III, to be successes, but both ultimately failed and became what we saw on screen. Whether the throwback was intentional or not I can’t say, but I definitely picked up a similar tone when Picard was on Vashti.

Sybok’s followers approach Paradise City on Nimbus III in *Star Trek V: The Final Frontier*.

Picard travels to the convent, where he meets the nun from the flashback sequence. The nuns are perhaps the only people on Vashti who aren’t unhappy to see Picard return – though she does remark he’s “got old” since their last encounter. And I want to give a little credit here to hair and makeup. My reviews often focus on plot and story at the expense of other elements of a production – it’s something I’m trying to work on! But the way Picard appears in the flashbacks and in the up-to-date sequences does differ – and part of that is his hair. In the flashbacks, Picard has sported a close-cropped version of his grey-white hair that we remember from The Next Generation, and is notably completely bald in the rest of the show. This subtle change does age and de-age him somewhat in the two sequences, as well as differentiating them from one another. It’s subtle, such that it was hard to put my finger on at first, but I think it works well without having to rely on excessive makeup or expensive (and imperfect) digital techniques to make him look younger for the flashback scenes.

As Elnor appears – now a fully grown man – Picard reacts with shock. Before we can see what happens, however, the action cuts back to the Artifact. Ramdha isn’t dead, but she’s been sedated or placed in stasis, and Soji has paid her a visit. Narek stops by – he seems to have been tracking her movements – and she tells him something which I think is important – she felt like Ramdha had “seen” her. Even though she doesn’t know why, as she is unaware of her true nature, she felt like Ramdha had some kind of insight, something that she saw or recognised in Soji that is true. And not to spoil my next theory post, but I have a feeling there may be more Soji and Dahj lookalikes out there somewhere – one of which Ramdha may have encountered. That’s one explanation, anyway, but I don’t want to sink too much into theory-crafting right now!

At a canteen or mess hall on the Artifact, Soji and Narek sit down and discuss what happened last week. She asks him flat-out if he’s been following her, and it seems that this sequence takes place immediately after last week’s episode, as Soji says she “just now” visited the disordered Romulans. She presses him, asking if he works for the Tal Shiar. He says no, of course, but she is unconvinced. We can’t trust Narek at this point, so when he says he doesn’t know what happened to the Romulan vessel or to Ramdha, we – like Soji – don’t believe him. He plays his cards close to his chest and clearly knows more than he’s letting on. In this scene, I wonder if the blue drink they were sharing was meant to be Romulan Ale? This drink has appeared a number of times in Star Trek and it would be a nice reference if it were!

Narek tells Soji he wants to show her a “Borg ritual”, and for a moment I wondered if he might actually know something about Borg behaviour or even their origins. But it turns out it was a joke/metaphor, as the two slide in their socks along an uninhabited part of the Artifact. Narek presses her on her background – she learnt to speak Romulan “some time before May 12, 2396” – which is give-or-take three years before the events of the series. Given that Dr Jurati believed that Dahj only had around three years’ worth of genuine background – everything in her records before then seemed to have been made up – this fits with what we know. Could the 12th of May 2396 be Soji and Dahj’s activation or creation date? Narek pushes Soji too hard for information, saying he knows she wasn’t aboard a ship she claims to have been on around that time, and she takes offence and leaves, pushing past him on the way.

Back on Vashti, Picard explains to the nun that he wants someone to join his cause. Elnor offers him a meal, then storms off, clearly upset at Picard’s reappearance just like the Romulans in town had been. It’s here that we learn – contrary to my expectations, I have to admit – that Picard did nothing to aid the Romulans either on their homeworld or on Vashti after the attack on Mars. After his resignation, he simply went home to the château. No wonder the Romulans are so upset – Picard had been the face of the Federation when they promised to help, and after only a tiny fraction of that help had been delivered, they reneged on it and Picard simply disappeared. He seems never to have returned to Vashti after the flashback sequence at the beginning of the episode, even abandoning Elnor.

The nun calmly scolds Picard – “because you could not save everyone, you chose to save no one”, she tells him, and it’s true, Picard even admits it himself. The attack on Mars is not the issue in and of itself, it was merely the catalyst for what really happened to Picard – Starfleet and the Federation broke their commitment, and when he threatened to resign in protest, instead of recognising the error of their ways and doing things his way, they simply accepted his resignation. This moment is what broke him. The attack on Mars set the stage, but Picard was reminded thereafter not just of Starfleet’s petty factional politics, but of his own unimportance to the organisation he’d dedicated his life to.

He can’t go back and undo it, building up a new fleet and saving lives. It’s too late for that – and it is a regret that he will have to live with. I’m sure we will see more of Picard wrestling with those feelings in future episodes, but for now at least, the nuns give him a chance to begin to make things right for at least one Romulan – Elnor. The shot of Elnor standing outside the convent, holding a thin-bladed sword with the reddish-coloured leaves in the background was clearly inspired by Japan. Elnor is, in this moment anyway, a samurai warrior.

Elnor with his sword on Vashti – definitely a Japanese-inspired look.

Picard and Elnor sit together, and it’s an awkward conversation as Elnor clearly feels aggrieved by Picard’s abandonment. He had seen Picard as a father figure, clearly, and his disappearance from Elnor’s life left him with the nuns. Picard steers the conversation away from the past to his mission to find Maddox and Soji, but Elnor says that, as Picard is only interested in him now that he finds him useful, he’s inclined to abandon him the way he was abandoned, and storms off.

Dejected, Picard heads back to town. Rios tells him that he’ll have to wait seven minutes before they will be able to transport him through the planet’s defences – and alarm bells started ringing immediately for me! This whole sequence was so well-constructed. The seeds were sown in earlier scenes: having to bribe his way to the surface, the cold reception he received from the townspeople, the nun confirming he abandoned the rescue project, Raffi on board the ship finding out that he’d been spotted and identified, and now finally the fact that he’ll have to wait alone for rescue. A lot can happen in seven minutes – Picard is clearly in danger.

His stubbornness gets the better of him back in the town, and he sits down at a table in one of the saloon-type places, much to the ire of the Romulans who were already there. One confronts him, as we knew was sure to happen, and it turns out that he had once been a Senator – before the supernova.

We get a little more information here about the rescue armada. Some of the ships were already in service at the time of the attack on Mars, and over a quarter of a million Romulans had been relocated to Vashti at the time of the attack. Rather than waiting for the whole fleet to be complete, Picard and Raffi had been working in the meantime. The Senator – and the other Romulans – detest Picard, both for his own failings and for the decision made by the Federation to pull out of helping them. The former seems fair, but the latter does not as we know how hard Picard fought to convince Starfleet to rebuild the fleet and continue to help.

Picard is confronted by an impoverished former Romulan Senator.

The Romulans throw him a sword and push him into the street to duel – we saw Picard showing young Elnor how to fence, and we’ve also seen him fence on at least one occasion in The Next Generation, but Picard is clearly outmatched here by the towering Romulan. He refuses to fight and tries to talk his way out of the situation, when Elnor shows up. He says “choose to live” – and we assume he’s speaking to Picard, encouraging him to pick up the sword he’d thrown down. But as the Romulan lunges for Picard, Elnor steps in and kills him. His statement was a threat – not to cross an assassin of the Qowat Milat. As another Romulan prepares to pull his disruptor and shoot Elnor, he and Picard are beamed aboard La Sirena.

We do have to again examine Picard’s frame of mind here. He berates Elnor for killing the Romulan Senator, but it’s obvious that he would have killed Picard in a heartbeat. The state of the galaxy, and Picard’s own relationship with the Romulans and other factions is not what it was fourteen years ago – yet he doesn’t seem to have fully grasped that reality yet. Elnor stepping in was the only option in that fight – the only other outcome was Picard’s death. As a great diplomat, as well as a former friend to the Romulan people, it must be hard for him to accept that his words mean nothing to them any more.

Elnor has committed himself to Picard’s cause – and now the whole crew is finally assembled. The last main character has slotted nicely into place, and four episodes in, we finally have the whole cast! This slower-paced introduction of the main characters has been spectacularly successful. Instead of trying to dump them all at once in the first episode, we’ve taken our time and got to know more about each of them as the show introduced them, and that’s really been a great way to handle it.

As Dr Jurati meets Elnor, she finally finds out the answer to a question she – and we as the audience – had from earlier: what was the Qowat Milat’s criteria for signing up? The answer – they only volunteer for lost or hopeless causes.

Elnor and Dr Jurati meet aboard La Sirena.

Narek receives a visit from Rizzo back on board the Artifact. She teases him about his “robot girlfriend”, and half-strangles him to get him to tell her the only useful piece of information he’s found so far – he believes, as Ramdha did, that Soji is Seb-Cheneb or “the destroyer”. He cautions her, pleadingly, about avoiding another activation – as happened to Dahj in Remembrance. But Rizzo tells him that the endgame is the same – they plan to kill Soji when they find out where she and Dahj came from. She gives him one more week to get more information out of her, before she will take action. I’m sure that the “one week” timeframe is no coincidence – it’s a reference to something happening in the next episode!

The episode closes with a final scene aboard La Sirena. The bird-of-prey mentioned earlier, and seen in the trailers, is fighting Rios’s ship, trying to push them into the planet’s defence grid which will destroy them. We get to see the scale of La Sirena better here – it’s much smaller than the bird-of-prey, and is thus more manoeuvrable. However, it takes the intervention of another ship to disable the bird-of-prey and save La Sirena – and as that ship is about to be destroyed, Picard makes the decision to beam its pilot on board. The pilot is, of course, revealed to be Seven of Nine.

Seven of Nine’s appearance was unfortunately telegraphed well before she beamed aboard.

Overall, I really enjoyed Absolute Candor. The Qowat Milat are an interesting and unique faction within Star Trek, at least that I’m aware of, and Romulan society – both pre- and post-supernova – is being explored in much richer detail than we’ve ever seen before. Unlike with the Klingons in Discovery, who many have argued overwrote some aspects of Klingon culture and design that had been present in past iterations of Star Trek, nothing we’ve seen of the Romulans so far contradicts what we already knew – it merely advances the story of the faction and adds to our knowledge and understanding. In that sense, the Romulans were a much better choice for Star Trek: Picard’s main faction than the Klingons were for Discovery. Whereas the Klingons’ history and culture had been explored in depth thanks to Worf and B’Elanna being main characters, and the Klingons’ prominent role in many episodes and films, the Romulans, despite being a known faction, were much more of a blank slate for the new creators to work with.

Having the full cast together is great, and now that we’re four episodes in we really should be expecting that. Elnor has two very clear influences, at least in my opinion. This episode played up a distinctly Japanese aesthetic for him – the way the convent was styled and his weapon in particular. The way he fights is reminiscent of samurai stories and martial arts films, further adding to that. But there’s also what I think is a pretty clear nod to Tolkein-esque elves in his appearance – particularly his clothing and his hair. Elnor’s look borrows much from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film trilogies – though Elnor is more emotional and less stoic than most of the elves in those films.

I enjoyed a number of the little nods and winks to returning fans: the TOS bird-of-prey, the use of the phrase “jolan tru”, the older style of combadge in the flashback sequence, the bottle of what looks like Romulan Ale on the Artifact, and the comparable state of Vashti and Nimbus III. It’s so clear from practically every moment, whether Picard is on screen or not, that this show is 100% a Star Trek show, and I really needed that. Discovery had plenty of great Star Trek-y moments too, but sometimes those could get drowned out by other elements of the plot. And the Kelvin films similarly had some highs and some lows when it came to feeling like a genuine part of the franchise. Picard, thus far at least, has had very few low points in general, and oozes that elusive Star Trek quality in every single scene.

I loved the return of the *TOS*-era bird-of-prey.

It was great to see La Sirena in her first real firefight. Rios is clearly a good captain and a skilled pilot – but I’m a little concerned that the ship was so easily outmatched by a vessel a century-and-a-half old. I’m not sure this bodes all that well for future battles, but with Seven of Nine and – possibly – others tailing Picard, perhaps they can count on some additional support.

One of my friends, who I know isn’t a Star Trek fan, texted me yesterday to show me that they were sitting down with family to watch the latest episode. Apparently it has become a big deal for them to watch it together and they’ve loved seeing Picard’s new adventures. I know this is one person and it’s anecdotal, but I really get the impression that Star Trek: Picard is breaking through to new and old fans alike in a way that Discovery never really did. And that’s fantastic news – as someone who loves Star Trek and wants to see more of it, I’m always thrilled when it seems to be a success.

Seeing Seven of Nine again, after such a long hiatus, was great as well, even though she was only on screen briefly. We’ve seen Hugh back, of course, but many returning fans will have much more of a connection to Seven of Nine than to Hugh. The first few episodes have all been about bringing the crew together and setting up mysteries – and this time I finally feel that we’ve turned the page and are now beginning to get some more information about what’s been going on. There’s still so much to learn in the next few episodes, and I can’t wait for next week, where Jonathan Frakes will be back to direct Stardust City Rag. What a great name for an episode!

Absolute Candor – and the previous three episodes of Star Trek: Picard – are available to stream now on CBS All Access in the United States, and on Amazon Prime Video in the United Kingdom and other countries and territories. The Star Trek franchise – including Star Trek: Picard – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: The Next Generation re-watch – The Measure of a Man

Thu 13.02.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There will be spoilers for the first three episodes of Star Trek: Picard – as well as for The Measure of a Man from TNG Season 2.

When I was compiling two lists of episodes to watch prior to the release of Star Trek: Picard, I only included The Measure of a Man, from The Next Generation’s second season, as an afterthought in one of my “honourable mentions” sections. Despite having seen some androids briefly in one of the trailers, and even after having seen Mars come under attack in the Short Treks episode Children of Mars, I still wasn’t convinced this episode would be important. I wound up including it in my second list of episodes, but not because of androids or Bruce Maddox, but because of how it showed an aspect of Picard’s character – his staunch defence of the rights of different life-forms.

We now know, of course, that Maddox has a key role in Star Trek: Picard, though whether he’s actually going to appear in person or is merely a narrative force is unclear right now. And of course we’ve learnt a lot more about synthetics and the development and subsequent prohibition of synthetic life. Thus, at this point, The Measure of a Man warrants a re-watch and a closer re-examination.

Watching an episode so long after its original airdate, and after we’ve seen so much Star Trek content that was produced subsequently, it’s worth trying to stay objective and be aware of where the three characters we’ll be focusing on are at this point in the timeline. Obviously Maddox was a guest star, and aside from a reference in the fourth season, was never seen or heard about again until Picard premiered. But Data and Picard are arguably different than we might remember considering how early we are in The Next Generation’s run. This episode aired before Q Who introduced the Borg, before Picard was assimilated, and before Data had really developed a strong personality that extended beyond his original programming.

Data plays poker with his crewmates in the opening scene from *The Measure of a Man*.

The Next Generation operated differently to Discovery and Picard – it was much more of an ensemble show with each crewmember having their own stories and episodes, rather than focusing primarily on one character’s story. So Data and Picard, by this point in the show, still have significant parts of their backstories unexplored.

The episode opens, as many episodes of The Next Generation did, with Picard narrating his captain’s log. Nothing too exciting – the Enterprise-D is due to dock at a starbase, pick up and drop off some members of the crew, and switch out some science experiments that have presumably been running in the background. On board, we see Data, Riker, O’Brien, La Forge, and Dr Pulaski playing poker. Data seems confused by some of the “superstition” that the others apply to their playing – he can’t quite grasp the concept of “luck” in a game of chance. Again, it’s worth remembering how early we are in Data’s story! This might be the first game of poker he’s played, and just as he struggled with the others feeling lucky or unlucky, he was completely unprepared for bluffing – it’s such an illogical way of playing, after all.

In this moment, Data is still very much a machine, regarding the game as “simple”, based around mathematical probability and assuming that everyone will play logically. Having this sequence be the setup for an episode about taking him apart to find out what makes him tick is an interesting choice; we see Data at his most mechanical, but we also see in him an adaptability and a desire to learn and grow. The costuming choice to give Data a poker visor was also a great call – he’s approximating and mimicking human behaviour, but without fully understanding it.

Seeing Data easily outmanoeuvred by Riker – despite holding a better hand – emphasises how much he still has left to learn. Riker wasn’t betting on the strength of his cards, he was simply betting that Data would fold – Data thus missed a key element of playing poker. But he learns from this experience, much like a child would.

As an interesting aside, the next shot shows the Enterprise-D approaching Starbase 173. The model used for the Starbase was in fact a re-use of the Regula One station from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and is virtually unchanged in its appearance (except for, I believe, its scale in relation to the Enterprise-D). This model was itself a re-use from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. With CGI generally being so good nowadays, it’s almost hard to imagine a time when a single model would have to be re-used over and over again – and The Measure of a Man was not the last appearance of this model by any means.

Aboard the station, Picard is reunited with Phillippa Louvois, accompanied by a very romantic soundtrack. He seems very surprised to see her, and she is clearly an old flame of his – someone who he didn’t part with on good terms judging by their conversation! But the passage of time can be a great healer, and where other people may have held a grudge, Picard is amused, and maybe even happy to see her again. The credits roll, and then we’re back with Picard and Louvois, sitting down to have a longer conversation.

Louvois holds the rank of captain – putting her on equal footing with Picard – and her uniform matches his. She’s not the first woman captain featured in The Next Generation – there was at least one other in Season 1 – but she gets a significant amount of screen time here. She explains that she’s the JAG (judge advocate general – i.e. a military judge, or in this case a Starfleet judge) for this sector, and the way she talks about it makes it seem like a remote part of the Federation, far from any other Starbases. It’s the frontier!

We find out about Louvois’ history with Picard – she was the officer responsible for his court-martial after his previous command was lost. We’ve seen the Stargazer before in The Next Generation, in the episode The Battle, and we also know that Dr Crusher’s husband was serving on the Stargazer under Picard’s command when he was killed. Louvois says that a court-martial is “standard procedure” when a ship is lost, but Picard accuses her of being overly aggressive in her prosecution of him – and says that’s why she left Starfleet for a time. There’s a very complicated history here. Louvois calls Picard out on his arrogance – which to be fair, he actually was in this scene. But the chemistry and sexual tension between them is noticeable – there’s much more to their relationship than something professional or friendly.

After the awkwardness of seeing Picard called a “damn sexy man”, an Admiral approaches and Louvois excuses herself – but not before taking the opportunity to try to embarrass Picard in front of their superior. The Admiral introduces Commander Bruce Maddox, but they don’t immediately discuss Maddox’s proposal as the Admiral wants a tour of the Enterprise while it’s visiting his new Starbase. Maddox joins the Admiral on the tour, and they visit the Enterprise’s bridge. There is some discussion of the Starbase’s location being near the Neutral Zone, but the focus is clearly on Maddox, cutting to a close-up of him staring at Data.

Maddox interrupts the small-talk about the Romulans and the legacy of past starships Enterprise, clearly impatient. The Admiral tells Picard that Maddox is here “to work on your android”, then promptly leaves the bridge. Data, Picard, and Maddox have a conversation set to a backdrop of very tense music. Clearly all is not well. Maddox, it turns out, opposed Data’s entry into Starfleet Academy some years prior, claiming Data was not a sentient being and was thus not eligible. Picard asks what Maddox plans to do and he replies calmly that he is “going to disassemble Data.”

The way Maddox has been set up thus far is of someone who is impatient and impersonal – arguably lacking in empathy. He refers to Data as “it”, a term one might use for an inanimate object. Data is, anatomically speaking, male. In the second episode of The Next Generation’s first season, The Naked Now, Data sleeps with Tasha Yar and though we don’t see it on screen it’s confirmed that he is, for all intents and purposes, male. So Maddox dehumanising Data in this way, while subtle, shows us the kind of person he is.

Maddox explains his reasoning in the next scene – seeing Data when he first applied to the Academy sparked a desire in Maddox to learn more about the work of Dr Soong, Data’s creator. His intention is to dismantle Data, learning how he functions, in order to recreate him and produce copies. Maddox believes himself to be close to a breakthrough, and Data is intrigued at the prospect, in part no doubt because he’s been essentially alone as the only one of his kind. Riker, on the other hand, seems much more concerned. Data asks Maddox a technobabble-laden question, and when Maddox replies that he hasn’t been able to get the basics of a positronic brain working, Data’s tone changes from interest to concern – and after a couple more questions from both Riker and Picard, Data pipes up and says that Maddox’s research is inadequate. Picard says he will not allow Data to undergo the procedure, but Maddox has a trump card – Data is to be reassigned under his command.

Maddox makes his case to Picard – as well as to Riker and Data – in the briefing room of the Enterprise-D.

In the next scene, Data arrives in Picard’s ready room and the two have a conversation about what to do regarding Maddox. Data says he will not undergo the procedure, but Picard is playing devil’s advocate – wondering aloud whether there is merit to Maddox’s idea. Data uses the example of La Forge’s visor, and claims that his status as a non-human is why Picard would even consider letting Maddox experiment on him. Picard dismisses him but is clearly troubled by the implications. He gets to work reading Starfleet case law regarding officer transfers.

After what must be some time, Picard visits Louvois in her office aboard the Starbase, and is clearly very angry about Data’s forced transfer. The usual calmness we associate with Picard is gone, replaced by a firey demeanour borne perhaps from a combination of frustration at the legalese he’s been trying to wade through and his previous conversation with Data. After all, Data did essentially say that Picard and Maddox are being racist (or species-ist) in their treatment of him. Louvois gives Picard a “nuclear option” for getting Data out of the procedure – his resignation. There’s no other way to stop the transfer, and as Picard doesn’t trust Maddox, this seems to be the only way. Again the complicated past between Picard and Louvois complicates their conversation, but the advice she gives him is sound. And as she’s the senior officer in the sector for legal matters, that should be it.

Back aboard the Enterprise-D, Data is packing his belongings, and pauses briefly over a hologram of Tasha Yar. Maddox enters the room while Data has his back turned, and picks up a book that Data had been reading. Barging in without ringing the door chime is another way Maddox demonstrates to the audience that he doesn’t regard Data as warranting the same rights or respect as a human or other life-form. He tries to reassure Data that his knowledge and memories will remain intact despite the procedure, but Data retorts that the facts may remain, but the feelings associated with them will be lost. He then uses the example of the poker game from earlier in the episode – that the moment-to-moment reality, the essence of his experiences, is not just a case of data and facts. Maddox, Data claims, does not have the necessary expertise to preserve Data’s memories and personality.

It’s at this moment that Data explains that he has resigned. Maddox becomes angry and tells him that one way or another he will serve under his command – and undergo the procedure. It’s clear that Maddox’s attempts at gentle persuasion were all for show; this is how he really feels. Believing Data to be a “thing”, an object not a person, he pays lip service to Data’s feelings while not understanding them or even recognising their existence. In the next scene, Picard and Maddox are in Louvois’ office, where Maddox has started a legal process to prevent Data leaving Starfleet, saying that as a non-sentient being he cannot resign of his own volition.

Maddox presents the argument that if he’s successful, every Federation starship could have its own Data on board, allowing for much greater exploration and potentially even saving lives. He’s “sick of hearing about rights” – a shocking statement in and of itself – and selfishly makes the point that this is his life’s work, and he doesn’t want it to be ruined by what he sees as the ignorance of Picard and Louvois. Data, in Maddox’s view, is “just” a machine, and because of that does not have the right to either refuse to undergo the procedure or to resign.

While Picard listens in, Maddox makes his case to Capt. Louvois.

Picard has a great line here: “Starfleet is not an organisation that ignores its own regulations when they become inconvenient.” In Remembrance, the first episode of Star Trek: Picard, this is essentially his own reasoning for leaving Starfleet. He felt that they had an obligation to help the Romulans and failed to do so – ignoring their own regulations, and a promise made, because it had become difficult in the aftermath of the attack on Mars.

Maddox manages to convince Louvois that there may be law to support the notion that Data – like the Enterprise’s computer – is not a “person” in the legal sense, but is merely the property of Starfleet. Picard urges her to use the same passion she showed at his court-martial. Though Maddox and Picard don’t interact much here, as they mostly direct their remarks to Louvois, it’s clear that they have very quickly developed a loathing for one another. Picard feels Maddox is essentially ignoring Data’s rights as a sentient being, and Maddox believes that Picard doesn’t understand the issue and is unfairly getting in the way of his work.

Back aboard the Enterprise, Data is attending a farewell party. Riker, Troi, Worf, Pulaski, and Wesley are all present in Ten-Foward, and Data receives several gifts from his friends, but La Forge is sat alone, away from the group. He’s feeling very down about the whole situation. In this moment, we see Data at his most human – La Forge is arguably his best friend among the crew, and when he says he will miss him, he really means it.

Louvois summons Riker and Picard to tell them that, according to her research and legal precedent from 300 years ago, Data is legally the property of Starfleet and not a person. Picard challenges her ruling, but the fact that the Starbase is new and she has no one working with her threatens to cause a problem. The solution is that Picard and Riker will take on the role of advocates – Picard arguing for Data and Riker against him.

This is the point in the episode which is the most questionable, I feel, as a point of plot. Riker is chosen to prosecute Maddox’s case as a senior officer, but Maddox himself is of equal rank to Riker and would be a better candidate – especially as Riker states very clearly that he can’t advocate a position he fundamentally disagrees with. I’m no expert on the law, let alone on military law, but surely there must be someone else who could have taken on the position. Or, if not, it should have been possible to send for lawyers from elsewhere – Maddox’s experiment is not time-sensitive and could have waited for the case being resolved. As it is, however, Riker and Picard agree to proceed with the case.

La Forge wishes Data good luck at his going-away party aboard the Enterprise-D.

As the scene ends, I think we see the real genius of setting up Louvois as having history with Picard. If he’d been facing off against a random, faceless judge or JAG, we would know the stakes but we’d be confident in his abilities and ultimate victory in the case. But knowing Louvois is a “hardball”, someone who prosecuted Picard aggressively in the past regarding his conduct on the Stargazer, it raises the stakes and there’s a real sense in this moment that Picard and Data could lose. Because we’ve always seen Picard to be a rule-following officer, an exemplar of Starfleet’s code of conduct, and an all-round upstanding captain and diplomat, knowing that Louvois went after him in the past makes her seem all the more aggressive in her handling of the law. We get the sense that things could end badly, that the one factor Picard has no control over in the case – the judge – is someone who will work hard against him and Data. This information, conveyed only in a few brief lines of dialogue in their earlier two encounters in the episode, has set the stage and told us all we need to know.

Data again visits Picard in his ready room, and Picard explains the ruling and the challenge he’s making to it. He offers Data the opportunity to select another officer to provide his defence, but Data declines – an important moment given the earlier conversation they had in the same room. We then see Riker studying the law in preparation for the case, feeling pretty rotten about what he has to do. He looks up Data’s technical schematics, smiling to himself as he thinks he’s found something – then his mood and the background music turn sour as he realises the implications. Riker doesn’t want, after all, to win the case. And getting caught up in it for a moment and allowing himself to feel excitement at a breakthrough ends up making him feel worse about the task.

At the hearing, Riker calls Data to take the stand. Could Data have refused, as he’s essentially being compelled to serve as both evidence and a witness for his own prosecution? I think that’s a matter of law again! And if he did refuse to take the stand, would there have had to have been another case to answer the question of whether he has the right to refuse to testify? Regardless, Data takes the stand and his commendations and decorations from Starfleet are listed by the Starbase computer (notably not the usual computer voice). Riker asks the simple question “what are you?” to which Data responds that he is an android. Riker pushes him for the definition of the word, which includes a sentence that androids “resemble” humans, but are obviously not, in fact, human. He then pushes Data on his creator, making the point that Data was artificially made.

None of this, really, seems relevant to the hearing. Data’s nature is known to all parties and his defence does not depend on proving himself to be anything other than an android. But for dramatic effect it’s important, as essentially the fact that Data was man-made is the entirety of the prosecution’s case against him. Interestingly, and completely unrelated to the events of the episode, Data states that his total memory capacity is “800 quadrillion bits”. If a 24th Century “bit” is assumed to be the same as today’s computer bits, that would put his memory at 800 petabits, or 100 petabytes as there are eight bits to one byte. While this is a lot of memory, it’s not as huge as it may sound even by today’s standards. It’s roughly an order of magnitude less than the most up-to-date estimates of the size of the data stored on the internet, for example. And that’s something which is growing all the time. It is, however, much greater than the capacity of a human brain or memory – though the comparison is an inexact one as we don’t store and process memories and information in the same form. But there are computers and servers in the world today which can store as much or more information that Data can – something which would obviously have been hard to conceive when The Measure of a Man aired in 1989, before the invention of what we know of as the internet today.

Riker looks up Data’s schematics in preparation for the hearing.

As Riker continues with his demonstrations, Maddox is seen smiling to himself – he seems to think the two of them have the case sewn up. Data is forced to bend a steel rod to demonstrate his physical prowess to the hearing, and Riker then removes his forearm and hand – apologising to Data as he does so. Riker then tries to explain that Data was made “to serve human needs”; that is his sole purpose. Of course, having already seen Data with his “brother” in the first season episode Datalore, we know this isn’t really true. Lore was a companion to the colonists on Omicron Theta, and Data was designed to be so too. Riker has also fallen into the habit of referring to Data as “it” in this moment, and as he continues his speech about Data he walks behind him – hitting a hidden “off switch”, which we’d previously seen Data show to Dr Crusher and others in the aforementioned episode Datalore.

Picard and Louvois are both shocked by this, and Riker sits back down. He clearly thinks that this is a case-winning move, and the look of shame and self-loathing on his face confirms that. Maddox smiles, smugly. Picard requests a recess and tells Guinan, back on board the Enterprise, that Riker’s words in the hearing “almost” convinced him of Data’s status.

Guinan’s response, that if Data is ruled to be merely property, it could pave the way for “whole generations of disposable people” warrants a closer look. And we have to step back and consider The Measure of a Man and its place in our own history. In 1989, we’re 25 years out from the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act which put an end to legal segregation in parts of the United States. In living memory for a significant portion of the audience was segregation – itself a hangover from the days of slavery. And this line, delivered in a very calm manner by a black woman, absolutely references slavery without her ever using the term by name. The implication for Picard is clear – if he loses the case, and androids are ruled to be property and not people, it’s the first step to the creation of a slave underclass in the Federation.

This moment changes the way Picard approaches the case. The word “property”, he believes, is merely a euphemism for slavery. And he returns to work with a renewed sense of purpose. Again, given his state of mind in the first three episodes of Star Trek: Picard, I’d direct anyone who says that Picard “would never get depressed” to look to this moment and others from The Next Generation to see how he can become defeatist and sit in self-pity. It took Guinan here to give him the kick he needed, just as it took Dahj to snap him out of how he’d been feeling in Remembrance.

During a recess in the hearing, Picard is counselled by Guinan.

Back at the hearing, Picard says that humans are simply “machines of a different type” to Data, and his mechanical status is not relevant to the case. Picard asks Data to return to the stand, and presents him with the bag he packed earlier in the episode – demonstrating that Data has a semi-emotional attachment to things like his medals and a book gifted to him from Picard. The final item from Data’s bag is the hologram of Tasha Yar, and after some gentle prompting from Picard, Data discloses he and Yar had been intimate – to the surprise of Louvois and Maddox.

Maddox then takes the stand, and Picard runs him through three tests for sentience. This is also, by the way, the first time the Daystrom Institute is named on screen. Maddox lists three criteria for sentience – intelligence, self-awareness, and consciousness. Picard proceeds to quiz him on why these apply to him – a human – and not to Data. Maddox is forced to concede that Data is intelligent and that he’s self-aware, as Data’s intelligence was never in question and he’s clearly aware of his place in the hearing and the potential consequences it could bring.

Maddox then talks briefly about his plans to disassemble Data – to rebuild him and thousands more like him. Picard challenges that by doing so, he will be creating a race of beings – a race that meet two of Maddox’s own criteria for sentience. If there’s even a chance that Data could meet the third, would the Federation have created a race of slaves? This is where we see Picard at the most passionate he gets, not just in the context of this episode but in almost all of his appearances in Star Trek to date. Aside from the emotional reaction he has to the Borg in First Contact, I can’t remember seeing him more energetic and involved. He cares for Data’s rights, but his conversation with Guinan shifted his whole perspective on the case, and now he has an even greater passion and reason to win. He admits to the court that he doesn’t know whether Data has consciousness, nor what that would mean if a race of Datas were created from Maddox’s work. But the implication he makes, as Guinan did earlier, is clear – they’re on a cliff-edge, with slavery at the bottom.

Picard also turns on its head the Starfleet mantra – “to seek out new life”. “There it sits,” he says as he gestures to Data. As he concludes his speech we see Riker smile for the first time since the hearing began. He’s never seen Picard so animated, and he clearly thinks the argument is a case-winner. And in short order he’s proven right. Louvois says she must allow Data the freedom to explore his life and consciousness for himself, and without explicitly ruling on his “personhood”, she rules that he is not the property of Starfleet and that he has the right to choose.

Maddox and Data have a moment of semi-reconciliation at the end of the hearing, as Maddox cancels the order to have Data transferred, and Data tells him to keep working and suggests that he may be able to agree to the procedure in future when more work has been undertaken. Maddox, disappointed by the ruling no doubt, appears to have had his opinion and perspective on Data shifted at least slightly by Picard’s argument – emphasised by his use of the word “he” right at the end.

Picard invites Louvois to dinner – as they reconcile too. Back aboard the Enterprise, Riker has declined to attend a party in Data’s favour, feeling that he came too close to costing his friend his life. But Data reminds him that if he had refused to participate, the ruling would have been made against him, and the episode ends with the two of them heading to the party.

So, when considering Star Trek: Picard, what do we get from The Measure of a Man? Obviously we see Dr Maddox, some thirty-five years prior to the events of the new series. We see his attitude toward androids – he considers them to be tools, not people. But we also see his attitude shift right at the end, swayed by Picard’s argument and the time spent with Data over the course of the episode. Maddox, despite moments of smugness, isn’t a classic villain. Instead, the episode shows what is basically a difference of opinion. Maddox, having studied androids from a theoretical standpoint for years, but with no practical real-world experience in living and working with Data holds the opinion that Data cannot be sentient. But Picard, Riker, and others, despite not having the same technical background as Dr Maddox believe Data to be their friend despite his synthetic nature. The episode thus shows the difference between theory and practice – and why practice is usually better and more appropriate!

Maddox obviously continued his work, as Data encouraged him to do. In the episode Data’s Day from Season 4, he dictates a letter to Maddox, confirming this. However, by the time of Star Trek: Nemesis, which takes place around fifteen years later, Data is still believed to be the only extant android – Lore having been disassembled. The discovery of B4 – an earlier version of Data – in that film is thus presented as a big deal. However, as we now know from Short Treks and Star Trek: Picard that teams of androids – albeit rather basic ones from a personality point of view – were working on Mars only a few years after Nemesis, Maddox must have been quite far along in his work by that point. It’s also possible that the discovery and disassembly of B4 provided Maddox with some of the missing pieces of the puzzle that he’d hoped to gain by dismantling Data.

Watching The Measure of a Man divorced from all thought of Picard is difficult, especially as we’re partway through the first season of the new show. But taken as a standalone episode, it’s an interesting piece of drama, the kind Star Trek has always been good at. Without any battles, explosions, or really any action at all, the episode manages to be riveting, especially in the hearing scenes. And of course it’s a great example of Star Trek using its science fiction setting to talk about real-world issues. In this case the issue was slavery rather than artificial intelligence, but looking back on it knowing the way technology has changed since, it can absolutely be viewed through than lens too.

Maddox was, aside from his single reference a couple of years later, a one-off character who served a fairly one-dimensional purpose for most of the episode. Bringing him back in a big way for Picard is something I absolutely was not expecting, and whether we get to see him on screen or not, his influence is all over the show. The Measure of a Man is not required viewing for Picard. The new show is structured and written in such a way that the role Maddox takes in the story could be swapped out for any other name and the story would be identical. But it does provide interesting background and backstory.

The development of a “race” of androids was clearly successful in the years after *Nemesis.*

Having had Maddox’s name dropped multiple times across the first three episodes, I would be surprised to learn we aren’t going to see him at all. A single reference would’ve been a cute throwback to The Measure of a Man and Data’s Day; a wink to returning fans. But with him being set up as perhaps the creative force behind Soji and Dahj, and with tracking him down being the driving force for the current storyline, I think he practically has to appear – at least in some capacity, even if it’s just in recordings – before the end of the season.

The legal precedent laid down in this episode was clearly not applied throughout the Federation. In the Voyager episode Author, Author, not only does The Doctor – a sentient hologram – have to undergo a very similar legal hearing, but we learn that thousands of Emergency Medical Holograms are being used as labourers in mines and on vessels across the Federation. And of course, in Picard we see that Maddox had been somewhat successful in creating his “slave race” of android labourers. There are disturbing implications there, which I wonder if the show will touch on in later episodes.

I enjoyed going back to The Measure of a Man. I wouldn’t like to guess how many times I’ve seen it already; as with most of the rest of The Next Generation and its spin-offs I’ve watched and re-watched it on a number of occasions.

The fourth episode of Picard premieres tomorrow here in the UK – though if you’re in America you may have seen it already! I’m looking forward to seeing if Picard and his new crew stay on Maddox’s tail as they head to Freecloud.

The Star Trek franchise – including Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Picard – are the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

The Borg: Space Zombies

Wed 12.02.20Thu 10.10.24Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the Star Trek franchise, including Star Trek: Discovery Season 2 and the first three episodes of Star Trek: Picard.

As part of a series of articles I wrote leading up to the release of Star Trek: Picard, I covered the Borg from an in-universe perspective, as well as looking at some possible options for their role in the new series. You can read that article by clicking or tapping here. While Star Trek: Picard remains a mysterious show even now that we’re three episodes in, the Borg’s role has been somewhat on the sidelines so far, as we’ve really only seen a few former Borg and the disabled Borg cube used as a setting.

For a while I’ve been wanting to look at the Borg from a storytelling perspective, because I think they’re one of Star Trek’s most interesting villains. Not only that, but they have an analogue outside of the franchise which we can compare them to – zombies. Both the Borg and zombies fill a similar role in the stories they appear in, and both can fall victim to the same storytelling pitfalls.

Let’s start with the most obvious comparison – and why both the Borg and zombies are a frightening adversary for any heroes to be pitted against. With the exception of the Borg’s first appearance in The Next Generation’s second season episode Q Who, the Borg’s sole purpose has been assimilation. By forcibly injecting their nano-technology into both machines and living organisms, practically anything they touch can become part of the Borg Collective in a matter of moments. Zombies are a low-tech, biological version – in almost every zombie story, the zombie infection spreads through biting. Thus both Borg and zombies don’t just kill, they turn everyone the heroes lose into another enemy to fight. And the infection or invasion can never be truly over until every last individual is defeated, because if even one Borg drone or one zombie remains, there’s the possibility for them to attack others and start all over again.

The Borg take on a similar role in some respects to zombies – such as those in *The Walking Dead*.

This one factor – that every friend lost doesn’t just reduce the numbers on the heroes’ side, but increases the number of enemies to fight – is huge. It means that a story featuring a Borg or zombie attack is completely different in tone and scope from any other war or invasion or battle that we might see in science fiction. And it’s a frightening prospect, seeing allies quite literally turned into enemies before the very eyes of the heroes. In fact, it’s arguable that the Borg’s appearances are as close as Star Trek as come to crossing over into the horror genre. The underlying premise, certainly, would be at home there. And if ViacomCBS ever chose to go down that route, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine a Borg-themed horror film or series.

One of the great things about entertainment and storytelling is that it’s subjective. The audience can interpret themes and points in a story in different ways, and anyone who’s ever taken a literature class can attest that! When I was in school and in the few literature classes I took at university, my teachers were always talking about analogies and themes and metaphors. And when it comes to the Borg, there are different interpretations as to a real-world analogue.

One of the most obvious is communism. Despite what’s often been said, Star Trek doesn’t really depict a “communist utopia”. The economy of the 23rd and 24th Centuries has always been deliberately ambiguous, and really I think it’s fairer to describe it as a post-scarcity economy, thanks in large part to technologies like food replicators and interstellar travel. Humans in Star Trek can still, for example, own and inherit property – like we see Joseph Sisko and the Picard family do – something which indicates that we’re not looking at communism. But that’s rather beside the point. The Borg, to get back on topic, with their lack of individuality and aggressively expansionist mindset, are arguably a metaphor for Western fears of communist states during the latter part of the Cold War. The history of Star Trek is littered with Cold War metaphors, and at the time the Borg were created and debuted on screen in 1989, the Berlin Wall hadn’t yet fallen and the Soviet Union was still the world’s “other” superpower.

Since the concept of the “walking dead” came to mainstream attention in the 1960s, critics have said the same thing about zombies, too – that they’re a metaphor for America’s communist adversaries. The comparison plays on a crude stereotype – that all people in a communist state are brainwashed and forced to do the state’s bidding. However, my intention isn’t to critique the concept, merely to acknowledge its existence. In a very real sense, part of what makes zombies and the Borg so frightening is the idea of losing oneself, and suffering “a fate worse than death”. For many in the Cold War era, ideas like communist infiltrators and brainwashed citizens returning from overseas – including former prisoners of war – were genuine concerns, if somewhat overstated and exaggerated.

Picard’s transformation into Locutus of Borg was shocking.

It’s those underlying real-world fears that give power to the Borg when they appear. They wouldn’t be so scary if it weren’t for a shared fear we have of losing our identity – stoked by fears from the Cold War era, perhaps, but just as relevant today in the age of radicalisation via social media. How many young men – and it is almost always young men – have been involved in mass shootings or terrorist attacks after being radicalised online? The concept of brainwashing – and our collective fear of it – is still very much alive in society today. The emphasis has shifted from the state to individuals, perhaps, but the basic fear remains the same. And it continues to make villains like the Borg intimidating.

When it comes to turning that into an exciting, heart-stopping story, though, it’s all too easy to fall flat. What we’ve seen in Star Trek, especially in Star Trek: Voyager, is the overuse of the Borg. The same thing has happened to the zombies in The Walking Dead, and can happen to other villains in other series too – the Daleks from Doctor Who come to mind as another example of overuse. The fundamental problem with having the heroes outsmart and defeat the same villain too many times is that they simply lose their fear factor – no matter how powerful it may once have been and what underlying social factors are propping it up.

Every victory over the same opponent adds to a feeling that victory for the heroes is inevitable. And in many cases, we know that. Even in a series like Game of Thrones, which could be utterly unpredictable, nobody was genuinely expecting that the Night King would be victorious – we all knew that somehow, some of the heroes would survive and find a way to win. That didn’t make the story any less exciting, and nor is Star Trek: First Contact any less exciting for first-time viewers who expect Picard and his crew to find a way to defeat the Borg. The tension and drama comes on a moment-to-moment basis, and also, as in many stories, part of the enjoyment comes from the journey even if the overall destination – victory, in this case – is known.

But when the same scenario plays out over and over again – a scrappy Starfleet crew faces off against impossible odds and beats the Borg, for example – it gets less and less tense and less and less dramatic with each new revision. When we see the Borg lose to Janeway for the fourth or fifth time having already seen them bested twice by Picard, they become stale, and the stories in which they appear become uninteresting.

The addition of the Borg Queen is symptomatic of this. After several prior Borg stories, and with their first big-screen appearance looming, there must have been some discussion about how to make the Borg intimidating again. It wasn’t enough to have this faceless mass any more, the Borg needed something new in order to fit the bill as big-screen villains. Part of that stems from the need to keep the story cinematic; to have those moments where Picard is traumatised by his memories of the Borg Queen, to have Data tempted and taunted by her in a way a nameless drone couldn’t, and to be able to have dialogue between heroes and villains which is often a tense yet satisfying part of storytelling in and of itself. But a significant part of the Borg Queen’s role in First Contact and subsequently has been to rejuvenate the Borg as a faction from a storytelling perspective.

Telling unique and different Borg stories has become as much of a problem for Star Trek as making the zombies scary again is for The Walking Dead. Unlike that series – which I’d absolutely argue had a natural lifespan (forgive the pun) of about four seasons and should have ended at that point – Star Trek has a much richer galaxy to explore and plenty of other villains to play with. The Borg are not essential to Star Trek in the way that zombies are to zombie stories – and that’s definitely been a saving grace.

With the exception of the Star Trek: Enterprise episode Regeneration in 2003, there hadn’t been any Borg stories in Star Trek since Voyager’s finale in 2001 – and none which were set further forward in the Star Trek timeline. After an absence of close to two decades, then, there’s an argument to be made that enough time has passed for a renewed look at the Borg. For new fans and younger fans who didn’t see every single appearance in order, and for more casual viewers who may not have seen any Star Trek episode or film since the turn of the millennium, that’s probably a fair point. But even then, because the Borg are essentially “space zombies”, in an era where zombie stories have become a television and cinematic genre in their own right with dozens of examples, perhaps we’re still burnt out.

Here’s where the Borg’s trump card comes into play – they aren’t just a metaphor for our fears of communism or brainwashing. Because of their technological nature, they can absolutely be an analogy for our overreliance on technology and for our fears of the evolution of technology in the future. This is what Star Trek: Discovery’s second season did, very successfully in my opinion, with the Control AI. Now I’m absolutely convinced that Control was meant to tie in somehow to the Borg and their origins when the story was originally written. Why that angle was scrapped (if indeed it has been wholly scrapped) is unclear, but it could be related to the Borg being an integral part of the story of Star Trek: Picard. That’s my current theory on that, at any rate.

The whole point of the Control storyline in Discovery was that artificial intelligence might not be a good thing to pursue. When an AI surpasses humanity in its abilities, it becomes inherently unpredictable. It can overwrite its own programming and could turn on us. This isn’t just a science fiction story trope – scientists like Stephen Hawking have expressed genuine concern that an AI could ultimately be harmful. Technological progress has advanced so rapidly from even when The Next Generation was first on the air and computers were basically glorified calculators and typewriters to the modern day where everyone has an internet-enabled super-smart camera-and-microphone connected-to-everything always-on computer-phone about their person 24/7. Those changes have, thus far at least, been a net positive for humanity. In Africa, for example, the rise of mobile phones has meant many of the world’s poorest citizens have access to the internet and information, as well as the ability to send and receive money securely without relying on banking. But with change comes fear, or at least a sense of uncertainty. Discovery played on those fears and concerns about the pace of technological change quite expertly.

The nanobots Control used to “assimilate” Capt. Leland are reminiscent of Borg technology, and play on the same fears of out-of-control AI.

The decision to have Control be an invention of Section 31 was another masterstroke. Since Edward Snowden and Julian Assange (and many others, of course) have demonstrated to the world that major governmental organisations run hidden technological surveillance on, well, everyone, mistrust of technology and technological communication has only grown. The idea that we’re all being watched all the time by “big brother” in the various three-letter agencies, and their international equivalents, has caused a lot of people to be incredibly uneasy about technology in general. Once again, Discovery tapped into this to great effect.

To get back to the Borg, regardless of whether or not Control was meant to be related to them in some way, the same principle is at work. The relentless march of technology could see us literally plugging ourselves into some giant network of machines, or augmenting our bodies with technological upgrades. In a sense, we already do. Our phones and computers are arguably an extension of ourselves, we’re almost constantly networked to billions of others via the internet, with all of their experiences and information only a few keystrokes away, and as medical science advances we’re able to replace defective body parts – like hips, for example – with synthetic replacements. The Borg are simply a few steps further along from we currently are in their embrace of technology.

For many people, the unstoppable march of technology is something they find intimidating. It means that the future is always changing – and people in general have an inbuilt mistrust or fear of change. Thus the Borg stand out in stories that feature them as a kind of nightmarish vision of a future gone wrong.

By playing on these two deep-rooted, almost instinctive fears, the Borg are truly a frightening opponent for the heroes in Star Trek stories to face.

Keeping that fear alive is a task for the new creators of Star Trek. In Discovery, Control hit the reset button by showing us at least a potential precursor to the Borg we’ve seen before. Enterprise threw 24th Century Borg against a 22nd Century crew – not that it was always apparent, but that was part of the goal of that episode. And finally, in Picard we have the Borg absent from their own setting – a derelict cube being slowly picked apart and studied. There’s an inherent creepiness to the aesthetic of the cube – a kind of cold, inhuman feel, amplified by the lack of windows and endless maze of identical rooms and corridors. If the showrunners wanted to play up that aspect they absolutely could, and it will be interesting to see where Picard takes this angle.

What has to be avoided, however, is the trap that ensnared Voyager’s Borg episodes. Repetition leads to a loss of that fear factor, and without it the Borg become stale and boring – it would be better to see the faction utterly defeated in a climactic battle than to have them crop up again and again in random episodes over several seasons. The serialised nature of current Star Trek storytelling, which has replaced the episodic, “monster-of-the-week” format, means that we’re less likely to see individual Borg-centric episodes any more. And that’s probably a good thing overall – despite my personal preference for episodic storytelling in Star Trek.

The episode *Q Who* introduced the Borg for the first time.

At the end of the day, the question for the Star Trek franchise and its new creative team is what to do with the Borg in future. We saw what I’m certain was an abortive attempt to show some kind of origin story in Discovery’s second season, and now in Picard we have the creepy abandoned cube as a setting, as well as the return of Seven of Nine and Hugh as liberated ex-Borg. Both of these approaches are different, and that’s good. As great as The Best of Both Worlds and First Contact were, those stories were lightning in a bottle – not something that can be recaptured or repeated, at least not to the same effect. And the way stories approach and treat the Borg will have to change if they’re to be as intimidating as we want them to be. That doesn’t mean the Borg have to change in their core outlook or philosophy; doing so would mean they’re no longer the villain we remember, after all. But it does mean they have to be written in a different way and that their inclusion in future Star Trek stories has to be very carefully considered.

In a sense, the Borg’s greatest and most frightening aspect – their relentlessness and faceless nature – is also part of their undoing when considering their inclusion from a storytelling point of view. Because of their philosophy and the way they approach their assimilation targets, the Borg are very much a one-trick pony. They show up, either en masse or on a single vessel, overwhelm their opponents, forcibly assimilate them, and move on. They have one unwavering goal, and essentially only one method of achieving it. There are no Borg spies, no Borg generals to be outwitted, no Borg personalities to provide personal drama and conflict in a story. With the exception of the Borg Queen – who isn’t even really an exception as she is simply the face of the Borg, not a leader – the Borg operate as one entity with one goal and one approach.

The Voyager two-part episode Scorpion, which introduced Seven of Nine, took one of the most interesting looks at how the Borg’s single-mindedness can be their undoing. By presenting them with an opponent in Species 8472 who could not be assimilated, the Borg were on the back foot as the only method they had of information-gathering and conquest – they use assimilation for both purposes – did not work. This was a unique take on the Borg in Star Trek, but it had the unintended consequence of making them less intimidating as a result. As previously mentioned, any time we see a supposedly imposing villain failing in their objective, beaten and in retreat, it lessens the fear factor. As the audience, we know that they can be beaten – changing how we perceive stories. It stops being a question of “will the heroes prevail?” and instead becomes “when and/or how will they prevail?”

We need only look to Doctor Who for a case in point. Since its 2005 reboot, Doctor Who has seen its main villains, the Daleks, so thoroughly overused that they long ago became completely dull and unexciting. And two other villains, the Cybermen and Weeping Angels, have suffered from overuse too. As a result, since the latter half of Matt Smith’s tenure as the Eleventh Doctor, the show has limped along feeling played out. New villains and storylines have fallen flat – a consequence of mediocre writing – and the show is absolutely ready to go back on hiatus as there are no good ideas. It’s a lesson for Star Trek to learn, especially as production ramps up and there are multiple shows (and at least one film) all in various stages of development. Sometimes less is more. And also, when a storyline has run its course, and when a villain has done all they can reasonably do, unless there’s a new way to approach that story it’s time to put an end to it and move on.

The Borg haven’t yet reached that point. There is still space in Star Trek for new and exciting Borg stories, but they will have to be properly planned, not simply thrown in at the last minute. Like Doctor Who’s Daleks, the Borg are an iconic villain, emblematic of the franchise that spawned them. But they aren’t an infallible storytelling device that guarantees a successful film, season, or episode. And mishandled or overused, all the threat, tension, and drama they can bring will melt away leaving a bland, uninspiring film or episode behind.

The Artifact represents a new direction for Borg-related stories in Star Trek.

Between the zombies in The Walking Dead and the Daleks in Doctor Who, we have two great examples of how to mishandle and overuse villains like the Borg. Star Trek is fortunate to have such a rich history of alien races to draw on, and can hopefully avoid those pitfalls as we move into what will hopefully be the franchise’s second “golden age”.

The Borg are a frightening and compelling faction in the Star Trek universe, and there is still scope to learn more about them and see them return – in both big and small ways – in future episodes and films. And I’m looking forward to that, as well as to seeing what Picard has in store for this absolutely iconic faction. As I’ve said many times already, it’s a fantastic time to be a Star Trek fan right now. There’s just so much going on, and so much more to come. Discovery has had hits and misses, but in my opinion at least, Picard has been outstanding so far, and I’m interested to see what will come next. Surely, after the success the franchise has experienced over the last few weeks, this won’t be our last look at the 24th and early 25th Centuries – and unless something major happens to the Borg by the end of Picard’s first season, I’m sure that sooner or later we can expect to see them back once again.

The Star Trek franchise, including all films, episodes, and series mentioned above, is the copyright of ViacomCBS and Paramount Pictures. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Picard theories – week 3

Mon 10.02.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There will be spoilers ahead for the first three episodes of Star Trek: Picard as well as for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

The End is the Beginning gave me several new theories – it was a fascinating episode in that respect. There are so many mysteries that Star Trek: Picard has set up that it’s hard not to analyse every little detail and get lost in theory-crafting!

So without further ado, let’s jump into the theories. You may remember some from my previous two posts, but others are new based on what we learned this week. There was only one theory that’s almost certainly debunked, so let’s look at that first.

Debunked theory: Sentient holograms (like The Doctor from Voyager) are outlawed as part of the ban on synthetic life.

I had previously theorised that Index, the hologram from *Remembrance*, might be sentient.

This was one of my earliest theories, beginning almost as soon as we heard of the ban on synthetic life in Remembrance. My idea was that the term “synthetic” hadn’t really been used before in Star Trek to describe androids – it’s a much more broad term, perhaps covering other forms of artificial intelligence too. And aside from androids like Data, the only other sentient AIs we’ve seen in a major way in Star Trek have been holograms.

But in The End is the Beginning, Chris Rios has several holograms aboard his ship, La Sirena. They all share his appearance, which is a bit of fun in and of itself, but the interesting conversation he had was with his ENH, or Emergency Navigational Hologram. This hologram wasn’t just interactive, it was talking to Rios like a real person would. It was clearly far more than just a computerised tool with a human appearance – it was a full AI, as close to sentience as possible.

Based on this conversation, as well as the appearance of La Sirena’s EMH, I consider this theory debunked.

So that’s the only debunked theory from The End is the Beginning. Now let’s take a look at some new ones, as well as those from earlier which are still potentially in play!

Number 1: Dahj and Soji are human augments/genetically enhanced.

Soji on board the Artifact in *The End is the Beginning*.

I dropped this theory last week after having proposed it in my first theory post, not because it had been in any way debunked; I just felt it was a real long-shot. But one phrase from The End is the Beginning prompted me to bring it back.

When Picard, Laris, and Zhaban are questioning their Romulan captive, shortly before he ends his own life he says “she’s not what you think she is” – referring to Dahj (and also to Soji). Well, Picard is 100% convinced at this point that Dahj and Soji are androids built by Bruce Maddox. But if they aren’t, because the Romulan assassins know what they’re looking for, what could Dahj and Soji be?

In Remembrance, Dahj wasn’t just able to fight well. She could tell that she and Picard were going to come under attack minutes before the attackers appeared. They weren’t in the area for her to see out of the corner of her eye – they beamed in. That’s bordering on a telepathic premonition, and I don’t believe we’ve yet seen an android in Star Trek capable of that. In the same episode Dahj was also able to leap several dozen feet during the fight on the rooftop – again not something we’ve seen Data or other androids do. And finally, on the Artifact in The End is the Beginning, Soji seems to have a telepathtic experience too – knowing the name of the ship Ramdha was on before she was assimilated.

Could these abilities point to Dahj and Soji being genetically augmented humans? I think at this stage, as unlikely as it may seem, we can’t rule it out. For me, the biggest piece of evidence pointing to this is that Dahj and Soji must appear to be fully human on all sensor scans – because if they didn’t, Starfleet or someone else would have realised a long time ago that they aren’t. And then there’s the absolutely huge difference when comparing androids like F8 with Dahj and Soji. F8 was not a sentient machine – not even close. He was several steps behind Data from even his earliest appearances in The Next Generation. Yet somehow, Maddox has apparently managed not only to recreate Data, but to create a better, more human version of Data that can fool all sensors and security scans, in a little over a decade – without the support of any government, or many of his colleagues like Dr Jurati. Seems a bit of a stretch, doesn’t it?

Number 2: Dr Jurati isn’t who she seems to be – and could be a double-agent.

Dr Jurati immediately after killing a Romulan attacker.

Speaking of Dr Jurati, Alison Pill has been outstanding in the role so far in Star Trek: Picard. And were it not for one comment right at the end of The End is the Beginning this theory would not exist.

As Picard and his new crew prepare to warp off to Freecloud, Raffi seems incredulous at the inclusion of Dr Jurati. “You didn’t even ask me to run any kind of security check,” she exclaims, “not even the most basic!” Dr Jurati clearly has Picard’s trust – but Raffi is right, he doesn’t really know her and her desire to go on the mission is at least a little suspect.

What do we know about her? She’s a synthetics expert who has managed to retain her job despite the ban on synthetic life, conducting theoretical experiments while not actually being allowed to build anything. If her whole field of study had been effectively outlawed fourteen years ago, why would she still be working on it? What benefit does it bring the Federation or the Daystrom Institute to conduct “theoretical” research into synthetics?

When Commodore Oh visited Daystrom in The End is the Beginning, Dr Jurati looked surprised to see her – and a little intimidated. But their conversation wasn’t seen on-screen; instead Dr Jurati only tells Picard – and us as the audience – afterwards that she confessed everything. She also says something that I’ve only ever heard really good liars say: “I’m a bad liar.”

Next, she turns up at the château at almost the same moment as the Zhat Vash attackers. She picks up a discarded Zhat Vash weapon and uses it to kill the last remaining operative before he can harm Picard. Was that a genuine attempt to save his life, or a way of ingratiating herself with him? And how did she know how to use a Romulan disruptor? Are they just point-and-shoot weapons, or do you need to have some idea of what you’re doing in order to use one?

Finally, there’s the way she insists on joining Picard on the mission. She uses her credentials and experience with synthetics, but she also seems like she won’t take “no” for an answer at this point. Could all of these things be exactly what they seem – an academic who’s excited to have the chance to finally see a real synthetic after more than a decade in the wilderness? Possibly. But could she also be a sinister double-agent waiting to pounce?

Number 3: The synthetics were hacked.

The evidence for this one keeps stacking up. We saw F8 again, and got another close-up of his eyes as he seems to be receiving new orders or some kind of transmission. I couldn’t pause every single frame, but in some frames you can see words of what looks like computer code reflected in his eyes.

Raffi also adds to this theory when she talks to Picard in The End is the Beginning. While telling Picard about her evidence for a Starfleet-Romulan conspiracy, she says that the Romulans may have aided Starfleet or been aided by Starfleet to attack Mars and destroy the fleet. Picard scoffs at this and seems to dismiss it – why, after all, would the Romulans want to destroy a fleet built to help them? But I said right from the start that a rogue Romulan faction opposed to Federation help might just have done that – and the Zhat Vash fit the bill.

Other pieces of evidence we’ve collected along the way are: the suicide of F8 (and presumably the other synths as well), which prevented anyone from analysing them to discover what happened; the work crew on Mars describing F8 as “compromised”, a word which could absolutely describe a hack; the choice of target within the Sol system; the fact that the attack was clearly a coordinated effort and not random; and the fact that we can think of at least two factions who have the means and ruthlessness to do something like this.

They are of course the Zhat Vash, who have been set up as the antagonists in Star Trek: Picard, but also the Federation’s own Section 31.

Number 4: Chris Rios worked for Section 31.

Ash Tyler worked for Section 31 in *Discovery*; could Rios have also worked for the organisation?

Before he quit Starfleet prior to the events of the series, Chris Rios served as the XO – executive officer or first officer – of a Starfleet vessel named the Ibn Majid. This mission scarred him, as he saw his Captain – a man he had great respect for – brutally killed.

But he describes the Ibn Majid as having been “erased” by Starfleet after the events of this mission, and that doesn’t seem like something Starfleet would do. But it absolutely is something that Section 31 would do.

Section 31 is the secretive, black-ops division of Starfleet intelligence, who run off-the-books operations in a clandestine manner. With Section 31 having recently featured in Discovery and with a new series based on the organisation in the works, it seems like the creators of Star Trek would want to fit in some reference to it here in Star Trek: Picard. Having Section 31 be in Rios’ backstory would be a way to do that without it being a huge part of the plot, and his line about the Ibn Majid at least hints at something like this.

Number 5: The captain of the Ibn Majid was a character we’re familiar with.

While we’re talking about Rios’ former captain, one theory I have is that the deceased officer is someone we’re familiar with from a previous iteration of Star Trek. This would be less likely, perhaps, if Section 31 is involved, but if they aren’t and the ship he was on was just a regular Starfleet vessel, there are several candidates for who it could be – at least in my opinion! The only clue we have to this person’s identity is that they were a captain and they were male.

Chakotay – The former Maquis and first officer of Voyager had been a Starfleet officer before he resigned to fight alongside the Maquis. Ordinarily this would preclude him having a senior role, but his time on Voyager under Janeway’s command, and the experience he gained in the Delta Quadrant, may mean he could have rejoined Starfleet officially after Voyager’s return.

Edward Jellico – Seen in the TNG two-part episode Chain of Command, this hardball captain assumed command of the Enterprise-D when Picard undertook a secretive mission in Cardassian space. He clashed with Riker and others aboard the Enterprise, but ultimately managed to outmanoeuvre the Cardassians and win Picard’s freedom.

Capt. Bateson – Played by famous actor Kelsey Grammer in an episode of The Next Generation, Captain Bateson and his crew found themselves displaced in time from their 23rd Century origins to the mid-24th Century thanks to a temporal anomaly which also ensnared the Enterprise-D.

Harry Kim – Another officer on Voyager’s long trip through the Delta Quadrant, Harry Kim set his sights on command, and would often command Voyager’s night shift in the years before they returned to the Alpha Quadrant. In an alternate timeline he’d been promoted to Captain by the early 25th Century.

Solok – The Vulcan captain from the Deep Space Nine episode Take Me Out to the Holosuite was a decorated officer during the Dominion War, and a friendly rival of Benjamin Sisko.

There are others characters it could be, if indeed Rios’ captain is someone we’ve met before, but as there are literally hundreds of male Starfleet officers who either were captains or could have become captains, there are too many to list individually! I think this is at least a possibility. However, considering Rios’ former captain was killed it would be a shame to learn it was someone important from a previous Star Trek series as it would preclude us seeing them again in future.

Number 6: Narek is going to go rogue.

Narek told Soji he’s falling for her in *The End is the Beginning*.

In The End is the Beginning, Narek confesses to Soji that he’s “falling in love” with her. Whether this is true or merely a part of his act to get close to her, he’s almost immediately scolded by Rizzo, his superior officer, and warned not to fall for Soji. Could this be some foreshadowing?

If he does develop feelings for Soji then it makes sense to think he’d want to protect her from the Zhat Vash. He knows what they plan to do to her – interrogate her, according to Commodore Oh – but given the Zhat Vash’s apparent hatred of Soji and Dhaj, as well as their fear of them, Soji is in serious danger. Could Narek go rogue, turning on his current friends and allies, in order to save Soji from harm? If he’s seen to be failing in his mission, could she do something to save him, winning his loyalty?

Harry Treadaway has turned in some solid performances thus far in Star Trek: Picard. But it’s interesting to note he’s the only starring cast member to be on the opposite side to Picard and his crew – could that be an indication that we’re going to see him switch sides? With the exception of Mirror Lorca, whose true nature was concealed until the last minute, Star Trek has never had a villain as a main character before. And other Zhat Vash and co-conspirators, like Rizzo and Commodore Oh, are merely guest stars. Not sure how relevant this is, but it adds to the sense that we could be seeing Narek join forces with Picard and company.

Number 7: Starfleet is conspiring with the Zhat Vash.

Commodore Oh is looking less and less likely to be a Romulan agent and more like a co-conspirator. Raffi believed that the attack on Mars was a coordinated effort between a corrupt high-ranking Starfleet officer and the Romulans – though at the time she was unaware of the Zhat Vash. Picard told us that Raffi has a unique talent for seeing connections between seemingly unrelated things so she could be right!

Even if Commodore Oh isn’t a Starfleet officer, if she is truly a Romulan operative, it raises the serious question of how the Romulans were able to replace or have one of their operatives promoted to head of Starfleet security. It seems practically impossible to do without outside help.

The question is, aside from the obvious anti-synthetic crusade, what is the ultimate purpose of this conspiracy for both the Zhat Vash and Starfleet? The Zhat Vash have already won – synthetic life is banned, and the Federation and all other parties to the “galactic treaty” will crack down on synthetic research and development, as well as presumably shut down any rogue operators like Maddox who have flouted the ban. So what is the ultimate endgame? This is completely unclear.

Those are all of the new and updated theories after The End is the Beginning. But there are a few more theories, ones which this week’s episode neither advanced nor debunked. If you want a full breakdown of these, check out my last couple of theory posts, but I’ll list them here briefly.

Number 8: Picard assembled a new rescue fleet to help the Romulans after his resignation.

This stems from the steadfast loyalty of Laris and Zhaban – as well as from the line in the first trailer which says that Picard “commanded the greatest rescue armada in history”. There were around four years in between the destruction of his fleet and the Romulan supernova – plenty of time for Picard to do something to contribute to the rescue effort.

Number 9: Bruce Maddox is responsible for the attack on Mars – but it was probably an accident.

Picard with Bruce Maddox aboard the Enterprise-D.

In The End is the Beginning, immediately after the attack the synths were described as having a “fatal code error”. Maddox was one of the senior people in Starfleet’s synthetic research – could this be his fault? I don’t think we’ll find out until we either meet Maddox in person or learn what happened to him.

Number 10: The Trill doctor from Maps and Legends is going to wind up assimilated.

Is this Trill doctor about to wind up assimilated by remnants of the Borg aboard the Artifact?

This one feels like a horror film cliché, but I have a feeling that the Trill doctor who Soji befriended in Maps and Legends isn’t long for this world!

Number 11: Soji and Dahj’s necklaces are a symbol from Maddox – or whoever created them – to communicate with other synthetics and creators or to deliver a message.

Dahj’s necklace. Soji has one just like it.

It strikes me as odd that Maddox would give Soji and Dahj a very obvious symbol of their synthetic nature to wear. Surely this is like painting a giant bullseye on both of them – and it may even be what led Starfleet and/or the Zhat Vash to notice Soji and Dahj in the first place.

Number 12: Picard is terminally ill with Irumodic Syndrome.

Dr Benayoun brought Picard bad news in Maps and Legends – an abnormality in his parietal lobe is in fact a terminal condition. It could be one of a number of syndromes, all of which “end the same way”. This ties into the finale of The Next Generation in which Picard was in the early stages of Irumodic Syndrome.

So that’s it. Those are all of my current theories regarding Star Trek: Picard. It’s possible that, as we approach the midpoint of the season,we’ll start to find out more solid information about what’s going on. Right now there are so many mysteries to unravel!

I can’t wait to see the next episode – which will be titled Absolute Candor. This will be the first of two episodes directed by Jonathan Frakes. His work on Discovery was outstanding, and it’s not unfair to say that he has unique knowledge of the Star Trek franchise. So there’s undoubtedly more good things still to come!

The first three episodes of Star Trek: Picard are available to stream now on CBS All Access in the United States, and on Amazon Prime Video in the United Kingdom and in other countries and territories. The Star Trek franchise – including Star Trek: Picard – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Picard review – Season 1, Episode 3: The End is the Beginning

Sat 08.02.20Mon 01.05.23Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There will be spoilers ahead for The End is the Beginning – the third episode of Star Trek: Picard – as well as for all previous episodes. There may also be spoilers for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

To get it out of the way before we start, I have reviewed the first two episodes of Star Trek: Picard already. You can find the first episode here, and the second episode here.

Mysteries continue to deepen in Star Trek: Picard, and The End is the Beginning has certainly left us with more questions than answers at this point. It was, overall, a solid episode that was at least on par with last week’s Maps and Legends. Visual effects were outstanding as usual, and we got proper introductions to two more main characters. I think there’s only one remaining who we haven’t met.

As happened last week, The End is the Beginning opened with a look back in time. We briefly saw the rogue synths’ attack, including what I believe were a couple of new clips of Mars, before the action cuts to Admiral Picard – in full uniform – outside Starfleet Headquarters. He meets Raffi, the woman who pointed a phaser at him at the end of the previous episode, and it’s revealed that she was a Starfleet officer. Judging by her rank pips I believe she was a commander, and she’s wearing the gold of either engineering or security.

Though we did see, in Picard’s dreams, uniforms from The Next Generation films and Deep Space Nine, it would have been a good opportunity to see them again here, I think. Starfleet uniforms have gone through a number of revisions, but the uniforms used here, fourteen years prior to the series, are different from the uniforms we saw starting in First Contact and running through the next two films and the back half of DS9. While I understand that each new show and each new creative team wants to give Star Trek a refreshed look and put their own spin on things, for this short scene I feel that they could have used those older uniforms – there was no real reason not to and it would have been a nice little tie-in to past iterations of Star Trek, as well as to Picard’s personal history.

Picard and Raffi in their Starfleet uniforms.

Picard and Raffi were obviously close – she calls him “JL”, which is something we haven’t seen anyone really do before. The incredible effort to save Romulus may be part of the reason for this familiarity, or she may simply be a kind of aide-de-camp who he’s worked with since his promotion. Picard had friends and friendly relationships with his crewmates in The Next Generation, but there was always a formality to those relationships within the command structure of Starfleet. His crew, for example, weren’t on first-name terms with him in the way that some of Kirk’s crew were. So this is a new direction for his character in a sense, but it shouldn’t be all that unexpected under the circumstances. From a production point of view, having Raffi be on first-name terms with Picard is one way to immediately convey to us as the audience how close their relationship was at this moment in time. And when taken like that I felt that it worked – though I can already predict it will be a point of criticism for some.

As the scene unfolds, it’s clear what has just happened – this is the immediate aftermath of Picard’s resignation. Raffi doesn’t realise it at first, and watching her digging around for alternative solutions was heart-wrenching because we already knew what the outcome was before Picard said a word. It was nice to see Picard in uniform as an Admiral in this flashback scene, albeit that it was right after he had resigned. I wonder if we’ll see his argument with Clancy and others in future episodes, but I don’t actually think we need to because this scene conveyed everything we needed to know. Picard was his usual calm self, having recovered from the argument we know to have happened inside the building behind him. But he was a defeated man in this moment, and the way he shuts down any suggestion of doing something on his own to keep his promise to the Romulans shows that. Personally I believe that he did ultimately do something to contribute to the rescue effort – Laris and Zhaban’s loyalty could be seen as an indication of that – but in this moment that’s clearly something he can’t even fathom.

The synthetics were described as having suffered a “fatal code error” – but given this scene was taking place in the immediate aftermath of the attack, and that it’s been stated in previous episodes that what happened to them wasn’t clear, I don’t think this answer is as conclusive as it sounds. It would lend credence to my theory that Dr Maddox – who Picard is planning to look for – somehow accidentally caused the attack. However, we saw another brief look at the eyes of F8, the synthetic we met last week, and again it looks like he’s receiving new data or downloading something, which I think is indicative of a hack. Given some of the comments later in the episode from Raffi in particular, the hack theory seems more and more likely. The culprit, however, remains unclear.

The Vasquez Rocks have been a filming location in several iterations of Star Trek. Most notably it was the site where Kirk fought against the Gorn captain in the episode Arena from The Original Series, but the location has also been used to represent Vulcan, including in the reboot film series, as well as serving as various locations in The Next Generation, Voyager, and Enterprise. It was interesting to set Raffi’s home in such an identifiable location, and it was a nice homage and not to past Star Trek stories without being too in-your-face. Star Trek: Picard has been good at this, at least so far, managing to throw in little nods and winks to returning fans without letting nostalgia overwhelm the plot.

Raffi is now no longer a member of Starfleet. Whether this happened immediately upon Picard’s resignation – as she suggested in the previous scene – is unclear, and I don’t see why it would. An officer, even an aide-de-camp as it seems she may have been, could be reassigned, and unless she tendered her own resignation there’s no reason why Picard’s resignation or the attack on Mars would have led to her losing her commission as a Starfleet officer. Regardless of the reason, however, she’s clearly had a rough few years. It was mentioned in some of the pre-release marketing material that Michelle Hurd’s character – who we now know is Raffi – had a drug problem. She seems to ingest a drug called “snakeleaf”, which looked to me to be a 24th Century marijuana – complete with the possible side-effect of paranoia. If this comes back into play in future episodes perhaps we’ll learn more.

After a conversation in which Picard is trying to get her help to solicit a ship and pilot, she storms off. And in this moment, for a few seconds before finding his resolve and going after her, I think we see Picard finally hit rock bottom. He’s been on a downward slide since we first got reacquainted with him in Remembrance, but after losing Dahj, after trying and failing to get Starfleet to help, and having nowhere else to turn Raffi seems to have let him down too. And for a brief moment, Sir Patrick Stewart shows us, with little more than a facial expression and body language, Picard’s absolute rock bottom. In that expression was a man ready to quit, utterly defeated, depressed and dejected. How he manages to find the energy to press on and go after her – Picard is in his mid-late ninties after all – is beyond me, but he does.

The action then cuts to the Artifact, where Hugh the ex-Borg is keeping track of Soji. He’s impressed by the care she showed to the Nameless Borg last week, and it turns out he’s in charge of something called the “Borg reclamation project”. I was wrong in last week’s review and subsequent articles, by the way. The Borg Soji and her Romulan colleagues are removing the implants from aren’t dead – they’re alive, just unconscious. And it would seem that after their implants are removed they can be reawakened, free of their connection to the Collective.

Hugh describes these former Borg – the XB’s – as the “most despised people in the galaxy”, and it’s implied that those on board the Artifact aren’t permitted to leave by the Romulans. I don’t think this applies to Hugh, though. Soji has been asking for an interview with a Romulan XB, and after seeing her work with Nameless, Hugh decides to grant her request.

I enjoyed Jonathan Del Arco’s performance. He was recognisable as Hugh to returning fans – and to anyone who’d seen the pre-release marketing material – but as mentioned above, there was nothing that new fans or people who aren’t as attuned to Star Trek would miss by not knowing or remembering who Hugh was. When I heard a few months ago that Hugh would be returning in Star Trek: Picard I confess I was more than a little surprised. He appeared in two or three episodes of The Next Generation, and while those episodes were good they weren’t necessarily the show’s finest offerings, and Hugh was very much a minor character – with no offence intended to Jonathan Del Arco. So his return caught me off-guard when I heard about it, because I could think of half a dozen or more side characters from The Next Generation that I felt might be more interesting to see return. However, what we saw of Hugh was genuinely impressive. And to see that he’s using the individuality he recovered to help other Borg overcome their assimilation was wholesome – it’s something Picard would be proud of, no doubt.

Back at Vasquez Rocks, Raffi tries to tell Picard – presumably not for the first time – that she believes Starfleet and the Romulans conspired to attack the rescue armada. Picard is disbelieving, but he does say that Raffi had a unique talent for seeing connections that other people couldn’t. Based on last week’s episode with Commodore Oh and Lieutenant Rizzo, this could well be part of the conspiracy she’s referring to. I don’t believe it’s been thrown into the story as a misdirect – this is another piece of the puzzle to understanding what happened on Mars and what may be still happening with the Zhat Vash and Starfleet. Raffi does come across as somewhat paranoid, jumping from point to point quickly while swigging a bottle of wine. Michelle Hurd did a great job conveying a character who has lost everything and has been addled by years of substance abuse. Yet it’s clear that beneath the surface, Raffi still has a keen mind.

The scene concludes with her telling Picard she knows a pilot, Chris Rios, and that he will be in touch. Apparently she’d already set this up before the two of them had a conversation – or at least that was the inference I picked up.

At the Daystrom Institute, Commodore Oh pays a visit to Dr Jurati in person, wanting to know about Jurati’s visits from Picard. There was something ominous about this scene, and though we don’t see much of it unfolding, it was clear that Dr Jurati was caught out and was about to spill the beans. From a costuming point of view, this was definitely one of the weakest points in the series so far. Commodore Oh is wearing sunglasses – fairly modern-looking ones at that – and she just looks absolutely ridiculous. Far from looking like an investigating FBI or CIA agent – which was clearly the intention – the combination of Starfleet uniform, Vulcan ears, and sunglasses just looked stupid. If that was the aim, which it shouldn’t be when dealing with the most important named villain we’ve seen in the show thus far, then great. Mission accomplished. But I’m sure the intention was not to make Commodore Oh look ridiculous, so it has to go down as a costuming fail, I’m afraid.

Back aboard the Artifact, Hugh flashes his credentials to the Romulans to get Soji access to the XB she wants to interview – a Romulan named Ramdha. The room they enter, which is under pretty heavy guard, contains a few Romulans, who Soji describes as “the disordered”. And I have to take somewhat of an issue here – the people in the room all appear to be mentally ill; the camera pans around and we get a few close-ups of some of the Romulan inmates taking part in pretty stereotypical “mentally ill person” activities that any number of television shows portray when they want to get across the idea that a group of people are psychiatric patients. We see someone drawing dark shapes very intently, another waving aimlessly in the air, and several muttering away to themselves. While it gets its point across as a brief scene in a television show, it’s an incredibly stereotypical picture of mental health.

Soji finds the individual she wants to talk to – apparently Ramdha is an expert in Romulan mythology and legends, and Soji believes she can help Romulan XBs with her knowledge reacclimate to life outside of the Collective. When we’ve seen individuals in prior iterations of Star Trek liberated from the Borg, including Hugh, we’ve never seen significant psychological conditions as these “disordered” seem to have. Hugh mentions that these are “all the Romulans ever assimilated”, so it could be a uniquely Romulan trait. It could also be related to the Borg cube’s “submatrix collapse” which is evidently what disabled the ship years prior to the events of the series.

Back at Vasquez Rocks, Raffi is deep in research, clearly trying to find out all she can about Maddox, the Romulans and everything else Picard told her about. Picard calls her and sends her his data on Maddox, and after this brief scene is over we finally see the ship – the ship that will be a significant part of the series. It’s been said before that in the Star Trek franchise, the ship is almost like an extra crew member. It’s the setting for many episodes, it’s something distinct and recognisable, and it has a name, a design, and a personality all its own. I must’ve missed the ship’s name, but apparently it’s called La Sirena – Spanish for “the mermaid”.

La Sirena is different from any Federation or Starfleet ship we’ve seen so far in Star Trek. That’s not a controversial statement, it’s just a matter of fact. Firstly, there’s no “SS” designation, nor any other apparent designation or numbering scheme. Then there’s the design of the ship itself. There’s no saucer section or obvious warp nacelles; the engines appear to be built into the main hull. And La Sirena is an unusual design – a main body with two large “arms” either side, and a number of fins and other details near the engines at the rear. I would say it’s very much a modern-day science fiction vessel design, taking almost everything “Star Trek” and ignoring it in favour of inspiration from other franchises. In particular, I’m seeing elements of Mass Effect and Battlestar Galactica in its design, perhaps with a dash of Star Wars for good measure. It’s designed to look as “cool” as possible – if you remember in Voyager when Tom Paris was designing the Delta Flyer and he wanted tailfins and other aesthetic elements, but Tuvok shot him down saying the Delta Flyer wasn’t a “hot rod”. Well, Chris Rios built or bought himself a 24th Century hot rod.

I actually love this design. The red detailing on the hull, the modern sci-fi-inspired shape, yet the familiar blue hue of Starfleet warp engines combine to make a truly unique and utterly distinctive vessel. When Sir Patrick Stewart was conducting one of his many interviews prior to Star Trek: Picard, he said that the set built for La Sirena was the biggest starship set he’d ever seen used before in his time working on Star Trek. So I think we’re going to see a lot more of this beauty before the show is over.

La Sirena (with the brightness turned up a little). Ain’t she a beauty?

A couple of years ago, Santiago Cabera – the actor who portrays Rios – was in a series called Salvation. This was my first encounter with him as an actor, and I adored his performance in that underappreciated show. When I heard he was going to play a role in Star Trek: Picard I was genuinely thrilled – and he’s only the third actor since Scott Bakula and Sonequa Martin-Green that I was familiar with before they took Star Trek roles! Not that that really matters, at the end of the day!

He gets a fantastic opportunity over the next few scenes to show off his range – Chris Rios has apparently configured all of the holograms on his ship to look just like him. When Picard materialises on the (very large) transporter pad, after a brief swelling of the music to signify his return to space – an emotional moment in itself – he’s greeted by who we assume is Capt. Rios. Only it isn’t – it’s his Emergency Medical Hologram. The real Rios is sitting on the bridge, suffering a wound to the shoulder. The EMH is easily able to treat it and he’s fine, though after refusing a dermal regenerator he will probably have a scar. The effect of the shrapnel lodged in his flesh was, in contrast to much of the rest of the scene which relied on CGI, a wonderful example of practical special effects. And both the effects artist and makeup artists should be congratulated, because the overall look was incredibly realistic – and it looked like a very painful injury that he suffered at some unknown location for an unknown reason.

After briefly pausing over the Captain’s chair, Picard takes a seat at either the helm or conn position, and talks with Rios about the mission and where they may be headed. The two also discuss Rios’ background – Picard notes from the way the ship is maintained and organised that Rios was a Starfleet officer. He confirms this, and talks briefly about a ship he was on that was seemingly lost – but Starfleet covered it up. Another hint there that all is not well in Starfleet, tying into the conspiracy we’ve seen glimpses of.

The music score here was fantastic. Picard tells Rios that he can tell he’s “Starfleet to the core”, and the familiar theme pipes up as his speech comes to a close. But when Rios tells Picard “don’t try to get inside my head”, the theme turns sour and discordant, full of minor chords and it grinds to halt. We got that moment of the classic theme and Picard together, only for it to fade away. I loved that, and even though music can be hard to put into words I hope that point came across.

Wearing shirts was mandatory when Picard was in command! Here he meets Chris Rios for the first time.

Raffi is continuing to dig into Maddox, and soon manages to find her way to some part of the Starfleet “internet” called Freecloud. It isn’t clear exactly what this is, but Raffi seems to know exactly what it means in this short, dialogue-free scene. We got a couple of these with Raffi in The End is the Beginning, and it shows her as a self-reliant person. A loner, perhaps, but also someone who can be dedicated to something – arguably obsessively so – when she sets her mind to it.

Rios has another conversation with one of his holograms – this one is the ENH, or Emergency Navigational Hologram. They discuss Picard and his virtues, and Rios is adamant that he doesn’t want to get involved again, to get too close to Picard or anyone else because his former captain – on the ship Starfleet erased from their records – ended up killed. His death clearly still haunts Rios. This is a setup we’ve seen before, and there’s a Han Solo-esque feel to Rios in this scene. He’s a good person at his core, an ex-Starfleet officer, but someone who’s gone through something traumatic and his response has been to try to shut himself off from his feelings. But his heart of gold will come back into play later in the story – at least, if Star Trek: Picard follows convention!

Picard has returned to the vineyard and has packed a bag. Laris and Zhaban, to my surprise I must admit, aren’t going to accompany him. They’re going to stay and tend the grapes, and Laris has seemingly got over her anger and/or fear at Picard’s departure that she expressed so strongly last week. As Zhaban gives Picard a bag of provisions for the trip, the trio come under attack by assassins from the same group who attacked Dahj in the premiere.

This was a genuinely heart-stopping moment in The End is the Beginning. As Picard takes cover, Laris and Zhaban show off their Tal Shiar skills by fighting off the attackers – though at any moment either of them could have been killed. I didn’t expect them both to survive the fight, but they did. Which is good – I don’t think I could’ve taken losing one of them so soon! As the fight ends and the three gather themselves, one Romulan is left stirring in the corner and raises his weapon – only to be shot by Dr Jurati, who has apparently entered the château while the fight was ongoing.

Picard takes on an intruder at his home.

Alison Pill hasn’t had much to do so far in Star Trek: Picard, but here we really got to see an acting performance from her. She portrays Dr Jurati’s fear and adrenaline rush just pitch-perfectly, and her reaction to using the Romulan weapon, killing someone, and talking with Picard afterwards was absolutely one of the high points of the episode. It was absolutely on point and I can’t fault anything about her role in this scene.

Meanwhile, back on the Artifact, Soji is finally able to get Ramdha to talk to her a little. They talk briefly about Romulan mythology – though apparently Ramdha dislikes that term, instead calling what she does “the news”. Soji likes this idea, and hopes to use some of what Ramdha is doing to help the other Romulan XB’s.

While Picard and the others interview the sole surviving Romulan attacker, Ramdha turns on Soji, saying she “remembers [her] from tomorrow”. Soji and Hugh seem to attribute this to her psychological state, but she becomes increasingly agitated and aggressive, and the scenes cut back and forth a couple of times between the Romulan captive at the vineyard telling Picard Soji and Dahj aren’t what he “thinks they are”, and Ramdha accusing Soji of being “the destroyer” and asking her if she is the sister “who lives or dies”. The editing here, while fast-paced, was absolutely incredible, and the blending of the two scenes was fantastic and raised the tension significantly.

Soji seems to come close to having an “activation” similar to Dahj’s in Remembrance. She asks Ramdha a series of rapid-fire questions about her role on board a Romulan vessel and the Borg cube’s submatrix collapse – perhaps this is part of what she was programmed to learn about. Ramdha manages to pull a weapon, and though Soji is able to disarm her before she hurts herself, everyone involved is clearly shaken. Soji, upset by Ramdha’s comments about her sister, calls her mother – the same woman Dahj spoke to in the premiere – and asks about Dahj by name. Her mother tells her a lie – that Dahj is okay – and Soji collapses into unconsciousness. Whether this was simply a result of exhaustion or whether the “mother” said a word or phrase that triggered her to shut down/rest is unclear – but my money’s on the latter.

The Romulan attacker spits acid at Zhaban, just like the others did to Dahj, though Zhaban is unharmed while the Romulan disintegrates – apparently this acid is both a weapon of last resort and a kind of suicide pill. Something vaguely comparable would be old-fashioned cyanide capsules – many Nazis in Germany when defeat was looming used cyanide in glass capsules to commit suicide – biting on the capsule to release the fast-acting poison. I’m certain this was at least part of the inspiration for this device.

The Romulan attacker commits suicide by dissolving himself.

With the Romulan dead, Picard and his friends didn’t actually learn anything. His words were little more than incoherent warnings about Soji and Dahj – but I’m taken by the threat that Soji “isn’t what we think she is”. We’ve been working on the assumption that she’s synthetic – could this be a clue that she isn’t? I speculated in my first theory post that Soji and Dahj might actually be genetically enhanced humans and not androids, so that remains a possibility. It could also be a reference to Soji and Dahj being some kind of weapon – the “activation” and Dahj’s fighting skills, as well as Soji’s hidden knowledge and aggressive pursuit of it could point to that.

Before we get on to the end of the episode I want to nitpick. This is something I thought of last week but dismissed, but because Picard, Raffi, and the others still don’t really have a destination I feel like I have to bring it up at this point. Picard knows Dahj Asha’s full name. Dr Jurati had access to her application to the Daystrom institute, which included school transcripts. Could it really be so difficult to find out her sister’s name given what they already know? With the information they already have it should be a hop, skip, and jump to find the family, to find Soji’s name, and to figure out that she’s a scientist aboard the Artifact – after all, those people’s names must be recorded somewhere. Raffi in particular has a unique way of finding out information, and Laris and Zhaban are ex-Tal Shiar. I would have thought between them they could figure it out with a little effort. I know it’s a nitpick. And it isn’t a huge deal, it doesn’t harm the story. But it’s a little annoyance in the back of my mind, I must confess.

After Soji awakens from her nap/shutdown, Narek pays her a visit. He’s obviously heard or seen what happened and wants to check in with her. In this scene they embrace, and Narek says hes “falling in love” with her. Narek’s intentions here are unclear – in the next scene he’s with Rizzo, now returned to her Romulan appearance, and they’re talking about “staying on mission” and figuring out what Soji knows. But Narek could just as easily have meant what he said to Soji – or perhaps this is some foreshadowing of something more between them to come in future episodes. Either way, I have a feeling Narek may abandon his mission and his cause in order to be with Soji and keep her safe.

Narek and Rizzo meeting in a dark, shadowy hallway had all the earmarks of a classic spy drama. And I loved the way the scene between them was shot. A Borg cube clearly has a lot of corridors and dark areas where no one is present – absolutely the perfect environment for two clandestine operatives to meet.

Dr Jurati insists on going with Picard to track down Maddox and Soji, insisting he needs her expertise as the greatest expert on synthetics on Earth. Picard and Jurati beam up to La Sirena, where Raffi has also joined the crew – but she insists she’s only hitching a ride to Freecloud – apparently the place where her research led her – for her own purposes, and not as part of Picard’s mission. Rios is just the pilot, and Raffi is going her own way, so Picard definitely needed Dr Jurati’s company as she’s currently the only person who’s actually going with him for the right reasons! Though there was a hint, albeit a small one that I could be misinterpreting, that Dr Jurati isn’t all she appears – Raffi seems to think it’s a mistake to let her join the mission without even a “basic” security check. Could that come back to bite Picard? Time will tell.

The episode ends with Picard giving the order to “engage!” to the indifferent-looking Rios and Raffi, and La Sirena warps out of sight as the credits start to roll.

The End is the Beginning was another great episode. Again, perhaps not on par with Remembrance, but definitely a really enjoyable episode of Star Trek that moved the story forward – while uncovering a whole host of new mysteries for the show to unravel later.

It was great to see Hugh again – I hope we’ll see more of him before the season is over. And we got to learn a little more about the origins of the Artifact – it’s interesting to me that it basically experienced the Borg equivalent of a computer glitch and just broke down. The Romulans didn’t defeat it, they just claimed its wreckage. And as I mentioned, seeing La Sirena and finally getting a good look at the ship’s design was amazing. I love it, and I can’t wait to see more inside and out!

Picard finally has his crew together, and they’re warping off to Freecloud. What this place is, and what they’ll find there, is something we won’t know until next time. And what’s going on with Soji – is she activating, or close to activating? Is Narek on her side or the Zhat Vash’s side, and will he switch sides before the end? What will happen to the XBs? Are they all “disordered”, and what happens to those that aren’t? So many questions!

We had some great visual and practical special effects in The End is the Beginning. I love the look of the holographic computer panels on La Sirena – they’re suitably advanced from what we’ve seen in The Next Generation – and again similar to tech we’ve seen in other science fiction franchises like The Expanse or the Mass Effect series – but while retaining a Star Trek feel. That line can be hard to walk, but for me anyway, the designers nailed it.

My only real criticism is of the way the “disordered” were portrayed. I just feel that the way people with mental health issues are portrayed on television is generally pretty poor and very stereotypical, and this just leaned right into all of those stereotypes. I don’t know exactly what I’d have done differently to convey the same message while avoiding that pitfall, but I’m sure something different could have been managed. But aside from that sequence, and the utterly ridiculous decision to put sunglasses on Commodore Oh, the episode was a joy from start to finish.

I still have far more questions than answers, and Star Trek: Picard has managed to create such a rich world populated by interesting characters who each feel genuine. That’s absolutely fantastic, and just where I wanted to be at this point in the series. The way the new characters have been introduced has been amazing – giving each of them space and time to shine without overcrowding the series was a fantastic idea and deserves credit. The producers of Star Trek: Picard – including Sir Patrick Stewart himself – have put so much care and attention to detail into this series, and that absolutely shines through.

I can’t wait for next Friday already! Live Long and Prosper!

The End is the Beginning – the third episode of Star Trek: Picard – is available to watch now on CBS All Access in the United States, and on Amazon Prime Video in the United Kingdom and other countries and territories, as are all of the previous episodes from Season 1. Star Trek: Picard and the rest of the Star Trek franchise are the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

My new audio setup

Fri 07.02.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

For a number of years headphones were my only option for watching a film or listening to music, largely because I was living with other people. I was okay with that – despite the discomfort that using headphones for prolonged periods can bring. But a few years ago I got a mid-range set of PC speakers. They’re from Logitech, which is a good brand in my experience, and they’re USB-powered. And for several years they’ve been good.

When I got a new television a couple of years ago I hooked up my PC to it for a more enjoyable film-watching experience. Having a bigger screen as opposed to a small PC monitor has significantly improved my entertainment experiences in that time. But I kept the same set of speakers – the TV’s own speakers being pretty poor in comparison, as a lot of modern slim television speakers are.

Recently, though, I started looking into audio equipment again. What I really want – one day, when budget allows – is a 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound system. That’s the “gold standard” of home cinema setups, but of course a decent one is prohibitively expensive. Or at least it is on my budget!

So I started to look at headphones again.

Initially I thought maybe I’d get some kind of wireless or bluetooth setup, but after reading a lot of reviews and trying some out for myself I came to the conclusion that even the more expensive ones – £200 or more – weren’t all that great. They might be okay for some uses – gaming, for example – but when it came to having a good all-round entertainment experience – for listening to music, watching television and film, as well as perhaps gaming too – the wireless devices that I could find all felt inadequate. In addition, one of the biggest features on modern wireless and bluetooth headphones is “noise cancellation”, where the headphones will use a combination of a microphone (to measure noise in the environment) and additional processing to try to cover up external noise. But I have no need for that, so it would be an additional expense for no reason.

I’m not an audiophile by any means, and my ears aren’t as finely-tuned as many people’s seem to be, but I found myself drawn more and more toward headphones marketed to audiophile consumers. What I really wanted, at the end of the day, was a listening experience that would be as true-to-life as possible, without distortion, interference, or anything of that nature. The noise-cancelling technology I mentioned above has a noticeable effect on audio quality, as a background of white noise or hissing is often present as part of the way it works. I didn’t want any of that; I wanted a sound that was as neutral as possible.

As I looked at various headphones, one recommendation that came up again and again was to get an external DAC – a digital-to-audio converter. PC motherboards have one by default in order to translate a digital file into an analogue audio signal that can be then used by speakers or headphones. But DACs in computers often suffer as a result of being too close to other electronic components, which can lead to noise interference, as well as generally being of lower quality.

After looking at a number of options, I chose a DAC by a company called iFi. This device, called the iFi Zen, is a combined DAC and amplifier – an amplifier being important to get sufficient volume in lots of headphones which draw more power.

The DAC on its own doesn’t do much, obviously, so pairing it with a nice set of headphones was important. After much research into different types of headphones, different technologies, and of course different brands, which took me a solid couple of months, I nailed down my choice – the Sennheiser HD 600. These headphones were originally released in 1997, and to my mind they’re very fancy – even if some audiophile gear sells for ten times the price!

What attracted me to this model was its reputation for being a truly neutral headphone – there are no artificial attempts made to boost the bass, or otherwise distort the sound produced. In fact Sennheiser HD 600s are often used by sound engineers and editors for that very reason. It doesn’t mean that listening to a recording of someone speaking is the same as hearing someone standing next to you, rather that the reproduction of the sound is as close as possible to the way it was recorded. And I have to say I did notice a difference.

It took a little while to get used to it, partly due to the directional nature of the sound. My two speakers sit either side of the screen and face towards the room. Because the headphones are positioned on either side of my head, and because there’s less distracting noise within the room, sound comes from one side or the other, or in the middle, instead of straight at me in an unspecified direction. That was a new experience for me, really, something that I hadn’t noticed with previous headphones and headsets I’ve owned. It’s hard to explain in words, but the headphones do a great job with positioning the sound; if two characters on screen are speaking, for example, they sound different depending on where they are standing. You can even tell when a person is closer or further away, as well as positioning where they are – how far left or right.

When listening to music this isn’t so much of a factor, but watching television is definitely a different – and I think much more enjoyable – experience. I trialled my new setup on last week’s episode of Star Trek: Picard and I was really impressed. Since then I’ve experimented much more, playing many different kinds of music, watching a few different series and films, and of course playing Age of Empires II. I wrote a post the other day about how much fun it has been rediscovering that game – you can find it by clicking or tapping here.

I’d also been used to a more bass-heavy sound, just because of the way my speakers work. And the first few things I listened to on the headphones sounded flat in comparison. But it was only after using them for a while then going back to my speakers that I realised that the speakers were distorting and over-emphasising the bass. The headphones, as I had hoped, were much closer to a neutral sound.

It’s worth noting that digital audio files, like MP3s and the audio tracks on many digital/streaming videos, are compressed. And the compression process reduces the overall quality of the audio. I would love to be in a position where I could afford to go out and buy the highest quality of everything; 4K Blu-Rays and a Tidal subscription to listen to so-called “master quality” audio. But as I said, I’m not sure my ears are sufficiently finely-tuned to notice a difference!

For my purposes, though, my new setup – modest though it may be – is a great improvement over the speakers, and while I won’t be using it all the time or even every day, when I’m sitting down with a film or television show, or wanting to rock out to some bangin’ tunes, it’ll be my go-to.

This is not a sponsored post or ad. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Predicting the 2020 Academy Awards (aka my picks for the Oscars)

Thu 06.02.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Picture Credit: oscar.go.com

Because my health has been poor for some time now, I don’t get to the cinema any more. Which is unfortunate – not because I miss the “cinema experience” particularly, though going to see films with friends was an important part of my youth – but because it means I almost always end up seeing films several months after their release! By that point any hype and buzz has died down, and the conversation online has shifted to newer titles.

Nevertheless, as someone who follows the world of cinema and entertainment, I do stay as up-to-date as possible with at least some of the latest titles, and with the 92nd Academy Awards now a mere three days away, I wanted to have a first ever attempt at the longstanding tradition of making predictions!

You know how this works – I’ll make a few guesses at who might win in a few of the biggest categories. And then when we get the actual results on Sunday night (Monday morning here in the UK) you can have a good chuckle at how wrong I was!

My choices are from a combination of films I’ve seen and films I only know by reputation and review. These picks try to stay true to what I think the Academy will choose, but of course my own biases come into play as will my own hopes and preferences.

Let’s get started!

Best Visual Effects: The Lion King

This one might be a controversial choice. Should 2019’s The Lion King count as an animated film or not? I’d absolutely argue that it does – any film made using entirely digital creations is, by definition, a computer-animated film is it not? Notwithstanding that argument, the CGI used in The Lion King was outstanding. The animals and the environments looked photorealistic, such that it was impossible to tell you were looking at something wholly artificial.

This is a new direction for cinema. We’ve seen glimpses at this in other titles – 2016’s Rogue One springs to mind with CGI recreations of actors – but never quite on this level. For me personally, The Lion King was actually the worse for going down the route of extreme realism. In what should have been a fun kids’ film, with a story that is a modern-day Disney classic, the photorealism detracted from the story and the performances. Whether that’s simply because it’s something we’ve never seen before is a good question.

However, for me at least, I felt that the original film had much more character to it. It had more soul, more heart, and a uniquely “Disney” visual style. Whether photorealism will catch on for animation in a big way is thus something I’d question. The style and techniques used could absolutely feature in other titles, though, to supplement physical actors and props. The visual effects seen in The Lion King are unparalleled, and set an incredibly high bar for future titles to reach.

Best Film Editing and/or Best Cinematography: 1917

War epic 1917 had been on my radar for ages as one of the films I’ve been most interested in. It wasn’t until fairly recently, however, when director Sam Mendes was giving interviews regarding the film in the run-up to its release, that I learned how visually different the film was going to be.

1917 is filmed as if it were one continuous take, with the action following two British Army soldiers who are tasked with delivering a message to call off an attack and save lives. The film follows their journey through enemy-held territory to deliver the message in time, and was inspired by Mendes’ grandfather’s service in the First World War.

I think it’s absolutely up for Best Film Editing, but it could also nab Best Cinematography on the back of this incredibly ambitious one-take effect. It’s certainly something which is unique among 2019’s films, and the Academy loves uniqueness! There’s also a personal story – Mendes has talked at length in interviews about his grandfather, and because the First World War affected so many people, many families will have a connection to someone who fought in that conflict.

Best Original Song: (I’m Gonna) Love Me Again from Rocketman – Elton John & Bernie Taupin

Rocketman was very much a poor second to the other great musical biopic of the last couple of years, Bohemian Rhapsody. However, (I’m Gonna) Love Me Again, which was written specifically for the film, has picked up a lot of buzz when it comes to winning Best Original Song – picking up the Critics’ Choice Award and Golden Globe in this category, which are often seen as good indications for the Oscars.

As an interesting aside, the song I’m Standing With You – a competitor in the Best Original Song category – was written by Diane Warren, who penned Faith of the Heart, the theme song to Star Trek: Enterprise. The film it’s taken from, Breakthrough, was directed by Roxann Dawson, who is of course well known for playing B’Elanna on Star Trek: Voyager. As a Star Trek fan I wish them good luck, but it looks like (I’m Gonna) Love Me Again has this one in the bag!

Best Documentary: The Edge of Democracy

If you’ve been reading my articles for a while, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of documentaries as a genre. This year it’s interesting to see that all of the contenders in the Best Documentary category are foreign films, either wholly or partially in a foreign language. Of all of these, The Edge of Democracy is one that I think has a great deal of relevance.

Documenting the crisis in Brazilian politics, with a focus on the fall of Brazil’s last two presidents and the rise of Jair Bolsonaro, there are some parallels for the United States considering that Bolsonaro is called “the tropical Trump”, and his politics are somewhat comparable to the current American president.

Because it’s been on Netflix, and the Academy hasn’t always appreciated that, it might arguably be more of a long-shot, but I think the political themes present in The Edge of Democracy might push a few extra votes its way.

Best Animated Feature Film: Missing Link

There are some great animated films in the running this time. Netflix’s Klaus was a really cute Christmas film, but as mentioned above the streaming service isn’t exactly popular with the Academy. There was also Toy Story 4, the latest in that series and which was well-received, and of course the debate over whether The Lion King counts or not! But the Academy likes something different, and in an era of CGI and computer-aided animation, Missing Link absolutely fits that bill.

A stop-motion film with a great cast that unfortunately didn’t fare well upon release, Missing Link was nevertheless very well received by critics, and is exactly the kind of underappreciated, somewhat different and artistic film that the Oscars often like to honour. If it were to win, it would be the first stop-motion film, and the first film not to be computer-animated, to do so since the 78th Academy Awards in 2006.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Joker

Spoiler alert for the end of the list, but I don’t think Joker is going to be crowned Best Picture. To throw a bone to the superhero/comic book film genre though, it could well be awarded Best Adapted Screenplay instead.

Several high-profile folks in the film industry, like director Martin Scorsese, have gone on record saying that comic book films “aren’t real cinema” – a kind of artistic snobbery looking down on what “common people” like to watch, quite frankly. As a result, many comic-based films which have been hugely popular have ended up missing out on the industry’s top awards. And I don’t expect Joker to break the mould and win the top awards, but as the Academy often does, they may see fit to dish out a “lesser” award like Best Adapted Screenplay, or one of the Supporting Actor/Actress gongs.

Even though I’m not a particularly big fan of comic book films as a whole, there are some great films that have emerged from the genre, and Joker is absolutely among them. The film deserves some kind of recognition at least, and I think this could be one way of acknowledging it.

Best Original Screenplay: Knives Out

This one is going to be controversial in some circles because Rian Johnson is involved. Some Star Wars “fans” have been incredibly hateful toward the director of The Last Jedi; hate which is still present more than two years after the release of the middle part of the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Though I personally think that The Last Jedi was a good film, the trilogy as a whole has been a bit of a mess – you can find my thoughts on the production of the trilogy by clicking or tapping here if you’re interested to read more.

But Rian Johnson’s most recent project has been Knives Out, a murder mystery film featuring an ensemble cast. I don’t want to spoil the plot but the film has been incredibly well received by critics for its writing and sense of humour in particular, as well as the mystery and the “whodunnit” nature of the film. These elements in particular lead me to think it could be in the running for Best Original Screenplay, and from a personal perspective it would be a hilarious middle finger to some of the Star Wars haters, and that would really just be the icing on the cake!

Best Supporting Actor: Tom Hanks for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Tom Hanks in the trailer for *A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.*

Growing up in the UK, I wasn’t aware who Fred Rogers (better known as Mister Rogers) was. But over in the United States its not unfair to say he’s a cultural icon – someone who many Americans will be familiar with from their childhoods. His long-running show, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, was a mainstay of preschool and young childrens’ television for more than three decades, and Tom Hanks’ portrayal of the legendary figure in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood has received almost universal acclaim.

Hanks is one of contemporary American cinema’s greatest actors, and has performed some incredible roles in his career. He’s already claimed two Academy Awards for Best Actor – for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump. A combination of Hanks’ performance with the nostalgia and wholesomeness of Mister Rogers could absolutely net him his first award in the Best Supporting Actor category this time around.

Best Supporting Actress: Scarlett Johannson for Jojo Rabbit

Scarlett Johannson in the trailer for *Jojo Rabbit.*

Jojo Rabbit looks like an incredibly funny film – with a very serious subject matter. That can lead to a jarring disconnect for some viewers, and until I’ve seen it for myself it’s hard to judge. However, Scarlett Johannson has picked up incredibly strong support from critics for her role in the film, and could well be in with a shot here.

Interestingly, she could be the first ever actress (or actor of any gender) to win both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress in the same year if she also wins for her role in Marriage Story. I’m not convinced she will, but the Academy does like to surprise us sometimes, so you can never tell!

Best Actor: Adam Driver for Marriage Story

Adam Driver in the trailer for *Marriage Story.*

Adam Driver is a phenomenal actor, and the range he shows in Marriage Story is incredible. I mentioned the Star Wars sequels earlier, but they lucked out to get someone of Driver’s calibre to play Kylo Ren.

Marriage Story being on Netflix may count against him here, unfortunately, and there has been a tidal wave of support for Joaquin Phoenix’s role in Joker. But the Academy doesn’t always like to follow trends, and if they decide to stay away from Joker for whatever reason, Adam Driver could still be in the running.

Best Actress: Saoirse Ronan for Little Women

Saoirse Ronan in the trailer for *Little Women.*

After being nominated twice before, for her roles in Brooklyn and Lady Bird, I think this could finally be Saoirse Ronan’s year. Little Women is perhaps an under-appreciated film from a popular point of view, but her performance has won praise across the board.

After having been nominated and rejected twice, she’s also in a strong position to stake a claim this time around. The Academy can be quite particular about bringing in a younger actor or actress into the club of Best Actor/Actress winners, but as she’s a little older and more experienced now than she was when nominated for her previous work, this could absolutely be her moment.

Best Director: Bong Joon-ho for Parasite

Parasite has been an incredibly well-received film. It would be a rarity for the Best Director award to go to the director of a non-English film, but with all the buzz surrounding Parasite it could very well happen this time.

The film looks at social class, and the division between classes. In that respect it’s not dissimilar to Bong’s other significant film Snowpiercer – which, by the way, is set to be remade as a television series soon.

The Oscars in recent years have been plagued by accusations of racism and racial bias keeping non-white actors and directors away from the biggest awards, and there could well be a swing toward giving one of the top awards to Bong Joon-ho and Parasite as a counter to that argument. Members of the Academy will, at the very least, be aware of the criticism.

But Parasite and Bong’s direction are absolutely worthy of an award in their own right, and after winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes, as well as many other awards, it could be a great night for the director at the Oscars too.

Best Picture: 1917

This award could absolutely go to Parasite as well, or the Academy could surprise me and give it to Joker. But as mentioned above, 1917 is a unique and visually distinctive film, one which I think has the potential to become a classic of the drama and war genres that people will be coming back to for decades.

Sam Mendes won for American Beauty twenty years ago, but hasn’t featured prominently at the Oscars since. This could definitely be his second win, though, because the Academy likes nothing better than a unique film with a dramatic premise.

There’s also that personal side, the story from the director’s grandfather, which paints a picture of 1917 as an homage to the First World War generation but with a distinctly personal take. In terms of being something altogether different from the other titles in contention, 1917′s appeal is cemented.

So that’s it. My predictions or picks for the 2020 Academy Awards. We’ll have to wait a few days to see if I’m right!

All films mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio and/or distributor. The 92nd Academy Awards ceremony takes place on Sunday the 9th of February at 5pm local time – 1am on the 10th of February in the UK. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Updating my Star Trek: Picard theories – week 2

Tue 04.02.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There will be spoilers ahead for the first two episodes of Star Trek: Picard, as well as for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

Last week I wrote a post in which I began theorising about the story of Star Trek: Picard. I didn’t intend for it to become a weekly series, but I think it probably will be. I’ll be updating my theories after each new episode, as well as deleting theories that seem to have been debunked, and adding new ones as I come up with them!

Let’s start with those theories that Maps and Legends debunked.

Number 1: The Romulans who attacked Dahj were the Tal Shiar.

We now know these operatives work for the Zhat Vash.

In my last theory post I said that this theory, out of all of my pet theories for Star Trek: Picard, was the most likely to be correct… oops.

The Romulans who attacked Dahj are now suspected to be the Zhat Vash. I also said that we’d only seen the face of one of Dahj’s attackers, so the fact that he was Romulan might not mean that all of the attackers are – it could have been a multi-faction collaboration to take down synthetics, perhaps a group enforcing the ban. But the discussion of the Zhat Vash in Maps and Legends seems to confirm that the people who killed Dahj – and those hunting Soji – are Romulan.

They may, however, be getting help from Starfleet itself. Lieutenant Rizzo is an undercover Romulan agent – this much was also confirmed in the episode – but her handler, Commodore Oh, is much more ambiguous. She absolutely could be a Romulan – but it’s just as likely she’s a Vulcan and is simply conspiring with the Zhat Vash.

Number 2: The attack on Dahj (and the hunting of Soji) are in retaliation for what happened on Mars.

The attackers aren’t looking for revenge for the attack on Mars.

When speculating on the motives that Dahj’s attackers had, I said that they may have been seeking revenge for the synthetics’ attack on Mars. This wasn’t so much because Romulan lives were lost – 90,000 people died in the attack, and it’s conceivable that Romulans were among them as the fleet was destined to help Romulus – but because the loss of the fleet led to many more deaths in the supernova.

That was my theory, and it made a certain kind of sense. It would have depended, of course, on what happened in the aftermath of the attack. The Federation pulled out of helping the Romulans, despite Picard’s fleet being intended to save 900 million lives. Surely not all of those lives were lost as a result, but even if Picard managed to assemble another fleet, potentially fewer lives were saved.

However, the Zhat Vash’s motivations are much more clear-cut: Romulans have a longstanding fear and hatred of synthetic life, and the Zhat Vash amplify that. They have, for centuries, it seems, hunted down and killed synthetics – and not just in Romulan territory. There was mention of Zhat Vash operations in Gorn and Klingon space as well, and of course in Federation territory as we saw.

With a “galactic treaty” now prohibiting synthetic life, the Zhat Vash should be feeling pretty smug – this is a huge victory for their cause, at the end of the day. Given that they’re specialists in hunting synthetics, it’s at least possible that they see themselves as enforcers of the ban, or even that other governments have requested their help in getting rid of any remaining or undercover synths.

So those were the debunked theories. Now let’s take a look at some theories which are still at the very least possible – even if they’re unlikely! Some of these you may remember from last time, others are new based on what we saw in Maps and Legends.

Number 1: Starfleet is conspiring with the Zhat Vash.

Who is Commodore Oh? Maps and Legends implied that she, like Lieutenant Rizzo, is a Romulan agent. But is this really the case? We saw a Vulcan emblem on her desk, which could be part of her act, but it could also be a subtle hint to the audience of her true identity.

I mentioned this previously, but a Commodore is a very high ranking position for an enemy agent. It’s plausible that the Zhat Vash would have been able to plant a fake Lieutenant, but a Commodore? And not just any Commodore – one in a senior position in Starfleet security with a responsibility for protecting Earth itself? It’s possible, but I think it’s more likely that Commodore Oh is a Vulcan.

If she is, then she’s part of the anti-synthetic conspiracy along with the Zhat Vash – and a collaborator.

If it turns out that Commodore Oh is in fact a Romulan, then I still believe that there’s some merit to the theory that some in Starfleet are co-conspirators, because it would raise questions about who helped her infiltrate Starfleet and who helped elevate her to a senior position.

Number 2: Picard put together another fleet and still managed to save many Romulan lives.

Laris and Zhaban are very close with Picard.

Why are Laris and Zhaban so loyal to Picard? It seems that they’re ex-Tal Shiar operatives (or at least that Laris is), so why would they be so steadfastly loyal to a retired Starfleet officer as to live at his home on Earth?

In the first trailer for Star Trek: Picard, a voiceover says that Picard put together “the greatest rescue armada in history”. This absolutely could be referring to the fleet that was destroyed in orbit of Mars… but if that fleet was destroyed, would it really have gone down as the greatest in history? If it never left its home base it seems unlikely to be remembered as such. Given that, it’s at least possible that Picard was able to pull some strings with other factions and acquire ships to use in a new rescue armada.

When Starfleet pulled the plug and refused to rebuild the lost ships we know Picard was furious and resigned in protest. But the timings of these events is unclear. Mars was attacked fourteen years before the events of the show, but in Remembrance the supernova is stated to have taken place exactly ten years ago. So there was a span of time in between the destruction of the fleet and the supernova in which Picard – either as a Starfleet admiral or not – could have done something else to help the Romulans.

It’s possible he could have used friendships with people like Spock, or his relationship with factions like the Klingon Empire, Bajorans, or Tamarians to help him put together a fleet. Picard made first contact with a number of species during his tenure aboard the Enterprise-D, and also offered help and assistance to many others. There will have been people and factions throughout the Alpha and Beta Quadrants who “owed him a favour”, if you will, and if he called those favours in he could’ve built up a decent sized fleet.

The only evidence we really have, however, that Picard went above and beyond to help the Romulans is the unwavering loyalty of Laris and Zhaban. And it’s possible that whatever he did to win their trust was something specific to the two of them rather than something so grand in scope.

Number 3: The ban on synthetic life includes sentient holograms like The Doctor from Voyager.

The Doctor during his time in the Delta Quadrant.

In previous iterations of Star Trek, the term “synthetic” was rarely, if ever, used. When referring to Data and others, the preferred term had been “android”, and even in The Original Series this was the word that was used. So why has the word “synthetic” come into play?

“Synthetic life” is a much broader term than simply “android life”; it suggests a wider category of artificial life forms which would include AIs and, crucially, self-aware holograms. If this is the case, then Voyager’s Doctor could be among those forcibly shut down in the aftermath of the attack on Mars.

I mentioned in my last theory piece that Index, the hologram at the Starfleet archive visited in Remembrance, seemed to be giving a few very subtle hints that she had a greater understanding of what was going on, and may have been sentient. This time I’m extending this theory to say that sentient holograms are banned under the “galactic treaty”.

As an interesting note, Robert Picardo (the actor who played The Doctor in Voyager) was reported to have said he’d be interested in having a role in a potential second season of Picard, back while Season 1 was still in early production. Some people seem to have taken these reports as confirmation that he definitely will have a role, but after looking into it I couldn’t see anything solid. If he does come back, however, it could be an indication that this theory is incorrect – or it could be an interesting plot thread for Season 2 if the “galactic treaty” is overturned.

Number 4: The synthetics were hacked.

After the opening scene in Maps and Legends, where an android named F8 is shown during the events of the attack on Mars, I think we can treat this one as much more likely.

During a work shift, F8 pauses, appears to receive a transmission or to be processing new information, and then immediately begins to take down the Martian defence network at least in his sector. Moments later the attack on Mars unfolds.

F8 was in a room with several humans at that moment, and if he’d suddenly been overcome by an urge to rebel, starting by attacking them would make more sense. The attack on Mars was a coordinated action against a deliberate target – all of the synthetics acted together.

The work crew with F8 describe him as “compromised”, which I think sounds like they’re describing a hack or that he’s under the control of someone else.

Why didn’t the synthetics continue their attack? With powerful ships under their command, and knowledge of Starfleet defences, they could have proceeded to attack Earth and other targets in the Sol system. They could have also kept the ships that they’d commandeered and left the system, but instead it seems that they all committed suicide after the attack was successful – could this be someone trying to cover their tracks by preventing the synths being forensically studied?

I think the primary culprits are Section 31 and the Zhat Vash, or another Romulan faction opposed to Federation help. Last time I did mention a few others who could be responsible – the Borg, the Klingons, or the Dominion – but these seem less likely given the show’s focus on the Romulans and the synths.

Section 31 would be an interesting choice. We’ve just seen a Section 31 storyline in Discovery, and production has supposedly begun on the Section 31 spin-off series with Michelle Yeoh and Shazad Latif. So from a production point of view, there’s a reason to keep Section 31 in the minds of viewers. They are also a faction who are not above such things – they infected Odo and his people with a disease that would have wiped them out, after all. Covering their tracks by using hacked synthetics is also something we could imagine Section 31 doing, and if they believed helping the Romulans to be a mistake, they’d be prepared to take any action to stop it, including killing Federation citizens.

However, the Zhat Vash could also be to blame. From their point of view, the Federation’s continued development of androids would be abhorrent. And as people like Dr Maddox got better and better at building them – to the point where whole work crews made up solely of androids could be rolled out – then they may have felt they had no choice but to act. By attacking only ships designed to aid Romulus, rather than Earth itself, perhaps they felt that the risk of triggering a war if they were caught was reduced. They may have also been opposed to Federation help. However, if the Zhat Vash are as staunchly anti-synthetic as they claim to be, would they have had the knowledge to hack them?

Number 5: Bruce Maddox caused the attack on Mars – probably by accident.

Could the attack on Mars – and 90,000 deaths – be a result of something Dr Maddox did or didn’t do?

Dr Maddox going missing is an interesting story point. Dr Jurati and others stayed at the Daystrom Institute, continuing to work on synthetic life if only from a theoretical point of view, so there’s no reason Maddox couldn’t have done so. But Dr Jurati says that he “disappeared” – not that he resigned or was fired, but just vanished.

Commodore Oh expressed surprise that Maddox is still alive, but given her clandestine nature she may know more than she’s let on about that. I don’t think Maddox’s name would have been referenced so many times in the first two episodes if we weren’t going to learn more about him and what happened to him – a single name-drop would have been a fun little easter egg for fans of The Next Generation, but the continued discussion of him suggests he will have a bigger role.

I think we’re going to learn that Dr Maddox did something wrong in the run up to the attack on Mars – something which left the door open to the synthetics being hacked. And that his disappearance and continued work on androids isn’t merely because he’s someone dedicated to that idea, but because he has an incredible sense of guilt over what happened, and he wants to prove that not all synthetics are bad – and that what happened won’t be repeated.

It’s also possible, but far less likely in my opinion, that Maddox was deliberately involved in the attack. He may have been working with Section 31 – if they are the culprits – to prevent Federation help going to the Romulans.

Brian Brophy, the actor who portrayed Maddox in The Next Generation, hasn’t made any statement regarding the new series that I could find, nor is he confirmed to be among the cast.

Number 6: The Trill doctor is going to end up assimilated.

The new Trill doctor doesn’t seem long for this world!

This one seems almost a given considering the amount of foreshadowing present in Maps and Legends! The Trill doctor who meets Soji aboard the Artifact – I had to look up her name, apparently it’s Naáshala Kunamadéstifee – is nervous about her first shift. Soji reassures her several times, telling her that the Romulans’ warnings are just “drama”, and telling her she will be fine.

It’s a cliché from the horror genre, but almost any time a non-main character is in this situation they end up meeting a nasty end. Aboard a Borg cube – even a disabled one – surely this means assimilation.

Further foreshadowing came from the Romulan guard himself, saying that once in the “grey zone” the assembled researchers should assume anything they don’t personally know to be safe is “malignant”, and of course there was also the sign hanging in the checkpoint area which was featured prominently on screen – saying it had been 5843 days since anyone was assimilated. While this should be reassuring, what it actually does is remind us, as the audience, that assimilation is still a possibility.

With Soji working to dismantle dead Borg drones, could she end up finding her new Trill friend on her operating table before too long? I wonder. In any case, this character seems almost certain to wind up assimilated – or meeting a similarly unpleasant end.

Number 7: Picard’s terminal illness is Irumodic Syndrome.

This disease was first mentioned in All Good Things, the finale of The Next Generation. And while I’m sure I wasn’t alone in speculating prior to Star Trek: Picard’s premiere that his illness might come into play, we got confirmation in Maps and Legends that Picard is indeed in the early stages of a terminal condition.

Dr Benayoun, who Picard served with prior to taking command of the Enterprise-D, brings him the bad news, and while Irumodic Syndrome is not mentioned by name, there were two hints from this conversation that it’s what we’re dealing with.

Firstly, Picard says that he knew that the issue in his parietal lobe could become a problem – a nod to his time-travelling adventures in All Good Things, I’m sure. And secondly, Dr Benyaoun refers to the group of potential conditions as “syndromes” – another clear nod. While there hasn’t yet been a formal diagnosis, it’s looking likely that Irumodic Syndrome will be mentioned before too long.

The only question I have from this, really, is why Picard didn’t tell his doctor about this possibility. He knew, thanks to Q’s actions, that Irumodic Syndrome was at the very least a possibility, yet it seems to have taken Dr Benayoun wholly by surprise. There may be a reason why he chose not to mention it, but you’d think he might’ve wanted to provide his doctor with that information so that the necessary tests could be run and the situation could be monitored.

Number 8: Soji and Dahj’s necklaces are a deliberate sign from their creator.

Why would Bruce Maddox – or whoever is responsible for Dahj and Soji’s creation if it isn’t him – give them each a necklace which would be immediately recognised by anyone who works in the android creation field? Given the ban on synthetic life, it seems like he painted an unnecessary bullseye on Soji and Dahj – and that may even be how the Zhat Vash were able to track them down.

I felt that the necklaces were actually quite weak props, probably the least visually interesting of the major props seen thus far in Star Trek: Picard, simply because of their understated design – they look to me like cheap costume jewellery. And honestly, learning more about the necklaces and seeing how important Soji’s is to her just amplified that feeling. Because they’re so bland from an aesthetic point of view, it made Picard’s interest in Dahj’s necklace seem quite forced in Remembrance.

However, from an in-universe point of view, if someone is manufacturing illegal androids using illegal methods, why would that person then provide both androids with a very obvious visual symbol – something so (allegedly) distinctive as to be eye-catching even to someone not aware of its meaning? It seems completely illogical – unless Dahj and Soji’s creators are trying to communicate with someone, or otherwise use the symbol to show off or make some other point.

From a story point of view it made sense in Remembrance; the necklace served as a clue for Picard and Dr Jurati to begin to unravel what was going on – and set the stage for them tracking down Soji. However, unless there’s more to it than meets the eye it doesn’t make a lot of sense for an android builder to do that.

So that’s it. At least for now anyway, those are my theories. As I said last time, they could all be wrong – but I’m feeling good about the synthetics being hacked! Then again, I said last time that I was confident in the Tal Shiar being responsible for the attacks and that didn’t pan out! So take the above with a pinch of salt. And after all, this is only for fun!

Theorising and speculating about a show with so much mystery is all part of the experience of watching it, and thus far I’ve really enjoyed the return to the 24th Century that Star Trek: Picard has afforded us. Friday can’t come soon enough!

The Star Trek franchise – including Star Trek: Picard – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. The first two episodes of Star Trek: Picard are available now on CBS All Access in the United States, and on Amazon Prime Video in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Ten things we learned from Maps and Legends

Sun 02.02.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There will be spoilers ahead for Maps and Legends and Remembrance, as well as for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

Maps and Legends was a solid episode, and a good continuation of the story that Remembrance set up. Despite not quite reaching the same heights as the first episode of the season, it was enjoyable nevertheless, and we got a lot of new information that, while setting up story elements for later in the season, also tells us about the Star Trek galaxy in the final year of the 24th Century.

You can read my full review of Maps and Legends by clicking or tapping here, and in this article I’m going to look at ten points of interest from the episode as we wait impatiently for the next one!

Number 1: The Romulans seem to be doing better than we thought.

One of the Romulan guards aboard the Artifact.

Because Picard has at least two Romulans working with him at the Château, and because of the total destruction of his planned rescue armada, I surmised after watching Remembrance that the Romulan situation was pretty bad. Though I wrote then that “they aren’t completely out of the game”, it seemed that things were rough for the surviving Romulans.

But we learnt a lot more in Maps and Legends about the status of the Romulans, and it seems things aren’t actually as bad as we’d thought. Obviously the supernova and the loss of their capital has caused significant upheaval, but the Romulans seem to be doing remarkably well despite this.

The Romulan Free State – which I’m assuming is a successor to the Romulan Star Empire based upon its control of the Artifact and that it seems to have a strong military – remains an independent faction. While there is cooperation with the Federation at least, as seen from Soji and other non-Romulans aboard the Artifact, they seem to be in a pretty good position all things considered.

Not only are their operatives – now known to be a new Romulan faction called the Zhat Vash – able to freely operate on Earth, even at the heart of Starfleet, but Romulan intelligence agents have penetrated Starfleet itself.

My personal belief at this stage is that Commodore Oh, despite what was hinted at in Maps and Legends, is actually a Vulcan who’s simply a co-conspirator. But Lieutenant Rizzo is absolutely confirmed to be a Romulan agent. The goal of the Zhat Vash is seemingly to track down and eliminate synthetic life, but I’m sure having an operative strategically placed within Starfleet intelligence brings the Romulans other dividends! And if they managed to get one person in, given an organisation the size of Starfleet it’s at least possible that there are others.

The Romulans have always been a secretive faction, and their power plays in other iterations of Star Trek have tended to be more covert than overt, so this really fits nicely with what we know about them and how we might expect them to behave.

For a more detailed look at the Romulans, I wrote an article before Star Trek: Picard premiered which you can find by clicking or tapping here. Suffice to say, however, that this isn’t their first tussle with Starfleet, nor their first time using undercover agents to try to gain the upper hand. The Khitomer conspiracy, which Kirk and his crew managed to stop at the last moment, had heavy Romulan involvement. Indeed, this seems to be one of the inspirations for the Starfleet conspiracy aspect of Picard’s storyline.

Number 2: The Borg survived the events of Voyager’s finale.

*Endgame* saw a time-travelling Admiral Janeway infect the Borg with a virus and provide future technology to Voyager’s crew.

It was always a bit of a long shot to think that Admiral Janeway’s actions in Endgame, the finale of Star Trek: Voyager, would have wiped out the Collective entirely. After all, they survived the loss of one Borg Queen during the events of First Contact, and that barely seemed to affect them at all. Not to mention the war they fought against Species 8472 that was said to have cost them thousands of ships and millions of drones.

One of the reasons that the Borg are so dangerous is their adaptability. And the virus that future Janeway introduced, as well as the upgrades she provided to Voyager, may have worked in the short term, but once the Borg have adapted they essentially become useless. This makes me wonder very much about the grey badges worn by Soji and others aboard the Artifact – will they lose their effectiveness, and if the remaining Borg on that “graveyard” were to wake up, would they be able to adapt to the technology the Romulans and others have deployed?

Borg stories can be difficult in Star Trek for the simple reason that the Borg Collective, in theory, is an overwhelmingly powerful opponent for our heroes. A single Borg cube was able to destroy almost 40 Federation ships in their first engagement, and a second cube came very close to assimilating Earth a few years later. In Voyager we saw them deploy dozens of ships against a Delta Quadrant species, conquering and assimilating the planet very quickly. If they used similar tactics against the Federation they’d surely be successful. So just knowing that the Collective still exists, that they’re out there waiting, is dramatic in itself.

Ever since the Enterprise-D first confirmed the existence of the Borg more than thirty years prior to the events of Star Trek: Picard, Starfleet has maintained a tactical division working on technologies and strategies to defeat them. But as we saw in The Best of Both Worlds and in First Contact, Federation technology lags far behind what the Borg are capable of. If they could so easily shrug off a devastating war against Species 8472, the damage inflicted upon them in Endgame would have scarcely registered. The lost ships and complex could be easily rebuilt – the Borg control so much Delta Quadrant territory as to have near limitless resources – and the virus that future Janeway used would be rendered harmless once an adaptation could be found. Adaptations to the virus and the technology she brought from the future would be rolled out to the entire Collective in a short span of time, and it would all be essentially useless thereafter.

The Artifact is cut off from the Collective, and given it has been under Romulan control for a long time (possibly even a couple of decades depending on how we interpret the number of “cycles” that the Romulans claim to have had it) it seems unlikely that the Borg are coming back for it anytime soon. But there could still very well be dangers lurking in the “grey zone” – and as I said in my review, I have a feeling that Soji’s new friend, the Trill doctor, isn’t going to last very long. There was too much foreshadowing for that not to happen!

Number 3: It’s looking increasingly likely that someone hacked the synthetics and compelled them to attack Mars.

The moment F8 turns on his human colleagues – was he hacked?

I wrote previously that the attack on Mars was not random. It was a calculated, deliberate action against a well-chosen target. For the synths to all malfunction at once, and all decide to go after Mars instead of, for example, other Federation targets, or instead of simply killing nearby humans or going on a rampage, strongly suggests that they were being controlled by an outside force.

F8, the synthetic who the first part of the episode focuses on, appears to receive a transmission, or to be processing something. He stops what he’s doing, his eyes change, and then he begins to take down the Martian defences in his sector. It’s only when the humans on his work crew attempt to interrupt him that he fights them; if he and the other synthetics had suddenly been overcome with a simple urge to rebel, it seems more likely that he’d have just attacked the people in his vicinity rather than performing the complex task of compromising the shields and defensive weapons around Mars.

Because the entire attack unfolds in a matter of just seconds, whatever happened to F8 had to have affected all of the synths practically simultaneously. This adds further credence to the idea that they were hacked, as does F8’s suicide. If this had been some kind of synthetic rebellion, a terrorist attack to highlight the plight of synthetics or to inspire rebellion among others, it wholly failed because as a consequence of what happened on Mars, synthetic life was banned and synthetic research largely shut down. The suicide of F8 – and presumably the other synths as well – would make sense if an outside hacker were covering their tracks. By destroying the synths after they’d achieved their goal of destroying the fleet and shipyard, there was no evidence to understand what happened, nor point to any culprit other than the synths themselves.

When it comes to who was responsible for the hack, however, we can only speculate as there’s basically no evidence to go on at this point in the story.

Number 4: Starfleet has been infiltrated.

Lt. Rizzo and Commodore Oh are co-conspirators.

I mentioned this above when discussing the Romulans, but at least one Romulan agent has managed to infiltrate Starfleet, and not just any branch of Starfleet, either. Commodore Oh appears to be a senior officer in Starfleet security, specifically the department of Starfleet security responsible for security on Earth.

There were a couple of elements in play here that I felt riffed off past Star Trek storylines. Star Trek: Picard has been great at that so far; throwing the audience little hints, names, visual details, and now thematic elements that harken back to previous iterations of the franchise. In particular, the Commodore Oh-Rizzo-Narek group of characters plays on themes we saw in The Undiscovered Country. In that film, Romulan agents, including undercover agents in Starfleet, attempted to disrupt Federation-Klingon peace efforts. There were also very subtle hints, I felt, at The Next Generation’s first season, particularly the episodes Coming of Age and Conspiracy – a duology of episodes dealing with parasitic organisms which were attempting to gain control of the Federation.

Playing up these themes is great; returning fans get further confirmation that this really is Star Trek, taking place in the same timeline, and for new fans it’s so subtle that it doesn’t get in the way of the story one iota.

From a story point of view, I have a suspicion that Commodore Oh is in fact a Vulcan, not a Romulan, and is simply a co-conspirator. Perhaps the Zhat Vash, because they have centuries’ worth of experience in tracking down synthetics, are a natural ally for someone like Oh as she tries to enforce the “galactic treaty” banning synthetics.

Lt. Rizzo, however, is very much a Romulan agent. Whether she’s the only one of the Zhat Vash undercover in Starfleet isn’t clear, but she definitely has it in for Soji.

Number 5: The show has broken viewership and streaming records.

The logo for CBS All Access original shows.

Star Trek: Picard was the most-watched series ever on its channel when it premiered on Canadian television. More than 1.1 million viewers tuned in to the CTV Sci-Fi Channel to watch Remembrance last week, which is a new record for the channel. Great job, Canadian Trekkies!

Additionally, CBS All Access broke the 10 million subscribers mark in the week leading up to Picard premiering. It’s possible that, due to the way CBS All Access reports subscriber numbers, not all of those are paid subscriptions as some may be a free trial, but it’s good news regardless. CBS All Access is the platform for Star Trek in the United States, and if the franchise is to survive long-term we need CBS All Access to succeed. This is a good indication that it’s on track to do well at least for now.

Finally, both Remembrance and Maps and Legends are among the most-pirated television episodes right now. While this of course means that CBS and others aren’t making money from those views, it does indicate that there’s a huge number of people interested in seeing Picard right now. Discovery, by the way, never came close to being the most-torrented or most-downloaded show, not even its premiere. Other shows that have been massively pirated in the last twelve months include Game of Thrones, The Witcher, and Chernobyl – all of which were hugely successful for their parent companies. Piracy should be seen as a reflection of how much interest there is in a series, so seeing Picard right up near the top is, despite what ViacomCBS might be inclined to think at first, remarkably good news.

The level of excitement for Picard was sky-high before Remembrance premiered. I’ve had friends and family who didn’t watch Discovery and who may not have watched any Star Trek property since the 1990s asking me about Picard and telling me they’re going to tune in, so I think that the show is really riding high right now. Hopefully the interest and excitement can be maintained over the whole season and the series can continue to be the biggest hit – so far, at least – for this new generation of Star Trek shows.

Number 6: The rank of Commodore still exists!

In The Original Series, and I want to say in The Animated Series as well (but I’m not 100% sure on that), there were several characters who held the rank of Commodore. Starfleet ranks imitate United States Navy ranks, where a Commodore is essentially a nonspecific rank offered to senior Captains. Previously the rank was used for a Captain who was in command of more than one ship – a kind of half-step between a Captain and an Admiral.

But since the era of The Original Series we haven’t seen anyone in Starfleet holding that rank (at least not in canon). It was possible that, as in the United States Navy today, the rank was less commonly used or only honorary, but this is evidently not the case.

Commodore Oh is clearly a senior commander in Starfleet security on Earth, and may even be wholly in charge of Earth’s security as she seems to report directly to Admiral Clancy, who is in charge of Starfleet. This is a serious responsibility, and her rank reflects this.

Her uniform is a point of note, however. Red has been the colour of command officers since the The Next Generation era, yet she is wearing the yellow/gold of security. Her uniform is also the same as Lt. Rizzo’s, and not the same as Admiral Clancy’s, despite both a Commodore and an Admiral technically being flag officers. She has a single rank pip, which presumably denotes her status as a Commodore, and her rank pip has a background to it as opposed to the pips Lt. Rizzo has, which are plain.

I looked at the combadges used in the new Starfleet uniforms in my review of Maps and Legends, but hopefully as we see more of the uniforms in the next few episodes I’ll be able to do more of a breakdown. One thing I did spot, though, was that the coloured portion of the uniform features a Starfleet logo pattern, similar to the uniforms of the Kelvin-timeline films.

Number 7: There may be more Sojis and Dahjs out there.

Picard with Bruce Maddox – the man who we assume built Soji and Dahj – aboard the Enterprise-D.

This was implied during the conversation between Rizzo and Oh. They talk about finding a “nest” of synthetics, and interrogating Dahj and Soji to learn where they came from so they can be tracked to their source.

It makes sense that, if it was possible to create Soji and Dahj three years ago, there could be more that have been built subsequently. When Soji said, at the end of Remembrance, that she had a sister I wasn’t convinced that she was referring to Dahj at first. I thought it might’ve been an interesting story point to learn that she was talking about someone else, but Dahj’s last name being confirmed seems to put that particular theory to bed.

However, it’s possible that there are still others out there like Soji, and that she and Dahj weren’t the only ones created by Dr Maddox – or whoever it turns out is ultimately responsible.

Number 8: The Artifact may have been under Romulan control for decades.

The Romulans have controlled the Artifact for a long time.

I hinted at this above, but three moments in Maps and Legends suggest that the Romulans may have been holding onto that Borg cube and its technology for a very long time.

Firstly we have the sign hanging in the checkpoint area. It says, in English and in Romulan, that the Artifact has “gone 5843 days without an assimilation”. 5843 days is around sixteen years, so the Romulans must’ve had control of the Artifact for at least that long.

This ties in closely with the next scene, where Soji is assisting with the dismantling of Borg drones recovered from the Artifact. The drone she and her Romulan colleagues are working on – that the Romulans call “Nameless” – is said to have been in regeno-stasis for fourteen years. Depending on what precisely regeno-stasis means (a combination of stasis with Borg regeneration?), this drone has been inactive for some time. However, the most recent assimilation aboard the Artifact took place longer ago than the drone has been inactive – so that raises the question of what was happening aboard the Artifact at that time. Were there still Borg alive and working on board when the Romulans first arrived? If so, were they still connected to the Collective at that time? The Collective currently sees the Artifact as a “graveyard” according to Narek, but if there were still Borg alive for potentially two years after the Romulans captured it, could the rest of the Collective be aware of what’s going on?

Finally, back at the checkpoint scene, we have the number of “Ops Cycles” stated by one of the Romulan guards. Maps and Legends takes place during or at the beginning of Ops Cycle 9834. If Ops Cycles are equivalent to standard Earth days, that would mean that the Artifact has been under Romulan control for almost 27 years – which would put them capturing the Borg vessel sometime around the year 2372. This would coincide with the second season of Voyager and the fourth season of Deep Space Nine, prior to the outbreak of the Dominion War. While this is a possibility, I think it’s more likely that we’re looking at a 14-16 year timeframe for the Romulans’ capture of the Artifact, which would place it not too far away from the attack on Mars. Could the Borg have been involved with that?

Number 9: The Romulans have a new emblem.

This was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it affair, but the Romulans do indeed have a new emblem. It appears to be a stripped-down version of the one we’d seen in The Next Generation era. That emblem featured what appeared to be a winged creature gripping something in its talons, and this design, in a dark red/maroon colour, is a similar shape with a spread-wings design.

It can be glimpsed briefly behind Soji while she’s working on the Nameless Borg drone, and if I had to speculate – which you know I do – I’d say it’s the emblem of the new Romulan Free State.

The new emblem can also be seen – though much less clearly – on the railings in the checkpoint scene aboard the Artifact. There may have been other appearances that I didn’t notice!

Number 10: Picard is dying.

Dr Benayoun brought Picard the worst possible news.

This was arguably the biggest revelation of the episode. Picard asked his doctor – who happens to be an old crewmate from the Stargazer – to certify that he’s fit for duty to Starfleet as part of his plan to get reinstated. But his scans revealed something in the parietal lobe (a section of the brain).

Dr Benayoun isn’t sure exactly what the abnormality represents, but all of the conditions it could cause “end the same way” – i.e. in Picard’s death.

In The Next Generation’s finale, All Good Things, Picard learned that he would suffer from something called Irumodic Syndrome, and this was clearly a reference to that. Picard tells Dr Benayoun that he had been told this parietal lobe issue could become a problem, and Benayoun refers to the collection of conditions that could afflict Picard as “syndromes”. Irumodic Syndrome looked to be something similar to Alzheimer’s disease insofar as it was a degenerative condition.

Later in Maps and Legends, Laris sarcastically asks Picard if he’s suffering from “dementia”, which I think is another reference to Picard’s age and state of health.

This diagnosis, such as it is, changes the tone of the show. No longer is Picard merely coming out of retirement, overcoming his depression, and finding a cause worth getting involved with. All of those elements are still present, but in addition is the sense that his time is running out. Whatever condition he has – presumably Irumodic Syndrome – is terminal. And, if Dr Benayoun is right, it won’t be a pleasant death.

Picard is now a man facing his own mortality, and more than that, he’s facing the prospect of losing himself before the disease kills him. This is clearly an allegory for degenerative conditions faced by many people today as they enter old age – I mentioned Alzheimer’s disease but there are many others. Many of us will have known someone who suffered from such a condition. There are several people I can call to mind in my family and among friends and neighbours. There will be consequences for Picard as a result of this diagnosis. We may not see his decline and death on screen – though that may be something the showrunners have in mind for later seasons – but as Picard assembles his crew and ventures into space, at the back of our minds we’ll be wondering if this really will be his final mission. Unlike in the past, when he’d been able to escape even what seemed to be insurmountable challenges like being assimilated by the Borg, this time there is no escaping his own mortality.

So that’s it.

Ten things from Maps and Legends. Despite being two episodes in already, Star Trek: Picard is still playing its cards close to its chest; we have far more questions than answers right now. The biggest answer we got from Maps and Legends, or at least the closest thing to an answer we got, is that the synthetics on Mars were almost certainly hacked or otherwise interfered with. Who did it and why, however, remains unknown.

As I said last week, I’m glad that we’re getting the episodes on a weekly basis instead of having the whole season at once. Star Trek: Picard has a lot going on, and I think if I’d binge-watched the full season I would have missed a lot of things, especially little references, throwbacks, and easter eggs.

I’m incredibly excited to learn more about the conspiracy in Starfleet, Soji and Dahj’s origins, and to finally meet the rest of the main cast – we’re almost certainly going to meet Santiago Cabera’s character next week and I’m a fan of his. There’s so much still to come, and The End Is The Beginning can’t come quickly enough!

Maps and Legends, the second episode of Star Trek Picard, is available to watch now on CBS All Access in the United States, and on Amazon Prime Video in the United Kingdom and other countries and territories. The Star Trek franchise – including Star Trek: Picard – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.