jean-luc picard – Page 2 – Trekking with Dennis

Star Trek: Picard + Star Trek: The Next Generation crossover theory: Lore

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Picard Season 1, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and for other iterations of the franchise.

Season 1 of Star Trek: Picard expanded our knowledge and understanding of the Star Trek galaxy in the 24th Century. As the lore of Star Trek grows (pun intended!) one thing I find fun is seeing how any new information we get can be made to fit with past iterations of the franchise, and in the case of Picard, I think I’ve hit on a theory that is plausible based on some new facts that we learned last year.

I previously touched on this theory as part of my essay on Commodore Oh a few months ago, but I thought it warranted being expanded and given its own article – so that when it’s finally confirmed on screen I can say “I told you so!” Or not. In short, this theory connects Data’s brother Lore to the Zhat Vash, the faction introduced in Star Trek: Picard.

Before we go any further and get into the weeds, let’s recap. Lore was introduced in The Next Generation Season 1 episode Datalore, and would return in Brothers in Season 4, as well as the Season 6 finale Descent, and Descent, Part II which opened Season 7. He was, in effect, Data’s “evil twin,” and would go on to cause havoc for Data and the crew of the Enterprise-D. We would also learn that Lore was responsible for luring a spacefaring lifeform called the Crystalline Entity to his homeworld, killing most of the citizens of the colony.

Next we have the Zhat Vash, who were introduced in Star Trek: Picard. An ancient, secretive Romulan sect, the Zhat Vash were on an anti-synthetic crusade. They believed that the development of artificial life would lead to all life in the galaxy being exterminated, and sought to wipe out synthetics wherever they found them. As part of their plan to prevent the Federation developing synths, a Romulan agent named Oh infiltrated Starfleet shortly after the discovery of Data in 2338.

This theory begins with something that The Next Generation never really explained: Lore being evil. Apparently this is a flaw in at least some Soong-type androids, as we’d also see Sutra exhibiting many similar traits to Lore in the two-part finale of Picard Season 1. But is there more to it than a simple mistake, as Dr Soong believed?

Though the Zhat Vash despise synthetic life, as part of their crusade to exterminate synths from the galaxy they seem to have learned a great deal about them – including how to reprogram them. In Picard Season 1, we learned that rogue synths had attacked Mars, destroying Admiral Picard’s fleet. It was the intervention of the Zhat Vash, hacking into the synths and reprogramming them, that caused this attack. If the Zhat Vash possessed the ability to do this in the 2380s, it’s at least possible that they were able to do something similar to Lore in the 2330s.

The Zhat Vash were able to reprogram Federation synths, leading to the attack on Mars.

Lore was activated months (or possibly years) before Data, and lived with his creator on the Omicron Theta colony. Dr Soong’s reputation seems to have been known within the Federation, and his work doesn’t appear to have been classified or somehow kept secret. The Zhat Vash seem to have been able to infiltrate the Federation with relative ease, having two spies inside Starfleet that we know of, and even if a Zhat Vash operative in this era were not an especially high-ranking officer, given the openness of Dr Soong’s work and the dedication the Zhat Vash have to their cause, I think we can reasonably suggest that they would have come to know what he was doing, and thus of the existence of Lore.

As I suggested in my last crossover theory, it stands to reason that the Zhat Vash will have been deeply alarmed about the Federation and their synthetic research. In the mid-23rd Century, two Federation AIs went rogue: Control (as seen in Discovery Season 2) and the M-5 multitronic unit (as seen in The Original Series second season episode The Ultimate Computer). Although it seems to be androids that were the main focus of Zhat Vash attention, as Laris made clear, the Romulans fear all kinds of AI – so these events would certainly have upset them enough to keep an eye on Starfleet and the Federation.

A fleet of ships under Control’s command went rogue and attacked the USS Enterprise and the USS Discovery.

That makes it even more likely, in my opinion, that the Zhat Vash would have found out about Dr Soong and Lore on Omicron Theta. If they were following Dr Soong’s work on positronic brains, they may have been working on ways to shut down his research or reprogram Lore. As mentioned, none of this appears to have been classified, and while Dr Soong kept his work private, it may have been possible for the Zhat Vash to infiltrate Omicron Theta and gain access to his research.

Their main goal was to prevent the rise of synthetic life. A single android was bad enough, but what they feared most was a civilisation of them. But Dr Soong didn’t have a civilisation – he had one single operational android. From the Zhat Vash’s perspective in the 2330s, if they could force Lore to be shut down – and ideally kill Dr Soong at the same time – the Federation would be unable to replicate the work and would thus be unable to build more.

At some point following his activation, Lore began to exhibit “emotional instability” to the point that he upset and worried the colonists on Omicron Theta. This doesn’t appear to have happened from the moment of his activation, though, which lends credence to the idea that he was reprogrammed – perhaps rather crudely in an attempt to force Dr Soong to take him offline.

However, before Dr Soong could take action to shut him down, Lore contacted the Crystalline Entity, which arrived and wiped out the Omicron Theta colony. If Lore had been reprogrammed, was this something he chose to do of his own volition? It seems a very specific action to take if he wanted to kill the colonists – he was more than capable of physically overpowering and outwitting them if he wanted to kill them.

The Crystalline Entity “feeding,” as seen in *Silicon Avatar.*

The destruction of Omicron Theta can be seen as a classic Romulan move. By using the Crystalline Entity, not only was Lore assumed destroyed, but so were Dr Soong, his assistants, and all of his research, setting back synthetic research in the Federation by decades. Of course we know that Dr Soong and Lore both escaped – but that clearly wasn’t part of the Zhat Vash’s plan! Perhaps they underestimated Lore.

Most importantly, though, having the Crystalline Entity wipe out Omicron Theta absolved the Romulans of any direct involvement, as well as potentially destroyed any evidence that they had ever been there. It reminds me in many ways of the false flag operation that they ran on Mars; the synths were reprogrammed and forced to go rogue, an event which so thoroughly shocked the Federation that the Zhat Vash were able to persuade them to shut down all synthetic research.

Laris first told Admiral Picard – and us as the audience – about the existence of the Zhat Vash.

With Lore being the only extant android, a “clean” attack on the colony, wiping out the entire site and all of its inhabitants, would work very well from the Zhat Vash’s perspective. Openly attacking Omicron Theta would surely have started a conflict with the Federation, and if that could be avoided through this kind of cloak-and-dagger operation, well that seems exactly like something they would seek to do.

So that’s the extent of the theory, and any Zhat Vash involvement afterwards appears to have ignored Lore. Perhaps they figured that the existence of Data showed that the Federation would not stop until they were forced to, or at least that it was no longer possible to stop Federation AI research by killing one android. This would explain why they didn’t take any aggressive action against Data during The Next Generation era, and could also explain why Dr Soong went into hiding after the Omicron Theta attack – he may have been hiding from the Zhat Vash.

Data in *Star Trek: Generations*. The Zhat Vash appear to have been either unable or unwilling to attack him.

This theory fits with Lore’s appearances in The Next Generation and doesn’t step on the toes of anything as far as I can see. It provides backstory to why Lore acted the way he did, and explains his motivations for doing so in a different way. It also elevates Lore from simply being an “evil twin” trope into more of a tragic character – we will never know what Lore could have been were he not interfered with.

Crucially, this theory fits with what we learned of the Zhat Vash in Picard Season 1, both in terms of their goals and their methods. It seems at least possible that the Zhat Vash are responsible for the attack on Omicron Theta and for reprogramming Lore, turning him into the malevolent adversary that Data and the crew of the Enterprise-D had to deal with.

This could have even been the first mission of a young Zhat Vash operative named Oh. Maybe she was the one sent to Omicron Theta to deal with Dr Soong, and this entire situation is her doing.

So that’s it. That’s my theory! I doubt it will ever be confirmed, but you never know! It seems plausible to me, at least. I hope this was a bit of fun and an excuse to jump back into the Star Trek galaxy. As always, please remember not to take this theory, or any other fan theory, too seriously. Theory-crafting is supposed to be enjoyable, and the last thing we need right now is something else to argue about!

Star Trek: Picard Season 1 is available to stream now on CBS All Access (soon to be rebranded as Paramount+) in the United States, and on Amazon Prime Video in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The Star Trek franchise – including Picard and The Next Generation – 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 – Season 4, Episode 12: The Wounded

Thu 28.01.21Thu 01.09.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as for other iterations of the franchise.

Thirty years ago this very day, Star Trek: The Next Generation broadcast the twelfth episode of its fourth season: The Wounded. This would be a highly significant episode for the franchise going forward, and in many ways began to set the stage for the upcoming spin-off Deep Space Nine. At this stage work on pre-production of Deep Space Nine had already kicked off, and while The Wounded is by no means a backdoor pilot, there was a conscious effort on the part of Rick Berman – who was in charge of Star Trek at the time – to begin to put the pieces together for the new series.

The Wounded is the first episode to give future Deep Space Nine regular Miles O’Brien a significant role. Though present since Encounter at Farpoint at the beginning of Season 1, O’Brien had been a background character with little to do until this point. The episode also marked the debut of the Cardassians, with future Gul Dukat actor Marc Alaimo featuring as a different Cardassian – Gul Macet.

Gul Macet – the first Cardassian ever seen in Star Trek.

For both of those reasons, The Wounded is incredibly important within the history of Star Trek. The foundations of Deep Space Nine were laid here, and it was around this time, under Rick Berman’s direction, that Star Trek truly cemented its evolution from purely episodic storytelling to an interconnected franchise. Deep Space Nine would share The Next Generation’s time period and be broadcast while its sister show was still on the air. This was a marked change from the way The Next Generation was spun off from The Original Series, and one which allowed the different parts of the franchise to connect in ways that were unprecedented at the time.

After more than a decade of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and other such franchises, we almost take for granted this concept of big, interconnected fictional universes. But episodes like The Wounded are a big part of building that sense of connectedness within Star Trek, and in the early ’90s that was something entirely new. The difference between a good film or television show and one that can become one part of a greater franchise is that sense of interconnectivity, and it’s impossible to understate the importance of episodes like The Wounded on building up Star Trek as that kind of franchise.

*The Wounded* was instrumental in laying the groundwork for *Deep Space Nine*.

In that sense, it isn’t only Deep Space Nine which owes so much to The Wounded – and other similar episodes around this time in The Next Generation’s run – but also Voyager, and by extension Enterprise, the Kelvin films, Discovery, and the fact that Star Trek is still going strong thirty years later. It’s one of those incredibly significant moments in the history of the franchise – one of the moments at which Star Trek became an expanded franchise.

More than that, The Wounded is an especially good episode. As Star Trek has always done, it deals with real-world themes through its sci-fi lens, looking at war, post-traumatic stress, how feelings of hate can linger long after the event, and so on. It was also a rarity at this point in Star Trek to see Starfleet officers as anything other than exemplars of virtue, or the Federation as anything less than a utopia. Captain Maxwell is not a villain per se, but the actions he takes in The Wounded endanger the peace – a hard-won peace with the Cardassians. In that sense, the episode looks at the idea of how war can and should be justified, and whether it’s acceptable to sacrifice the truth to preserve the peace.

Coming toward the end of the 1990-91 Gulf War, that makes The Wounded a very timely piece of television. Unlike the later Iraq War of 2003, the Gulf War was generally popular at the time, but even so there was a sense that there wasn’t a real plan for what to do after the initial military objectives had been achieved. Should the US and allies push on into Iraq and remove the Iraqi government? Or should they make peace even if doing so meant leaving a dictator in place? The Wounded doesn’t tackle all of these issues head-on, but the general theme of making peace with an enemy, the value of peace itself, and on a personal level, the toll war can take on those who serve, were all present in the narrative.

Finally, The Wounded draws on inspiration from the film Apocalypse Now, itself influenced by the novel Heart of Darkness, and in the vein of those classics features a story about a war hero going “mad.” Plot points like Captain Maxwell’s mental state and his foray into enemy territory are comparable to storylines in those classic works of literature and cinema. There’s a reason why audiences respond to such powerful themes and storylines, and The Wounded does an admirable job of translating them to Star Trek’s science fiction setting, doing so in a way that retains the original message, ensuring it isn’t buried too deeply in talk of aliens and spacecraft.

*The Wounded* follows a similar narrative to classic war film *Apocalypse Now*.

Because of the way The Next Generation was broadcast at the time, I can’t claim that this is the thirtieth anniversary of when I saw The Wounded! That would’ve been a couple of years later, as here in the UK that was the kind of delay we were looking at between an episode’s US premiere and when it would be broadcast here. Regardless, let’s take a look at The Wounded together.

The episode begins with a couple of sequences that set up the main storylines. Both via his captain’s log and on the bridge, Picard gives us a lot of information about the Cardassians – who were, as noted, new to Star Trek in this episode. The bridge crew briefly discuss the situation, and it emerges that Picard had been part of the conflict and negotiations to resolve it while in command of the Stargazer. The exact nature of Cardassian-Federation relations is a little confused; Picard says a “peace treaty” is in effect whereas Troi describes the Cardassians as “allies.”

Up next we get a sequence with Chief O’Brien and Keiko – whose wedding had been part of the previous episode, Data’s Day. In their quarters, O’Brien seems unimpressed with Keiko’s vegetarian cuisine. O’Brien got a fun line when looking at the kelp-based meal: “Sweetheart… I’m not a fish.” That line still wins a chuckle decades later! As O’Brien promises to prepare Keiko a meal of his childhood Irish classics, the ship comes under attack.

The attack on the Enterprise comes during Miles and Keiko’s breakfast.

On the bridge, the crew briefly discuss the minor damage to the ship. The Cardassians apparently fired without responding to hails. This sequence marked the first appearance of the Cardassian Galor-class warship, initially described here as a “scout ship.” Despite firing on the Enterprise-D while its shields were down, there is no major damage nor any casualties. A few phaser shots from the Enterprise-D causes damage to the Cardassian ship and forces its captain – Gul Macet – to hail. The Galor-class would go on to be one of the Cardassian mainstays during the Dominion War – where it was much more effective! Perhaps it got an upgrade. Macet alleges that a Federation ship attacked the Cardassians in violation of their peace treaty; he gives Picard one hour to find out what’s happened.

Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Discovery both have pretty understated theme music. They aren’t bad, but they’re closer to the themes from Deep Space Nine and Voyager in that they’re slower, quieter pieces of music. The Next Generation’s theme is in contrast to those! Taken from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the up-tempo theme really conveys a sense of adventure in a way the others really don’t. Star Trek: Lower Decks, and to a degree the main theme from 2009’s Star Trek reboot film, both do this too, and both of those pieces of music are likewise up-tempo and adventurous. It’s only when coming back to The Next Generation after watching a full season of Discovery that I can really appreciate this difference in musical tone!

The Enterprise-D attacked by the Trager, the first Cardassian Galor-class ship seen in Star Trek.

After the opening titles Captain Picard receives a briefing from a Starfleet Admiral. He informs Picard that the USS Phoenix, under the command of Captain Maxwell, was responsible for destroying a Cardassian station – though they are unable to find out why as Captain Maxwell is not responding. The Enterprise-D – along with a small group of Cardassian “observers” – has been granted permission to enter Cardassian space and catch Maxwell.

The Admiral is very concerned with preserving a hard-won peace treaty, and makes it clear that he believes that the Federation is not prepared for another war with Cardassia – prescient, one might say, in light of how badly the Federation handled much of the Dominion War! Though the Dominion War arc hadn’t even been conceived at this stage, when looking back at The Wounded now that we know what happened, it’s possible to see how the Dominion War story built on what had previously been established in many ways. These smaller moments add up to a much greater whole, and are part of what makes for a believable narrative.

Though Captain Picard is initially insistent that the three Cardassian observers be made welcome and not made to feel like “prisoners,” he acquiesces to Worf and Riker’s request that their access to the ship be limited. Worf intends to post guards at what he considers to be sensitive areas of the Enterprise-D for the duration of the Cardassians’ stay. Data establishes that O’Brien once served with Captain Maxwell aboard a ship called the Rutledge, and Picard tasks Counsellor Troi with looking after the crew, as he feels some officers may be uncomfortable with the Cardassians on board – foreshadowing what’s to come.

The Cardassians beam aboard and Riker and Troi are there to greet them, along with Chief O’Brien. The Wounded is the only episode of Star Trek to show off a different style of Cardassian uniform. Unlike the silver-grey mail-like armour that they would wear in the Deep Space Nine era, here the Cardassians wear a plain brown leather-like armour over some kind of undershirt. Most notably, this is the only episode which shows off Cardassian headgear – a kind of helmet that covers the back of the head with three bars connecting at the front. Though the outfit isn’t bad per se, I think it’s easy to see why it was changed later. Not only does the headgear look a little silly, it also covers up key aspects of the Cardassians’ facial features and makes them less distinguishable from one another. Gul Macet sports facial hair, too, and The Wounded would be the only time we would see that on a Cardassian character.

It’s interesting that Marc Alaimo was the first Cardassian seen in Star Trek, and in another role would also go on to be the most significant Cardassian. In that sense he’s similar to Deep Space Nine co-star Armin Shimmerman, who was one of the first Ferengi seen in Season 1 of The Next Generation and also played Quark, the most famous Ferengi in Deep Space Nine. We don’t spend enough time with Gul Macet to really show off how different he is from Alaimo’s more well-known character of Gul Dukat, and in many ways the performance he puts in here is similar. Perhaps Macet and Dukat are related?

Counsellor Troi seems to pick up on O’Brien’s discomfort with the Cardassians as she and Riker escort them from the transporter room. In the briefing room, Geordi and Riker explain the basics of scanning for the Phoenix, and that they’re able to scan one sector per day. It’s worth pointing out that how big a “sector” is in Star Trek has never been consistently explained on screen! The Cardassians are sceptical – understandably so – but Picard is able to calm the tensions.

Also present at the briefing room table is O’Brien, and Picard turns to him to ask him a little about Captain Maxwell, with whom he previously served. O’Brien explains that Maxwell’s family were killed during a Cardassian attack on the Setlik III outpost – and if Setlik III sounds familiar to you, it’s a name associated with O’Brien’s military service that would be brought up numerous times in Deep Space Nine, most significantly, perhaps, in the episode Empok Nor.

O’Brien responds aggressively when it’s suggested to him that Captain Maxwell is taking revenge for what happened to him, and it’s clear that he feels a strong sense of loyalty to his former commander. Gul Macet attempts to press the point when Picard intervenes, but before the discussion can continue the briefing is interrupted by Worf, who has located the Phoenix on long-range sensors.

The briefing breaks up, and Captain Picard invites Gul Macet to the bridge with the senior officers. O’Brien and the two junior Cardassians leave together and end up sharing a turbolift. Here’s where we get one of the episode’s most interesting scenes. The Cardassians – who are, after all, just doing their jobs – attempt small-talk with O’Brien, but he isn’t having any of it.

After an invitation to join the Cardassians in Ten-Forward, O’Brien snaps. He tells them abruptly that he will cooperate with them when it comes to discussing technology or the search for Captain Maxwell if ordered to do so, but will not spend his free time with them. He then barges past them out of the turbolift.

O’Brien and the Cardassians in the turbolift.

It was around this time that we began to see cracks in the utopian/perfect veneer of Starfleet and humanity in Star Trek, proving that they haven’t entirely risen above the pettiness and conflicts we have in contemporary times. Gene Roddenberry was strongly opposed to the idea of Starfleet as a military outfit, and famously tried to have Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country re-written to cut out what he saw as anti-Klingon racism from Kirk. He felt such attitudes were beneath humanity in his vision of the future. I can only imagine he felt the same way about O’Brien in The Wounded. As an aside, The Undiscovered Country will also celebrate its 30th anniversary this year.

On the bridge, Picard orders the Enterprise-D to intercept the Phoenix, with Gul Macet watching over his shoulder. Macet wants the ship’s precise location so that he can have Cardassian vessels arrive first. He also asks for the ship’s transponder frequency – a neat callback to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Worf looks angry at this suggestion, which Captain Picard refuses – diplomatically, of course.

O’Brien serves Keiko the promised meal in their quarters, though she seems unimpressed with his replicated potato casserole (which looks more like potato salad!) He sings an old song from his days on the Rutledge, and it seemed for a moment as though the unpleasantness with the Cardassians was forgotten. But it turns out the song – which Colm Meaney does his best to sing – was a favourite of Captain Maxwell’s. He pushes Keiko to comment on why someone – speaking abstractly – might not be comfortable with Cardassians, but appears in denial about his own feelings toward them.

This scene and the previous one really humanise O’Brien. What he’s feeling is, as Keiko explains, quite natural. Yet at the same time he’s not comfortable sharing with her exactly what it is that’s wrong. He brushes off his battle experiences calling them “skirmishes,” and refuses to accept or even recognise that he’s holding on to a degree of resentment.

On the bridge, the crew has detected that the Phoenix is in pursuit of a Cardassian vessel – a supply ship. Gul Macet is incredulous that Data can read Cardassian transponder codes and tell what kind of vessel it is at such range, but they have a more immediate problem. Maxwell is not responding to hails, and goes on to attack the ship while the Enterprise-D can only watch.

I do like the 2D graphics used to represent the positions of the Phoenix and the Cardassian ship on the main viewscreen. Though arguably not very “high tech,” it’s cleverly done and easy to understand for us as the audience. The remastered Blu-Ray version didn’t change this, but did upscale and improve it. Though in many ways Discovery and Picard have changed up the aesthetic of Star Trek for modern times, we have seen these flat, 2D maps in those series as well.

Gul Macet again insists on being given the transponder frequency (or prefix code) for the Phoenix, and when Maxwell does not respond Picard orders Worf to send the code to the Cardassians. Worf loudly protests, but does carry out his orders. Despite sending the codes, however, the Phoenix is able to continue its attack and destroys both the Cardassian warship – to Gul Macet’s shock – and the supply ship it was initially targeting.

Following the battle – if it can be called that – Picard orders the Enterprise to increase speed to warp 9 to catch up. Given the urgency, I do wonder why the ship was only at warp 6 initially. Gul Macet leaves the bridge wordlessly.

The Phoenix destroys a Cardassian warship.

Picard goes to visit O’Brien in his transporter room. O’Brien again states how greatly he respects Captain Maxwell, saying he served with “the two finest captains in Starfleet,” putting Maxwell on par with Picard himself. He also says that he believes Captain Maxwell must have a reason for the actions he’s taken, reiterating that this isn’t some quest for revenge.

Captain Maxwell, according to O’Brien, took the loss of his family as well as one could, and continued to perform his duties despite the tragedy. Even hearing that Captain Maxwell has just killed 600 Cardassians does not shake O’Brien’s opinion, as he tells Picard that he “knows” them and that one must be careful around Cardassians, a race he clearly holds in low regard. What Picard says next about holding on to one’s anger clearly has an effect on O’Brien, and causes him to consider not only what Captain Maxwell is doing, but his own attitude to the Cardassians. It’s one of the most powerful moments in the episode – yet lasts mere seconds.

Captain Picard arrives in the transporter room.

Picard, in this statement, encapsulates the theme of the episode: that holding on to anger is never a good thing. Captain Maxwell may have pretended to be fine – as O’Brien was moments earlier with Keiko – but neither man ever got over their wartime experiences. It’s something that applies in the real world, too. At the time, the Gulf War was raging, but the peace treaty storyline reminds me more of the Vietnam War, and how Americans in this era might view their one-time enemies. It could even apply to the Second World War, and even today there are lingering feelings from that conflict in some areas.

In Ten-Forward, O’Brien joins one of the Cardassians for a drink. He initially offers an apology for his earlier actions, spurred no doubt by Captain Picard’s words. But as he talks to the Cardassian officer he spills more of his history with them – he was present on Setlik III after Captain Maxwell’s family was killed, and it was the first moment he ever killed someone. O’Brien’s words are very powerful: he doesn’t hate the Cardassians, he hates himself, and blames them for making him into a soldier and a killer.

O’Brien and the Cardassian officer in Ten-Forward.

On the bridge, Worf claims to have caught the other junior Cardassian accessing a computer on deck 35. Gul Macet reprimands him and confines him to quarters. The Cardassian officer’s staredown of Gul Macet seems to imply that he was carrying out his orders, but that point was not expanded upon further.

Gul Macet and Captain Picard speak in the ready-room. Macet says he will further discipline the man, Picard says it doesn’t matter, and that in order to have peace, no one individual must be allowed to disrupt it – a very self-serving statement under the circumstances, one might say! Macet sees Picard as a kindred spirit – both men desire peace above all else. Perhaps that comes as a surprise to both of them. Though it is hard to detach Marc Alaimo’s performance as Macet from his later role as Dukat, he is believable in this moment.

Data interrupts the conversation to tell Picard that they’re twenty minutes away from intercepting the USS Phoenix, and the very next scene shows the two ships together. Captain Maxwell beams aboard to discuss the situation with Captain Picard, and is greeted by O’Brien and Riker in the transporter room.

Far from being adversarial, Captain Maxwell is disarmingly pleasant, greeting Riker warmly and being pleased to see O’Brien after such a long time. Were it not for the previous twenty minutes we’d be forgiven for thinking this was any “normal” interaction between Starfleet officers! In that sense though, seeing this scene in context, there’s something very unsettling about it. Knowing that Captain Maxwell has gone rogue, knowing how many people he’s just murdered, and then seeing him as a jovial man in a Starfleet uniform offering friendly handshakes leaves a bad taste – intentionally so.

Captain Maxwell and O’Brien reunite in the transporter room.

O’Brien looks disturbed as Riker and Maxwell depart, the latter arriving in Picard’s ready-room for a showdown. Again, though, pleasantries were observed, and Maxwell initially retains his disarming persona. Soon, however, Maxwell appears to go off the rails. He insists that the Cardassians are re-arming, and that the science station he attacked was actually a military outpost.

When pushed by Picard for evidence, he offers nothing concrete, instead talking in vague terms about there being no need for a scientific station in the area and its strategic value from a military perspective. He didn’t contact Starfleet because he didn’t want to wait, believing that Federation bureaucracy would be too slow to recognise the threat.

Captain Maxwell genuinely expects to find a kindred spirit in Picard, a fellow veteran of the Cardassian border wars. Not only does he expect Picard to harbour the same anti-Cardassian sentiments he clearly holds, he seems to expect his so-called “evidence” – which is little more than guesswork – will be adequate to excuse his actions in Picard’s eyes.

When this doesn’t materialise, Maxwell begins to sound even more disconnected, talking in big but ultimately vague terms about the need to save lives. He argues that he’s trying to prevent a war by stopping what he sees as Cardassian aggression, and accuses Picard of losing his edge. He believes that the peace treaty was a ruse, and that he was doing necessary work by ignoring it.

Picard replies by giving his assessment of the situation. He suggests that Maxwell is not doing any of this for the good of the Federation, but simply for the sake of revenge. When Maxwell says that history will consider Picard a fool, Picard says he will accept that, but insists Maxwell stand down now and return to Federation space. Maxwell asks him to join him and scan one of the Cardassian supply ships together, but Picard refuses.

Can we argue, in light of what came next, that Maxwell was right? Not only in the sense of what the Cardassians were doing in The Wounded, but seen in hindsight after the Dominion War? The Cardassians were re-arming, and within five years of the events depicted in this episode, the Dominion War would break out. Captain Maxwell’s methods may have been wrong, but his basic point stands: the Cardassians did use the peace treaty to rebuild and re-arm. They were preparing for another conflict. In that sense, we can look at the Cardassians as one might look at Germany in the mid-1930s. Picard was arguing that peace was the most important goal, something worth making sacrifices for. Those same arguments were made by many in Britian, France, and elsewhere in the years preceding the Second World War. We might even call it appeasement.

Maxwell initially agrees to Picard’s plan, agreeing to return to the Phoenix and accompany the Enterprise-D to a nearby Starbase. Picard was very strong and unwavering during the conversation, telling Captain Maxwell that he will “allow [him] the dignity” of returning to his own ship rather than putting him in the brig, then turning away to face the window after ordering Maxwell escorted out.

Predictably, though, Captain Maxwell does not stick to his side of the agreement. While en route to the Starbase, the Phoenix changes course, hunting down a Cardassian starship a light-year away. Picard orders the Enterprise-D to pursue, rapidly increasing speed. However, Data explains that the Phoenix is also accelerating and they won’t catch up in time.

As an aside, I like the design of the Nebula-class ships. They debuted in The Best of Both Worlds, though this was the first time the ship design was named on-screen. The intention with the Nebula-class was to create a vessel comparable to the Galaxy-class but smaller, clearly giving the Enterprise-D an advantage. In that sense it’s an updated Miranda-class from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and in fact its saucer-plus-nacelles design is superficially similar. It’s a neat-looking starship, and though such things are 100% subjective I’ve always thought the Nebula-class was a fun design.

As Picard gives the order to ready the phasers, Riker informs him that O’Brien used to be Maxwell’s tactical officer, and he’s summoned to the bridge. The Enterprise-D catches up with the Phoenix just as it intercepts the Cardassian supply ship, and O’Brien arrives on the bridge to help out.

The Phoenix has not powered up its weapons, and Data informs the bridge that they’re unable to scan the Cardassian ship. That does raise eyebrows – literally – but Picard first talks with O’Brien about Captain Maxwell, still hoping to avoid a Starfleet-on-Starfleet battle. Captain Maxwell hails the Enterprise and pleads with Picard to board the Cardassian ship, saying it will prove him right.

Picard, of course, is having none of it. With Maxwell no longer trustworthy he insists he beam aboard the Enterprise. Maxwell is looking increasingly desperate, threatening to destroy the Cardassian ship if Picard won’t board it. He ends the conversation when Picard doesn’t back down.

Captain Maxwell on the Enterprise-D’s viewscreen.

Captain Maxwell will strike if his back is against the wall, so says O’Brien. And mere seconds later the Phoenix is seen to power up its shields and weapons, reading an attack on the Cardassian vessel. Picard orders red alert, and prepares to take the extraordinary action of firing on another Starfleet vessel to defend a Cardassian ship.

O’Brien offers to beam aboard the Phoenix to talk Captain Maxwell down, and comes up with a technobabble plan to beam through the cycling shields of the Nebula-class vessel. With few other options, Picard authorises the mission. It would’ve been neat to see O’Brien in the transporter room pulling off this seemingly dangerous, complicated bit of transporter work! But instead the very next scene in in Captain Maxwell’s ready-room, with O’Brien having already beamed aboard.

Captain Maxwell looks out at the Enterprise-D.

Maxwell is shocked to see O’Brien, and pulls out a phaser. He refuses to believe Picard will attack his ship to protect “the enemy,” but when O’Brien insists that he will he becomes dejected. He asks O’Brien what happened in “this war,” but O’Brien retorts that there is no war any more, that the war is over and they have peace.

As they talk, it becomes clear to O’Brien – and to us as the audience – that Picard and Gul Macet were right: for Captain Maxwell this is all about what happened to his family on Setlik III. He says that the war is not over, that the Cardassians are butchers who “live to make war,” and O’Brien comes to realise that he was never able to let go of what happened.

Captain Maxwell points a phaser at O’Brien.

As O’Brien listens, Maxwell’s voice breaks. His children never had the chance to grow up, he lost his family, and he has been unable to let go of that anger toward the Cardassians. It has clouded his judgement. The two men talk and reminisce about their time on the Rutledge, and other officers they served with, including a man who died at Setlik III. O’Brien sings the song again, and Captain Maxwell joins in. It turns out the song was one sung by the man who was killed by the Cardassians.

As the song comes to an end, Captain Maxwell realises that it’s over. Whatever he was trying to do, whatever reasons he had, however he’d convinced himself and his crew that it was right, he couldn’t defeat the Enterprise and he couldn’t negotiate with Picard. As he says to O’Brien, he isn’t “going to win this one.”

Picard confirms in a voiceover log that Captain Maxwell has been detained, and that the Phoenix has rejoined the Enterprise. In the briefing room, Picard thanks O’Brien for resolving what could’ve been a far worse situation. O’Brien expresses his pride at having served with Captain Maxwell, someone he still considers a “good man,” in spite of what he did. Picard dismisses him, and Gul Macet says he admires O’Brien’s loyalty, “even if it is misplaced.”

The Wounded has one final twist, though, as Picard explains to Gul Macet. After saying that Maxwell, who was a decorated war hero, simply could not find a role for himself when peace broke out, Picard drops the bombshell that Maxwell was right. The Cardassian ships were not carrying science equipment – they were, as Maxwell said, preparing for war.

Captain Picard talks to Gul Macet in the briefing room.

Gul Macet asks the obvious question: if Picard knew, why not board the ship? Picard responds that he was there to protect the peace; that was his only objective. He placed preserving the peace ahead of everything else, even when he knew that Maxwell was right and that the Cardassians were using the so-called science outpost for military purposes. As we discussed above, he chose to put peace ahead of all other considerations.

Picard tells Gul Macet to take a message back to the Cardassian Central Command: the Federation and Starfleet will be watching. They know what the Cardassians were trying to do, and though they did not take aggressive action this time, the option remains on the table. Any chance of a surprise attack is gone, the Cardassian objective has failed. Picard spins his chair around, signalling the end of the conversation – and the episode.

So that was The Wounded. It was fun to look back on this episode on its thirtieth anniversary – something which makes me feel very old indeed! The episode was a heavy one, with incredibly deep and meaningful themes that touched on issues which are still as relevant in 2021 as they were in 1991. It’s also an important piece of Star Trek history, introducing the Cardassians, giving O’Brien his first real storyline, and bringing Marc Alaimo into the franchise.

Though the Cardassians’ uniforms would be redesigned, their overall look, as well as the appearance of their Galor-class ships, would remain in use until the end of Deep Space Nine. We have briefly seen a Cardassian in the recent third season of Discovery, too, a design which is largely unchanged from that which debuted here. The Cardassians would go on to join the Klingons as one of the most-explored Star Trek factions thanks to their significant role in Deep Space Nine.

As Gene Roddenberry stepped back from day-to-day work on Star Trek: The Next Generation, things began to change. Where the first season largely followed the formula Roddenberry used in The Original Series, by the end of Season 2 and certainly by the time The Wounded premiered, the series had taken a different path. In addition to the darker themes which looked at humans holding prejudiced views and even committing war crimes, Rick Berman and others were working hard to establish Star Trek as a growing, connected franchise with themes, characters, factions, and storylines that would all cross over.

Plans for Deep Space Nine were underway, and within two years that show would premiere with the episode Emissary. The Star Trek franchise we know today wasn’t created by The Wounded, but the episode plays an important role in taking Star Trek to new places, not only thematically but also in terms of expanding the roster of characters. O’Brien had his first major storyline here, and the success of his role in The Wounded established him as a major player in Star Trek, getting him ready for the move to Deep Space Nine.

I had fun re-watching this episode of The Next Generation. I have written up two other re-watches from the show, and you can find them here: Season 2’s The Measure of a Man and Season 7’s Lower Decks. This is something I do from time to time, and with no new Star Trek on the schedule at the moment, check back as I’m sure I’ll be writing up more episode re-watches this year!

Star Trek: The Next Generation is available to stream now on CBS All Access (soon to be Paramount+) in the United States, and on Netflix in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The Star Trek franchise – including The Next Generation and all other properties 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 Season 1 – one year later

Sat 23.01.21Mon 21.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Picard Season 1. There are also minor spoilers for Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Discovery.

Time certainly flies, doesn’t it? It was one year ago today that Star Trek: Picard Season 1 debuted in the United States (and a day later in the rest of the world). It’s not unfair to say that I was incredibly excited about this series, which would take the Star Trek timeline forward in a significant way for the first time in eighteen years. Though I tried hard to keep my hype and expectations in check, there was no getting around how much I was looking forward to Star Trek: Picard.

As we hit the first anniversary, I thought it could be a good moment to look back on my remembrances (ha! get it?) of the show as well as what the first season achieved, what it did well, and where it came up short.

If you were a regular reader a year ago, you’ll recall from my reviews that the season started very strongly. In fact, I named Remembrance (the season premiere) the best Star Trek episode of 2020 – a year which, for all its problems, saw 33 episodes across three shows. I rank Remembrance very highly among modern Star Trek episodes, and I’d even compare it favourably to Deep Space Nine’s Emissary, perhaps placing them joint-first as the best Star Trek premieres.

The finale, on the other hand, let the season down somewhat. Carefully-established mysteries that the show had slowly build up over the preceding eight episodes felt rushed through in a two-part conclusion that dumped new characters, a new location, a new faction, and whole new storylines into play right at the very end. The season also ended with a plot hole unexplained – why Dr Maddox travelled to Freecloud – and the disappearance of main character Narek, whose storyline was dropped halfway through the second part of the finale.

So despite enjoying Picard overall, as I look back a year later at Season 1, I’m afraid I have to say that it was a mixed bag.

From the moment Star Trek: Picard was announced it shot to the top of my list of shows I was excited for. I may have talked about this in the run-up to the season, but I remember feeling distinctly underwhelmed when Enterprise was announced in 1999. I wasn’t particularly interested in a Star Trek prequel, and while the show had heart and told some exciting stories, there was a sense really since Voyager ended and Nemesis had been in cinemas that Star Trek wasn’t moving forward.

Enterprise, the Kelvin reboot films, Discovery, and even Short Treks all told stories in the 22nd or 23rd Centuries, and though those stories were enjoyable and fun, there was a lot left behind in the 24th Century that was never explored. What would become of the characters we knew, of the Federation, of Starfleet, and all the other factions, races, and planets? The 24th Century had been Star Trek’s biggest era – with 517 episodes of television and four films starring three crews and a huge supporting cast of secondary and recurring characters.

Moving the timeline forward beyond *Nemesis* was something I really wanted to see from Star Trek.

The 24th Century was also “my” Star Trek era. The Next Generation was the first Star Trek series I watched, and it was literally my way into being a Trekkie. I have a great fondness for the shows of that era, and I consider it to be not only the time when Star Trek was at its most successful in terms of viewership (and finances) but also the closest the franchise has to a “Golden Age.” So to see that era abandoned for prequels and mid-quels wasn’t exactly disappointing, but it wasn’t something I was wild about.

So for eighteen years (Nemesis was released in 2002) Star Trek hadn’t moved forward in terms of the timeline. And even when Discovery launched and established itself with Short Treks and a spin-off, there was still no plan to revisit the 24th Century. Picard came along like a breath of fresh air, and I was incredibly excited, hyped up, and interested in what the series would bring. That was my mindset going into the premiere and each of the subsequent nine episodes.

Picard was not Season 8 of The Next Generation – and I didn’t want it to be. I was very keen that the new cast be given an opportunity to establish themselves within the franchise and become fan favourites for a new generation of Trekkies. What I hoped for was that, in thirty years’ time, people would be clamouring for a Dr Jurati series or Star Trek: Elnor with the same vigour I have for Picard. And I think, in that sense, we’ve begun to see at least the beginnings of that.

A lot of television shows don’t really settle in until Season 2, which is where the overused term “growing the beard” comes from. I’ve used that expression myself a few times, but in the aftermath of Discovery’s recent outing it seems to be the only phrase that critics are using to describe the show and it’s honestly put me off! But we’re off topic. There was perhaps a degree of leniency on my part going into Season 1 of Picard; a willingness to let some minor issues slide in order to see the show continue to build and grow. And as underwhelming as the Season 1 finale was, I’m hopeful that Season 2 can build on the foundation that has been laid.

The crew of La Sirena at the end of Season 1.

Though there was the mystery of Dr Maddox’s location, the Romulans’ scheme, and later the beacon to contact the super-synths, what Season 1 really was, when you boil it down, was a team-up story. Picard, over the course of ten episodes, put together a new crew and gave them a reason to work together. Establishing each member of the crew, giving them a side-quest of their own, and binding them together to follow Picard was the primary accomplishment of the season.

I’ve used the analogy of the Mass Effect video game series once in relation to Star Trek: Picard already – when it comes to the basic existence of the super-synths and their beacon. But there is a second point of comparison that is interesting to me, and may be to you if you’ve played those games. In Mass Effect 2, much of the game is comprised of Commander Shepard recruiting a crew. Each member of the crew needs to be brought on board, then later a side-mission is given in which players can earn their loyalty. Picard Season 1 played out similarly.

Elnor in Season 1. Recruiting him for the mission took up one episode.

Raffi wanted to go to Freecloud to reunite with her son. Dr Jurati had a secret plot to kill Dr Maddox. Elnor had to resolve his lingering emotional issues with Picard. Rios had to put together the pieces of what happened aboard the USS Ibn Majid. Seven of Nine wanted revenge for Icheb. Each of the main characters – at least those on the mission to save Soji – had to be recruited and then have their side-quest resolved before the story could reach its conclusion. This isn’t just a story from Mass Effect 2, it’s something many team-up stories do.

As I mentioned when considering some preliminary ideas for Season 2, finding a way to keep this crew together will be something that the next chapter of this story needs to address. Because they came together to do a single task – rescue Soji – and then continued to help the synths on Coppelius and prevent the arrival of the super-synths, they’re done. Their mission is complete, and Season 2 will have to find a believable reason for keeping them together. But that is a challenge for next time!

The super-synths were called off at the last moment.

Each character we met was interesting, and none felt unoriginal or bland in the way some secondary characters can in a story which primarily focuses on one person. We’ll deal with Picard himself in a moment, but for now: Elnor was a lonely member of an all-female sect, and also had abandonment issues after Picard’s disappearance. Rios pretended to be the roguish “Han Solo” type, but had serious post-traumatic stress following his former captain’s murder-suicide while aboard the USS Ibn Majid. Raffi was a flawed genius whose drug problem had dominated her life and cost her her most important relationships. Dr Jurati had been brainwashed into murdering someone she loved. Narek was the spy with a heart of gold – but instead of being a cliché he turned that trope on its head by sticking to his mission to the end. Dahj and Soji were different from one another – androids unaware of their synthetic nature. One was drawn to Picard, the other deeply suspicious of him.

Then we had the reintroduction of several legacy characters. Dr Maddox, who we met in The Next Generation, had continued his research after his meeting with Data, and eventually was able to develop his own line of androids. Seven of Nine had helped Icheb become a Starfleet officer, but lost him when she was betrayed by Bjayzl. Riker and Troi, who had married in Nemesis, had a family – but their son had died. Hugh was perhaps the most successful of all the legacy characters, the ex-Borg who had taken full advantage of his own liberation to assist hundreds or possibly thousands of other ex-Borg on the Artifact.

There was tragedy and drama aplenty in each of the characters we met, but none of it felt forced or contrived in the way some drama shows can. This wasn’t a soap opera, it was hard-hitting. Picard Season 1 may not have followed the traditional episodic Star Trek formula, but it had a distinctly Star Trek tone – it used its sci-fi setting to examine real world issues. It did so in a tense, dramatic, and exciting way, and expanded on themes from The Next Generation and elsewhere in the franchise, looking at basic rights such as the right to life.

The attack on Mars can be analogous to many different recent and historical events, but the reaction to it is certainly reminiscent of the western world’s post-9/11 outlook. The aftermath of a tragedy allowed a nefarious faction to push through a prohibition on certain groups of people. Islam was not “banned” after 9/11, but as recently as 2016 Donald Trump talked of a “ban on people from Muslim countries” – these restrictions were in place for much of his term as President.

The attack on Mars was a significant event in the years before Season 1 of *Picard* is set.

The theme of the season was in realising that we mustn’t judge whole groups of people by the actions of a few. This could apply just as much to the supporters and voters of Donald Trump in 2021 as it did to Muslims and others. The fanatics who attacked the United States Capitol a couple of weeks ago are no more representative of the 70+ million Trump voters as ISIS or al-Qaeda are of Islam. That is the message of this synthetic ban storyline: not to be so quick to judgement, and not to allow those with a pre-existing agenda to force the issue.

The Zhat Vash quietly infiltrated Starfleet, and slowly began poisoning the minds of Starfleet officers and Federation civilians. We have the literal expression of this metaphor via the mind-meld – this represents how those with an agenda are using propaganda and “fake news” to unduly influence the discourse. These themes are buried in the narrative, but they are there – and open to interpretation. This is how I see some of these storylines having real-world comparisons, but it may not be how you or someone else sees it. Fiction is always subjective, and that’s okay. If you disagree, that’s great!

As I’ve said before, a story doesn’t just have merit because it can be seen through a real-world lens. In some cases, pushing too far in that direction can lead to a narrative being less enjoyable. So Picard balanced out some of these contemporary metaphors with a truly engaging and mysterious Star Trek story.

We saw these events from Picard’s point of view, and he’s such a great character for telling this story because he didn’t know exactly what happened and why, just as much as we as the audience didn’t know. So when the synths attacked Mars, his life, his career, and his whole world fell apart. We meet him at the beginning of the season premiere as someone who’s fallen into a major depression. Dahj would be the catalyst for bringing him out of that – but it wasn’t until the mysteries and conspiracies had been unravelled and brought to light that he could truly move on.

We went on that journey with Picard. We began together, not knowing what had happened on Mars, not understanding why, and then along comes Dahj. She was equally mysterious: who was she, why was she seeking out Picard, who were the assassins that were trying to hurt her? And as we learned more about both of these elements of the story, this chapter of Picard’s life – and the lives of those around him – came into focus.

My criticisms of the season finale generally don’t stem from the fact that any of the narrative decisions were bad, but rather that I wanted to see more. We rushed through Sutra’s story, Dr Soong’s story, and the end of Narek’s story. We don’t know anything about the super-synths, and precious little about the civilisation on Coppelius. There was scope to know more if the season had been structured differently and perhaps extended by an episode or two, and that’s really where I felt things came unstuck.

Coppelius Station was the setting for the two-part finale.

From an aesthetic point of view, Picard blended The Next Generation-era elements with a style firmly centred in modern-day sci-fi. The design of La Sirena reflects this – it was clearly not a Starfleet ship. Inside and out, La Sirena has touches of Star Trek, but stands apart and very much does its own thing. Beginning with the redesign of the USS Enterprise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and carrying all the way through to Discovery, we’ve seen starship interiors with certain visual elements – angled corridors and hallways, grey or blue pastel carpeting, panels with distinctive lines, the warp core as a glowing column, and so forth. La Sirena has some hints at some of these, but is much closer to ships seen in The Expanse, for example, and other modern sci-fi properties in other ways.

Within the Star Trek fandom, starship designs and uniforms are both subjective things with a range of opinions on which are best. And before anyone rushes to judgement to say La Sirena looks bad or they dislike the mermaid-combadges, I’d say that we need to give the show time for its aesthetic to grow on us. There have only been ten episodes of Picard compared with 176 of The Next Generation, and those episodes are only a year old. Obviously nothing in Picard will feel as “iconic” yet – but as time goes by and we spend more time in this era that may happen.

I adored the design of La Sirena. It felt like a runabout mixed with a hot-rod, and I think that shows to some extent the personality of Captain Rios. This is his ship, and he’s put his personal stamp on it – as we saw in a very funny (and incredibly well-acted and well-filmed) sequence with five different Rios-holograms. After the blue boiler suits of Enterprise were followed up with another all-blue look in Discovery I was also glad to see more colour back in the two new Starfleet uniform designs which debuted in Picard. The one in the “current” time (that we saw people like Riker and Commodore Oh wearing) was my favourite of the two when compared to the design seen in flashbacks, but both were neat.

The only aesthetic problem I felt Season 1 had was its outdoor filming locations and their lack of variety. We visited locations on Earth which were supposedly in France, Japan, and North America, as well as half a dozen planets, and each looked exactly like southern California. Because Picard had ten episodes and almost all of them had some outdoor filming this was amplified far more than it had been in the likes of The Next Generation, which would see fewer outdoor shoots with more episodes in between them. But as the season progressed, the fact that each planet Picard visited was a barely-disguised location within a few miles of Los Angeles detracted from the look.

Some locations, like the planet of Aia, were beautifully created in CGI, but then ruined when scenes on the surface not only didn’t match the CGI creation of the planet (the colour and tone are way different). What made no sense to me about the Aia scenes in particular is with so little time spent there, why not use a sound stage? Rig up a planet that looks genuinely different instead of using an outdoor filming location. We only saw two or three scenes set on Aia, all around the beacon, and I honestly just thought it was a wasted opportunity. Vashti, Nepenthe, and Coppelius all felt very samey because of the decision to shoot outdoors in the same area, and that’s just a shame to me. I would love to see some more variety in Season 2 – either by travelling to shoot on location further afield, or by using indoor sound stages that can be made to look different each time.

So we come to the man himself: Jean-Luc Picard. I mentioned earlier that he was depressed, and the way this part of his story was conveyed was heartbreaking and wonderful. I recently wrote an article looking at the characterisation of Luke Skywalker in the 2017 film The Last Jedi, because he was also depressed in that story. It was one that some Star Wars fans hated, but it resonated with me. Picard’s story in Season 1 resonated with me too, for many of the same or similar reasons as I explained in that essay.

Depression and mental health are not easy subjects to convey in fiction, and Picard itself had a scene in the episode The End Is The Beginning which unfortunately painted a pretty stereotypical picture of mental health. But Picard’s story was much better, and very well done overall. It showed that anyone – no matter how heroic they have been in the past – can fall victim to depression. Picard lost his fleet, he lost his role in Starfleet, and instead of saying “no, the right thing to do is to help so I’m going to fight on,” he collapsed. He hit a problem that he couldn’t solve, suffered a humiliating defeat, and gave up. He spent years in quiet retirement – which was more like a self-imposed exile – because of how he felt.

That is powerful in itself, as it shows how anyone – even heroes that we want to put on a pedestal – can fall victim to depression. The same was true of Luke Skywalker. But what came next is equally important – Dahj gave Picard a reason to believe in something again. Not only was there a mystery to figure out, which can be tantalising in itself, but Picard was the only one capable and willing to help Soji – so he stepped up. Where he had fallen into the lowest point of his life, he found a reason to believe and that set him on the path to recovery. I find that a powerful and inspiring story.

Dahj inspired Picard and gave him a cause to believe in.

There were two cathartic moments for me in Season 1 that I didn’t know I needed to see. The first was with Seven of Nine. During the latter part of Voyager’s run, Seven was my least-favourite character. She was annoying, arrogant, and worst of all, after learning some “lesson in how to be human” from Captain Janeway or the Doctor, she’d seemingly reset and forget it ever happened by the next episode, requiring her to “learn” the same lesson in being human many times over. She was repetitive and boring. But in Picard she had finally moved past her Borg years and embraced her humanity and emotions – even though she lost Icheb, seeing her get so genuinely angry and react in such a human way was something wonderful to see – and was performed beautifully by Jeri Ryan.

The second cathartic moment came from Data. His death in Nemesis wasn’t something I was happy about, but within the story of that film I remember feeling at the time that it worked. However, looking back I can see how, for example, seeing Picard and the rest of the crew laughing and moving on at the end of the film was perhaps not the right way to end the story. Data didn’t get to say goodbye to anyone – his sacrifice happened in a brief moment, and after saving Picard he was just gone.

Data’s consciousness remained in the digital afterlife until Picard shut it down.

Picard carried that regret with him in a far more significant way than the closing moments of Nemesis hinted at. Riker and Troi did too, and we got to see both of them express that. Picard poured his heart out to Data when he was in the digital afterlife, and the scene between the two of them was something incredible. It was something I as a fan needed to see, to put Data to rest properly after all these years.

In a sense, Picard and Data’s story is an inversion of the story Kirk and Spock went through in The Search For Spock and The Voyage Home. After Spock’s death, Kirk would stop at nothing to find a way to bring his friend back to life – even stealing the Enterprise. While Picard set out on his journey to save Data’s “daughter” from harm, what he ended up doing was bringing a final end to Data’s life. There was no way to save Data, nor to transfer whatever remained of him into a new body. The only thing Picard could to for his friend was finally allow him his mortality, and permit him to die. As Kirk might’ve said, that sounds like a “no-win scenario.” But as Kirk never really had to learn – at least until the moment of his own death – those scenarios exist every day. It might sound cool to say “I don’t believe in no-win scenarios” and push to save everyone all the time, but that isn’t possible. It’s a fantasy – and Picard confronted the genuine reality of death in a way Kirk never had to.

Picard shut down the remaining part of Data permanently.

Data had desperately yearned to be more human. From his first appearance in Encounter at Farpoint when he struggled with whistling through to the introduction of his emotion chip in Generations and beyond, all Data wanted was to feel less like an android and more like a human. Mortality is one of humanity’s defining characteristics – especially when compared to machines and synthetic life. By shutting down Data’s remaining neurons and consciousness, Picard gave him perhaps the greatest gift he could give – and Data achieved his goal of getting as close to humanity as possible.

As I look back on Season 1 of Picard, I can see that it had some flaws and some issues. But none of them were catastrophic, and even though there was one episode that I described at the time as a “misfire and a dud,” the season as a whole was great. It started off with what is perhaps the best premiere of any Star Trek series, and though the ending was imperfect we got some amazing story-driven dramatic Star Trek.

Dr Jurati beams the crew of La Sirena aboard.

Perhaps Season 1’s legacy will be defined by what comes next. Not only by future seasons of Picard, but by other shows and films set in or around this time period, expanding the Star Trek franchise and pushing it to new places. The Next Generation served as a launchpad for two other series and four films, and perhaps Picard has similarly laid a foundation upon which more Star Trek will be built. That’s my hope, at any rate.

Even if that doesn’t happen, though, Season 1 was an entertaining ride – with a few bumps in the road as mentioned. We got to learn a lot more about some of Star Trek’s factions – the Romulans in particular, but also the Borg – and meet some genuinely interesting new characters. Despite some leftover story threads from Season 1, Season 2 is potentially wide open to tell some new and interesting stories when it’s finally ready to be broadcast. I can’t wait for that!

Star Trek: Picard Season 1 is available to stream now on CBS All Access in the United States, and on Amazon Prime Video in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The Star Trek franchise – including Picard and all other properties 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.

Preliminary Star Trek: Picard Season 2 predictions

Tue 19.01.21Sun 13.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Picard Season 1, Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-3, Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 1, and for other iterations of the franchise.

A couple of days ago I wrote up some preliminary predictions for Star Trek: Discovery Season 4, and now it’s the turn of Star Trek: Picard Season 2 to get the same treatment. Season 1 left several big mysteries behind, and while some may be addressed it seems as though Season 2 will see Picard and the crew move on to new adventures.

A significant portion of Season 1 was occupied by recruiting the crew, but after they came together basically to do one job – find Soji – and accomplished that objective, the big thing that Season 2 needs to do is find a truly convincing reason for keeping the crew together. Rios seemingly worked as a commercial pilot, and the others have lives of their own too. Now that Soji is safe and the super-synths have been called off, what exactly is preventing everyone from drifting back to their old lives?

The super-synths in the Season 1 finale.

Right now, I see that as perhaps the biggest challenge and point of interest. What will bind this disparate crew together after their mission is complete? Unlike a Starfleet crew they don’t have a new mission or new orders, and they aren’t just going to fly around aimlessly in La Sirena looking for adventure. So finding a convincing reason for keeping them together – or reuniting them if they’ve already separated as of the beginning of the season – will be key.

As I said last time, it’s very early in the process to be considering what may or may not be included in the upcoming season. At time of writing filming hasn’t even commenced; Picard is filmed in California, and while production is in theory able to resume it’s a slow process. There have been suggestions that February may be the goal for filming to begin – but it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve been given a timeframe that didn’t pan out, so watch this space. I’m not claiming any “insider information,” nor saying that anything on my list is certain to happen. This is guesswork at best – educated guesswork in some places, perhaps, but nothing more.

With those big caveats out of the way, let’s jump into the list.

Number 1: A Galaxy-class ship.

Season 1 showed us a beautiful CGI rendition of the Galaxy-class Enterprise-D. But this ship was only seen in Picard’s dream and didn’t make a real appearance – despite the Federation fleet in the season finale presenting a good opportunity to do so. One lesson I hope the team behind Picard has learned is that the two fleets we saw during the standoff over Coppelius looked less impressive for being comprised of only a single starship design each – and bringing more ships into the show would be something great to see.

Obviously Picard himself has connections with several different classes of ship: the Sovereign-class from his time aboard the Enterprise-E, the Constellation-class from the Stargazer, and we even saw him on a Deep Space Nine Danube-class runabout once. But no ship design is more greatly associated with Picard than the Galaxy-class, and while the Enterprise-D is gone, there were others, including those which served in the Dominion War.

Galaxy-class ships seen in *Deep Space Nine’*s Dominion War arc.

In an alternate timeline seen in the Voyager fourth season episode Timeless, Galaxy-class ships were still in use in the 2390s, which is close to the time in which Picard is set. An updated Galaxy-class Enterprise-D was also seen in The Next Generation’s finale All Good Things in sequences set in the 2390s.

In addition, Excelsior-class ships from the late 23rd Century were shown to be in use for decades, and the Galaxy-class ship seems like such a versatile vessel that it would make sense to see them still in use. La Sirena will clearly continue to be the home for Picard and his new crew, and I’m not suggesting they be given their own Galaxy-class ship somehow! But it would be wonderful to see Picard’s reaction to a real-life Galaxy-class ship, triggering memories of his time aboard the Enterprise-D.

Number 2: Confirmation of Narek’s fate.

The two-part Season 1 finale had some issues. From my point of view, the biggest problem was that the final two episodes had far too much story to cram into a relatively short span of time; new characters, new antagonists, new storylines, and a whole new civilisation were all introduced right at the end of the season.

One of the consequences of this was the abandonment of some previously-important storylines. Narek, who was a major character across the rest of the first season, was symbolic of this, as his character was simply dumped without any explanation or resolution midway through the finale.

I know that Narek wasn’t everyone’s favourite character in Season 1, but I found him genuinely interesting. He looked certain to play out a relatively common trope in thriller stories: the spy with a heart of gold who abandons his mission after falling in love with his target… but to my surprise – and great enjoyment – he didn’t go down that route and remained loyal to the Zhat Vash crusade.

There are several possibilities for what happened to Narek after his attempt to destroy Soji and Sutra’s beacon. He could have been recovered by the Romulans, he could have been handed over to the Federation, he could have remained a prisoner of the synths on Coppelius, or he could even have renounced his wicked ways and joined Picard’s crew. The latter may seem less likely, but as we didn’t see or hear anything about Narek after the beacon attack it would be great if Season 2 could give us the rest of the story – even if it’s just by way of a line or two of dialogue.

Number 3: Riker and Troi.

Riker and Troi have recently appeared in *Star Trek: Lower Decks*.

Though I believe Riker actor Jonathan Frakes will be returning to Picard in the director’s chair, we don’t yet know whether Riker and/or Troi will return in Season 2. However, I would argue that their post-The Next Generation storylines have more to give, and I would love to see them both back.

One thing I was very keen on in the run-up to Season 1 is for the show to avoid being The Next Generation Season 8, and by only including a few classic characters in a few episodes, I would say the show accomplished that goal. But there is still a lot of interest from fans about the fates of many characters we knew and loved in past iterations of Star Trek, and the already-established Troi-Riker family could be a stepping stone for telling some of those stories too.

The reunion between Picard and Riker was one of the highlights of Season 1.

It would also be interesting to see whether the events of Season 1 have brought either Riker, Troi, or both back to Starfleet on a permanent basis. Riker described himself as “acting captain” in the Season 1 finale, so perhaps he will return to his family home on Nepenthe. But maybe not!

If Season 2 is to feature Starfleet more significantly than Season 1 did, we will need at least one Starfleet character to be portrayed on screen. Someone Picard knew and can work with would be a good bet, as he could call on them to help out, cashing in favours. However, I did also like the way Raffi used her Starfleet contacts in Season 1, as well as the introduction of Admiral Clancy.

Number 4: Revisiting an event from Picard’s past – such as the Stargazer or the Borg.

Captain Picard first met the Borg while commanding the Enterprise-D.

Season 1 saw Picard confront his past with the Borg as he boarded the Artifact. But there’s scope to further explore his history with the Borg, especially if the faction were to come back in a major way. Nothing we saw in Season 1 suggested that the Borg threat has gone away, and the super-synths we met in the finale could possibly have a connection to Star Trek’s iconic cybernetic villains.

The inclusion of Seven of Nine and the ex-Borg could also contribute to a Borg story. Perhaps the ex-Borg would work together with Picard to use knowledge or technology from the Artifact to defeat another Borg threat. The Borg would also be a reason for Picard’s new crew staying together instead of going their separate ways.

Alternatively we could revisit an event from Picard’s past that The Next Generation hinted at but didn’t explore in detail. We know Picard commanded the USS Stargazer and that Jack Crusher – husband to Beverly and father to Wesley – was killed. But the specifics of that event have never been shown on screen.

The inclusion of Dr Benayoun in Season 1 connected to Picard’s time aboard the Stargazer, and a storyline looking back at this time could bring back this character. It would also be a way for Dr Crusher and even Wesley to be included – perhaps something that happened around the time of Jack Crusher’s death is going to be relevant to a new event or storyline.

Number 5: Development of Seven of Nine and Raffi’s relationship.

Seven of Nine and Raffi at the end of Season 1.

The Season 1 finale showed Raffi and Seven of Nine had become close, and the possibility for the two to enter a relationship would be something really interesting for Season 2 to look at in more detail. We know that Seven of Nine and Chakotay had a relationship toward the end of Voyager, and that Raffi has a son from a previous relationship. But this could be a great opportunity for some more LGBT+ representation – in this case, perhaps, bisexuality.

Both characters saw significant development in Season 1 – Raffi by finding her son and Seven of Nine by avenging Icheb. Seeing Seven of Nine finally break out of the repetitive, emotionally stifled character she was in Voyager was genuinely cathartic, and giving her even more opportunities to show off her humanity and emotional side would be fantastic.

Seven of Nine and Raffi with the crew of La Sirena.

Both characters have experienced the loss of either a child or child figure, and that could strengthen their bond. They’re different people, and having gone through very different life experiences have responded differently to loss – Seven by becoming obsessed with revenge, and Raffi by falling into addiction.

They could help each other overcome these issues. Seven of Nine could help Raffi through recovery from her drug and alcohol addictions, and Raffi in turn could help Seven move on from the loss of Icheb and the murder of Bjayzl. There’s a lot of scope for very interesting and emotional stories in this pair of characters.

Number 6: Foreshadowing of the Romulan-Vulcan reunification seen in Discovery Season 3.

Romulans, Vulcans, and Romulo-Vulcans seen in the 32nd Century.

Discovery’s third season confirmed that Vulcans and Romulans had managed to set their differences aside – for the most part – and come back together. Though Discovery said this happened “centuries” after Spock’s first visit to Romulus, perhaps we could see some movement in that direction in Picard.

The attack on Mars and its aftermath has arguably left Federation-Romulan relations – and by extension, relations between the Vulcans and Romulans – at an all-time low. However, the unmasking of the Zhat Vash and their role in the attack may have led ordinary Romulans to look upon the Federation less harshly, and if there have been reforms to Romulan society – as was hinted at by the use of the name “Romulan Free State” instead of “Romulan Star Empire” – maybe the beginnings of reunification have already been seen.

The emblem of the Romulan Star Empire in the 24th Century.

Picard had a heavy focus on the Romulans in Season 1, and at least one Romulan character – Elnor – will return in Season 2. Thus the show is the perfect vehicle to show the path forward, bridging the gap between the secretive Romulan Empire of The Next Generation’s era and the reunified Ni’Var of Discovery’s 32nd Century.

The return of a character such as Tuvok could also be a part of this; seeing Elnor working closely with a Vulcan could set up his character for a future role in the reunification process, for example. With Seven of Nine already confirmed to be coming back, bringing one of her Voyager colleagues on board would be great to see.

Number 7: Spend more time with Starfleet.

Season 1 made good on its promise of taking Picard away from Starfleet. While two members of the new crew are ex-Starfleet officers – as well as Picard himself – they operate outside of the organisation. I wouldn’t want to see that change; Picard has done what no other Star Trek show ever really did by focusing entirely on a non-Starfleet crew and that’s been fantastic. But there is scope to see more of Starfleet at the beginning of the 25th Century.

After Season 1 saw Picard and his crew largely working against Starfleet, from him being denied access to a Starfleet ship to Raffi and Rios breaking all the rules to gain access to the Artifact, it would be great to see some cooperation. The Season 1 finale gave us a taste of that with Riker and his armada, but there are more ways Picard and La Sirena could work with Starfleet while still remaining separate.

Riker’s Federation fleet stares down a Romulan armada in the Season 1 finale.

Alternatively – or perhaps additionally – we could see more of the story of Season 2 unfold from Starfleet’s point of view. Admiral Clancy was our major Starfleet character in Season 1 and she could certainly return. But this could also be how another legacy character is introduced, and Picard could work alongside them for some reason.

Having at least one major character being a Starfleet officer, and depicting events within Starfleet, would be something I think I’d like to see Season 2 do, provided it could balance that with keeping La Sirena on the outside. Starfleet and the Federation have always been a huge part of Star Trek, and while it was great to see that they’re still the “good guys,” spending more time with them next season would be fantastic.

Number 8: Consequences for Dr Jurati.

Dr Jurati killed Bruce Maddox in Season 1.

Though she did so under the influence of a mind-meld, Dr Jurati still murdered Dr Maddox in Season 1. Star Trek has done some great courtroom drama stories over the years, and I think it would be really interesting to see Dr Jurati arrested and even stand trial. Would the mind-meld be a suitable defence in the eyes of the law? We’ve never seen such a case in Star Trek.

This is another storyline that the finale rushed and ultimately failed to do justice to. At the beginning of Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1 Dr Jurati is still expecting to turn herself in and be arrested for murder, as Picard insisted she would be. However, by the end of Part 2 she seems free to remain aboard La Sirena and has even formed a relationship with Rios.

The question of Dr Jurati’s culpability is potentially interesting. Despite still being under the influence of the mind-meld she refused to try to harm Soji, pushing through Commodore Oh’s brainwashing. If she could stop herself from harming Soji, how did she harm Dr Maddox – someone with whom she was intimate?

Even if the legal side of things is only briefly addressed, such as a line of dialogue telling us that the charges were dropped, Dr Jurati may suffer psychological effects from what she did. She murdered someone she was very close to, and threatened to sabotage Picard’s mission. Even if he and the others have forgiven her, will she be able to so easily forgive herself? She has already attempted suicide once, and this is an angle the show could look at in more detail as well.

Number 9: The return of Dr Soong.

Even if Season 2 takes Picard away from Coppelius for the most part, it would be great to catch up with Dr Soong – a character who felt underdeveloped in the Season 1 finale. We never learned why Dr Soong wanted to transfer his mind to a synthetic body, nor what the consequences are for him of giving that body to Picard.

I picked up a hint or two in Season 1 that Dr Soong may be sick or dying, so perhaps donating the synthetic body he planned to use to Picard has condemned him to death. Alternatively, however, he may simply be able to build a new one now that he understands the mind-transfer process.

A story on Coppelius could also show us what impact the loss of Data’s neurons may have on Dr Soong. Without them, is he able to build new synths, or build another golem for himself? The finale left these questions unanswered, and while I don’t expect Season 2 to spend all of its time tying up loose ends, it would be nice to see some of these points addressed.

Dr Soong is of course played by Data actor Brent Spiner, and welcoming him back to Star Trek was wonderful in Season 1. It would be great if a role could be found for him in Season 2, even if it was only for a single episode.

Number 10: Guinan.

Guinan with Picard in *Star Trek: Generations*.

This is a total cheat since we already have confirmation that Guinan is coming back, but I wanted to include it anyway. Sir Patrick Stewart invited Guinan actress Whoopi Goldberg to join the show for its second season months ago, so it seems like Guinan will have a significant role in the season. Whether she’ll be a recurring character or make an appearance in a single episode isn’t known at this stage, but she will certainly be back.

Picard and Guinan’s relationship was touched on in The Next Generation, but never fully explained. There’s certainly scope to learn more about how they came together, why their relationship goes “beyond friendship, beyond family,” as well as what the impact of Picard’s reclusion had on Guinan. What has Guinan been doing since we last saw her? We simply don’t know – so it will be interesting to find out!

Number 11: Foreshadowing the dilithium shortage seen in Discovery Season 3.

The dilithium planet from *Discovery* Season 3.

This is the second “foreshadowing Discovery” entry on this list, and I don’t expect (or want) Picard Season 2 to spend all of its runtime doing that. However, this is another way that we could potentially see a connection to the events of Picard’s sister show.

For some unknown reason, by the 28th or 29th Centuries dilithium supplies in the galaxy were beginning to run low. This is what prompted Starfleet to begin seeking out new sources of the important fuel, ultimately culminating in the Burn, as well as the people of Ni’Var withdrawing from the Federation believing their alternative propulsion experiments caused the Burn.

A dilithium crystal aboard the Enterprise-D.

Though the dilithium shortage depicted in Discovery’s recent season is centuries away, the beginnings of it could be seen in Picard… somehow. Perhaps dilithium supplies were already beginning to run low but the Federation was keeping it quiet, or perhaps they discovered a major cache of dilithium similar to the Verubin Nebula’s planet some time in this era which kept them going for centuries.

Even a single line of dialogue noting that a starship is on a mission to seek out new sources of dilithium would be a subtle nod to fans of Discovery, and a minor way in which the two shows could be connected.

Number 12: A broader look at the galaxy as the 25th Century dawns.

Despite bringing back a few legacy characters – not all of whom survived – and spending a lot of time with the Romulans, Season 1 didn’t paint a very broad picture of the state of the galaxy. We know that the Federation is doing well, despite the attack on Mars and the effects of the Dominion War years earlier. But what of other factions? And is all well in Starfleet?

There are so many races and factions that Season 2 could look at that I don’t know where to begin. But rather than a repetition of Season 1, with its relatively narrow focus on one faction and a handful of events, it would be great if Season 2 could expand the map and look at a few different places and peoples – even if that means doing so in less detail.

What happened to the Dominion after the Dominion War?

Right now, Picard is the only Star Trek production set in this post-Nemesis era. I wouldn’t be surprised if more shows, miniseries, and films were announced, but for the foreseeable future we only have Picard to show us the galaxy and what’s been going on in the years since Nemesis. Obviously the attack on Mars was a significant event, but there must be other things that happened in that twenty-year span.

As I mentioned in my last piece, a personal favourite story arc of mine is Deep Space Nine’s Dominion War, so I would be fascinated to learn anything about Bajor, Cardassia, DS9, the Gamma Quadrant, or the Dominion. But given Picard’s lack of connection to those events (except for a link to Bajor via Ro Laren) perhaps that isn’t on the agenda this time. Still, anything we could get to look at the bigger picture of the galaxy would be wonderful.

Number 13: Looking at current events.

Will *Star Trek: Picard* Season 2 discuss current events?

One thing Picard Season 1 did very well was show how Picard’s mental health was suffering as a result of his rejection by Starfleet. I think a lot of people who’ve been through almost a year of lockdowns and isolation could watch the Season 1 premiere, Remembrance, and empathise much more with the isolated, lonely Admiral Picard than they could when it was first broadcast.

Star Trek has never shied away from using its sci-fi setting to tackle real-world issues, and the biggest right now is of course the pandemic and its associated effects. Season 2 may have had a complete draft written before the pandemic hit – production was meant to take place last year, after all – but there has been plenty of time to change things up and include contemporary themes. Not every series has to use the pandemic as inspiration, and in many ways people come to sci-fi and fantasy to escape the real world – something that’s arguably even more necessary right now – so maybe this won’t happen.

Number 14: The return of Laris and Zhaban.

Laris and Zhaban – Picard’s Romulan assistants – served a fairly typical adventure story role in Season 1. They were the safe reminders of home that Picard had to leave behind when setting off on his quest; a role filled by the residents of Hobbiton in The Lord of the Rings, for example.

But they were also more than that. The decision to make them Romulans did serve a purpose – without them, Picard would never have learned of the Zhat Vash, for example. But given Picard’s complicated history with the Romulans after abandoning his efforts to help them evacuate their homeworld, the question of why these two ex-Tal Shiar operatives were so steadfastly loyal to him raised its head.

Picard with Laris, shortly before he left Earth.

Maybe this is simply a minor plot contrivance, but I don’t want to just overlook it and say it’s fine. What did Picard do to win their trust and loyalty so strongly that they’d follow him to isolation on Earth? And why did they choose not to follow him into space when he set out to help Soji? It wasn’t to attend to the grape harvest, surely.

Some further development of these two characters would be welcome, and while I know they did feature in a novel, most folks don’t read those and it arguably isn’t canon – Star Trek, unlike Star Wars, has always drawn a line between what happens on screen and what happens in apocryphal works. So their backstory in relation to Picard is still, in my opinion at least, an open question that Season 2 could address.

Number 15: The Artifact will come under Federation control.

The Artifact’s resting place on the surface of Coppelius.

Though parts of it have been picked over by the Romulans for decades, the opportunity to study a largely-intact Borg vessel does not present itself every day. Unless the Borg have somehow been defeated off-screen between the events of Nemesis and Picard – which I very much doubt given their popularity among fans – the Federation will surely want to avail itself of this opportunity.

The Artifact crash-landed on Coppelius at the end of Season 1, but with the planet designated a Federation protectorate they now have access to the wreck. Who knows what Federation scientists could learn about the Borg if not constrained by the Romulans. The Artifact may not play a big role in Season 2, but I would argue it is incredibly important to the Federation. That may even be the cynical reason why they chose to send a fleet to defend Coppelius.

Number 16: The appearance of Section 31.

A black Section 31 combadge as seen in *Discovery* Season 2.

If you followed my reviews and theories during Season 1, you may remember that I thought of numerous ways that Section 31 could’ve been included. This stemmed from the production side of Star Trek: Section 31 had recently been a major part of Discovery, and there’s an upcoming Section 31 series in development. For those reasons, Section 31 seemed like a way that all three Star Trek projects could’ve had a familiar theme.

It didn’t happen in Season 1, of course, and with Discovery completely ignoring Section 31 in its third season perhaps you could argue that it’s less important this time around. But I don’t necessarily agree. The Section 31 series is still coming, with pre-production having already begun and Michelle Yeoh’s departure from Discovery setting the stage.

Georgiou’s departure has teed up the Section 31 show.

In addition, Discovery introduced us to the enigmatic Kovich in Season 3, played by famed director David Cronenberg. If you followed my Discovery theories, you’ll know I’ve posited the idea that he is an operative of Section 31 – or maybe even its leader in the 32nd Century.

As a result, Section 31 remains one way that many of the ongoing Star Trek projects can find common ground, despite being split up along the timeline. It would remind fans of each series that they’re watching one part of a greater whole, and connecting the Star Trek franchise together will hopefully help fans of one show jump over to others that are currently in production. I know of many people who have either watched Discovery or Picard – but not both. Finding more ways to connect the shows and bring the franchise together will be important to Star Trek’s future – and vital to its ongoing success.

Number 17: Fallout from Picard’s newfound synthetic status.

The android F8 during the attack on Mars.

There had been a widespread ban on synthetic life for over a decade as a result of the attack on Mars. Though we learned in Season 1’s closing moments that the ban has been rescinded, the attack, its aftermath, and the ban may have lingering effects on non-synthetics. Will Picard face discrimination and hate as a result of his synthetic nature?

Perhaps, given the reaction in some areas of the fandom to Picard becoming a synth and the whole death-and-rebirth narrative, Season 2 will seek to downplay Picard’s status. But it would be interesting to explore the ramifications. We’ve talked about Riker, Troi, and Guinan possibly being major characters in the story – how will they react to Picard being synthetic? Can Troi read synthetic minds? Would Guinan feel he’s no longer the same person given her sensitivity to such things?

There are real-world analogies that anti-synthetic discrimination could be used to show. Star Trek has, on many occasions in the past, looked at the complex issues of race relations in the United States, and in the wake of the events of 2020 and ongoing efforts to ensure racial justice and equality, this could be something the synthetic storyline highlights.

There are also interesting legal and ethical questions that the show could address. Most significantly: is Picard the same person as he was, or is he legally and morally a distinct person now that he has a synthetic body? Will Starfleet, for example, consider him to be the same retired Admiral, or will he no longer have those privileges?

Number 18: Making peace with the super-synths.

Soji contacted the super-synths in Season 1.

Although she stood down and turned off the synths’ beacon on Coppelius, Soji did nevertheless contact the super-synths (the villains I nicknamed the “Mass Effect Reapers” for their similarity to that video game faction). There may yet be consequences for having done so, because the super-synths might not simply return to dark space to wait for another faction to contact them – they may already be en route to the Milky Way galaxy.

Even if the super-synths themselves don’t initiate a conflict, from Starfleet’s point of view it makes sense to reach out and tell them what happened. By explaining Starfleet’s position – that they value synthetic life and will not seek to harm the Coppelius synths – perhaps a conflict could be avoided. Making the attempt seems like something Starfleet would do, at least.

The super-synths almost arrived at Coppelius before Soji broke off contact and shut the portal.

There’s a lot of potential to make the super-synths more than a plot device and one-dimensional incomprehensible villain. They could, as previously suggested, connect to the Borg. They could also be expanded upon as we learn more about them, their name, their motivations, and so on. We know precious little about the super-synths right now, and it would be great to learn more. Was their offer to help the synths genuine – or was it a trap?

Soji, as the instigator of contact with the super-synths, could be just the person to help pacify them if they turn out to be on the warpath. That could be why she needs Picard and the crew of La Sirena: to seek out the super-synths and prevent a war.

Number 19: Shutting down the beacon on Aia.

Now that the Zhat Vash have been exposed, we don’t really know what will become of their anti-synthetic crusade. The decision to have Commodore Oh withdraw so quickly in the Season 1 finale is not one I particularly liked; the Zhat Vash were presented as zealots who would stop at nothing to achieve their goal of wiping out synthetic life, and despite Soji closing the portal, from Oh’s point of view she could just open another one.

However, criticisms aside, it makes sense that Starfleet – or at least Picard – would want to find the octonary star system and shut down the beacon on Aia. Not only would this prevent the Zhat Vash from continuing to use it, but it would also avoid the possibility of other synths accidentally finding it and using it to contact the super-synths.

This should be a priority for Starfleet, at least in my opinion! Though we may not see it for ourselves, this could be something communicated in a line or two of dialogue, just noting that the beacon has been shut down.

Alternatively it could be a major storyline, with Picard and La Sirena setting out to find Aia and continue their fight against the Zhat Vash. I’m not sure if this would be the right way to go – it feels like an epilogue to Season 1 rather than the main event for Season 2. But it could make for an interesting episode!

Number 20: The return of Dr Crusher (or another major character from The Next Generation era).

Dr Crusher in *The Next Generation* Season 1.

Dr Crusher was the only major character from The Next Generation who wasn’t confirmed to be alive in Season 1. We saw Troi and Riker, of course, and thanks to Zhaban we heard about Worf and La Forge too. But despite how close Picard and Dr Crusher were – they had even married in an alternate timeline – no mention was made of her.

The question of what became of their relationship is an open one. In the aftermath of Picard’s resignation and retirement, did Dr Crusher visit him? Were they married, or romantically involved? If so, could the wedding of Troi and Riker (that we saw in Nemesis) have been the prompt for them to revisit their relationship?

Captain Picard and Dr Crusher in *The Next Generation*.

Picard was clearly single in Season 1, so if he and Dr Crusher had been romantically involved it’s clearly something that has already ended. But his new lease on life – thanks to a new body and overcoming his depression – could mean he wants to renew things or at least contact her.

Alternatively we could learn that Dr Crusher has died, or that she and Picard never got together. They could even have had a major falling-out and may not have spoken in over a decade. Such a storyline could see them coming back together, moving on from whatever caused the fight.

So that’s it. I didn’t plan to write this at first, but writing up some preliminary guesses for Discovery Season 4 was so much fun that I wanted to do the same thing for Picard Season 2 as well!

Picard Season 2 will – fingers crossed – begin filming some time soon. I wouldn’t bet on seeing it on our screens in 2021, though, just because of how much time post-production will take. So it may be a while before we see Picard, Raffi, Elnor, Rios, Dr Jurati, and Seven of Nine! But that doesn’t mean speculating and guessing about what may be coming is any less enjoyable.

These are not even theories – I want to call them guesses rather than anything else. So please, please don’t get carried away thinking that any of these are destined to happen. We all need to remember to take such theories and predictions with a pinch of salt at the best of times, and guesswork this far out when we know less than nothing about the upcoming season is almost silly! So as fun as this was to put together, let’s all try not to get too excited about anything listed above.

Star Trek: Picard Season 1 is available to stream now on CBS All Access in the United States, and on Amazon Prime Video in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The Star Trek franchise – including Picard and all other titles 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.

Unsolved mysteries from Star Trek: Picard Season 1

Fri 02.10.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the entirety of Star Trek: Picard Season 1. There are further spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery (including the Season 3 trailers) and for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

It’s been a little over six months since Season 1 of Star Trek: Picard came to an end. The series set up a number of mysteries, and while many of them were completely resolved by the first season finale, some weren’t. Some of these may be addressed in future – in fact, that’s something I’d really like to see – but assuming the series follows a similar pattern to Star Trek: Discovery, Picard and his new crew will likely warp away to a different adventure next time. That may mean that we never learn the truth behind these mysterious unresolved story threads.

Many television series nowadays set up mysteries or unanswered questions early on that become important later, and I don’t mean to come across as impatiently banging on the table demanding we get answers to everything now! Part of the fun of watching a series like Star Trek: Picard – at least for me – is the theorising and speculating, trying to figure out the puzzles that the producers and writers have created.

Jean-Luc Picard will return in Season 2!

One small caveat: it’s possible that some of these points have been addressed in non-canon sources (like comic books) but I’m not counting that. Star Trek, unlike Star Wars, has always drawn a clear line between official canon and unofficial sources. Occasionally we will see points from unofficial material make its way into Star Trek, but unless we see these points resolved on screen, the potential exists for the writers of Season 2 – or indeed of any future Star Trek production – to overwrite anything published in a novel, comic, video game, etc.

With that out of the way, let’s dive into the list!

Number 1: Who are Laris and Zhaban, and what is the nature of their relationship with Picard?

The first few episodes of Season 1 introduced us to Laris and Zhaban – Picard’s assistants at his vineyard in France. Laris and Zhaban are Romulans, and not just any Romulans but former Tal Shiar operatives. I assumed, before we learned what happened to Picard’s planned rescue armada, that he had won their loyalty by saving them (or their families) from the Romulan supernova. But now we know that Picard only evacuated a minuscule number of Romulans, most of whom wound up on the planet Vashti. Those refugees detest Picard for abandoning them – even though the decision was taken by the Federation rather than him personally.

So the question remains: why are Laris and Zhaban so loyal to Picard that they’d give up everything to become housemaids and winemakers on Earth? Even if he saved their lives during the evacuation, very shortly afterwards he gave up on helping their people and their cause. Not only do they seem 100% fine with that, but they appear to have made no effort to help either, despite being operatives of the Tal Shiar.

A related point would be why didn’t Laris and Zhaban accompany Picard when he left the vineyard to go back into space? Picard seems to convince them to stay behind by telling them he needs them to attend to the grape harvest – but if you stop to think about it, this doesn’t make much sense. If they’re staying with him out of sheer stubborn loyalty – for some as-yet-unidentified reason – why would they allow him to head off on a dangerous mission unaccompanied?

And finally, now that Picard seems to have a ship and loyal crew, what will happen to Laris and Zhaban back on Earth? Are they just going to remain behind as custodians of the vineyard while Picard is away? That’s certainly a possibility, but it still raises the question of why he has such steadfast loyalty from them.

Laris and Zhaban filled a story role in Season 1, not only by introducing Picard (and us as the audience) to the idea of the Zhat Vash’s existence, but also by being representations of Picard’s home and safe harbour that he has to leave behind as he goes on his adventure. They serve the same role as some of the Hobbiton Hobbits in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings novels in that regard. As a story point and character archetype that’s fine, but in the Star Trek galaxy, given everything we learned about Picard and the Romulans, some explanation would be nice!

Number 2: What happened to Soji’s Trill friend after Maps and Legends?

Maps and Legends (the second episode of Season 1) introduced us to a Trill character: Dr Kunamadéstifee. The two sequences in which she featured appeared to have a lot of horror film-style foreshadowing, leading to a theory I held onto for almost the whole of the season that she was going to meet an unpleasant fate. However, after Maps and Legends the character was abruptly dropped with no explanation.

From a production point of view, it would have been beneficial to keep this character around. Soji had precious little interaction with anyone aside from Narek for much of the season, and a character like Dr Kunamadéstifee could have been a friend she could speak to, if only occasionally. Star Trek has always had guest stars who make a single appearance then don’t return, and from that point of view this isn’t odd or out of the ordinary. But it would still be nice to learn what became of Dr Kunamadéstifee – one way or the other!

Number 3: Why was Dr Bruce Maddox on Freecloud?

This is a huge point, because right now it represents a gaping hole in the story of the first season. I’ve talked about this before, but just to recap: the storyline of the first half of the season was about locating Bruce Maddox, who had been missing since the ban on synthetic life. Maddox was eventually tracked to Freecloud, and the only reason he’d travelled to the dangerous planet was because his lab had “been destroyed by the Tal Shiar.”

Obviously he can’t have been referring to his lab on Coppelius – Picard was literally sat in that room at one point, and it didn’t look destroyed to me! But even assuming Maddox had built a second lab away from Coppelius, why did he not simply return there if the new facility had been attacked? Why did he go to Freecloud instead? Dr Soong and the other synths would have welcomed him with open arms, yet he chose to go to a dangerous place and visit a woman he owed a lot of money to.

Freecloud was a very dangerous place for Maddox to visit.

Bjayzl may not have killed him or successfully sold him to the Tal Shiar, but she contributed to his death by weakening him significantly. Travelling to Freecloud – and to Bjayzl’s club in particular – appears to be an act of desperation or of last resort, yet Maddox clearly had other options.

Right now, the only reason Maddox was on Freecloud is to enable other aspects of the storyline to make sense, and to get Picard and other characters into position. Without Maddox, Picard would have had to find a different way to track down Soji, so he’s important to the plot. Unfortunately, the lack of explanation to this point leaves a pretty wide plot hole, and because finding Maddox was the main focus of the first half of the season, it’s one I can’t overlook. It needs a satisfactory expanation.

Number 4: What will happen to the ex-Borg and the Artifact?

The Artifact’s final resting place on Coppelius.

At the climax of the Artifact’s storyline, Seven of Nine and Elnor attempted to lead a rebellion of ex-Borg against the Romulans. However, Rizzo and the Zhat Vash were prepared and ended up killing a lot of xBs. Not all of them were killed, though, and while we don’t know how many survived, there clearly were survivors after the Artifact arrived at Coppelius. A Borg cube can easily have tens of thousands of drones aboard, and while it was suggested that Rizzo killed the majority of them, we don’t really know how many could have survived. It could easily be hundreds – or possibly more.

Seven of Nine appeared to take on a leadership role for the xBs, filling a void left by Hugh’s death. Many xBs seemed confused or traumatised by their experiences – and they will need someone to help them get through that. At the end of the Season 1 finale, though, both Seven of Nine and Elnor had rejoined Picard aboard La Sirena, and the ship then warped away to an unknown destination. Without Seven of Nine, what will happen to the ex-Borg?

Seven of Nine went to a lot of trouble to help the xBs… then appears to have ditched them.

The Artifact itself is likely to come under Starfleet control, at least in my opinion. Its wreckage on Coppelius is largely intact, and presumably the Federation will want to study as much Borg technology as it can get its hands on. It’s possible that something has happened in the galaxy in the two decades that we didn’t see that may have resolved or ended the Borg threat, but that was never mentioned on screen so I assume Starfleet would be very keen to get its hands on a mostly-intact Borg cube – even if it had been picked at by Romulans and may be several years out-of-date!

The ex-Borg are another matter, though. There appeared to be a wide range of races, including many non-Federation species. Some may wish to return home, but in the case of species like the Hirogen, that may not be possible. The Federation may offer them all refugee status and help them reacclimate to life outside the Borg Collective, but it still seems very strange to me that Seven of Nine has just seemingly abandoned the survivors. It’s possible that the final scenes of Season 1 took place many months later, in which case this may have been handled off-screen. Still, it would be nice to get a proper resolution, even if it’s just a couple of lines of dialogue.

Number 5: What will Starfleet do about Aia?

Somewhere beyond Romulan space – and out of reach of Starfleet – lies Aia, a planet at the centre of eight stars. The stars were deliberately moved and aligned to strongly indicate Aia’s location, and at some point in the past – perhaps centuries ago – the Romulans stumbled upon it. On Aia there’s a beacon left behind by a powerful synthetic race (I nicknamed them the “Mass Effect Reapers”) and it tells synthetics to contact them. The Romulans would interpret this information as something apocalyptic, and the Zhat Vash came to believe that any synthetic life would ultimately lead to the extinction of all sentient organic life in the galaxy.

The beacon was more complicated than that, and instead contained an instruction for synths, telling them to contact the “Mass Effect Reapers” if they need help or are being persecuted by organics. Given the immense power that the “Mass Effect Reapers” appear to possess, surely Starfleet can’t risk leaving the beacon on Aia for anyone to find.

The beacon already caused massive problems – the attack on Mars and the Romulan attempt to attack Coppelius being just two examples, and there may be countless others. Leaving it alone will not only perpetuate the Zhat Vash’s conspiracy theory, but will also be dangerous. What if someone else encounters the beacon and contacts the “Mass Effect Reapers”?

I have a theory that – somehow – the Romulans have “cloaked” the octonary star system and Aia, otherwise surely with 24th Century scanning technology and telescopes the Federation would have noticed it. So it may not be as easy as just travelling there and shutting it down. Attempting to do so could even lead to war with the Romulans. However, I think it’s a risk the Federation will have to take; leaving the beacon alone is simply not an option.

Number 6: Who are the super-synths that I nicknamed the “Mass Effect Reapers”?

The “Mass Effect Reapers” – nicknamed for their similarities to a faction from a video game series – are a total unknown quantity. There are many possibilities for who they are and what their motivations are, but we only caught the barest of glimpses of them in the Season 1 finale, and in the aftermath of Picard’s “death,” no one mentioned them. Surely, however, they’re an existential threat to Starfleet – and indeed the whole galaxy – on a scale comparable to the Borg. Heck, they could actually be the Borg.

I have a theory that the “Mass Effect Reapers” may be the cause of the Burn – a galactic catastrophe seen in the trailers for Star Trek: Discovery Season 3. If that’s the case, perhaps Discovery will explain this faction’s backstory in more detail. If they reside in an area of space far beyond the Milky Way galaxy it could have taken them centuries to travel here, meaning the timelines match up for Discovery’s far-future setting.

Soji used a beacon to contact the “Mass Effect Reapers.”

Theories aside, we know next to nothing about this faction. They were powerful enough to move stars and to create a sustainable eight-star octonary system. They also appear to have altruistic motivations when it comes to synthetic life, offering to help synths in their struggle against organic oppressors. But is that genuine? Or when they arrive would they simply harvest or assimilate whoever they found? We simply don’t know, but it feels like something that could easily be a trap.

Soji was talked into closing the beacon – but whoever the “Mass Effect Reapers” are, they’re now aware of the existence of the Federation, the Romulans, and the Coppelius synths. If I were Starfleet, I’d immediately work on a plan to contact them and try to open a dialogue. Explaining what happened, and that the Coppelius synths are safe, may be the only way to avert a conflict.

Number 7: Why was Dr Soong planning to transfer his mind to a synthetic body?

When Picard and the crew of La Sirena arrived on Coppelius they met Dr Soong – the son of Data’s creator. Dr Soong was working on a synthetic body for himself, but had been unable to perfect the mind-transfer that he would have needed to accomplish that goal. He ended up donating the body – nicknamed the “golem” – to Picard, but what consequences (if any) will there be for that?

Sadly we didn’t get to spend a lot of time with Dr Soong, but I felt it was at least hinted at in Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1 that he needed a synthetic body. Perhaps he, like Picard, is dying? The finale had a lot of story to get through and rather skipped over that point, so we don’t really know why Dr Soong wanted to become a synth. Was it a desire for immortality? Was it because of illness? Was it because all of his friends were synths and he felt left out? We simply don’t know.

With Brent Spiner set to reprise the role in Season 2, I’d say we have a decent chance of finding out.

Number 8: What became of Narek?

We have no idea what happened to Narek after this moment.

Narek’s story came to an abrupt end partway through Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2. After convincing Raffi and Rios to go along with his plan to attack the synths’ beacon, Narek was wrestled to the ground by a group of synths during the botched attack. After that he was never seen or referenced again.

Apparently there’s a deleted or unfilmed scene from the episode which was to depict Narek being taken into custody by the Federation. While it isn’t canon, it remains the most likely outcome. However, there are other possibilities. Narek could have been retrieved by the Romulans during their mission to Coppelius, being transported aboard a Romulan ship during the standoff. He could have been held by the synths, who have cause to hate him for unleashing the Zhat Vash upon them. He could have recanted his Zhat Vash ideology and left aboard La Sirena with Picard – though I consider this one unlikely.

There are many reasons why Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2 was a mixed episode and a somewhat stumbling finale. The lack of any resolution to the story of a major character is just one of them. Though unconfirmed at this stage, I doubt Narek will return as a major character in Season 2, so unless we get some dialogue or a cameo confirming his fate, the deleted/unfilmed scene may be all we have to go on.

Number 9: Are the synths safe on Coppelius?

The Federation and Romulan fleets over Coppelius.

The timely arrival of Riker’s Starfleet armada is the only reason Coppelius wasn’t obliterated from orbit by a massive Romulan attack fleet. Soji may have listened to Picard and shut down the beacon, but Commodore Oh and the Zhat Vash are fanatics and zealots, and the idea that they would have simply stood down having witnessed that and having heard Picard’s speech doesn’t make a lot of sense.

With that in mind, what’s to stop them returning at any point in the future to finish the job and destroy this colony of synths? Unless Starfleet plans to permanently base an entire fleet in the system, and perhaps build a Starbase there too, it seems like the synths can never be safe if they remain on Coppelius. Evacuating them to a new home would seem to be the safest option.

Number 10: Who knows that Picard is now a synth?

Obviously Dr Soong, Dr Jurati, and Soji know that Picard is now a synth. The rest of La Sirena’s crew must know too, as will Seven of Nine. At the very end of Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2 Picard basically admitted it out loud in front of all of them. But does anyone else know? What about Riker and Troi? They played big roles in Season 1, but Riker left Coppelius before Picard’s “death” so he may not be aware of what transpired.

There are potential ramifications for Picard’s death-and-rebirth. From Starfleet’s perspective, is he the same Jean-Luc Picard as before? To his friends he may seem the same, but to those prejudiced against synths after a long prohibition on synthetic life, will they treat him the same? Picard may reunite with other people from his past in Season 2 – someone like Dr Crusher or Guinan. I wonder how they will react if they learn what happened.

So that’s it. Ten unresolved mysteries from Star Trek: Picard Season 1. Some of these I fully expect future seasons to tackle, but others feel in danger of being abandoned as Picard and the crew move on to new adventures.

Overall, Season 1 of Star Trek: Picard did a good job of resolving the mysteries and storylines that it set up. But there are some that fell by the wayside and didn’t get a proper conclusion. If the plan is to continue these stories and make more of them in future seasons then I’m all for it, because that sounds fantastic. But if we aren’t going to see these storylines and characters return, doing something to bring proper closure is something I really hope the producers and writers try to do.

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.

Has Star Trek: Picard’s first season finale set up the plot of Discovery’s third season?

Thu 03.09.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Discovery, and the trailer for Discovery’s upcoming third season.

Ever since we first caught a glimpse of Star Trek: Discovery’s third season setting, I’ve been wondering what’s going on. According to everything we know at this stage, Burnham and the ship will successfully complete a 930-year time jump into the far future. That future looks pretty bleak, and perhaps could even be described as post-apocalyptic. If it’s true that Discovery plans to tell a story set in an era where the Federation is defeated or in decline, figuring out how that happened – and reversing it – is surely going to be the overarching story.

For now we’re going to have to set aside reservations about how a post-apocalyptic or otherwise bleak setting will work with Star Trek from a storytelling point of view. Instead, let’s look at things from an in-universe perspective and try to figure out what may be going on. I have already covered this theory back in March when I was wrapping up my Star Trek: Picard theories, so if you’re a regular reader it may be familiar to you.

In short, here’s how the theory goes: the race of super-synths from Star Trek: Picard are the cause of Discovery’s post-apocalyptic setting. Let’s break it down, look at why it could be a possibility, and explore it in more detail.

This shot of a planet being destroyed by powerful synthetic life-forms was used in both *Discovery* Season 2 and *Picard* Season 1.

So although I said this would be an in-universe explanation of the theory, there is one production-side reason we need to look at too. One thing that modern Star Trek shows lack is a relationship to each other. Discovery did a pretty good job of tying itself to The Original Series, and both Picard and Lower Decks have connected themselves to The Next Generation, but there’s essentially nothing beyond a couple of throwaway lines linking Picard to Discovery right now. That would have been unthinkable during the 1990s, where The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager all shared characters, settings, locations, factions, and themes.

Modern Star Trek is hampered by its shows being split up along the timeline, and this makes it harder for new fans to transition smoothly from one series to another. There are no threads of consistency running between the different series, and while they are semi-independent productions they are all being produced by one overall team of people under the Star Trek Universe umbrella.

If we were to learn at some point in Discovery’s third season that the events depicted in Picard were directly related to the Federation’s decline or defeat, suddenly there would be a reason for Discovery fans who missed Picard to go back and watch it, and for Picard fans who haven’t seen Discovery to jump over and watch that show too. There would be the strong feeling that both shows genuinely take place in the same universe and the same timeline, which right now is lacking. This would help the Star Trek brand stay cohesive, and be a frame of reference for casual viewers, all while allowing both shows to provide each other a boost.

The Federation official from the *Discovery* Season 3 trailer.

So that’s on the production side of things. But I promised you an in-universe look! First let’s very briefly recap, in case you forgot the events of the final few episodes of Picard. While investigating Soji’s origins, Picard and the crew of La Sirena came to realise that there are a race of synthetic life-forms – created by Bruce Maddox – living on a planet called Coppelius. The Romulan faction known as the Zhat Vash were searching for the synths too, because they believe that the synths will trigger an apocalyptic event. This apocalypse was revealed to them by a beacon left behind by an ancient race on a world they called Aia, and when we got a clearer look at the message the beacon contained, it was less a warning to organics than a message to the synths themselves, offering aid. A faction of super-synths that I nicknamed the “Mass Effect Reapers” exist somewhere beyond the galaxy, and they have promised aid to any synthetic race that calls on them. Sutra and Soji planned to contact them, and to open a portal that would have allowed the “Mass Effect Reapers” to travel to the Milky Way galaxy. They successfully built the beacon, but at the last second Picard convinced Soji to shut it down, closing the portal and preventing the arrival of the “Mass Effect Reapers”.

Did I miss anything? I hope not! I nicknamed this faction the “Mass Effect Reapers” because they have noteworthy similarities to another race of super-synths in the Mass Effect series of video games.

I think that the most important thing to note is that in the finale, Soji and Sutra were successful in opening the portal. Thus, the “Mass Effect Reapers” are aware of the existence of a race of synths in the Milky Way galaxy, and also of the existence of the Federation. While Picard was able to convince Soji to stand down and close the portal, questions remain.

Soji working on the beacon in *Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2.*

Now that the “Mass Effect Reapers” know of the existence of the Romulans, Federation, and synths, will they be content to go back to sitting still, waiting for another race of synths to contact them? Or did Sutra and Soji set into motion a chain of events that can no longer be stopped? Closing the portal may have prevented the imminent arrival of the “Mass Effect Reapers”, but it’s totally unclear what they will choose to do next.

The “Mass Effect Reapers” were presented as hyper-intelligent, arguably far beyond the Federation and Romulans in terms of technology, and thus their motivations and actions can be difficult to predict. This may be an oversimplification, but at the moment Soji closed the portal and shut down the beacon, she didn’t seem to communicate to the “Mass Effect Reapers” why she was doing so. From their point of view, a portal was opened – through which they could see a race of synths threatened by an imposing fleet of starships – then before they could take action the portal was closed. If I were the “Mass Effect Reapers”, I’d want to know why. And if I were paranoid, I might be thinking that the synths who tried to contact me were under attack and that the beacon had been forcibly shut down.

If the “Mass Effect Reapers” followed this line of thinking, and their motivation is still to provide help to any synthetic race that asks for it, the logical next step would be for them to set off to the Milky Way as fast as they can. Depending on how far away they are – and the show never really explained that – it could take years, decades, or even centuries for them to travel, even if their technology is more advanced than anything we’ve ever seen in Star Trek. That’s assuming they set off immediately – there may have been a debate or discussion about what to do that could have lasted years or longer.

This is basically all we saw of the “Mass Effect Reapers” in *Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2.*

In any case, it’s not inconceivable that this extra-galactic threat could take centuries to arrive. I like to assume that Picard and/or Starfleet will travel to Aia and disable or destroy the beacon to prevent not only the Romulans from using it, but from other synths finding it in future. Even shutting down the beacon on Aia may be too late, though, because of the events of Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2.

The “Mass Effect Reapers” are perhaps the only faction other than the Borg who could be capable of waging a successful war against the Federation. Even if all of the powers of the Alpha and Beta quadrants were to band together, it still might not be enough against the superior technology of these super-synths, and we could certainly expect any such conflict to be long and catastrophically costly. Even if the Federation survived it would be seriously weakened. Furthermore, a large-scale attack on the Federation would result in far-flung colonies being cut off, and any news or information might be hard to come by.

This is where the trailer for Discovery’s third season comes in. We see a setting best described as bleak, as Burnham and the crew arrive in a part of the galaxy that seems far away from Earth. The Federation seems to be in decline, Starfleet is described as a “ghost”, and we’re left wondering what happened to cause all of this. We’ve seen the Federation in the far future before, both in Voyager and Enterprise, and certainly 100-200 years before Discovery’s far future setting, the Federation and Starfleet seemed to be doing pretty well, even furthering their mission of exploration to include time as well as space. Reconciling that image of the future with Discovery’s setting is something Season 3 will need to do.

The crew of the USS Relativity in the 29th Century – around 300 years before *Discovery’*s third season is supposedly set.

As a faction we know essentially nothing about – not even their name – the “Mass Effect Reapers” are ripe for exploring in more detail. Discovery could do so in such a way that doesn’t interfere with anything Picard set up, providing not only the next part of the story, but also some background. We could learn about their leadership, motivations, and level of technology in much more detail. And it would still be a practically blank slate for Discovery’s team to use to set up the third season’s bleak and dark setting.

The question of the “Mass Effect Reapers” motivation comes into play again. There are two broad possibilities for their actions in Picard – either they were genuine in their offer to help synthetic races, or the beacon on Aia was part of an elaborate trap. Neither option bodes well for the Federation, assuming that the “Mass Effect Reapers” are now aware of their existence. If it was a trap, and the “Mass Effect Reapers” were waiting to be contacted by synths simply because that would mean advanced civilisations are present, they may now have a new target. If it wasn’t a trap and their desire to help was genuine, they may be motivated by concern for the Coppelius synths or even anger at the Federation and Romulans for intruding before communication could be established. While it’s hard to say what this faction could be planning or thinking based on such a small amount of information, these possibilities seem reasonable, and if they decided they wanted to attack or investigate, the events of Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2 could have set that in motion.

Because Picard Season 1 wrapped up in the immediate aftermath of the standoff over Coppelius and the closing of the beacon, we don’t know what happened next. However, I consider two things to be somewhere between possible and likely: the synths on Coppelius would be relocated (in order to keep them safe from the Romulans), and Starfleet would make some attempt to contact the “Mass Effect Reapers” to explain what happened.

The Romulan and Federation fleets engage in a standoff over Coppelius in *Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2*.

Relocating the synths feels like a necessity. Commodore Oh may not have wanted to risk war with the Federation when staring down a massive armada, but there’s no indication that she changed her mind on the necessity of exterminating synthetic life. From her perspective, Soji and Sutra building the beacon was a culmination of her worst fears, and although Soji may have been convinced to stand down, again from Oh’s point of view what’s to stop her changing her mind? Or one of the other synths building a new beacon? Leaving the synths on Coppelius would be very dangerous for them, unless Starfleet plans to permanently base a fleet in the system, so the easiest option for everyone would be to relocate them to a safer place.

However, in the context of our theory, this could be problematic. Suppose it takes the “Mass Effect Reapers” a long time to arrive in the Milky Way galaxy, and they don’t manage to travel to Coppelius for several centuries. What do they find when they arrive? No synths, but several massive interstellar civilisations and empires of organic beings. Put the two things together and it’s not unreasonable to assume that the organics wiped out the synths – especially if the last thing the “Mass Effect Reapers” saw before the portal closed was two massive fleets approaching the planet. They may take the missing synths as proof of an attack and go on the rampage.

Even if Starfleet were able to contact the “Mass Effect Reapers”, there’s no guarantee a successful dialogue could be opened. Setting aside other theories like the “Mass Effect Reapers” actually being the Borg, a race of super-synths that considers themselves light-years ahead of organic beings in every respect may look at humans the way humans look at ants or bacteria, and consider any attempt at communication unworthy of their time. That’s assuming Starfleet could find a way to make contact without opening another portal – it may simply not be possible, though I expect the Federation would want to try.

The “Mass Effect Reapers” make their way to the portal in *Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2.*

Taken together, all of these different factors make at least a plausible argument for Discovery taking this story beat and expanding it for the basis of its third season. It could certainly be done in such a way that wasn’t confusing and didn’t make Picard essential viewing to understand what was happening – just like Discovery did with Pike, Vina, and the Talosians in Season 2. The Cage certainly provided extra details and informed what was going on, but viewers didn’t miss anything important for not having seen it. I’m sure the same could be done here, especially if the attack by or war against the “Mass Effect Reapers” was already over. It would exist simply as backstory; an encouragement to hop over and watch Picard without making doing so a necessity.

While this theory remains a possibility, at least in my opinion, it’s hardly a certainty and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn Discovery is going in a wholly different direction. Many of my theories during Picard Season 1 didn’t pan out, and this may simply be another that falls by the wayside! Nevertheless, it’s fun to craft theories and speculate, and at the end of the day that’s all this is: a bit of fun, and a chance to spend more time thinking about Star Trek. So please take everything I’ve said today with a healthy pinch of salt.

Star Trek: Picard Season 1 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. Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 will air beginning on the 15th of October on CBS All Access in the United States and Netflix in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The Star Trek franchise – including all series and films discussed 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 Season 1 theory roundup!

Thu 13.08.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the entirety of Star Trek: Picard Season 1, including its ending. There may also be spoilers for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

Star Trek: Picard’s first season wrapped up at the end of March – and it feels like forever ago, what with everything that’s happened in the world since! While the season was running, in addition to reviewing each of the episodes in turn I also concocted a number of different theories for what was going on in the show. Star Trek: Picard very carefully set up a number of mysteries, and even heading into the second half of the finale, it wasn’t clear exactly how they would be resolved.

I’d argue that the first season’s two-part finale wasn’t the show at its best, and it felt as though a season which started incredibly strongly ended up stumbling a little as it crossed the finish line. There were a number of reasons for this – which I covered at the time – but it boils down to some of the show’s mysteries not being fully explained, and some storylines being dropped or left unresolved. That and the truly awful gold makeup used for the synths on Coppelius!

If you’d like to read all of my theories from Star Trek: Picard Season 1, you can find them on my dedicated Star Trek: Picard page. Click or tap here to be taken there!

This time, what I’d like to do is take a look back at some of the theories I postulated while the season was running. I’ll explain why I thought they seemed viable – and why they ended up being total misses! In a way, part of the fun of theory-crafting and speculating is knowing that you won’t always get it right… and boy oh boy did I have some seriously wrong theories!

Number 1:
Dahj and Soji aren’t synthetics, they’re genetically-engineered humans.

This is a theory I first came up with right at the beginning of the series, almost from the very moment Picard begins to suspect that Dahj is synthetic. It seemed like it could’ve been a clever idea for a double-bluff – establishing Dahj and Soji as synths, only to rip that away and challenge both Picard’s and the audience’s expectations. However, it didn’t pan out that way, and looking back, this theory was kind of ridiculous!

Genetic enhancements, similar to those made on characters like Dr Bashir and Khan, could have given Dahj the incredible speed and strength that she possessed in Remembrance, so from that point of view it wasn’t wholly unthinkable. But looking back, while Star Trek: Picard did aim to be a show that kept us guessing and didn’t telegraph every aspect of its storyline, this kind of subversion of expectations would have been a step too far. We didn’t know anything about Dahj or Soji at the beginning of the series, and to take the one established fact about them and make it a lie or a misunderstanding would have been a storytelling mistake.

Dahj during her fight against Zhat Vash operatives in *Remembrance.*

There was also plenty of evidence that Dahj and Soji were synthetic: Picard’s meeting with Dr Jurati, Narek’s interest in Soji, and the strong connection Picard felt to Dahj (and later to Soji) because of his friendship with Data. All of that would have made no sense in the story if we’d ended up dealing with genetically-enhanced humans!

I brought this theory back after episode 3, The End is the Beginning, based on a line spoken by one of the Romulans who attempted to assassinate Picard: “she’s not what you think she is!” This of course referred to Soji, and it struck me that, as Picard and his comrades believed Soji to be a synth, perhaps the Romulan knew that she was not. However, as the story progressed it became abundantly clear that Soji and Dahj were the synthetics that the story established them to be, and that I was barking up the wrong tree with this one!

Number 2:
Section 31 will make an appearance in the show.

A black Section 31 combadge from *Star Trek: Discovery.*

This theory was crafted not so much because of anything that directly happened in the plot of the show, but rather for production reasons. In short, the Star Trek timeline is seriously fractured, with shows being produced simultaneously occupying very different timeframes. When Discovery’s third season kicks off in a few weeks time, there will be four shows occupying four time periods. This complicates the franchise, and what that means is that some threads of continuity would be very helpful, especially for casual viewers.

Section 31 featured heavily in Discovery’s second season, and in addition, a spin-off based on the organisation is currently being worked on. It seemed logical that Star Trek: Picard might want to find some way of incorporating Section 31 if for no other reason than having one of those threads of continuity running through the franchise, tying things loosely together and being a frame of reference for casual viewers.

My first thought for a potential Section 31 appearance was that they could’ve been responsible for the attack on Mars and the destruction of Picard’s armada. I theorised they might have taken such aggressive action to prevent the Federation giving aid to the Romulans. This was extended to include Section 31 hacking the Mars synths as part of this plan.

F8’s eyes during a flashback sequence that depicted the hack.

I next had two potential Section 31 operatives pegged – Chris Rios and Seven of Nine. Rios because he worked aboard a Starfleet ship that was “erased” from the records, and Seven of Nine because it wasn’t clear who she worked for or why she was following Picard.

Finally, as these other theories fell by the wayside, I speculated that Section 31 may have arrived to take control of the Artifact after it was abandoned by the Romulans and later crashed on Coppelius. While I suppose you could argue that might yet happen, it didn’t happen in Season 1, and thus any real benefit of the organisation crossing over from a behind-the-scenes perspective was lost.

I maintain that this theory makes a lot of sense from a production perspective, and my final idea in particular – Section 31 taking control of the Artifact to study it – could have been accomplished without making any changes whatsoever to the season’s storyline. However, it didn’t happen!

Number 3:
Soji’s Trill friend will end up getting assimilated or killed.

Soji with Dr Kunamadéstifee in *Maps and Legends*.

Episode 2, Maps and Legends, introduced a Trill doctor working aboard the Artifact along with Soji. She ultimately only appeared in one sequence, but that sequence seemed to contain a lot of horror film-style foreshadowing, and for weeks I was insistent that we’d see this character meet an unpleasant end! Aboard a Borg cube – even a disabled one – the most likely way that would manifest would’ve been her assimiliation.

After Soji helped Dr Kunamadéstifee with her uniform, the two stood together while they listened to a speech from one of the Artifact’s Romulan guards. He stated that the area they were about to enter was incredibly dangerous, and a nearby sign seemed to reinforce the possibility of assimilation by counting the days since it had last happened. This seemed as thought it could tie in with Soji working on de-assimilating Borg drones; was she about to see her friend end up on her operating table?

It turned out, of course, that I was reading too much into one side character and one short sequence, because not only didn’t Dr Kunamadéstifee end up assimilated, she was never seen again after Maps and Legends, which was a shame because she seemed like a potentially interesting character. Soji spent much of her time from episodes 2-6 with Narek, and giving her someone else to interact with was a good idea. My theory was that their friendship may have built up a little more, leading to shock and sadness for Soji upon learning of Dr Kunamadéstifee’s fate.

I suppose in theory we could say that it’s unlikely that she survived the various disasters which befell the Artifact, from Narissa executing huge numbers of ex-Borg to the ship crashing on Coppelius, but nothing was ever seen on screen to even hint at her fate.

Number 4:
Commodore Oh is a synthetic.

Commodore Oh in the episode *Broken Pieces*.

As with Soji and Dahj being human, this was kind of an “out there” theory! But the whole point of theory crafting is to make wild guesses sometimes, and there were a couple of reasons why I considered this a possibility. First of all, it would have been thoroughly unexpected and shocking. Many recent films, games, and television series have tried to pull off genuinely unexpected twists, and had this been true, it would have been one heck of a shock!

Secondly, the premise of Star Trek: Picard’s first season had been the cloak-and-dagger factions vying to thwart or create synthetic life. The Zhat Vash and the Tal Shiar were on one side, Maddox and his team on the other. There were rogue traders, Romulans, ex-Borg, and all sorts of shadowy figures involved – any one of whom could have not been what they seemed. The show crafted mysteries for us to examine. As we learned more about the Zhat Vash and their mission, I began to wonder if they could have been infiltrated by someone who wanted to stop them harming synths. This later evolved into wondering if they’d been infiltrated by someone who wanted to bring about the very disaster they sought to prevent.

Dahj and Soji were both unaware of their true synthetic natures, which built on past iterations of Star Trek that showed synths can be programmed to not realise they’re synths. Commodore Oh could have genuinely believed in the Zhat Vash cause – but been programmed to “activate” at the opportune moment. We later learned that the Zhat Vash feared the arrival of a faction of super-synths that I dubbed the “Mass Effect Reapers” (because they were very similar to that video game faction) and I incorporated that into this theory, suggesting that Commodore Oh may be working for the “Mass Effect Reapers” to try and bring about their arrival.

Of course it was a complete bust! Commodore Oh was a Zhat Vash operative to the core, and as far as we know, wholly organic in nature! I still think she’s a fascinating character, and I wrote an article a few months back looking at her place in the Star Trek timeline. You can find it by clicking or tapping here.

Number 5:
Picard telling everyone that their enemies are the Tal Shiar – and not the Zhat Vash – will have consequences.

One thing that Star Trek: Picard didn’t do particularly well, in my opinion, was staying consistent in how it referred to its antagonists. In Remembrance, the faction who attacked Picard and Dahj weren’t named, but in Maps and Legends we learned of the existence of the Zhat Vash – an ancient, shadowy organisation which operated within, yet were distinct from, the Tal Shiar.

Yet for several episodes, Picard and others kept referring to their adversaries as the Tal Shiar. In-universe, there’s a certain kind of logic to this. Picard may not have believed fully in the Zhat Vash’s existence, having only heard about them from one source, or he may have felt trying to explain the difference would have been too time consuming and/or made him seem too conspiratorial. However, with practically everything else in the show being done deliberately to achieve certain story payoffs, I wondered whether Picard’s decision not to be up front with his crew might have had repercussions.

Colonel Lovok (or rather, a changeling impersonating him) was a Tal Shiar operative seen in *Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.*

Elnor was the one character who I felt seemed most likely to be affected by the revelation that it was the Zhat Vash, not the Tal Shiar, that he was up against. As a member of the Qowat Milat, Elnor was opposed to the Tal Shiar. But the Qowat Milat’s relationship with the Zhat Vash was unclear; even if they were enemies, the Qowat Milat may have had particular techniques for dealing with them. And at the very least, Elnor and his faction seemed likely to know of their existence.

However, Elnor learned in Nepenthe that he was facing off against the Zhat Vash, not the Tal Shiar, and the revelation seemed to have no impact on him whatsoever. The rest of La Sirena’s crew were equally nonplussed, and there were no consequences at all for the confused terminology – at least, not from an in-universe point of view. I think that, unfortunately, the decision to complicate the terminology around the show’s antagonists may have made it harder to follow for casual viewers. When dealing with made-up names like “Tal Shiar” and “Zhat Vash”, remaining consistent is important for the audience to be able to follow what’s going on.

Number 6:
There’s a Starfleet-Zhat Vash conspiracy.

Admiral Clancy, the commander-in-chief of Starfleet.

In Maps and Legends, we were introduced to Commodore Oh for the first time. It was a great shock to see a high-ranking Starfleet officer involved in Dahj’s murder, and at the time it wasn’t at all clear whether Commodore Oh was a Romulan infiltrator or a Vulcan co-conspirator. If she was a Starfleet officer working with the Zhat Vash, it stood to reason that others in Starfleet were as well – perhaps even senior admirals.

Furthermore, when we learned how Commodore Oh recruited Dr Jurati into the conspiracy – all it took was a brief mind-meld – it seemed plausible that she may have used the same technique on others. Commodore Oh had been embedded in Starfleet for more than sixty years, and in that time there’s no telling how many people she may have interacted with.

Lieutenant Rizzo arrives to meet Commodore Oh.

However, it turned out not to be the case. Admiral Clancy, the head of Starfleet Command, wasn’t compromised, nor were any of the other Starfleet officers and leaders seen or referenced in Season 1. As far as we know – and this could change if future Star Trek projects decide to look at this aspect more deeply – only Commodore Oh and Rizzo were involved within Starfleet, and they were both Zhat Vash operatives.

This is one theory that I’m definitely pleased didn’t pan out. Making Starfleet itself the “bad guys”, even if there were a reason for it, wouldn’t have felt great in a Star Trek series, and would have been a far darker path for the show to have taken. Seeing Riker show up in Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2 at the head of a Starfleet armada was a beautiful moment (though sadly one that had been telegraphed ahead of time) in large part because it proved that Starfleet and the Federation were still on the right side. The plot to kill the synths and attack Mars was purely a Zhat Vash creation.

Number 7:
The Control AI, from Star Trek: Discovery Season 2, is involved.

A re-used image from *Star Trek: Discovery.*

Although I initially considered it to be a bit out of left field, the episode Nepenthe really kicked this theory into high gear! My first thought had been that perhaps the reason why the Zhat Vash were so frightened of synthetic life was because they had some involvement with Control, the rogue artificial intelligence from Star Trek: Discovery’s second season. I was convinced – wrongly – that the producers behind the overall Star Trek franchise would have wanted to build a major connection between Discovery and Picard for some of the reasons already discussed, and bringing Control in seemed like a viable option for accomplishing this.

In the episode Nepenthe, we finally got to see how Dr Jurati came to be recruited into the conspiracy – she was shown a vision by Commodore Oh, one that seemed to warn of something apocalyptic. Contained within this vision were a couple of visuals that were made for Star Trek: Discovery – more specifically, they were used to show a vision Michael Burnham and Spock had of the Control AI.

The Control AI commandeered Captain Leland’s body in *Star Trek: Discovery*.

At the time, I noted that there could be production-side reasons to re-use visual effects, as it was less time-consuming and cheaper than making wholly new CGI. However, for a couple of weeks I really did think that we were going to find some connection between Control and the Zhat Vash; perhaps the Romulans and Federation had been competing in some kind of mid-23rd Century AI arms race, or perhaps while Control was on the loose it had attacked Romulan ships or planets.

In a thematic sense, Star Trek: Picard’s first season and Discovery’s second season share some significant points. Both consider the potential for rogue or out-of-control artificial life, and both look at the consequences of continuing to develop AI – something that we arguably should be concerned about today! But there was no deeper crossover beyond basic themes, and the shows remain almost entirely separate from one another. The re-used visuals are what completely threw me for this one!

Number 8:
The synths on Coppelius are already dead.

A crowd of clearly not dead synths in *Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2*.

Star Trek: Picard’s first season had, unfortunately, one rather large plot hole. The driving force for much of the first half of the season was locating and rescuing Bruce Maddox, the Federation cyberneticist who built Soji, Dahj, and many of the other synths. Maddox was on a planet called Freecloud, a place he travelled to when he seemed to have nowhere else to turn. He ended up returning to the dangerous Bjayzl, someone he owed a lot of money to, and was captured. The reason he put himself in such grave danger was because his lab had been destroyed by the Tal Shiar, or so he claimed.

But in the two-part finale, Picard and the crew travelled to Coppelius and saw for themselves that Maddox’s lab hadn’t been destroyed, and the Tal Shiar or the Zhat Vash had never been there. This feels like a pretty major issue, because the question of why Maddox was on Freecloud now has no satisfactory answer. The reason seems to be “because plot”, and that’s never a good thing.

Bruce Maddox only went to Bjayzl because his lab had been destroyed.

However, before the finale I was still trying to square that particular circle. One of the possibilities I came up with was that Maddox was right – his lab had already been destroyed, which could mean that the synths he’d built were already dead. It would have made Narek’s mission kind of a waste of time, as his colleagues had already killed off the synths, not to mention being a rather bleak way to end the season, but it would have fit together with what had already been established.

I don’t think I’d have enjoyed this storyline, which would have left Soji as perhaps the sole survivor of her race. It would have been very dark, and would have felt like a victory for the show’s antagonists. But at the time, I was scrambling around looking for ways to make the story of the first half of the season – culminating in Maddox’s statement to Bjayzl about his lab being destroyed – fit with the second half of the season and the revelation of the existence of more synths.

Number 9:
The captain of the USS Ibn Majid is a character from a past Star Trek show.

Harry Kim could’ve been a starship captain in this time period.

This was a pretty simple theory by my standards. When we learned that Rios had served aboard a ship called the USS Ibn Majid, which was destroyed and covered up, I began to wonder who might’ve been in command of the vessel. Rios was clearly very attached to his former captain, and I wasn’t sure if we might’ve seen – in flashback form – this character make an appearance.

From Rios’ initial comments about the character – that they were dead, male, and “heroic” – I put together a shortlist based on possible characters from past Star Trek shows who could conceivably have been starship captains in that era. I ruled out those who seemed to have no desire to sit in the captain’s chair, like Dr Bashir or Tom Paris, and obviously ruled out those who wouldn’t be eligible like Chief O’Brien. Finally, Zhaban had mentioned that La Forge and Worf were still alive, so they were out too. That left a handful of characters, including Chakotay and Harry Kim, both from Voyager. I also suggested Edward Jellico from The Next Generation two-parter Chain of Command, Solok from the Deep Space Nine episode Take Me Out to the Holosuite, and Captain Bateson from The Next Generation Season 5 episode Cause and Effect.

Solok, the Vulcan captain of the USS T’Kumbra.

There were other possibilities – most of which were minor characters who made only one or two appearances in Star Trek – and there were many male officers who could, in theory, have made the cut. I liked this idea simply for the sake of continuity, as having the Ibn Majid’s captain be someone we already knew seemed like an interesting concept.

With Bruce Maddox, Hugh, and Icheb all killed off in Star Trek: Picard’s first season, it was clear that the producers has no qualms about getting rid of legacy characters! That fact also contributed to making this theory plausible. Past iterations of Star Trek has been reluctant to kill off main characters, but Star Trek: Picard did so several times. However, none of this came to pass, and instead a new character – Captain Alonso Vandermeer – was created for the show, and was only seen briefly in a photograph.

Number 10:
Narek will go rogue.

Narek in *Broken Pieces* after trying to kill Soji.

Narek was a unique character, not only in Star Trek: Picard but in the whole franchise. Never before had an out-and-out villain been a main character, with their name in the opening titles. Narek was also an interesting and nuanced character in a season where – most of the time – the villains could feel flat and one-dimensional. I’m still disappointed that his storyline was unceremoniously dumped midway through the season finale; we didn’t even learn what became of him after Picard’s “death”.

But that’s somewhat beside the point. From as early as the third episode, I began speculating that somehow, Narek would be convinced to abandon his mission and join with Soji and Picard. His clear feelings for Soji seemed to offer a route for him to make this happen, but even if the show didn’t go for the “spy falls in love with his target” trope, there were other ways it could’ve happened. Narek seemed like a reasonable man; if it were demonstrated to him that the synths were not a threat, it seemed at least plausible that he might’ve switched sides.

However, as of the last time we saw him – before he just dropped of the face of the series with no conclusion to his story – he was still 100% committed to the Zhat Vash cause. In fact, he never wavered. His attempt to kill Soji may have caused him great distress, but that didn’t stop him going ahead with his mission; he didn’t even hesitate.

I actually like that Narek was unpredictable, and as a whole I like that the show set up what looked to be a familiar trope – the spy with a heart of gold who switches sides for the girl he loves – only to say that actually, Narek was still committed to his cause and his mission. However, it’s a shame that this never really got a proper payoff, as Narek disappeared. His character arc feels incomplete, and as I’m fairly confident he won’t be returning for the show’s second season, we may never learn what happened to him after the events on Coppelius.

So that’s it!

A handful of my theories for Star Trek: Picard Season 1 that never came to pass! I did manage to successfully predict a handful of (more obvious) plot points across the first season, so my theories didn’t all fail as hard as those listed above. The important thing, though, was that I had fun doing this. Thinking about the series and writing up the theories was really enjoyable at the time, and it’s something I hope to do with Discovery later in the year – at least, provided it has suitable theory-crafting material to work with!

Jean-Luc Picard will return for Season 2!

The important thing when considering fan theories is to remember that they’re just guesses and speculation. The showrunners, writers, and producers are the ones who craft the story, and they’re the ones who get the final say on how it’s going to pan out. Getting overly attached to any one theory – no matter how much we like it or how plausible it seems – really just means we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment. I could point to many projects in recent years which have suffered as a result of this, but all I really want to say is that, for those of you who followed my theories during Star Trek: Picard Season 1, I hope that I didn’t cause you any disappointment or frustration when I was wrong. At the end of the day, this is supposed to be fun and an excuse to spend more time in the Star Trek galaxy. Let’s all try to take fan theories with an extra-large pinch of salt!

Star Trek: Lower Decks is currently airing its first season – the second of three Star Trek projects in 2020. For all the problems that this year has thrown at us, having three different Star Trek shows to enjoy has been a blessing. If you missed it, I’ve reviewed the first episode of Lower Decks and I’ll soon be taking a look at episode 2, which will be available to watch (at least for viewers in the US and Canada) later today. And as mentioned I’ll be looking at Discovery when that airs in October. There’s no word on when exactly we can expect to see Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard. It has an optimistic release date of 2021, but given that California is still largely locked down and filming has yet to begin, I wouldn’t be surprised if that slips back. Regardless, whenever we get it I’ll be taking a look at the episodes and probably crafting a bunch more theories!

Star Trek: Picard Season 1 is available to stream now on CBS All Access in the United States, and on Amazon Prime Video in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. 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 10: Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2

Sat 28.03.20Mon 01.05.23Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There will be spoilers ahead for Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2, and for the entirety of Star Trek: Picard Season 1. There may also be spoilers for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

I’m in two minds about Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2. On the one hand, the entire second half of the episode was incredibly emotional, with hit after hit after hit that left me in tears. But on the other hand, much of the first half of the episode followed on directly from Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1 and was a waste of space.

I think overall, I stand by what I said in my review last week: that many of the story points in this two-part season finale were rushed and underdeveloped. Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2 had, at points, the same issue of blitzing through potentially interesting story beats, and the disappointing thing isn’t that any of the storylines were bad, it’s that they had potential to be so much more than they were. Despite the second half of the episode going a long way toward redeeming the entire two-part finale, I think when the dust settles and I’m thinking more clearly and less emotionally, the overall picture will be, at best, mixed. There just wasn’t enough time remaining for many of these points to be fully explored, and realistically that meant that either some story threads needed to be cut entirely, or the season needed another couple of episodes to explore them fully.

Where the second half of Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2 succeeded was that it slowed down, and the rushed pacing, the jumping between storylines, and the obviously-cut down scenes did largely abate. This gave way for a more emotional story to develop and play out over several slower, touching sequences, which brilliantly played on elements of the story that had been spread out over the preceding nine episodes – beginning right back in the first episode of the season, and indeed the first sequence of the first episode.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2 begins right where Part 1 left off last week, where Sutra let Narek escape and locked Picard up. Narek travels to the Artifact’s crash site and manages to sneak aboard, passing Seven of Nine, Elnor, and a handful of xBs who seem to be working on repairing the crashed vessel. The establishing shot of the Artifact was actually really pretty, and the closest the planet of Coppelius or Ghoulion IV came to not looking like California for the whole episode.

Narek is searching for something on the Artifact when Rizzo appears from nowhere and surprises him. I’ve mentioned several times that Rizzo has grown on me as a character in her appearances over the course of the season. Her transformation from an uninteresting and one-dimensional villain into an actual fleshed-out character has been great to see, and it’s hard to imagine the story of Star Trek: Picard’s first season without Peyton List’s occasionally over-the-top performance. Seeing Rizzo and Narek reunited showed us that they were real people underneath it all, and given it was almost sure to be Narek’s last meeting with his sister, their hug was strangely touching. After being attacked by the xBs at the end of Broken Pieces, I’d assumed Rizzo had beamed over to one of the Romulan ships near the Artifact, but it seems that she remained aboard during its short-lived mission to Coppelius and survived the crash-landing. I hadn’t expected that – partly because it wasn’t communicated clearly, it must be said – so it was a surprise to see her. But we did get to see a brief moment of vulnerability and emotion from Rizzo – in that moment, she was genuinely relieved, happy, and even slightly overwhelmed to see Narek, and that moment played out perfectly.

The next scene has to be one of my least-favourites. Not for its dialogue, which was a conversation between Picard and Soji as he tries to convince her to try things his way instead of following Sutra, but for the editing. The best moments with Picard, both in this series and in his previous Star Trek appearances, have been a combination of what he said and his presence while saying it. With this scene cutting away from Picard and Soji in large part, with what should’ve been one of his trademark speeches heard only in voiceover, something significant was missing that made the words he said far less impactful to us as the audience. We needed to see Picard as well as hear him for his speech to have its full effect. And back to what I said at the beginning, this feels like a consequence of both parts of the finale having just too much to cram in to two episodes. Before the opening titles, the episode needed to show this conversation, as well as convey – through Dr Jurati seeing it firsthand – the construction of the beacon that Sutra planned to use to contact the “Mass Effect Reapers”. Instead of there being enough time for both scenes, they ended up smashed together, with the voices of Picard and Soji on top of Dr Jurati silently watching the beacon. For me it simply didn’t work, and both scenes were the worse for being amalgamated.

The opening titles once again ruined the surprise appearance of a character. For the third time this season, an actor’s name was included which telegraphed the arrival of a character whose appearance was supposed to be unexpected: this time it was Jonathan Frakes, who reprised his role as Riker. What was the point of that? In all three cases where this has happened – Seven of Nine in Stardust City Rag, Dr Soong in Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1, and Riker this time – the appearance of the character was treated in the episode as a surprise. Everything from the camera work to the music built up the suspense of who we were about to meet – yet the opening titles had already spoilt it. Riker’s appearance at the head of Starfleet’s armada was supposed to be something that would make the audience go “wow!”, but instead it was telegraphed ahead of time, so the arrival of his fleet and then seeing him in person when he hailed the Romulans had lost the crucial element of surprise. I just do not understand this decision. How hard would it have been to credit Jonathan Frakes at the end and leave Riker’s appearance a genuine surprise? It was poor, and it detracted from what should’ve been one of the episode’s more powerful moments. It was still nice to see Riker on screen and back in uniform – we’ll deal with that scene in more detail later – but it was such a shame that it wasn’t the surprise it should’ve been.

After the opening titles we see why Narek went to the Artifact – among the many things the Romulans didn’t have time to evacuate were a set of bombs, and he plans to use them to destroy the orchid-ships before the Romulan fleet arrives. This is a pretty tense scene in contrast to his reunion with Rizzo, as we see that there’s still tension between them and they’re of unequal status – despite being very shaken by recent events, Rizzo is still the superior officer. She really doesn’t have a choice in letting Narek go, as there are two jobs to do – destroying the orchids and activating the Artifact’s weapons – and two of them. Narek called himself a “Zhat Vash washout”, and clearly his history with the secretive organisation is complicated. We’d seen a couple of hints at that in earlier episodes, but nothing as major as what we got here. Unfortunately, as with many points across the two-part finale, it was left undeveloped. Narek has had multiple appearances across Star Trek: Picard’s first season for this aspect of his background to be explored, and given that we’re less likely to see him return for Season 2 than anyone else at this point, I would have thought that if the series wanted to properly explore his Zhat Vash background that this would’ve been the last opportunity. As it is, we got a couple of throwaway lines about Narek and Rizzo’s family: their parents, apparently, died as a result of working for the Zhat Vash, but again, how or why is not explained in any detail. Narek and Rizzo part for what would be the final time.

Out of all of Star Trek: Picard’s villains, the dynamic between Rizzo and Narek was by far the most interesting. As brother and sister there’s always going to be an element of sibling rivalry to what they’re trying to do, and Rizzo made clear in every scene together where the power lay in that dynamic. They played off each other well, with Rizzo pushing Narek to the brink of mutiny at times. But throughout it all, his commitment to the cause never wavered, and was stronger than both his fear of and disdain for Rizzo, as well as his clear feelings for Soji.

Narek and Rizzo at the Artifact’s crash site.

Technology in Star Trek has always been flexible to suit the needs of the story, and I appreciate that’s something that has happened going back to The Original Series. Even with that caveat, I didn’t like like the magical do-anything macguffin that’s used in the next scene by Raffi and Rios to fix La Sirena’s engine. It strayed too far into the realm of magic for me, especially with its “just believe it will work” spiel. While we’ve seen similar things in Star Trek before, and perhaps in some contexts it could’ve worked, it just felt forced at this moment; a way to send Raffi and Rios on a mission to La Sirena so they could be there for other story elements to unfold, but done in such a way that they didn’t need to spend more than thirty seconds fixing the engine – which they went back to do.

In fact, at several points in Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2 did I get this feeling that the story was being forced down a particular path. Scenes would be included not because they fit the natural flow of the story, but because they either looked “cool” from a visual standpoint, or because they moved characters around to get them to be in the right place for other things to happen. In this example, Raffi and Rios had to leave Coppelius Station – under the guise of fixing La Sirena, they were moved out of the way so Picard could be apprehended, and placed in the right location for Narek to find them later, so they could plan their (stupid) attack on the synths’ beacon. It all felt just a little too much like it was driven by a room full of writers, and not a natural way for the characters to go. We’d also see the attack I mentioned be done in a very stupid way to get the plot to a specific climax, as well as the campfire scene with Narek which will come later as other examples of characters being forced into specific situations which didn’t really make sense in the context of the episode. It was constructed in such a way as to allow the plot to unfold, and unfortunately we’re supposed to just brush off some of the contrivances to make it happen.

While we’re talking about contrivances, I can’t wait any longer to talk about Star Trek: Picard Season 1’s big plot hole. I’ve been flagging this up for several weeks as a potential issue, and unfortunately it was left unresolved at the end of the season. So a plot hole is what it’s become: why was Maddox on Freecloud? Finding Bruce Maddox was the driving force behind the first half of the season’s story, and when Picard finally encountered him on Freecloud, he made it very clear that the reason he was there, and had put himself in danger by contacting Bjayzl, was because his lab had been destroyed by the Tal Shiar. With nowhere else to go and no one to turn to, he went to see Bjayzl as a last resort – and ended up paying for it with his life. Yet Maddox’s lab clearly wasn’t destroyed. He wasn’t kicked out by Dr Soong and the synths, who continued to speak very highly of him. If he’d set up a lab elsewhere that had been destroyed, he could’ve returned to Coppelius. And as it sits right now, there’s no reason for Maddox going to Freecloud other than “because plot”. And that’s a mistake – Maddox was such an important figure, especially in those early episodes, that the reason he put himself in danger should have been given a proper explanation. It’s disappointing that the story and the season have ended with this gaping hole left unexplained.

After Raffi and Rios have used the magical macguffin, we get a scene with Dr Jurati and Dr Soong. At the end of last week’s episode, Dr Jurati had promised to aid the synths – but this was clearly a ploy to avoid being locked up and to be able to help Picard. I liked the dynamic between Soong and Jurati – he clearly hates her for killing Maddox, yet he needs her help. And his barely-contained loathing breaks the surface in the way he talks to her, as Brent Spiner delivers the lines in a style not dissimilar to how he portrayed Lore in The Next Generation. Again, though, as with too many points in the finale, this didn’t really have time to properly develop, and this scene between them, and one brief moment last week, is all the time they had alone together.

Both Brent Spiner and Alison Pill delivered amazing performances with the limited material they had – I especially liked Dr Jurati’s “I’m not their mother, asshole” line – but I would have liked to have seen more of this relationship. There was the potential for it to go from bad to worse, then for the two of them to form a hate-filled unlikely alliance, before finally coming to terms with what happened. Dr Jurati had been essentially brainwashed by Commodore Oh, and they had both lost someone they cared about in Maddox – I would have liked to see that explored some more, especially because the on screen presence and chemistry the two actors had was definitely one of the finale’s high points.

Back at La Sirena, Narek has arrived and is trying to get the attention of Raffi and Rios by throwing rocks. He shows off his grenade collection and insists on meeting with them. At the meeting, Elnor arrives – we’d seen him following Narek as he left the Artifact. Speaking as we had been of two characters who loathe one another, Elnor and Narek feel that even more strongly. Elnor’s anger at Hugh’s death was on full display, but everyone had to stow their feelings as they discussed the synth problem. Narek is still in Zhat Vash mode, seeking out allies for his mission to blow up the synths’ ships. Staying with the theme of parts of the story being rushed, Raffi and Rios’ decision to believe him almost straightaway wasn’t great. While it was nice to see Narek finally interacting with someone other than Soji or Rizzo – the only two characters we’d seen him spend any significant time with – it came too late in the story to really have much impact, and like other points in the finale, was rushed. Narek really didn’t have to do much at all to convince the others that the synths – who they’d just met and were on friendly terms with – were a galaxy-ending threat, and they didn’t consider any other possibilities for why they couldn’t contact Picard at Coppelius Station other than Narek’s reasoning that the synths were jamming their commuications. It’s just another part of the finale where more time was needed – time to allow the three non-Zhat Vash characters to come around to Narek’s way of thinking. As it is, it felt like an instant turnaround – 180 degrees from trying to save the synths to trying to blow up their ships and beacon.

Narek finally got a chance to talk to other characters.

At the beginning of Stardust City Rag, we got a fairly brutal scene where Icheb has his eye torn out. The graphic sequence was shown in full, and it was grotesque but at the same time it was something that as the audience, we couldn’t look away from. In the next scene in Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2, Dr Jurati takes the eye out of Saga, the deceased synth from last week, in order to use it to unlock a door and spring Picard from his captivity. But we didn’t get to see the eye removal, as the camera instead cut to Dr Jurati’s face for the majority of the scene. And unfortunately, this didn’t look great. Alison Pill undoubtedly gave it her best shot, trying to look both disgusted and like someone who was trying to figure out how to disconnect sensitive electronics, but it would’ve been better to either see the entire process or to jump-cut from her starting the procedure to having the eye successfully removed. As a story point I did like using the eye, and I liked the eyeball prop when we saw her use it later, but the removal itself was just a bit of a waste in my opinion.

The campfire scene where Rios, Raffi, and Elnor sit and listen to Narek’s Zhat Vash stories wasn’t great. In principle it was good to have them together, but by this point in the story, we as the audience are familiar with the Zhat Vash prophecy. And ghost stories around the campfire is just such a cliché that the scene felt so forced. And it didn’t make sense in context. The ship had been fixed – why sit around outside it? And with such urgency to get to Coppelius Station to destroy the beacon, couldn’t they have talked en route? Or flown La Sirena closer to the synths’ compound? It was just so obvious that the director or creators of the show had decided that a campfire scene would look cool that they shoehorned it in, even though doing so made little sense.

The campfire story itself was fine, but as I said there wasn’t much in there that we as the audience didn’t already know. In an episode with so much story left to conclude, and thus where every minute matters, a lot of this campfire scene was really just wasted time. Conversely to that, the next scene with Commodore Oh – which barely even qualifies as a “scene” because of how short it was – had been very obviously and badly edited down to just a few seconds, and simply fell flat in the moment. Who was she supposed to be talking to when she said “At last, our great work is nearly at an end”? There was no one else present in the scene, she was just standing on the bridge of her ship in her evil villain cloak doing an evil villain pose spouting a generic evil villain line. Given how tightly it was cut, there was almost certainly more to this scene that didn’t make it into the final episode, but this line simply did not work on its own.

The visual effect of the Romulan fleet at warp was good, however, and I did enjoy seeing that. The design of the new style of Romulan vessel was great, and I could see it being a natural evolution of the Romulan Warbirds from The Next Generation and the advanced warship used by Shinzon in Nemesis, and the fact that some elements of those designs made it into the new Romulan ships was good and shows that the show’s creators were paying attention to past iterations of Star Trek. However, one thing I didn’t like – and this also applies to the Federation fleet that we see later in the episode – was that all of the ships were identical. Past fleets that we’ve seen, while arguably smaller in scale, were almost always comprised of multiple classes of ships, and the fact that the animators and CGI artists had essentially copied-and-pasted the ships meant that the large fleet was less visually impressive that it could’ve been. It was good to see the number of Romulan ships en route, though.

Narek is back in the next scene, a mere few seconds later, showing off the bombs he retrieved from the Artifact. While the episode hasn’t communicated this very well, it seems that a significant amount of time has passed. When Narek arrived it was daylight outside La Sirena, but then the campfire scene seemed to take place after sunset. Yet this scene is in daylight again – and as I said before, considering the urgency of the mission to stop the synths bringing about the end of the galaxy, which everyone seems to agree on, they don’t seem to be moving very fast toward that goal as they’re still talking aboard La Sirena.

I did like the creative way that they were able to sneak the bombs into Coppelius Station; that was a fun story beat, especially when Rios seemed to be playing with the ball in front of the synths. There was a second where it felt like he might kick it too hard and it would explode! The scene a few episodes ago where Rios had been kicking a ball around on La Sirena also paid off here. And if I’m not mistaken, at least one of the synths on guard duty looked like F8 – the synth from the flashbacks to Mars that we saw earlier in the season. However, the next part of this is yet another example of a plot contrivance – the guards let Raffi, Elnor, and Rios into their compound with Narek, but then seem to leave them alone to do their own thing instead of following them or taking Narek back into custody. It would’ve been better to skip the part about hiding the bombs in the football and have them sneak in another way, or leave the compound unguarded altogether (who are they guarding it from, after all?)

I’ve already mentioned that the eyeball was a neat prop, and the way Dr Jurati figured out how to use it to access Picard’s room and spring him from custody was great. Picard is clearly suffering here from the unnamed brain condition that we saw the first real indication of last week. And while I liked that this had been set up way back in the second episode of the season, it was really only in the two parts of the finale that Picard goes from experiencing no symptoms to full-on dead in a matter of hours or a couple of days. And while we have no frame of reference for how futuristic diseases might run their course, as a story point I feel this would’ve worked better if we’d seen a couple of other instances of his health starting to fail in previous episodes. I know we’ve seen him snap and seem to be quicker to anger at a couple of points, and that we saw his PTSD-breakdown when he first arrived aboard the Artifact, but for the most part Picard has seemed in good health for his age – until the finale, when his condition seemed to rapidly accelerate from nowhere.

Dr Soong learns, in the next scene, that it was Sutra and not Narek who killed Saga, and is visually shocked and heartbroken at the revelation. I’m glad that Dr Soong turned out to be someone who was on Picard’s side in the end. Brent Spiner can portray villains wonderfully, as he did with Lore and another Dr Soong in Star Trek: Enterprise, but as a fan, seeing his new character at odds with Picard wouldn’t have been my preference, given that it’s been so long since we saw the two actors together in Star Trek.

The guards of Coppelius Station seem to have just allowed Raffi, Rios, Elnor, and Narek free rein inside the compound, and they’re planning their attack on the beacon when Dr Soong intervenes. For a moment they thought they’d been caught, but Dr Soong plans to help take down the beacon having learned of Sutra’s betrayal.

Picard and Dr Jurati made it back to La Sirena – though how the two groups managed not to cross paths or spot each other isn’t clear. I mean, there can only be one direct route to the ship after all. But that is a minor nitpick compared to others in the episode. This scene, between Picard and Dr Jurati, was very powerful, and the first point in the episode where I really started to feel things turn around. I loved Picard’s line that “fear is an incompetent teacher”, and their plan – to launch La Sirena into space and make a last stand against the Romulans as a way to show Soji and Sutra that not all organics are evil is a good move – perhaps their only possible plan under the circumstances short of using La Sirena’s weapons to destroy the beacon. They’re banking their hopes on Starfleet having received Picard’s message and already being en route, because at best they’ll be able to stall the Romulans for a few minutes. This is basically a suicide mission, and they both know it. The genius of putting these two characters together, as opposed to say, having Picard teamed up with Rios or Elnor, is that they both have nothing to lose. Picard’s at death’s door, and Dr Jurati is facing a lengthy spell in prison, so of all the characters who could try to make a last stand, it makes sense for them more so than any others – except perhaps Raffi.

Picard and Dr Jurati back aboard La Sirena.

The Romulan fleet is only seven minutes away, so Picard launches La Sirena and shakily leads the ship into orbit, with Dr Jurati along for the ride. The action then cuts to Coppelius Station, where the rest of the crew are planning to attack the beacon.

Attacking the beacon makes sense in the story, but the way it was executed was so bad, and the plan was clearly designed to fail. They storm in and make a huge fuss, then Dr Soong uses another macguffin to deactivate Sutra, but because the other synths are still all-in on using the beacon and summoning the “Mass Effect Reapers”, the rest of the crew scramble around, punching and kicking before being wrestled to the ground. Dr Soong, having deactivated Sutra with his magic wand, doesn’t do anything. He stands motionless in the background while Rios makes a desperate throw to get the bomb into position, but Soji catches it and throws it away.

So many things wrong here, but the overall problem is this – the fight was clearly written in such a way that the “heroes” lose. And that was painfully obvious in the way it was carried out on screen. But let’s break down some individual failings. Why did Dr Soong not show the assembled synths the video of Sutra killing Saga? That single piece of evidence would have swayed most of them to his side. Why did he not use his magic wand on Soji after disabling Sutra? Why did the crew launch a full-frontal attack against a force of massively superior synths instead of sneaking around or causing a distraction? Why try to fight the synths at all? And finally, probably my biggest complaint about the synth storyline in the finale as a whole: what was the point of Sutra?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing that we should’ve seen more of Sutra this episode. The awful makeup and hammy performance meant I wanted to see as little of her as possible – in that sense I got my wish – but for an antagonist who’d played such a large role last week, and who did have, as I pointed out, a motive that was at least partly understandable, she was just completely sidelined by a story that raced through far too many points and left her completely undeveloped. Sutra had the potential to be interesting, at least in theory. Her presence turned the synths from damsels in distress needing to be saved to antagonists needing to be dissuaded or defeated, and that concept, if executed better, could have been interesting. Unfortunately, as I’ve already said, it would’ve needed several more episodes to work effectively – and a better performance from the central synth villain.

Given that Star Trek: Picard has been at least as much Soji’s story as Picard’s, I feel it would have been better on the whole to ditch Sutra and simply have Soji and Dr Soong be the principle drivers behind contacting the “Mass Effect Reapers”. It would have cut an extraneous character, allowed more time for some of the others to be explored, and we wouldn’t have had to sit through that awful performance last week. Soji did need someone to guide her turnaround last week, to allow her to convincingly side with the synths. But I don’t think that needed to be Sutra, and with a few tweaks here and there the story could’ve arrived at the same place without her – and it would have been better for it, especially considering she did nothing whatsoever this week.

The next scene with Dr Jurati and Picard was hit-and-miss for me. The jumps in tone from deadly serious suicide mission to cracking dumb jokes just didn’t work, and while Dr Jurati has occasionally provided moments of comic relief throughout the season, this was not the moment for humour and it just ended up detracting from what could’ve been a much more powerful scene. I did like, however, that La Sirena was not flying smoothly in the exterior shots we saw, indicating that Picard is still getting back into the swing of things. We have seen him pilot spacecraft before – shuttlecraft most often, but also the Enterprise-D itself in the episode Booby Trap from the third season of The Next Generation – so we know he’s at least basically capable and should understand the principles involved.

Seven of Nine and Rizzo fight aboard the Artifact as Rizzo has tried to bring the Cube’s weapons online. She’s targeting La Sirena, which does raise the stakes somewhat, and the fight itself was decently exciting. There was never any real doubt as to who the victor would be, however, and Rizzo finally gets her comeuppance for killing Hugh as Seven of Nine sends her falling to her death with a well-placed kick. The two traded barbs during the fight, and we really saw Rizzo in a way that I talked about a couple of weeks ago: as a racist. That aspect of the Zhat Vash and Romulans – that their actions are a veiled analogy for hating another group of people because they’re different – is something the show found a balance between hinting at and overplaying, and I think, taken as a whole, the balance was probably about right.

The visual effects and CGI in the episode were great, as we’ve already discussed, and the sight of the orchid ships launching to meet the Romulans, and overtaking La Sirena, was visually impressive. I still feel that the way the orchids operated last week was pretty dumb, but this time they don’t seem to be dragging intact ships to the planet’s surface; what exactly they’re doing in the fight other than getting shot at and serving as a huge distraction isn’t really clear.

The magical macguffin is back; Rios and Raffi apparently left it aboard La Sirena. Dr Jurati figures out that it can be used to produce holographic duplicates of the ship, which they can use to distract the Romulan fleet. Again, I really didn’t like this tool, and the fact that it seems to be magical and can be used for anything one’s heart desires was not great, even by the standards of Star Trek technobabble. While in principle what Dr Jurati hoped to do was a good idea, and I did like the name-check of the Picard manouvre from The Next Generation, the macguffin spoilt it really. And I felt that the moment where it created holo-duplicates of Dr Jurati’s face was a rare miss in the episode’s visuals.

However, Picard’s conversation with Soji, in which he explains that he’s basically laying down his own life to defend the synths was incredible and very powerful – the first of those emotional hits I mentioned at the beginning of the review. There’s something about a noble last stand that always gets to me, and this was a great example of it! It was an absolute desperation play, as Picard hopes against hope that Starfleet will arrive in time. If Starfleet didn’t get there, the “Mass Effect Reapers” would be the synths’ only hope of survival.

Picard speaks to Soji and asks her to reconsider.

The shot of La Sirena standing alone against the Romulan fleet was incredibly powerful too – part of that last stand feeling that I mentioned. The next part of the story has hits and misses, though. And I know this is kind of a nitpick, but what were the other synths and Dr Soong doing while Soji was activating the beacon? Did no one try to stop her or at least question what she was doing – especially given that they all heard what Picard had to say – nor try to contact the Romulans and reason with them? Several of the next few scenes played out as if Soji were the only one there, yet there were a dozen or more synths plus all of the other main characters.

Soji succeeds in activating the beacon just as the Romulans finish dealing with Picard and Dr Jurati’s last stand. The timely arrival of Starfleet – led, as the opening credits made clear, by Riker – prevented them from attacking the planet, and the two fleets enter a tense standoff. It was great to see Riker back in uniform again, and the last-minute arrival of the fleet saved Picard as well as the synths. However, as with the Romulan fleet earlier, all of the ships were the same type and I do feel that the copy-and-paste look detracted somewhat from the otherwise-impressive sight of so many Starfleet vessels – which, I believe, are based on a design from the Star Trek Online video game (but I could be mistaken in that). Until we’d seen his name in the credits, I wasn’t sure if we’d see Riker back in action this season. I was pleased that we did, and it definitely felt good to see Starfleet as the good guys again, after Picard had been forced to work around their obstinance for the majority of the season.

Though this moment had been telegraphed ahead of time and sadly was robbed of some of its impact as a result, the musical score as the ships emerged from warp, coupled with Riker’s appearance a few moments later, did still feel good – just not as good as if it had been a genuine surprise.

We got to see a better look at the command variant of the new Starfleet uniforms – which still have that Starfleet logo pattern in the coloured section – and again, as I said at the start of the season I do like the new uniforms. Especially compared to Star Trek: Discovery’s all-blue look I think they look great, and the combadges complement the look nicely.

Commodore Oh, throughout her appearances this season, hasn’t seemed like someone who would listen to reason. The Zhat Vash have been presented as the most committed of all Romulans to the anti-synthetic cause; both she and the organisation are zealots. And zealots seldom back down, even when facing significant opposition. Picard uses what is basically his dying breath to talk Soji down from summoning the “Mass Effect Reapers”, who hadn’t yet emerged through the aperture created by the beacon. This speech was really the climax of the episode, and the emotional hit of the words Picard spoke, combined with knowing he was suffering greatly as he spoke them, matched the high points other episodes of the season hit. It was the kind of speech Picard could’ve given at any time in The Next Generation as he focused on the rights of all life to exist, and for the need to demonstrate that the synths aren’t what the Zhat Vash feared them to be.

It was enough to sway Soji, who closes the aperture before the “Mass Effect Reapers” could come through or even send a message. Their mechanical tentacles did look menacing, but that’s all we go to see of them. Faced with Soji having stood down and Riker staring her down with a large fleet, Commodore Oh withdraws, and this is something which I feel was out of character. Are we supposed to believe Picard’s speech swayed her? Or simply seeing Soji stand down one time would be enough to override years of Zhat Vash indoctrination? Even if it was good enough for Oh, did everyone on the fleet agree? From her point of view, what is there to prevent the synths rebuilding the beacon in twenty years – or twenty minutes? While Picard’s climactic speech was beautiful, Commodore Oh’s decision to withdraw, like so many other points in the finale, felt rushed. And no sooner had he arrived than Riker, too, was gone – warping out of the system accompanying Oh’s fleet. Couldn’t they have left a ship or two behind? Considering what came next, Riker’s presence would have been incredibly emotional.

Picard bids Riker a solemn “adieu”, before succumbing to the effects of his condition – perhaps combined with whatever medication he was given earlier by Dr Jurati.

Picard’s death – or rather, his “death” – in this moment was the emotional climax of the story, after the plot had reached its own zenith a moment earlier. And it was a very powerful sequence. Soji transports Picard and Dr Jurati to the synths’ location, and Picard dies, surrounded by his crew and knowing that he did right by Soji and her people. His final act was one of sacrifice – making a last stand to defend the synths, righting a wrong from fourteen years ago where he had been unable to prevent the ban or aid the Romulans. The emotion on the faces of the characters – especially Raffi, as Michelle Hurd put in her best performance of the season – was heart-wrenching to witness. Surrounded by his friends, and with a few last words to (most) of them, he passes away, killed by the nameless condition that we assume to be Irumodic Syndrome.

Of all the characters we’ve met across the season, Rios and Seven of Nine arguably had the least connection to Picard on a personal level. Aside from a few scenes when they first met, I can’t recall a significant moment with Rios and Picard together. While there’s always sadness when someone passes away, especially under such circumstances, putting Seven of Nine and Rios together wouldn’t have been my first choice in the immediate aftermath, simply because they didn’t have the connection that, say, Raffi or Soji had with Picard. Nevertheless, the scene between them was touching, and they both spoke highly of the fallen Admiral. I liked the idea of sharing a bad drink because it was all they had access to, and it emphasised that they’re both a long way from home and that this is, for the moment at least, the end of the journey.

The real heartbreaking scene was when Elnor broke down and was comforted by Raffi. Elnor, who had been so strong and powerful, was weak and vulnerable having regained and then lost his surrogate father figure, and Raffi, who was devastated too, trying to comfort him was just incredibly emotional. Both actors put in amazing performances here, and as sad as this scene was, I loved it.

When Picard awoke, for a moment I was half-expecting to see Q! That was never going to happen, of course – it would be a complete bolt from the blue for anyone who hadn’t seen The Next Generation, for one thing – but it would have bookended Picard’s story in the Star Trek franchise if this had been his final appearance and he was to stay dead, tying into themes from Encounter at Farpoint. Instead, Picard finds himself sat opposite Data. And I know there will be criticism of Data’s appearance given Brent Spiner’s age, but a combination of lighting, makeup, and what I assume are digital effects made him look decent here, and I didn’t find the way he looked offputting, especially when compared to the way the gold synths had looked last week.

At no point was I convinced that Picard would stay dead, but that in itself didn’t rob any of the scenes surrounding his death of any of their drama or emotion. As a story point, though, killing a character in such a dramatic and emotional way only to immediately revive them can end up feeling like a bit of an anticlimax, and there was an element of that here I’m afraid. Not in the moment, and not in Picard’s scene with Data in the digital afterlife, but certainly after his revival there was part of me left thinking “well, what was all that for?” In a sense, restoring Data’s mortality and finally providing him with the closest thing to humanity that he could get, Picard did have a reason to travel to the digital afterlife. No one could have known that Data was trapped in a kind of purgatory, nor that saving parts of his mind from the information transferred to B4 would mean that some essence or facet of his personality would be forever entombed in this realm. That action – saving Data and finally laying him to rest – gives Picard a reason for this temporary death, and as a story it was, overall, a success.

Data takes on the role of what I guess you’d say was a god or grim reaper figure from classical literature, explaining to Picard that he’s in the afterlife and that he died. This was another incredibly emotional scene, as Picard got to express twenty years’ worth of sadness and regret to his long-lost friend. Maybe I’m seeing what I want to see, but I seemed to get hints at Data’s study in the set design, notably the room he occupied in All Good Things, the finale of The Next Generation, in which he was still alive and working as a professor. In fact, while we’re talking about set design, I felt that this room was one of Star Trek: Picard’s best and most evocative. I’ve written before that the outdoor filming scenes, supposedly taking place in France, in Japan, and on several alien worlds, all looked suspiciously like California, and that has been a let-down at points. But the interior sets have been fantastic. I love the way La Sirena looks – inside and out, in that case! – and the Troi-Riker cabin was everything it needed to be. The Artifact is something I really haven’t written about as often as I should’ve, because the subtle updates to the Borg vessel have been fantastic. I loved the shifting walls that were present at times, and the way that, despite being claimed by Romulans and some area being declared “safe”, it was still definitely a Borg vessel. Bjayzl’s club on Freecloud was maybe a tad cliché, but it still did a great job feeling like a futuristic, alien club. The nunnery on Vashti was incredibly reminiscent of something from Japan, and I loved that style when it appeared in Absolute Candor. And finally, Coppelius Station and the Daystrom Institute both conveyed the look of being futuristic in a similar but not identical way to locations in previous iterations of Star Trek.

In this case, the room was clearly artificial, but in a way that conveyed a sense of limbo or purgatory. By the furniture and decor being greyed out, there was the sense that, like in a computer when a file or programme is inaccessible, things weren’t quite right. And the fact that the only colour came from the two figures of Picard and Data, our focus as the audience was drawn to them and all attention focused on them – in the same way as you might expect if seeing a very minimalist stage production.

Part of the criticism of Star Trek: Nemesis at the time it was released surrounded how Data’s death was handled in the story. Aside from the criticisms of the story beat itself, the main ones were that he didn’t really get a chance for any goodbyes, and that in a relatively short space of time, Picard and the crew were laughing and joking on the way to their next adventures. We saw earlier in the season – indeed, from the very beginning – that Data’s loss weighed heavily on Picard, and that his friends Riker and Troi remembered him fondly and held his legacy dear, but in this moment, the second criticism was addressed, as Data got to say goodbye properly. Partly this was to Picard, but partly it was to the audience – to us. In a way, this righted what some fans had considered an eighteen-year wrong.

The conversation they had about dying was interesting – and it did, in a way, capture that elusive sense of “Star Trek-ness” that Star Trek: Picard has been so keen to restore to the franchise in the aftermath of Discovery and the JJverse films. Both of those, despite what some have argued, had moments where they “felt like Star Trek”, but not every moment. For all my criticisms of the plot and various scenes in Star Trek: Picard’s finale, it did always feel like Star Trek – and this scene with Data, talking about life and death, was just one part of that, but it was a particularly powerful part.

Picard walks out of the room into a bright white light, and awakens in a new synthetic body, donated by Dr Soong. I wish we’d seen more of Dr Soong and learned why he built himself a synthetic body. There seemed to be hints last week that he was sick or possibly dying, but these were vague and underdeveloped – like many points in the finale – so we don’t really know the stakes or what kind of sacrifice Dr Soong may have made. Did he condemn himself to death by giving Picard the “golem”, or will he just build another one next week now he knows how to do the mind-transfer?

Picard is reborn in a new synthetic body.

Soji, Dr Soong, and Dr Jurati explain to Picard a number of caveats – his new body is the same as his old one, he won’t have any enhanced strength, speed, brainpower, or anything that would change him in any way. He’ll be identical to how he was, just without the terminal brain condition. And it was around here that the sense of “well what was the point of all that?” kicked in. The Data storyline was great, and I loved that Picard got to say goodbye, that we as the audience got to say goodbye to Data, and that Picard got to do his friend a final favour of letting him die properly. But for Picard’s own character, the death-and-rebirth story didn’t really do much of anything. He’s back to how he was before he died a few minutes later, and all of the emotion from his goodbye to Riker to the reaction of all of the characters was, in retrospect, at least slightly wasted.

We get a touching sequence as Picard fulfils his promise, unplugging Data and letting him finally die. Data prepares his room in the digital afterlife, and lies down to await the inevitable. Picard appears to him in his old uniform – whether Data was imagining him or dreaming isn’t clear, but it is clear that his final thoughts were of his friend. Getting a proper goodbye with Data wasn’t even something I knew that I wanted – but now that I’ve seen it, I can see how it was missing from Nemesis and that it really was something cathartic and beautiful to see. Picard’s speech, the music, the change in lighting in the digital afterlife, and finally Data fading away were all amazing to see, and it was another deeply emotional moment. Picard may have come back to life, but Data won’t – he can’t. This marks the final goodbye to a character we first met in 1987, and who we spent a lot of time with.

The crew reassembles aboard La Sirena – and they’ve had to find extra chairs for the bridge. Seven of Nine seems to have joined the crew, though whether that’s temporary isn’t clear at this stage. They set off to destinations unknown, and we learn that the ban on synthetic life has been overturned. The season ends with Picard giving the order to “engage!”, and La Sirena jumps to warp. The familiar Star Trek music sting kicked in at this moment, making the final scene of the episode another stirring and emotional moment.

The assembled crew of La Sirena – ready for Season 2!

Taken as a whole, the episode was certainly mixed. There were high points which equalled or even went beyond the heights reached by other episodes of the season – even Remembrance right at the beginning. And there were some beautiful, deeply emotional moments which still pack a punch on a third, fourth, and fifth viewing. But there were some mistakes and disappointments too, and too much undeveloped story that was left behind as La Sirena warps off to a new destination and – presumably – a new story in Season 2.

There are key points left hanging as of the end of the episode. The first is: what happened to Narek? He obviously wasn’t present aboard La Sirena at the end, but he’d been a major character who we’d spent a lot of time with and he just seems to have been abandoned by the story about halfway through the episode. It’s not clear if he returned to Romulus, remained in captivity with the synths, was handed over to Starfleet, or even if he joined La Sirena but just didn’t sit with the others on the bridge. I don’t expect to see him return for Season 2 at this point, but just ditching him with no goodbye and no end to his story was just a bit strange.

Narek disappeared after this point in the story.

Obviously I’ve already mentioned the Bruce Maddox plot hole that was left unresolved, but that’s a major annoyance so it’s worth bringing up again. There’s also Dr Jurati – she did still murder someone, so why is she free to go with Picard? Was her conviction expunged? Is she a fugitive? Will this come back to haunt her in future? It would have been nice to see some resolution to that point – unless, of course, it’s something planned for next season, in which case I’m content to wait.

Next are the “Mass Effect Reapers”. The Zhat Vash were right, in a roundabout way. The relic on Aia does tell of a race of synthetic monsters from far beyond the stars. That race are out there – is Starfleet going to try to contact them and make peace? Will the synths from Coppelius contact them and tell them not to hurt anyone? Are the “Mass Effect Reapers” content to just go back to waiting for someone else to contact them, or are they now aware of Starfleet, the Romulans, and the Milky Way galaxy’s various species? What steps will everyone have to take in case they return? What’s to stop another synthetic race from contacting them, or even the Coppelius synths changing their minds and asking for their help after all? Building a beacon didn’t look too hard or time-consuming. And what of the relic on Aia? Is it still active? Will it be shut down? Are the Zhat Vash still hell-bent on killing other synths, even if they leave Coppelius alone?

The “Mass Effect Reapers” are still out there.

Finally, we have Dr Soong and the synths. They’re under Federation protection now, but what will happen to them? Will they stay on Coppelius? Will they continue to make more copies of themselves? Without Data’s neurons, can they make more synths? And without Dr Maddox and Dr Jurati, can Dr Soong continue to work? What’s to stop the Romulans coming back next week and nuking their settlement from orbit? Are they protected in any way? Will they have to leave Coppelius and settle somewhere safer? I didn’t expect every single one of these points to be addressed, but some hint and what’s to come next for the synths would’ve been nice given how they were such a large part of the finale and the story of the season overall.

If I had been tasked with salvaging the story of the finale, the first thing I’d have done would have been to get at least one more episode for the season – perhaps two. Then I’d have interspersed some of the storylines present on Coppelius with the other active stories much earlier in the season, allowing more time for the development of characters like Dr Soong, Sutra, and even Saga. Beginning with perhaps episode six or seven – roughly the halfway point of a twelve-episode extended season – I’d have introduced the audience to Coppelius and everyone resident there. I’d have done more to build up the stakes by exploring the “Mass Effect Reapers” in more detail, too. A name for the faction would have been good, but also a basic motivation as well as some indication of their level of technology. Finally, I’d have spent more time on the climactic stand-off between Commodore Oh’s fleet and Riker’s Starfleet armada, and tried to find a convincing way to end the Zhat Vash threat, like having other Romulans mutiny against Oh when the synths deactivated the beacon. I think that by spending some more time with some of the characters, and by introducing them earlier, the finale would have been more enjoyable. But there’s no salvaging that awful gold makeup. That would have to go!

I guess what I’d say about the two parts of Et in Arcadia Ego is this: it did provide a satisfactory conclusion to many parts of the story of Star Trek: Picard’s first season, but it left a lot on the table and it was rushed, poorly paced, and incomplete. When I think about the season as a whole, Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1 is by far the worst episode, and while Part 2 went some way to rectifying that, and did manage to pull out a passable end to the story, it wasn’t an especially great episode either, with some definite low points to counteract the emotional highs.

Star Trek: Picard Season 1 stumbled across the finish line, scraping together the bare bones of a conclusion, but leaving a lot of unanswered questions and at least one gaping plot hole. That doesn’t mean that Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2 was a failure; it did manage to elicit some powerful feelings and bring together some of the dangling story threads. But I don’t think we can call it a rousing success either, and a story that started out incredibly strongly ten weeks ago has finished with a weaker and less enjoyable pair of episodes than I would’ve wanted.

All that being said, I’m satisfied with the season as a whole. My gripes about specific points in both parts of the finale don’t detract from what has been, overall, a wonderful story and a great return to the Star Trek universe as the 25th Century is about to begin. I hope that Star Trek: Picard can now serve as a jumping-off point for other Star Trek shows set in and around the same era, moving the franchise forward into the future – where it should always have been trying to go.

Stay tuned for the conclusion to my Star Trek: Picard theories for Season 1, as well as later in the year when I hope to do a retrospective look at the season. When some time has passed and the dust has settled, it should be a good to go back and take a second look. Rewatching earlier episodes while keeping in mind some of the story elements from the finale should be an interesting experience, and I will undoubtedly see more hints and foreshadowing that I missed when I first saw them.

Now that Star Trek: Picard has concluded, don’t think that the blog is going away! There will be lots more to come as I have numerous articles in the pipeline. I half-expected to see a release date for Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 announced, but despite all the hype around Star Trek: Picard, ViacomCBS have chosen not to take advantage of this opportunity to plug Discovery. Even if the release date isn’t for a couple of months, putting it out there now would have been a great move. Regardless, whenever it airs, I hope you’ll come back to see me review and break down those episodes too.

See you next time!

All ten episodes of Star Trek: Picard’s first season 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: Picard review – Season 1, Episode 7: Nepenthe

Sun 08.03.20Mon 01.05.23Dennis

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

Hugh! Poor, poor Hugh. When I heard Jonathan Del Arco was returning for Star Trek: Picard, well before the show had premiered, my first reaction was “What? Really?” Of all of the characters in Star Trek’s history, I just felt that Hugh, who had only appeared in a couple of episodes of The Next Generation, wouldn’t have been my first choice when thinking about characters to bring back. But I was wrong – the way Hugh has developed as a character between The Next Generation and his appearances this season was incredible, and his death this week was genuinely heartbreaking.

Star Trek: Picard’s death toll, for legacy characters anyway, now stands at three – Bruce Maddox, Icheb, and now Hugh. In the aftermath of series like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones this was always a possibility – no main character on television should consider themselves “safe” any more. But of the three, Hugh’s death hit me the hardest.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves! Where last week’s episode, The Impossible Box, was an edge-of-your-seat wild ride, Nepenthe was a quieter affair, but intensely emotional. Simply processing everything that happened will take some time. Nepenthe didn’t merely advance the storyline of Star Trek: Picard, it took us on a detour that looked at Riker and Troi, and thus broadened our understanding of how the overall story of Star Trek has progressed since the events of Voyager and Nemesis. In that sense, it felt like an episode that was “made for fans” far more explicitly than anything else we’ve seen so far this season, even counting Seven of Nine’s appearance.

Counsellor Troi returns in *Nepenthe* for the first time since *Star Trek: Nemesis* in 2002.

If someone were to ask me why I’ve been so in love with Star Trek: Picard, I could give many reasons. But Nepenthe encapsulated them all perfectly. It brought back those nostalgic feelings, but it used characters and name-drops from the past in a way that made sense and tied in perfectly with the main plotline of the show. Unlike some other franchises we could mention, nothing in Nepenthe felt like fanservice, or overplayed the nostalgia card; Star Trek: Picard has been like a perfectly-cut jigsaw puzzle, with each piece of the story slotting neatly into place as the overall picture is now slowly coming together.

After the standard recap to bring us all up to speed, the episode kicks off with a flashback to just three weeks ago. We see more of the meeting between Dr Jurati and Commodore Oh from The End is the Beginning – and we see why it wasn’t shown in full in that episode. This is the moment Dr Jurati was recruited to join the Commodore Oh-Zhat Vash conspiracy, and I think we can now say with relative certainty that Commodore Oh is not a Romulan agent, but is in fact the Vulcan she has always claimed to be. While, in theory, there should be no reason Romulans can’t mild-meld, it’s never been shown on screen and that further adds to the evidence that Commodore Oh is a Vulcan. Whether her alliance with the Zhat Vash is new or not is unclear, but she is certainly fully signed up with their anti-synth crusade.

I had to go back and look at one part of this sequence several times before I could be sure, but at least part of what Commodore Oh showed Dr Jurati in her mind-meld is taken directly from Star Trek: Discovery’s second season. The two shows were always close from a thematic perspective, as both were looking at the possibility of rogue AIs and how they could be a danger, but this sequence seems to suggest that there’s more to it than thematic coincidence. In Discovery, the AI named Control was trying to acquire data stored in the USS Discovery’s computer which contained many millennia of information collected by an ancient lifeform, and if it had been successful it would have used its newfound power to wipe out all organic life in the galaxy. This seems to be the reason for the Romulans’ fear of synthetic life – that they will go rogue and start killing their creators. At least two of the shots of life in the galaxy being wiped out that Commodore Oh showed Dr Jurati in the mind-meld were identical to the vision Michael Burnham and Spock received.

This image, and at least one other, were recycled from the visions shown to Michael Burnham and Spock in the second season of *Star Trek: Discovery*.

Could this simply be a case of reusing shots to save money? After all, in the past Star Trek has shown the same Klingon ship blowing up on half a dozen occasions or more, and numerous models were reused over and over again from the era of The Original Series films through The Next Generation and its spin-offs. Given that the two clips I could identify in the mind-meld were less than a second long, I suppose we shouldn’t discount the possibility entirely. However, I’m not convinced that this is the reason. CGI nowadays requires far less effort and financial investment than many practical effects – like exploding starships – did in the past. For the sake of a couple of seconds’ worth of footage it would have been relatively inexpensive and not particularly time-consuming to make something altogether new if that was the aim. So I’m getting the sense that there’s a connection between Discovery’s Control AI and the Romulans in Star Trek: Picard – as I have been saying for several weeks in my Star Trek: Picard theories series! While I will save further speculation about what this could mean for my next theory post, I wanted to acknowledge it here too.

Mind-melds have been inconsistent in the way they’re presented in Star Trek. This one was more in line with the confusing jumble of images that Spock showed to Alternate Reality Kirk in 2009’s Star Trek film, rather than the calmer, slower-paced mind-melds that we’ve seen in The Original Series and The Next Generation. Obviously we didn’t get the full effect that Dr Jurati did, because the horrors she was shown caused her to vomit up her lunch. It was enough to immediately convince her, without any further persuasion needed from Commodore Oh, to sign up with the conspiracy and do anything – even kill her former friend and love interest and betray Picard.

Dr Jurati is given a tracking device, which she has to eat – and yes that is “eat” not “swallow”, which was interesting! The action then jumps to the present day, where La Sirena is caught in a tractor beam that the Artifact has deployed. Raffi and Rios are scrambling around on the bridge trying to break free. While Raffi attempts to break La Sirena free, she hacks into the Artifact’s computer and seems to see some drawings – possibly those drawn by Ramdha or another xB. Whether these will come into play or not is unclear, but the drawings, which were a pattern of circles repeated over and over, were at least visually interesting. So many aspects of Star Trek: Picard have been brilliantly set up by the creators and writers that almost everything we see or hear on screen has the potential to turn into a story point!

Dr Jurati is clearly terrified, trying to get Raffi and Rios to tell the Romulans that they “just want to go home” as it’s not really La Sirena that the Romulans are after. The others dismiss her semi-hysterical shouting, and then we get the beginning of Hugh’s punishment for the crime of aiding Picard. I didn’t expect Hugh to turn on his friend, and he never did, but there was always the possibility, as he didn’t know that Soji was synthetic, that learning her true nature might’ve shifted something for him. However, he stands by his promise to protect Soji and Picard, even as Rizzo executes one of the xBs. Even knowing the stakes he refuses to tell her – putting his loyalty to Picard ahead of his feelings for the room full of xBs, who Rizzo orders executed when he refuses to tell her where they went.

Rizzo also confirms that the operation to track and extract information from Soji has been ongoing for several years and has involved a number of different people, which is a neat thing to know I suppose.

This was definitely an emotional scene, and as I mentioned already, Jonathan Del Arco gives an amazing performance as Hugh sees people he has worked so hard to help cruelly and coldly murdered in front of him. His reaction to their deaths was raw and heartbreaking.

Peyton List, who plays Rizzo, was also on good form. Some of her earlier performances in the series have been a tad one-dimensional in parts. Rizzo as a character is, like Michelle Yeoh’s Terran Empress from Star Trek: Discovery, someone who is basically evil for the sake of being evil – or at least, that’s how I characterised her before this scene in Nepenthe. We finally get to see Rizzo’s motivation here – helpfully informed by the earlier mind-meld sequence. Far from being evil, she’s terrified. Synthetic life frightens her, and she genuinely fears that, were Soji allowed to live, all sentient life in the galaxy – “a trillion souls” as she puts it – would be wiped out. How it is that the Zhat Vash have come to know this – or rather, believe this – is not yet clear, but again I think the Control AI from Discovery surely has a role to play somehow. This second dimension changes what has been a rather flat villain and we are finally a big step closer to understanding why the Zhat Vash are so militant in their anti-synthetic crusade – and why, despite his feelings for her, Narek felt he had no choice when it came to killing Soji.

Speaking of Narek, he boards a one-person spacecraft in the Artifact’s hangar bay and departs the cube. La Sirena is no longer caught in a tractor beam – though Rios and Raffi realise it is undoubtedly a trap. We get a great scene as La Sirena skims along the Artifact’s hull at close range, showing off the incredible level of detail that has gone into the CGI work on both vessels. Elnor, who seems to have struck up a bond with Hugh since we last saw him, opts to remain behind to help the xBs after seeing them executed, and La Sirena warps off toward Nepenthe with Narek close behind.

For the first time since the show premiered, the main cast actually felt like a crew in this moment. And I know it seems silly as they’re all split up, but leaving Elnor behind was emotional for Rios, Raffi, and Dr Jurati – they clearly think they will never see him again. Whether they’re right or not doesn’t matter right now, because in that moment there was a sense of camaraderie; a bond between La Sirena’s crewmates. This is definitely something that Star Trek: Picard has lacked when compared to other shows. Even Deep Space Nine and Voyager, which both had different interpretations of a “divided” crew, had a sense of fellowship – and finally, seven episodes in, we saw some of that here. It was a nice throwback to the way crews have been in other Star Trek shows, and I really hope we see more of that going forward as Soji joins the crew and they’re all – hopefully – reunited with Elnor in a future episode.

“Adios, kid.” Rios and the crew of La Sirena agree to leave Elnor behind.

If you’ve been here before and read my other reviews, you’ll know I like to nitpick. And even in an episode as good as Nepenthe, there are still small things to pick at. After the credits roll, we’re with Picard and Soji as they materialise on Nepenthe – a few minutes’ walk from Troi and Riker’s house. That was some luck with the spatial trajector! I know it’s possible to get exact transport coordinates, but did Picard tell Hugh exactly where on the planet to send them? Did he know, by heart, the rough location of Riker’s house? Anyway, after they materialise they’re set upon by a girl brandishing a bow and arrow. Picard makes reference to his artificial heart – as seen in the episode Tapestry from the fifth season of The Next Generation – and it’s clear he recognises the girl. He calls her Kestra – which was the name of Deanna Troi’s sister from the seventh season of The Next Generation, specifically the episode Dark Page. It was nice to get a couple of little references in quick succession like that – and as always, neither of them got in the way of the flow of the story. Star Trek: Picard has handled its links to the franchise extraordinarily well.

While walking with Kestra to her home, Picard drops two huge bombshells on Soji. The first is that her father is Data, which means she’s an android. And the second is that Dahj has died. Soji, unsure really of what’s happened or who to trust, doesn’t really react. In this moment she doesn’t have space to process what she’s feeling, so grieving for Dahj will have to come later. Whereas Dahj seemed to have, as part of her programming, a desire to find Picard and an inherent feeling of safety in his presence, this seems to be absent in Soji for the duration of the episode. While she will, later, start to warm up to him and come around to the idea of trusting him, that feeling of safety and a desire to turn to Picard for protection does not seem to have been programmed into her in the way it was with Dahj. If I were to speculate as to why, I’d say it was probably because Dahj’s assignment was on Earth, whereas Soji’s was on the Artifact. It makes sense for Dahj to run to Picard as he was someone Maddox knew he could trust and was a stone’s throw away. On the Artifact, running to Picard would be difficult if not impossible, and Soji may have had someone else programmed into her as part of her activation, or she may have simply been programmed to defend herself. It’s also possible that, as Picard and Hugh intervened, Soji is not fully activated in the way Dahj was.

Picard was clearly expecting a different reaction from Soji. Even though he only knew Dahj for a short time, she trusted him implicitly, turned to him for help, and even saved his life. Because Soji and Dahj look identical – “more than twins”, as the show puts it – I wonder if he’s expecting her to behave in an identical manner too. When she doesn’t, it almost seems as if he doesn’t know what to do or what to say; she isn’t what he expected, and he may even feel disappointed by that, underneath the frustration of constantly messing things up.

Kestra leads Picard and Soji to her home on Nepenthe.

The cabin was an absolutely lovely set, and must have been a fun location to film on for the actors. It’s rustic in its appearance, but it’s what I’d call “21st Century rustic” in that this is clearly not a log cabin from the 1800s! It makes sense as the home of a couple who know their way around technology but want the appearance of something from an earlier time, and as we’ll see that is basically exactly what the cabin is. Of all the sets used so far in Star Trek: Picard, including the vineyard, this is the one which feels most like a modern-day building, though. I liked that, because I could see how that kind of design could still be popular or could make a comeback, but I can also see that being a point of criticism for some, as it is definitely different from any other 24th Century buildings we’ve seen in earlier Star Trek shows.

While we’re dealing with the aesthetic, though, Star Trek: Picard has definitely fallen into the trap that The Next Generation and its contemporaries also fell into in that every planet visited is clearly California! We had Picard’s home in France, the town on Vashti, and now Nepenthe. While they are all different in some respects, they’re not so different that you’d be tricked into thinking they weren’t all filmed within fifty miles of each other. In a way, I think we’ve probably been spoilt by big-budget shows like Game of Thrones, which famously had filming locations right across Europe from Croatia to Northern Ireland and Iceland. Expecting something on that level was unrealistic, and to the credit of the showrunners the locations mentioned do all have a different tone – it’s just that they are all very definitely filmed in California.

The music in Star Trek: Picard has generally been great, but the music played as Picard reunites with Troi was a cut above and absolutely outstanding. Much of the emotion in any scene is tied to the music, even if we as the audience don’t realise it. And as Kestra delivers Picard and Soji to her mother we get a beautiful piece that ebbs and flows with the emotions of the characters.

Troi, as an empath, can tell that Picard is in trouble – which is of course why he came to them in the first place. However, it’s her next moment after they embrace that really got me. We know, as of Maps and Legends, that Picard is dying. And Troi wordlessly touches his face and conveys, with just a bare look, that she knows his health is beginning to fail. He tries to reassure her that he’s fine, but of course we know better.

The next scene is the one we’ve all been waiting for since we first saw Riker in the second Star Trek: Picard trailer last year: the reunion between the Captain and his Number One. Jonathan Frakes’ performance in this scene reflects perfectly what the audience has been feeling for this whole journey: the excitement and pure joy of seeing an old friend again. That’s what nostalgia is, in a way. We’re just as happy to be reunited with Picard after all this time as Riker is in this moment. The last time we saw Riker and Picard, at the end of Star Trek: Nemesis, they were parting ways as Riker was moving on to take command of his own ship. A lot has happened since then as Troi and Riker seem settled in their home and with a teenage daughter to boot.

A hug eighteen years in the making. Picard and Riker are reunited.

Riker’s home is not as rustic as it seems. Upon learning that Picard is in trouble and hiding out, he barks orders at the cabin’s computer: “shields up!” being my favourite, a classic Riker line from The Next Generation, delivered in exactly the way we’d remember from that show. There was also a neat little name-drop of the Kzinti – a feline-like species that featured in an episode of The Animated Series back in the 1970s! That might actually be my favourite one-line reference so far in the whole series; tying Star Trek: Picard to Captain Kirk’s lesser-known adventures.

The young actress playing Kestra does a great job in this scene as she brings a hunted “bunnicorn” to Riker to prepare for dinner. It’s clear that, having grown up in a rural setting, Kestra is much more comfortable with hunting and skinning than many would be in the 24th Century – or even in the 21st! Sometimes younger performers, especially those cast for smaller roles, can end up coming across inauthentic in their delivery of lines and the way they inhabit their roles, but none of that was the case here. She did a great job and was convincing as the daughter of Riker and Troi.

Soji takes a shower – outside, of course, to add to the feeling of a rustic cabin-in-the-woods – and Kestra pesters her with questions, all of which related to things Data enjoyed or could do: playing the violin, reading Sherlock Holmes, and finally her physical abilities like running and jumping – which we sad Dahj do in Remembrance – and being able to bend steel. Soji has just done this, when she ripped a hole in the floor of the meditation room to escape, but we also saw Data do so on several occasions, notably in Star Trek: Nemesis and in The Measure of a Man, the second-season episode of The Next Generation which introduced Bruce Maddox. Kestra is immediately accepting of Soji. Not that the others weren’t, of course, but she takes to Soji as a friend whereas Picard sees himself as more of a guardian. Soji needed that, I feel, after everything she’s been through.

The questions Kestra asked about whether she has, among other things, saliva, were reminiscent of the observations Dr Bashir made of Data in The Next Generation episode Birthright, a two-parter from the sixth season. Both Bashir and Kestra were interested less in the extraordinary things an android could do – like calculate unimaginably huge numbers in an instant – and more in the ways that their creators had tried to make them ordinary. Data could breathe and had a pulse, and Soji has normal body fluids like saliva. Whether intentional or not, and I have to assume it was given how much care and attention has gone into Star Trek: Picard at this point, I loved this little callback to Data and The Next Generation.

Kestra’s parents have clearly told her so much about Data, and again as a long-time fan I think that’s something I wanted to see even if I would never have realised it. To know that Data, who died in Nemesis almost twenty years ago, is still remembered by his friends is a great feeling – and as someone who had longed to be human, this most human of legacies is something I think he would have approved of. As Kestra keeps up her questions and discussion of Data, Soji says that, until she heard the word “android” used, she was still hoping that she might be human after all. This is a lot to take in for her, as in the last few hours her whole life has been exposed as a lie and everything has come crashing down: her boyfriend, her job, her family, and her whole identity. Now she’s stuck on a planet she doesn’t know with people she’s never met, and she feels horribly unsettled not just with them but in her own skin – or whatever the android equivalent of skin is.

It was a nice touch to see the term “android” back in Nepenthe, after previous episodes of Star Trek: Picard had almost entirely used the terms “synth” or “synthetic” when discussing artificial life. I still feel, despite the presence of holograms on La Sirena, that there must be a reason for that. The vision Commodore Oh showed Dr Jurati, and the idea of rogue AIs destroying sentient life which motivates her and the Zhat Vash, are not exclusive problems caused by Soji-type androids. As we saw with Control in Star Trek: Discovery, any kind of AI is potentially susceptible.

An emotional Deanna leads Picard to her son’s bedroom, and we learn that not everything worked out for the Troi-Riker family after we last saw them. Their son, and Kestra’s older brother, died a few years previously. As is not uncommon with grieving parents, Riker and Troi have kept his bedroom as he left it, and as it’s presumably the only other available room, this is where she offers Picard a rest. We got a nice photo of Picard – in his post-Nemesis uniform – holding Thad as a baby, and Deanna gives Picard a very unconvincing “we’re fine!” when discussing him. It’s clearly still incredibly painful for her – whether she feels the loss even more as someone who has empathic traits isn’t clear, but as an episode dealing with the loss of a child and looking at how families and parents respond to that, Nepenthe was right up there with many other Star Trek episodes throughout the years that have tackled complex emotional topics.

One thing that is clear, though, as Picard and Troi continue this conversation, is that she is uncomfortable with their presence. Not because she didn’t want to see him – she clearly does – but because of the danger their visit poses. Having lost her son, she cannot bear the idea of her daughter being in any kind of danger. Nepenthe can be a stopover for Picard and Soji, then, but any hope of a permanent shelter or even a longer stay is dashed – and Picard knows that. He probably knew it before they ever arrived, but if he had hope of staying beyond a few days it’s gone without Riker or Troi having to come out and say so.

La Sirena is up next, and the trio still aboard have realised that they’re being pursued. Narek is clearly an expert pilot, and has managed to get his ship to sit in a kind of “blind spot”, almost unnoticeable to Rios. They discuss how to throw him off their tail, and Rios performs a new manoeuvre of dropping out of warp very suddenly so that Narek will “overshoot” La Sirena without realising. Star Trek’s warp drive has always been a bit of a mess in canon, so this being a new tactic is fine. I think it’s not original in that it’s something other sci fi franchises have used in the past, but as a narrative device it worked well here, I felt.

Dr Jurati then pipes up asking Raffi and Rios if they really want to go to Nepenthe or if they can instead pack up and go back to Earth. We know, as the audience, that she’s getting cold feet about her mission, frightened of what might happen if she ended up face-to-face with Soji. But Rios and Raffi don’t know what’s going on – or how it is that they’re being tracked – so Raffi assumes she’s just frightened and takes her off the bridge. Dr Jurati made reference to a gormagander in this scene, which was a space-dwelling life-form seen in Short Treks and Star Trek: Discovery, continuing the theme of the episode tying itself into other stories in the franchise!

Riker is cooking dinner on Nepenthe when Picard walks up. He’s reluctant to tell him too much about Soji or what happened, but Riker is able to figure out much of it from Soji’s behaviour. Picard has been a man alone in his mission so far. Dr Jurati, the only person on La Sirena who we thought was on his side is actually working for the enemy, and the others are just along for the ride or for pay. Even Elnor, who had signed on for Picard’s hopeless cause, has chosen to stay on the Artifact where he feels he’s more needed. So in this moment, when he had a genuine friend offering to help, it seems strange that Picard chose not to. Of course part of it has to do with what happened to Riker’s son and the presence of Kestra and Troi – he doesn’t want to endanger them any further. But telling Riker the full truth – something he failed to do for Hugh, the only other trustworthy face he’s seen since he left Earth – was an option.

Seeing Soji immediately pick up on Thad and Kestra’s made-up language was great, and we’ve seen her in previous episodes speak Romulan and the language of the xB called “nameless”, so we know it’s a skill she possesses. What I absolutely did not like in this sequence, or rather, what I felt had not been set up at all and failed to work, was Soji’s awkward Data-esque head tilting motion. That was a Data trademark from his earliest appearances in The Next Generation, but we’ve never seen Soji behave in such an artificial way. Whatever techniques Bruce Maddox and his team used to create her, they had improved upon the formula used by Data’s creator Dr Soong, meaning we shouldn’t see her do something that looked so odd and artificial. It was clearly put in as a story point, one which Riker immediately picked up on, and I know as a single second of screen time it doesn’t seem worth commenting on, but of all the Soji moments in Nepenthe, I felt it was by far the weakest, and its inclusion was not a good decision given that it had never been set up. There were plenty of other ways for Riker to pick up on Soji’s true nature, or of course, as mentioned above, Picard could have explained the situation.

Riker gives Picard a piece of his mind – calling him out for trying to carry everything himself and not let anyone help, calling it “classic Picard arrogance”. This wasn’t an attack, it was the “absolute candor” of an old friend. (See what I did there?)

In the tomato garden, Troi offers Soji a home-grown tomato. For someone who’s only ever had replicated food, she can sense the difference right away. There’s a message here too, I think, for us as the audience. We live in a world where food is increasingly processed, and more often than not something that comes in a packet from a supermarket. Many of us in the modern world are out of touch with food production and where our food comes from, and there is a uniqueness to something grown at home that I think we can all relate to.

Troi uses the example of the tomato to explain to Soji why “real” isn’t always better. Soji says that she is not real – like replicated food as they had just been discussing. But it turns out that the illness that killed Thad was something that could have been cured using a positronic matrix – i.e. an android brain. Unfortunately, due to the ban on synthetic life, no such matrix was available to synthesise a cure, and Thad died as a result. While an interesting metaphor, and something Soji desperately needed to hear, this also adds a personal dimension to the synth ban. Not only has it gotten Dahj killed, but we now know that the ban directly resulted in the death of Troi and Riker’s son. I’d absolutely argue that this raises the stakes even higher in Picard’s coming battle against the Zhat Vash and their allies in Starfleet.

Soji finally opens up, telling Troi a little about what happened with Narek and how he betrayed her trust. Narek has really done a number on Soji. In addition to everything she’s gone through and learnt in the last few hours, she finds it impossible to really trust anyone, and that’s all thanks to Narek’s manipulations. I wrote last time that the Narek-Soji storyline can be seen as analogous to gaslighting, and again I feel we see part of that here. Having been lied to, having had her head messed with and dissected by Narek, Soji is finding it incredibly hard to trust anyone, even Picard.

Their conversation is interrupted by Picard and Riker, however, and Soji storms off after Picard tries the old “reverse psychology” technique. He should have left the counselling to, well, the counsellor, because he really just managed to make things worse. Troi gives him a second dressing-down for the way he acted, and he starts to realise in this moment what’s going on and why Soji hasn’t behaved the same way that Dahj did. He will have to earn her trust, despite going out of his way to save her.

Elnor and Hugh are racing around the Artifact with a mission – they plan to return to the “queen cell” that they used to help Picard and Soji escape, and use the “immense power” it contains to seize control of the Artifact. Unfortunately they run into Rizzo, who has been tracking them. We finally, for the first time since Picard left Earth, get a mention of the Zhat Vash and confirmation that Rizzo is indeed a Zhat Vash operative. That aspect of the show had all but disappeared as Picard and everyone else insisted on referring to their adversaries as the Tal Shiar. As I said last time, this does make a kind of sense from an in-universe point of view, but I think it could be offputting for casual viewers in particular, as following the ins and outs of various Romulan factions is not easy, and the last thing viewers want when watching a show is to not understand the basics like who’s who and what’s going on.

Interestingly, Elnor doesn’t really seem to react to this revelation, though it is clear that the Zhat Vash and Qowat Milat know of each others’ existence. I had speculated that Elnor, having been told by Picard that he was facing off against the Tal Shiar, might have reacted badly to the involvement of the Zhat Vash. He still might, if he learns that Picard knew and didn’t tell him, but in this moment he doesn’t even react at all, he simply continues the fight. After dispatching a couple of Rizzo’s guards, the two engage in a hand-to-hand battle, but Rizzo uses a hidden blade to kill Hugh. In his dying moments, Hugh tells Elnor to find an xB and use them to activate whatever is in the “queen cell” – presumably something which will allow them to work together and overthrow their Romulan guards. Rizzo beams away before Elnor can avenge Hugh’s death, but I’m sure she’ll get her comeuppance sooner or later.

Raffi and Dr Jurati are sharing cake in the back of La Sirena. One thing I liked, both with the replicator in this scene and with transporters in various episodes since the show premiered, is that the materialisation process for both replicators and the transporter is significantly faster than it had been in The Next Generation and shows of that era. The faster pace, which allows both people and goods to appear almost instantaneously, feels like a natural progression of those similar technologies, and I appreciated that. Dr Jurati breaks down on being told she’s a good person – she’s been wrestling with her feelings and emotions since she killed Maddox. In that moment she was able to do the deed, but it’s broken her and, if she survives, her usefulness as an operative to the Commodore Oh-Zhat Vash conspiracy is surely at an end. If she did plan to stick around and kill Soji, I just don’t see her being able to go through with it.

Replicating chocolate milk has gotten a lot faster since *The Next Generation*!

As Dr Jurati vomits up her cake – the second time in this episode that poor Alison Pill has had to throw up on screen – Raffi escorts her to sickbay. Rios informs them that Narek is still on their tail, which I’m sure could only make Dr Jurati feel worse at this point, as it’s her presence that allows him to track La Sirena.

Dinner is finally served at the Troi-Riker cabin. After Picard has been unable to contact Rios aboard La Sirena, Kestra mentions a Capt. Crandall who has a ship, and again we got a couple of name-drops, this time of the Klingon homeworld, Qo’nos, most recently seen in Star Trek: Discovery, and Tyken’s Rift, which refers to the episode Night Terrors from the fourth season of The Next Generation. Picard and Soji did leave Nepenthe at the end of the episode, but I wonder if this Capt. Crandall will come back into play in future, as Star Trek: Picard has hardly wasted a second of runtime in any of its episodes on dead ends.

Picard uses himself, or rather, his physical state, to try to persuade Soji to trust him, remembering his encounter with Dahj and getting Soji to use her newly-activated skills to assess him to determine whether he’s telling the truth.

During the conversation, Picard confesses to Soji and the others his true reason for helping her. Partly it’s a desire to help Data, to repay Data’s sacrifice by helping what Picard considers to be his offspring. But the other element to his willingness to help is that Dahj essentially snapped him out of a fourteen-year-long depression, giving him motivation and a cause again, which is clearly something he never felt he’d get. I’ve written before about how Picard has been depressed in Star Trek: Picard. The first two episodes in particular looked at that side of him and his life since Nemesis, but it’s in this moment that Picard acknowledges it for himself. It can be hard for someone dealing with depression to even realise what’s happening, and acknowledging that privately to oneself is incredibly difficult to do because it means acknowledging what society still considers to be a weakness. Picard has been depressed, and if anyone says “but the Picard I remember never would be depressed!” then I have two things to say. First is that they should go and watch The Measure of a Man from the second season of The Next Generation – a review of which can be found here – and watch how Picard acts when he seems like he’s going to lose the case. Watch him in the scene with Guinan in Ten-Forward and compare it to how he was acting in the premiere of Star Trek: Picard. Also look at his emotional, angry reaction to the Borg in First Contact and compare that to his fear and hatred in last week’s episode. This is the man we’ve known. The second thing I’d say is that anyone believing that certain people, even fictional characters, could “never” fall into depression needs to get some fucking empathy because that can happen to anyone, at any time, for any reason or for no reason. Anyone who’s lived a life has had ups and downs; Picard’s “down” was intense and long-lasting, and just because someone has been lucky in life never to suffer like that, or see someone close to them suffer, well that doesn’t mean it can’t happen or that it doesn’t happen to others. This moronic criticism plagued Luke Skywalker’s characterisation in The Last Jedi a couple of years ago too. It was as stupid, insensitive, and ignorant about mental health then as it is now. Rant over.

Picard acknowledges for the first time how bad he’d been feeling. And though he doesn’t say it, his gratitude to Dahj for snapping him out of it and giving him something worth believing in again is a powerful motivator when it comes to helping Soji.

Picard convinces Soji to trust him – at least a little.

This was a deeply personal speech, but delivered in the calm Picard style that we remember from The Next Generation. He doesn’t raise his voice, he doesn’t try to be sarcastic or pushy or aggressive, or anything else. He gently makes his case to her, and after everything she’s been through, Soji relents and shares with Picard and the others the information she gave Narek. Last week I nitpicked this information, saying that in an area the size of the explored galaxy, a planetary body with two red moons and a lightning storm is hardly conclusive. There are other issues, too, such as the fact that nothing in her dream indicated that lightning storms were a constant presence on that world, nor that whatever caused the moons to appear red from the surface would be noticeable from space. I also said, however, that none of this would matter for the sake of the story! And in moments, Kestra has texted this Capt. Crandall and found the location of the planet – an unnamed world in the Vayt Sector.

So much to unpack here, but let’s start with Picard saying “thoughts?” to Troi and Riker. For a brief moment, we weren’t at a cabin in the wilds of Nepenthe, but on the Enterprise-D in the briefing room. That moment, as Picard asked the two for their opinions and they replied in turn could have been transposed to that setting and it would have slotted perfectly into place. I loved it as a nostalgia trip.

Next, though it wasn’t necessarily approached this way in the episode, how do we feel about young Kestra having a literally under-the-table text conversation with Capt. Crandall, who Riker describes as “unstable”? In another episode of Star Trek, perhaps that concept could be explored more. As we live in a world where almost all young people over the age of nine or ten have an internet-enabled device, what they use that technology for and who they communicate with is an issue that parents, schools, and governments will have to face.

Armed with the location of Soji’s homeworld – or at least, a good candidate for it – there’s a renewed optimism to Picard’s mission, and hope that he and Soji might be able to get there in time – though what exactly they will find there isn’t known. Troi and Riker, when they discussed Maddox around the table, seemed to imply that Soji and Dahj may not be the only synthetics living there – could there be a machine civilisation on this world for Picard to make first contact with? And how does this tie into what we already know from Stardust City Rag about Maddox’s lab having been destroyed by the Tal Shiar?

Texting under the table – helpful in this instance, but possibly troubling.

Rios takes Dr Jurati to the sickbay area of La Sirena. We get a better look at this area than last time. La Sirena is a small ship, but still larger than the Runabouts seen in Deep Space Nine or Voyager’s Delta Flyer. The rear area of the ship seems to double as a sickbay with a couple of beds and also a meeting/conference area with a table. Rios suspects they’re being tracked by Narek, which is how he keeps finding them. But he’s mistaken in his choice of who to trust – he feels that Raffi, after her time on Freecloud, may be spying on them or being tracked herself. This had been set up perfectly last week – not the suspicion of Raffi itself, but that Rios, when left with only two people on board, would turn to Dr Jurati having shared an intimate moment with her last time. He’s known Raffi longer, but he also knows she has a drug issue. He hasn’t known Dr Jurati very long at all, but they have shared a very close moment – possibly the first time in a long time that the lonely starship captain had been with anyone. His suspicion of Raffi only makes Dr Jurati feel still worse, and she comes right out and admits that she’s the one being tracked, but in that same moment Raffi calls Rios to the bridge to deal with Narek. There’s a look between Rios and Jurati that could be interpreted as him understanding what she said – or at least planting a seed for that understanding next week. In the moment, however, he has to deal with Narek and runs to the bridge.

Overwhelmed, unable to cope, and now having probably blown her cover and ruined her relationship with the only person on La Sirena she could have conceivably turned to for help, Dr Jurati uses the replicator to synthesise poison, which she uses a hypospray to inject herself with. Alison Pill was phenomenal here, no exaggeration. Without saying a word, the expressions on her face, the shaky way she raises and lowers the hypospray before finally taking the plunge and using it was riveting and disturbing to watch. Even though Star Trek: Picard is science fiction and her suicide method was a hypospray, there was something gritty, realistic, and outright disturbing to watching her try to take her own life. Suicide can be hard to portray on screen, often being overly dramatic and stylised, or worse, the “noble” suicide where a character kills himself or herself for the greater good. This scene was neither of those things. Dr Jurati made the attempt on her own life because she couldn’t live with the double guilt of what she’d done to her former friend, and that she was putting her new friends in danger. She was at the end of her rope, and felt that she had nowhere to turn to and no other option – it was an act of desperation. And it was portrayed as such. The camerawork stayed on her face and upper body throughout the scene, starting with her dash to the replicator and ending with her collapsing on the floor.

I don’t think this is the end for her – La Sirena’s EMH will make sure of that – but her crime will now surely be exposed, and it will be up to Picard, Soji, and the others what to do with a murderer and a spy.

Taking the poison does appear to have the side-effect of neutralising the tracking device, at least temporarily. Aboard his ship, Narek watches a single light blink out on his map, and is unable to find it again. For someone who had seemed to be wavering, Narek feels, in this wordless scene, like he’s once again found his faith in the Zhat Vash cause. Whether that will hold up if he meets Soji again is not clear, though.

On La Sirena’s bridge, Rios is clearly still suspicious of Raffi, but the EMH’s call notifies him that Dr Jurati is in a coma and they both seem to drop that conversation as he runs to be by her side in sickbay. Raffi remains alone on the bridge, seeming to dismiss his short investigation with an eye-roll. The action then jumps back to the Artifact, where Elnor is now alone and hiding out from Rizzo’s security forces. He spots a Fenris Rangers badge/chip and activates it – the call will bring Seven of Nine and her vigilante group to the Artifact. Elnor just has to lay low until they get there, then he can – presumably – use Seven of Nine to do whatever it was that Hugh wanted to do with the “queen cell”. In another scene with no dialogue, I really got the impression of Elnor being a man alone, trapped against impossible odds. He’s way out of his depth as a man with a sword on a Borg cube – and he knows it.

It’s time for goodbyes on Nepenthe, and we get a scene glimpsed in the trailers as Riker and Picard sit down on a wooden dock. They talk, one-on-one, about the mission, about Picard jumping back into galactic affairs, and again Picard’s “condition” – i.e. his terminal illness – is again referenced. Picard always valued Riker’s advice, and had always insisted on being given his unfiltered opinion, and just as in The Next Generation, Riker obliges here.

There was a strange kind of Americana vibe to two older men sat on a fishing dock that I feel served the scene well given their conversation. The staging, in that sense, was fantastic, even if it wouldn’t have been something we’d necessarily say was “Star Trek-y” just reading about it. Seeing the full scene unfold, however, was a different experience, and just like how in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, seeing Kirk, Spock, and McCoy camping in the wilderness was a great scene, so too was this one. The “thank you” Picard gave to Riker – not just for letting him stay but really for everything they did together – was beautiful, but tinged with emotion knowing that Picard thinks he may never get another chance to say it.

I get the sense that Riker would have signed up in a heartbeat – but Picard can’t and won’t ask him to leave his family. He has obligations on Nepenthe, and Picard is content to head off to Soji’s homeworld with the new crew he has put together.

We already knew Picard, Riker, and Troi have a great connection. And that was on full display in Nepenthe, no doubt. What really surprised me, however, was the bond between Soji and Kestra. They got together like kids whose parents are friends often do – how many of us remember something like that from our own childhoods? But the bond they forged was genuine, and when Kestra says she will miss her, she really means it. Partly, I’m sure, that’s because she lives in a quiet, rural area, and Soji represents someone new and something altogether different and exciting. But largely it is because the two young women got along really well together – Soji may have made her first genuine friend on the show thus far. The hug between them as Soji and Picard prepared to depart was no less emotional than Picard’s was with Riker and Troi.

As La Sirena enters transporter range, Picard and Soji are beamed aboard, leaving the Troi-Riker family behind. I can’t tell right now whether it’s the last we’ll see of them in the series, or whether we might get Riker steaming back in to save the day if something goes wrong. We’ll have to see as the final episodes unfold.

So that was Nepenthe. As I said at the beginning, a quieter episode in some respects, but an intensely emotional one. The theme of nostalgia was once again perfectly played and never overused, with enough screen time given to all of La Sirena’s crew to balance out the scenes with Riker and Troi. Unless the show’s creators have a surprise in mind for later episodes, which they just might, I think we’ve seen all of the legacy characters that we knew would be in the show now.

After The Impossible Box, I sat back in my seat and felt this amazing sensation that you might experience after an intense rollercoaster at a theme park. When the credits rolled on Nepenthe, I almost cried, such was the intensity of emotion than ran through almost every scene. Some of them hit particularly hard – as some of you may know if you’re regulars, my own mental health is somewhat complicated, and my history with some of the issues raised in the episode brought feelings and memories to the fore.

Overall I loved Nepenthe. Seeing Riker and Troi was a treat after so long, and finally Picard and La Sirena now have their final destination in mind. Elnor may need help first, though.

Nepenthe is available to stream now, along with the first six episodes of Star Trek: Picard, 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 6: The Impossible Box

Sat 29.02.20Wed 23.02.22Dennis

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.

“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 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.

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.

The biggest “problems” with Remembrance… that aren’t problems at all!

Wed 29.01.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There will be spoilers for Remembrance, the first episode of Star Trek: Picard, as well as potential spoilers for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

I don’t read a lot of reviews. Maybe you could tell from the amateurish way that my own review of Remembrance (the premiere of Star Trek: Picard) was written! But I do check in with Star Trek on social media, and I sometimes watch a couple of folks on YouTube who discuss the franchise. In the aftermath of Remembrance last week, some people seem to be pulling at the threads of the story expecting it all to unravel.

There are a few points that I saw being raised multiple times, especially in comments on other sites and on social media. Makes me glad to not have comments enabled here, really! I thought I’d go through and take a look at a few of the complaints people had, because they’re all nonexistent as far as I’m concerned.

Remembrance was a stunningly good episode. Sir Patrick Stewart was outstanding as Picard, despite an eighteen-year absence from the role. And the three new actors who took starring roles – Harry Treadaway, Alison Pill, and Isa Briones – were on top form. I could nitpick a handful of very minor things (and I did), but that’s always the case with practically every work of fiction. And in case you missed it, Star Trek’s canon has always been a bit of a mess – just look at warp factors as one example.

So here’s a list of a few criticisms folks have thrown out regarding Remembrance – along with my own deconstructions and why I don’t think they’re relevant.

Please don’t take this as a personal attack – if you didn’t like Remembrance that’s okay. Even as Star Trek fans, we like different kinds of stories within the franchise – and that’s okay too. Entertainment is always going to be subjective, and we don’t all enjoy the same things. This isn’t meant to insult or attack anyone; if anything it’s a response to general points I’ve seen made, and it’s really just an excuse for me to get my own thoughts in order.

That said, if you can’t tolerate disagreement, now’s your chance to jump ship!

Number 1: Wasn’t it the “Hobus” star that went supernova?

The planet Romulus is destroyed in a supernova.

Short answer: no.

Longer answer: I spent a while going back and looking at 2009’s Star Trek to see where this word came from. Even I knew the word “Hobus”, and although I didn’t remember where I’d heard it spoken, it surely had to come from the 2009 reboot film, right?

Wrong – no one in that film uses the word “Hobus”. It was only ever mentioned in the Countdown comic book series that preceded the film. Since those comic books aren’t canon, it doesn’t count.

In the film itself, Spock simply says that “a star” went supernova, and that he raced to get there in time before it destroyed Romulus. For some people – probably some of the same people now getting upset about “Hobus” – this was always a bit of a plot hole in Star Trek, because supernovae can’t really destroy planets in nearby star systems, nor threaten “the galaxy”. At least that’s our current understanding of the phenomenon.

In 2009’s *Star Trek*, Spock never uses the name “Hobus”.

In that sense, changing the star that went supernova to be in Romulan system actually closes a plot hole rather than opens one.

And even if we’re so attached to the word “Hobus” that we can’t let that slide, it could simply be the Romulans’ name for their star, in the same way that we call our star the Sun or Sol. Thus it’s possible to have your cake and eat it: Hobus was the name of the star in the system containing Romulus, and it went supernova.

Number 2: How many Romulans are there?

A Romulan crew seen in *Balance of Terror* from *The Original Series*. The exact Romulan population – and even a guesstimate – is unknown.

Some people seem to be confused by the “900 million” number given by the FNN interviewer when discussing Picard’s evacuation of Romulus. I can kind of see why; it seems like a low number on the surface given that there were 50 million people just living on Earth’s moon in the 24th Century.

I tried looking for sources on the population of the Federation as a whole for some kind of guide. There’s nothing “official”, only non-canon sources like reference books which don’t really count. But there’s no reason to believe it would be a small number – tens or hundreds of billions people could easily be in the ballpark. So the population of the Romulan Star Empire, which controlled a large expanse of space, should be somewhere in the region of tens or hundreds of billions too, right?

Data and Picard went undercover on Romulus during the events of *The Next Generation’*s two-part episode *Unification* – and they saw a populated, but not overcrowded, city.

Well there are a couple of issues here. First is that we have absolutely no idea. We’ve only ever seen a handful of Romulans on screen all at once, and even their biggest fleets at the height of the Dominion War weren’t huge – so it’s conceivable that their population wasn’t as large as their territorial expansion would suggest. That could be for many reasons, like their empire containing a large number of uninhabitable worlds. Pure speculation, but it fits with established canon.

Secondly, and most importantly for this discussion, nobody said that Picard was evacuating the entire Romulan Star Empire – it was probably just Romulus and Remus and any bases or stations in that system. Add to that the fact that the Romulans have their own shipyards and their own fleet, meaning they could conduct a significant portion of any evacuation themselves. Starfleet wasn’t doing the entire thing while the Romulans sat on their hands – they would have been constantly evacuating as many people as possible while the fleet was being built. The 900 million figure is what Picard was able to contribute – and based on what he said about arguing with Starfleet Command, I bet he wanted to have more capacity on that fleet.

Thirdly, 900 million people could easily have been the population of the Romulus system – with billions of other Romulans spread throughout their Empire.

A combination of factors is actually the most likely – the Romulans were evacuating as many people as they could, but they needed extra support. The Federation, under Picard’s command, could get 900 million Romulans out of danger, which was a contribution to the effort but not the entire thing by any means. 900 million may have been the leftover population of Romulus by the time the fleet was being built.

See? It doesn’t have to be a problem at all.

Number 3: Too much politics!!!

If someone told me they’re upset by the intrusion of politics and political themes in Remembrance, I’d ask them one question: “have you ever seen Star Trek before?” Since its 1960s origins, Star Trek has used its science fiction setting to highlight real-world political issues.

*In The Hands Of The Prophets* from the first season of *Deep Space Nine* was a deeply political episode tackling the issue of religion in schools – a clear metaphor for the teaching of creationism and evolution.

If someone first watched the show while very young these things would go over their head, which is perfectly understandable. And if they watched it two decades or more after its initial airdate, many of the issues raised wouldn’t be obvious because they’re no longer current affairs. They were important socio-political issues at the time, but may no longer be something we’d even think about. So it’s easy to miss if someone didn’t watch each series when they were originally broadcast.

Let’s look at a handful of examples of where the Star Trek franchise has brought in potentially controversial political themes:

The Doomsday Machine (TOS, 1967) This episode featured Kirk and Spock discussing nuclear weapons and how good it was that they were never used, as well as looking at the concepts of superweapons and mutually assured destruction – both massive topics during the Cold War.

Let That Be Your Last Battlefield (TOS, 1969) This episode looked at racism and the consequences of holding on to hate for a long time. It was an attack on racist attitudes held by some in 1960s America.

Ethics (TNG, 1992) This episode dealt with the concept of ritual suicide in other cultures, disability and suicide, the concept of moral relativism, and the ethics of experimental medical procedures.

Relics (TNG, 1992) This episode looked at how we treat older people, and how people can make valuable contributions regardless of age.

Melora (DS9, 1993) This episode dealt with disability and how disabled people can be treated differently, looked down on because of their condition, and underestimated.

Jetrel (Voyager, 1995) This episode looked at the consequences of using chemical weapons and weapons of mass destruction – and the toll it can take not only on the victims, but the perpetrators too.

Rejoined (DS9, 1995) This episode is famous for featuring one of the first female same-sex kisses on American television. It touched on homosexuality and LGBT+ issues.

Death Wish (Voyager, 1996) This episode dealt with the concepts of suicide and euthanasia, as well as whether a “right to die” exists or should exist.

Stigma (Enterprise, 2003) This episode looked at the stigma of living with a disease that only “undesirable” people would have contracted. It was an allegory for the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Damage (Enterprise, 2004) This episode tackled addiction, and the long-term effects it has on people.

*The Original Series* could be incredibly political. *Let That Be Your Last Battlefield*, from Season 3, was intended to me a metaphor for race relations at the time.

So there’s a few episodes from all the iterations of Star Trek prior to Discovery that dealt with contemporary issues. There are literally hundreds of other examples, including smaller points in episodes about other topics. This could be a full article in itself, but anyone suggesting politics “has no place in Star Trek” hasn’t been paying attention.

As a final note on this, I didn’t really think that Remembrance got particularly political. The section of the interview regarding the evacuation of Romulus could be taken as allegorical for the modern-day migration crises facing Europe and the United States, and it could also be taken as a critique of isolationism as a broader concept. That’s really the only point that was “politically charged”, and even then it wasn’t the focus of the episode. That scene was there to provide some backstory.

The only other point where I think people have seen the episode through a political lens is the rooftop fight scene, where Dahj takes on the attackers while yelling at Picard to take cover. For some people with preexisting biases, perhaps they took this as “Strong Woman has to defend Old White Man” – she’s strong, he’s not, so it must be a feminist political point – or so goes their argument. But Picard is an old man, even by 24th Century standards – and more importantly he’s unarmed. Dahj, by contrast, is a newly-activated butt-kicking machine – probably literally a machine. Picard would have been useless in that fight, so she was the only one of the two characters who, in the context of the story, could have made a stand. It was just a fight scene – not a political attack on one group or another.

Sometimes we all need to deactivate our political lenses when watching something that’s designed to just be entertainment. If we turn every single thing into a political fight, there’ll be no room for entertainment or anything else.

Number 4: Technology is wrong – it’s not advanced enough!

So firstly, the episode took place entirely on Earth. As a result, we don’t get to see as much technology as we would if we were on board the Federation’s newest flagship. Secondly, Château Picard – the setting for much of the episode – is deliberately rustic. Picard’s family, if you recall from The Next Generation, were quite traditionalist. Picard was the first in his family to have left the solar system, and the way the house is built and decorated reflects the past deliberately. But even here at the Château, we see an updated LCARS display, a food replicator, holo-screens, and other trappings of the 24th Century.

An updated LCARS panel and a food replicator at Château Picard.

The transporter – as used by the attackers anyway – also seems to have been updated. Whereas the transporters of the TNG era took several seconds to fully materialise, in Remembrance the attackers appeared practically instantaneously – the transporting process now taking less than a second.

There’s also the archive. How exactly it works isn’t clear, but I’d speculate that the all of the items are held in some kind of transport buffer, able to be materialised at will. That’s a pretty impressive feat, and not something we’ve seen before, at least not on this scale.

We’re also looking at Earth a decade after the attack by rogue synthetics. The synths were living technology – and perhaps as a result of their actions, people are less enthusiastic about trying out new technology.

Sisko’s Creole Kitchen in New Orleans wasn’t a high-tech establishment – clearly a lot of people on Earth in the 24th Century appreciated that.

Finally, when we’ve seen Earth in other iterations of Star Trek, technology was never front and centre then either. Sisko’s restaurant in New Orleans is a good example – where was the technology there? We hardly saw any. It’s possible that the Federation likes to keep Earth looking as pristine as possible, at least in some regions, without too much tech everywhere. These could also be aesthetic choices by citizens of Earth to hide as much of their tech as possible. And of course, it’s also possible that, since the TNG era, miniaturisation has occurred, allowing formerly large devices – like the computer panels that took up a whole wall that we saw on starships at that time – to be much smaller.

Number 5: Picard is depressed.

Well, yes.

He lost a very close friend in Data, who sacrificed himself to save Picard. That isn’t something you can just snap your fingers and get over. It came only a few years after his brother and nephew died, too, with that loss (seen in Star Trek: Generations) affecting him greatly as it meant he was the last living member of his own family – and the end of his family line.

I’ve lost friends and family in my life, and I still think about them, I still visit their graves, and I’m still sad about them no longer being here even decades later.

Picard and Data, mere moments before Data’s death. The loss of his friend has clearly weighed heavily on Picard in the years since.

In addition to his personal loss, he went through a series of traumatic events. Firstly, the attack on Mars destroyed his fleet and killed over 90,000 people – many of whom he will have known. It’s even possible that Geordi La Forge was among those killed – he was working on Mars in the Star Trek: Picard Countdown comic book series (which is confusingly not the same Countdown as the 2009 series mentioned above), though whether this is fully canon or not is unclear. Next the Romulan supernova hit, and despite his best intentions it seems clear that he wasn’t able to save as many lives as he hoped. Finally, he’d been a Starfleet officer since he was very young – we’re talking six or seven decades of service, practically his entire adult life. And in an instant it was all over – he resigned in protest at Starfleet’s decision to pull out of helping the Romulans. No one stopped him – perhaps this is part of what he meant by his “offended dignity” remark.

We were warned a number of times that Picard might not be the same way we remember him, and in that sense it’s true. He’s missing a part of himself because of what he’s been through. But at the same time, the man we knew is right there under the surface. The way he speaks with passion and anger during his interview, defending the rights of Romulans and synthetics alike was absolutely pure Picard, and anyone who thinks otherwise must’ve skipped episodes like The Drumhead, The Measure Of A Man, Who Watches The Watchers, and countless others because the way he reacts in that moment is absolutely the way we would expect him to.

I felt the same way when I read so much criticism of Luke Skywalker’s characterisation in The Last Jedi too, and the two characters and their situations are somewhat comparable. But anyone saying “my childhood hero would never ever become depressed!” clearly has no understanding of depression and mental health. They’ve almost certainly never experienced it in their own lives or within their own families or peer groups, because if they had – and they were capable of basic empathy – they’d know that depression can afflict anyone. Sometimes it’s a result of circumstances – in Picard’s case, the loss of his friends and his treatment by Starfleet. In Luke Skywalker’s case, it was one moment of weakness that had disastrous consequences. But sometimes depression comes out of nowhere and hits you like a ton of bricks. Anyone who’s lived a life will know that there are good moments and bad moments. If we’re lucky, the bad moments don’t last long. But for Picard, his bad moment clearly has.

Picard’s mental and/or emotional state has been a point of contention for some viewers.

This is a much broader point. Life happens – and the way a person is at age twenty isn’t the same way they’ll be at forty, and the way they are at forty will change again by the time they’re sixty or seventy. We haven’t seen Picard in two decades – in which time he’s been though some really difficult experiences. It’s no wonder he’s stepped back.

But the point of these kind of stories isn’t that he’s a depressed old man, it’s that something gave him a reason to get involved again. There’s a mystery to unravel, a long-lost friend’s family to find – and suddenly Picard has motivation and confidence again. It took the extraordinary events of Remembrance to remind him that he can still make a difference. And a similar story plays out in The Last Jedi – Luke eventually realises that he can’t just sit around and die, he has to take action because there’s a cause worth believing in.

This is a twist on a very classic adventure story setup. I mentioned this in my review, but Remembrance plays up some of the elements present in classics of the genre like The Hobbit – Picard is living a quiet, rural life, with no plans to leave his home or do anything significant. But his life is interrupted by someone new, who drags him into a mystery and sends him on an adventure. The added twist is that Picard used to be an adventurer of sorts, but he ended up depressed and back at home before someone reignited that spark within him and gave him something to investigate and a cause to get involved with.

It’s an incredibly positive message: anyone can fall victim to this kind of mindset, but there is hope. Under the right circumstances, someone who has lost their way and who has been feeling down for a long time can find a way out of it. There’s light at the end of the tunnel, even for someone who had arguably lost all hope and was “just waiting to die”.

So that’s it. A few criticisms of Remembrance that I’ve seen people throwing around. Some were glorified nitpicks, like the Romulan population or the supernova’s name, and others were more to do with the themes and concepts the story established. But in both cases I’ve provided my rebuttal just based on my own viewing of the episode.

As I said before, this isn’t meant to call out anyone or criticise anyone. It’s totally okay to dislike the episode, it’s totally okay to have a different opinion to me on all of these points. Entertainment is subjective, and we all have different opinions about an episode or film. Some of these are informed by our own experiences in life.

For me personally, I hadn’t considered any of the above points to be problematic while viewing Remembrance, and a couple of them caught me completely by surprise when I saw people were upset.

I had expected the biggest criticism to be along the lines of “this is completely different from The Next Generation“, and while I’m sure there are people who don’t like the concept of the series, I haven’t seen a great deal of criticism centred around that point thus far.

Friday can’t come soon enough for me, though! Roll on episode two – Maps and Legends.

Remembrance, the first 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.

What to watch to be ready for Star Trek: Picard

Mon 13.01.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers for the episodes and films on this list.

It’s only a few days till Star Trek: Picard premieres. Just saying that gets me excited, as I’ve been anticipating this series since it was announced! And in a broader sense, I’ve been waiting for the Star Trek franchise to move its timeline forward again since Voyager went off the air and Nemesis was in cinemas.

If you’re new to Star Trek, or haven’t watched any of the older series for a long time, it might be worthwhile to go back and take a look at some of the classics in anticipation of Star Trek: Picard. So let’s go together and get caught up on some of the episodes which may – or may not – be relevant to Picard’s story. At any rate, they’re all worth a watch before the show kicks off.

Number 1:
Endgame (Star Trek: Voyager, 2001)

Admiral Janeway and the Borg Queen in the *Voyager* episode *Endgame.*

Before The Avengers ever thought of it, Voyager had the first Endgame! And it was a heck of a ride involving a time-travelling Janeway giving her past self technology from the future in order to defeat the Borg. By changing the past, Janeway was able to get Voyager home far sooner than she had in her own timeline.

Time travel paradox aside (how could future Janeway exist if she erased her own timeline by interacting with her past self?) the episode sets up what could be an important story point regarding the Borg. As Voyager prepares to travel home, future Janeway infects the Borg Queen with a virus – one that has the potential to devastate the entire collective. Voyager is able to easily destroy many Borg vessels – and the Borg Queen’s complex – thanks to the enhancements future Janeway brought them, and the end of the episode is the last time we’ve seen the Borg in the Star Trek timeline. What happened to them after Endgame is a key question, and given that we’ve seen a Borg vessel and ex-Borg in the trailers for Star Trek: Picard, it may be one that the series will answer.

Seven of Nine, a key member of Voyager’s crew in its later seasons, is also set to feature in some form in Star Trek: Picard, and her relationship with the collective was always a point of interest. I definitely think it’s worth giving Endgame a rewatch before Picard kicks off.

Number 2:
Star Trek: Nemesis (Film, 2002)

Data and Picard in this scene from *Star Trek: Nemesis.*

This had to be on the list, right? Nemesis is as far forward as the Star Trek timeline had gotten – prior to last week’s Short Treks episode Children of Mars. And it was a Picard-centric story, focusing on his fight against a clone of himself created by the Romulans. As a story which features Picard heavily, as well as his relationship with the Romulans, this would already be an important one to watch. But because in this film Picard sees Data sacrifice himself to save him, it becomes even more meaningful in the story of Picard’s life.

We already know from the trailers that Data’s loss weighs heavily on Picard, and may even be a significant factor in his decision to leave Starfleet a few years after the events of Nemesis. As Data’s sacrifice is such an important moment in Picard’s later life, Nemesis is definitely worthy of a viewing before Picard premieres.

Other things to note from the film would be the Romulans and their relationship with the Federation. Nemesis takes place after the Dominion War (as seen in Deep Space Nine) and the Federation and Romulans had been allies. Is that alliance still in place? Is it possible that the surviving Romulans will have a good relationship with the Federation after the destruction of their homeworld? All interesting points to consider!

Number 3:
Children of Mars (Short Treks, 2020)

Picard’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo appearance in *Children of Mars*.

I have a full review of Children of Mars already written and posted, which you can find by clicking or tapping here. Suffice to say that it wasn’t my favourite episode of Short Treks, but nevertheless it was created to be a prequel to Star Trek: Picard. While it’s unclear whether the two principal characters the episode features – schoolgirls named Kima and Lil – will cross over to the main series, there’s a significant event depicted which certainly will be a story point in some form.

A faction called the “rogue synths” launches a massive attack on Mars, where the Federation’s Utopia Planitia shipyards are located. Who this group are and what their aims were isn’t clear, but it seems as though this attack was designed to disrupt efforts led by Admiral Picard to assist the Romulans as they faced the supernova which would ultimately destroy their homeworld. In that sense, the attack on Mars looks set to be significant in the backstory to Star Trek: Picard.

Unfortunately if you’re outside the United States, as I am, you won’t be able to watch this episode by “conventional” means. Amazon Prime, despite having the rights to show Picard, don’t seem to have shown this episode of Short Treks. I suppose it’s possible that they will put up Children of Mars on their streaming platform before Picard premieres, but realistically if you want to guarantee seeing it before the main series you will have to find another way to access a copy. I can’t recommend any one website or other method, but if you know your way around a computer I daresay you’ll be able to find it.

Number 4:
Disaster (Star Trek: The Next Generation, 1991)

Picard and the children in the stuck turbolift in *Disaster.*

Disaster is one of my personal favourite episodes of The Next Generation. Perhaps I should do a list of those one day! It’s a bottle show (i.e. a show taking place entirely on board the ship – these were usually done to save money on building new sets) but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t tell a very interesting story – or rather, a connected series of stories. As the Enterprise-D hits a “quantum filament”, it is left without power to most of its key systems. The main crew are split up, and are forced to play different roles than they usually would.

It’s a great example of characters working in the face of adversity, and of how the threat and danger in an episode of Star Trek doesn’t have to come from a menacing evil alien. Worf ends up delivering a baby, Counsellor Troi is the senior officer on the bridge and is forced to make significant command decisions, and most significantly for our purposes, Picard is stuck in a turbolift with a group of frightened children.

We’ve seen Picard in command countless times and we know he’s good at it – with his own crew. What Disaster does is show us how Picard can take control of any situation, even one he’s uncomfortable in as he’s never been keen on children. He’s able to get the situation under control and lead the kids to safety in the face of a difficult situation. It may not be the most significant TNG episode ever from Picard’s point of view, but it is nevertheless worth a watch.

Number 5:
The Battle (Star Trek: The Next Generation, 1987)

Accompanied by a Ferengi Marauder, the Enterprise-D takes the USS Stargazer under tow in *The Battle.*

The Next Generation’s first season was all about the show finding its feet. With the Klingons having been somewhat pacified, the show was looking for a new antagonist, and the Ferengi were initially created to fill that role. Though over the course of Deep Space Nine we’ve come to see the Ferengi more as a neutral power, interested in their own finances more than in galactic events, in early TNG they were much more aggressive.

The Battle was only the Ferengi’s second appearance, though we’re not really interested in the episode for that reason. Dai’mon Bok, a Ferengi captain, has somehow acquired the USS Stargazer – a ship previously captained by Picard. Over the course of the episode, we learn Picard had been in command at an event called the “battle of Maxia”, in which he defeated a Ferengi vessel using a warp speed technique called the “Picard manoeuvre”. The story fills in some of Picard’s pre-TNG history and proved to be a great opportunity for Patrick Stewart to show off his acting abilities, as the episode takes the character through a moment of (induced) madness.

Number 6:
The Best of Both Worlds, Parts I & II (Star Trek: The Next Generation, 1990)

Picard transformed into Locutus of Borg in *The Best of Both Worlds.*

I’ve kind of spoilt it in the above picture, but Picard’s assimilation by the Borg in The Best of Both Worlds was a truly shocking moment for The Next Generation to end its third season on. This was the first time we’d seen assimilation on screen, and for a character as significant as Picard to be captured was a phenomenal moment. The entire two-part episode is beautifully constructed, and the moments leading up to the reveal of the assimilated Picard are perfectly shot and edited.

In terms of Picard’s life, his experience with the Borg, and the guilt and regret he felt over the attack on Starfleet ships at Wolf 359, would stay with him for a long time. In First Contact we see how it could influence his judgement – Picard was usually level-headed, calm, and neutral, but when it came to the Borg his emotions could get the better of him leading to irrational decisions. Seeing how this came to be, and how one traumatic event can affect his character, could be very important to understanding his decision-making in Picard, especially if the Borg are involved.

Family, the second episode of Season 4 of TNG, follows on from The Best of Both Worlds and would also be worth a look-in as an epilogue of sorts to this story.

Number 7:
Star Trek: Discovery (2017-present)

Lorca and Saru during *Discovery’*s first season.

Given the significant changes to Star Trek storytelling that are present in Discovery, it would be well worth getting up to date with Star Trek’s most recent outing if you haven’t seen it already. I understand that some fans weren’t happy with the series for a number of reasons, but there are some definite high points in there which even the most hardline sceptic should be able to appreciate.

Jason Isaacs in Season 1 and Anson Mount in Season 2 both give amazing performances as two very different Starfleet captains, and Discovery tells two separate, season-long serialised stories in the style that Picard plans to adopt for its first season. If the Short Treks episode Children of Mars is any indication, the visual style of Discovery will also carry over to Picard at least in part. Whether you think this is a good thing or not is another matter, of course, but if you’ve somehow avoided Discovery this long, now could be a good time to give it a second chance.

Because of its serialised nature it’s hard to pull just one episode from Discovery and say “just watch this one”. But if I had to pick a single episode, I’d recommend An Obol for Charon from Season 2. Despite containing several ongoing story arcs, the main thrust of this episode – dealing with an ancient planet-sized lifeform – is largely a self-contained story, albeit one that would have a huge impact on the remainder of the season.

Number 8:
Star Trek: Generations (Film, 1994)

Captains Kirk and Picard meet for the first time inside the Nexus in *Star Trek: Generations.*

“Don’t let them promote you. Don’t let them transfer you, don’t let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you’re there, you can make a difference.” Those were the words spoken to Picard by Captain Kirk in Star Trek: Generations. And for a time, it seemed as though Picard was following the advice his predecessor gave him. We saw Janeway promoted to Admiral in Star Trek: Nemesis while Picard remained a captain, even though for the audience she was a character we’d met much later and was noticeably younger. What could it have been that caused Picard to turn his back on Kirk’s advice?

In Generations, Picard loses several members of his family to a fire. Château Picard, where it seems he’s living in retirement at the beginning of the new series, was the place where his brother and family had lived. Family had been important to Picard, but he had been content that the family line would continue thanks to his brother having a family, but that was taken away from him in Generations. It’s a film in which he suffers another loss, too – the Enterprise-D.

Though casualties were said to be light, the loss of the ship he’d called home for more than seven years and had countless adventures aboard did have an effect on Picard, not that much of it is acknowledged on screen. Mostly, though, it’s Kirk’s sacrifice which is the key point worth noting from Generations, and even though the two men didn’t know each other particularly well, Kirk’s advice seemed to be taken to heart.

Number 9:
Tapestry (Star Trek: The Next Generation, 1993)

Given the chance to start over by Q, Picard ends up leading a very different life in *Tapestry.*

As Tapestry begins, Picard has been badly wounded. His artificial heart couldn’t tolerate the injury and he dies – only to be greeted by his long-time nemesis Q, and given a rare opportunity to make a fresh start.

Picard has an artificial heart because in his youth he was brutally stabbed! By choosing to avoid that fate, Picard set his life on a different path, one which didn’t lead to the man we knew, but a more timid and less successful man who had only made it as far as a junior lieutenant in Starfleet. He realises his mistake, and pleads Q to send him back to set things right, stating: “I would rather die as the man I was… than live the life I just saw.”

It’s another story that adds some colourful background to Picard’s story, and we see him in his youth before he settled down into the man we knew. Given that there are sure to be changes in his character between the last time we saw him and how he appears in Star Trek: Picard, it’s worth remembering that people do change over the course of their lives, and the person you are at 20 isn’t the same person you are at 50 or 70 or 90.

Number 10:
All Good Things… (Star Trek: The Next Generation, 1994)

Q takes Picard back in time in *All Good Things…*

The finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation was a strange one, with a time-travel concept and the return of Q. Across three time periods Picard had to figure out a puzzle – a spacial anomaly which would destroy humanity, and for which he was ultimately responsible!

If you’ve seen the science fiction film Arrival, then All Good Things… uses a similar concept. By learning to perceive time differently – realising that events in the future were impacting the past, not the other way around – Picard was able to prevent disaster. “We wanted to see if you had the ability to expand your mind and your horizons. And for one brief moment, you did.” So says Q, complimenting Picard on his ability to change the way he thought and attack the situation in a different way from a completely different line of reasoning.

Bringing to a close Q’s arc in The Next Generation, the episode also shows Picard as someone who is capable of things that he even doesn’t know about himself. Q gave him the push, but it was Picard who solved the mystery and saved humanity. We also get glimpses of Picard’s personal future – including his retirement at Château Picard. There’s the mention of a degenerative disease called irumodic syndrome which Picard is said to be suffering from in his later years – whether this will come into play in Star Trek: Picard is unknown.

Honourable Mentions:

I can’t end a list without adding in a few honourable mentions!

Star Trek (Film, 2009) – This is where we first hear about the supernova that destroyed Romulus from Spock. It’s a significant plot point in the film, but not one which is covered in great detail.
What You Leave Behind (DS9, 1999) – Concluding the Dominion War arc, which brought together the Federation and Romulans as allies, this episode is the most recent in which we saw many Star Trek factions like the Cardassians and Breen.
Skin of Evil (TNG, 1988) – Picard’s first on-screen experience with losing an officer and a friend, when Tasha Yar is killed in action.
Time Squared (TNG, 1988) – Picard must contend with the idea that he abandoned ship in the middle of a crisis when a duplicate of himself from the future is discovered.
The Defector (TNG, 1990) – A Romulan Admiral defects to the Federation to try to prevent a war, and Picard must deal with the information he provides.
The Raven (VOY, 1997) – Seven of Nine experiences flashbacks and uncovers her family’s half-assimilated ship where she was first captured by the Borg.
I, Borg (TNG, 1992) – The introduction of Hugh the Borg, and Picard’s attempt to weaponise him to defeat the collective.
Human Error (VOY, 2001) – Seven of Nine begins to discover more about her human side after years away from the Borg.
In The Pale Moonlight (DS9, 1998) – Sisko lies and cheats to bring the Romulans into the Dominion War as an ally – and Garak commits murder to cover up their actions. Did the Romulans find out between the end of the war and the events of Picard?
Sarek (TNG, 1990) – Picard came to know Spock well, but also met his father. Picard helped Sarek stay in control of his emotions as he suffered a serious Vulcan illness.

So that’s it.

A few episodes and films that might feed into the plot and background of Star Trek: Picard. Perhaps not everything will be relevant, especially given the scant information about the show’s plot that we actually have. I’ve made two significant assumptions based on the trailer and cast information that we’ve seen so far – firstly that the Borg will have some role to play in the story, and secondly that the Romulans will too. But it could be an elaborate misdirect and both of these factions will ultimately end up being little more than backstory. We’ll have to see.

Regardless, the episodes and films above should go some way to showing off Picard and Star Trek at their best as we prepare for the new series. It’s been a long time since I was this excited about the premiere of a new television series, and I can’t wait to tune in when Picard kicks off in just ten days’ time.

Live Long and Prosper!

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