Picard – Assimilation Review

So, here we are. Like so many Trek shows before it, in the past. Will Picard manage to escape the common time travel pitfalls? Will someone be faced with making a gut-wrenching choice to lose what or who they love so that they can protect the future (I’m willing to bet this is an almost certainty – I’ll get into some theories later on)? Or will poor Elnor’s death* be for naught? Lots of questions, but “Assimilation” was far more concerned with setting the stage for this new reality (our third such instance in the three episodes of the season thus far, but certainly the best of the lot), allowing several characters the chance to shine in their own, non-Picard centric, arcs.

*One of my biggest pet peeves with shows is a lack of stakes. Think Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead – when main cast members are in crisis, they are almost never really in danger, cocooned in plot armor ensuring they make it to the next episode. The choice to kill Elnor this early in the series screams of an opportunity for Q (or a Q, if our Q really is suffering from some mental degradation and can’t be trusted to right things) to bring him back to life once Picard and company have solved this puzzle. But then the series lacks stakes. So much of Q’s posturing is that Picard wants to make sure everyone comes out alive and in one piece – he’s afraid to take risks of any kind lest someone (including himself) get hurt. Their push and pull relationship is at its best when Q forces Picard to gamble and be willing to take risks to achieve his desired result. The death of Elnor is painful (less, apparently, for Picard than for Raffi – more on that in a bit), but it’s a sacrifice for the greater good. If this death doesn’t stick (and there’s a solid chance it won’t), the series will need a similar sacrifice to slot in its place. I have some ideas what that might be, but simply erasing his death and having everyone live happily ever after? Yeah, that’s not going to work dramatically.

“Assimilation” continued the strong character focus of the second season, letting Raffi (and by extension, a great Michelle Hurd) really shine. I loved the series letting her truly be impacted by her grief – from calling out Picard as the reason they are in this mess (someone needed to finally address that Picard may be annoyed by Q, but he also enjoys elements of their cat and mouse games) to not letting Seven try to comfort her after Seven’s past refusal to treat their relationship as an actual relationship. This new version of the character has agency and the emotional layers that Picard and Seven seem incapable (or unwilling) to access. Keeping her paired up with Seven is the smartest thing the series can do at this point, as it will allow her to balance out Seven as she goes on her own emotional journey this season (whether or not they get back together romantically is also a subplot to be explored, but it’s not as crucial as ensuring that Seven comes out of this experience more open to her own emotional needs).

Similarly, Rios (and Santiago Cabrera) is finally getting his own arc this time around rather than simply acting as a pawn in a larger story. Sure, it was clear the moment he met the lovely doctor the series was setting him up for some sort of domestic storyline with her and her precocious kid.* And yes, making this an ICE plot point might feel like an easy option, but it calls back to Star Trek’s history of reflecting important modern social issues on screen (usually it’s much more allegorical than this, but I’ll excuse the heavy handed execution in favor of watching an important modern story play out). But what really matters is that the writers are opting to allow Rios the opportunity to anchor his own story. That’s a breath of fresh air for a series that seemed so scared to let any of the supporting characters exist beyond archetypal sketches in season one. As I’ve said before and I’ll keep saying: Picard has a stellar cast. The writers cannot be afraid to trust them with the heavy lifting. It will only make the series richer.

*So, here’s where I suspect the writers will reach for dramatic stakes – barring forcing Picard into a life or death choice in some fashion. Rios meets a woman, falls in love with her and her kid, and ultimately must face the choice of whether or not he stays or returns back to the future. Perhaps Rios is the Watcher? Perhaps it’s the kid? But something here screams “major choice that could impact the future timeline.” We’ve already seen what happens when someone falls for someone with tragic consequences back in “City on the Edge of Forever,” and it’s a classic for a reason. Allowing Rios to face a similar choice of love or duty would have some stakes and allow Cabrera the chance to shine.

Speaking of making the series richer, thank you to the writers for finally giving Allison Pill something to do as Jurati that didn’t involve being too nervous to function. Listen, I get why the character has been written the way she is. When you have stoic, emotionally unavailable characters (here, Picard and Seven are the clearest culprits), creating a foil character who lives too much in their emotions – and lacks the social confidence to move beyond that – is tempting. And it’s not a bad choice. (See also Tilly on Discovery as a foil to Burnham.) The problems begin, however, when the character isn’t allowed to move beyond that basic characterization because the series doesn’t want its lead(s) to become more emotionally available. So they get stuck in a rut, constantly bouncing off the walls, unable to be confident and serious in the moment, cracking jokes. And it gets tiresome.

And Jurati was dangerously close to falling off the cliff into the realm of unwatchable (through no fault of Pill’s – that’s just how she was written). Giving her a chance to prove her scientific bona fides as well as experience some darkness? That’s just what the doctor ordered. It allowed Pill the chance to show us that she does, in fact, have some serious dramatic chops, while also making the character more interesting. With the Borg Queen intrigued by her abilities (shout out to Annie Wersching for some great work this week) and the pair stuck in the ship together, this could be the chance for Jurati to truly break out as a character. In season one, the fatal flaw of the writing was to have everything so tightly filtered through Picard that it didn’t allow for the other characters to grow. It appears that the writers are working to course correct in a big way, and this was a strong move toward fleshing out the characters to the depth we need them for us to actually care what happens moving forward.

Final Thoughts:

— That was Jon Jon Briones, father of Isa Birones (Soji, who has been conspicuously absent since her single scene in the premiere) and a great actor in his own right, as Seven’s evil husband.

— If you recall DS9’s trip back to 2024 San Francisco, there were encampments within the city for the homeless and poor populations that kept them walled off from the more prosperous residents. While we didn’t specifically see government created encampments, having Seven and Raffi walk through the tent city certainly hit as a call back to the situation discussed in that mid-90s episode. Sad to think that we are far closer to the bleak reality predicted in DS9 than we could have imagined when that episode originally aired. We’ll see if we get any more commentary on it – maybe a mention of the riots starting?

— While the writing has been pretty on point thus far, I’m still keeping my time travel BINGO card at the ready. I’m pretty sure we’ll get an instance where someone reveals they are from the future and one where future technology falls into the wrong hands.