Well, that was largely anti-climactic, wasn’t it? After an entire season musing about the origin of the attack on Mars – an attack that shattered the Romulan people, ended the Federation’s synthetic research, and broke one Jean-Luc Picard – we found out that it was a splinter sect of the Tal Shiar that decided they needed to end the creation of synths for good because . . . someone used images from the past to show that synths were deadly? Of all the possibilities I figured for the source of the attack, I can honestly say I never saw this answer coming. Perhaps because it’s flat out ridiculous, but still, I guess it was a shock.
So, a subset of the Tal Shiar decided that, in order to stop the prophecy regarding the Destroyer to come true, they needed to create a preemptive synth attack on Mars to scare the Federation into outlawing synthetics. Which, in turn, lead to Maddox taking his toys and going home to a hidden planet where he proceeded to create the exact synthetic from the prophecy. But they know there are still synths out there because Rios’s old ship found them – and he has a drawn picture of Jana, the precursor to Soji. So, they set-up the Borg Reclamation Project to lure Soji to them? They found Dahj through some other means? There’s a link missing here to connecting how the Tal Shiar knew about these two synths and how they tracked them. But even just writing all that out makes me feel exhausted.
The number of knots the story had to twist itself into (and out of) to get to this point – a prophecy that spurs a clandestine terrorist attack to stop synthetics but also sparks the greatest AI mind to run away and create the very Destroyer the Romulans wants to avoid – were largely unnecessary. And, frankly, it’s not all that satisfying. While I wouldn’t classify this as a puzzle box narrative (a la Westworld), it’s hovering awfully close.
If you’re writing an arc that requires multiple flashbacks over the course of multiple episodes to let the audience understand the current situation – as well as just what occurred in the past to set this situation in motion – you might be over-complicating things. And, waiting until what is essentially the penultimate episode* to reveal the key piece of information that helps the audience to understand just what the hell is happening? That’s manipulative in a way that hurts the story. If I’m still getting crucial bits of exposition right when the series is about it hit its climax, something is wrong with the storytelling.
*The final two episodes are a two-parter, that will, presumably, wrap up this particular arc for the series
My general guideline for whether or not a “twist” is satisfying is if the audience can see the reveal and walk back through the story and connect the dots. For example, the reveal of the killer in Knives Out works perfectly – once you know who did it, you can think back to each element of the story and see how you could have deduced that from what you saw. Here, I don’t think it works. Could you, reasonably, last week have said, “Well, yes, there was a subsect of the Tal Shiar that put the attack on Mars in motion? No. You could have said Oh is more entwined that we thought. Or that Narissa is operating under different orders than her brother. But there wasn’t enough information to connect this reveal to what came before. So it really came out of left field and was fitted nicely into the narrative while also destroying so much of what we spent the season watching. And it wasn’t the only plot point in the episode that managed to do that.
The revelation this week that Rios had seen an early version of Soji before – and that Oh had ordered his previous captain to kill it – felt even more clunky and unearned than the Tal Shiar reveal. Yes, as the “Previously On” segment reminded us, we knew that Rios saw his captain die, but to have that death link so perfectly into the arc of the season? I actually laughed when I heard the reveal, because of course it was a perfect fit. You could see the strings in the plot tying together with each exposition dump speech. Had we spent weeks watching Rios deal with his PTSD or chafe under the command of a new captain-figure in Picard, perhaps this twist might have worked. But we didn’t. We barely know anything about these characters, so how could we have guessed that Rios’ close friend and mentor killed himself after killing synths at the order of Oh? To suddenly have an episode where Rios goes into a depression and then reveals everything in a lovely speech is just bad writing.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: It’s not easy to write a great television series. But the cardinal rule for writing a script is show, don’t tell. And “Broken Pieces” was all about telling us things without doing the heavy lifting to show us. That’s lazy and I expected better of the series (especially Michael Chabon, who wrote this episode). We didn’t just get told in the plot twist reveals, we also were told a hell of a lot during the Seven scenes on the Artifact. In a sequence I was genuinely excited for (a showdown between Narissa and Seven had the makings of an all-time great battle), I felt letdown with the episode’s refusal to grapple with the huge emotional elements it was attempting to engage with.
Seven’s identity is something the character has dealt with throughout her existence within the Trek universe. It’s a cornerstone element of what makes the character tick. Here, she’s willing to reconnect herself to the hive mind in an attempt to stop someone who wants everyone on that Cube dead. That’s a HUGE decision for her to make, and there is the potential for serious ramifications – as Seven mentions And then nothing comes of it. The drones are sent into space, Seven easily disengages from the Cube, and she goes on her merry way to try and save the remaining xBs. That’s it. Now, there might be repercussions in the final two episodes, but I honestly can’t see the series having enough time left to give this particular character beat the time and space it needs to breathe. That’s a decision that should weigh on Seven, one we should get to see her struggle with in the coming episodes. For someone who still has difficulty understanding her humanity, linking back into the hive mind is both a terrifying and seductive thing. We didn’t get to see enough of that – instead we were just told.
Now maybe I’m being too harsh on the series, but it has shown that it could be so much more than this episode indicated. Picard has done its best work when it focused on character over plot machinations. Which makes is all the more disappointing that the writers have failed to adequately develop the new characters within the series. I would have loved more time with Rios (and far less with his hologram counterparts) to set up the Jana reveal. I would have loved more time with Jurati to better understand why she was so convinced she needed to kill Maddox – was the mind meld that impressive? Also, how did she survive that while that same vision killed so many Romulans? If the series had taken the time to build these supporting characters from the beginning, I think the plot twists might have landed a bit stronger.
Final Thoughts:
— I was sorely disappointed to be deprived of a real battle between Seven and Narissa. I hope that, should Narissa be a casualty in the finale, it comes after a battle with Seven. I suspect that won’t be the case, but man, that would be epic.
— In Seven’s first episode, I wrote that I wanted a spin-off series around her immediately. That wish was only strengthen with her appearance here. Jeri Ryan has been so great in her return to this character, and there are so many unanswered questions about just who Seven is now and how she got to this point that I would love to answered. Hell, the fact that Narissa knew of Seven’s reputation made it clear that she’s a force to be reckoned with at this point. Hopefully we get to spend some more time with her in the future.
— One scene I really enjoyed was the scene between Soji and Jurati, largely because it was a great character moment for both characters. We were able to see just how much Jurati loves the world of synthetics. We saw that Soji is learning to trust people, which is a huge step for her. The series could use more moments like that.
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