This was the first episode of this season of Picard that felt wholly of what fans are terming “Old Trek*” – you know, classic Next Generation or Voyager where the good guys manage to fight against seemingly insurmountable odds while battling inner demons to reach a key moral by the close of the episode. And, as a result, it felt more like old school Picard – and old school Seven, since she was crafted in that same vein – than it did whatever Picard seemed to be evolving into as a show – for good and for ill.
*I’m well aware that the New Trek detractors have a host of other complaints – a large number of which are particularly troubling and frankly don’t deserve space in any sort of discussion – but they all seem to boil down into a desire to get back the episodic, feel good, moralistic Trek of the “good old days,” which unsurprisingly also tends not to include Deep Space Nine, which is the closest “old” series to the current trend of narrative arc-based storytelling, although DS9 managed to do things a heck of a lot better than anything Trek is putting out today.
After spending the entire season allowing Rios to waver in his desire to go back to the future where he belongs, we get him opting to transport out and away from the good doctor without the series taking the time and space to show us why he is making that choice. It seemed, instead, that he has known for awhile he would be leaving yet continued acting like he might want to stay – flirting, letting the kid play around on the ship. After working so hard to create more consistent characterizations this season, the last several weeks have been filled with the series taking disappointing shortcuts on their way to try to wrap the season arc up with some ending that makes sense (more on that in a minute), allowing characters to suddenly make rash decisions or get over heaps of mental and emotional trauma in moments so that they can complete the task at hand – after all, character development is only useful insomuch as it allows the plot to advance, right? I had high hopes that the writers were turning things around and letting character drive the story rather than the other way around, but here we are, on the verge of the finale, and instead of letting characters take a beat or two to fully invest in what they are experiencing, we’re getting a race to the end of the story. The really frustrating part of this all is that there was time for a deeper character exploration, but we got more and more plot heaped on instead.
And then there’s the Picard of it all. We’ve spent literally the entire season thus far watching him slowly come to terms with having found his beloved mother following her suicide – something that no child should ever experience, and something that absolutely would have created a massive traumatic imprint on him for the rest of his life – and once he unlocks that particular memory, all it takes for him to seemingly move on is a hug from Talinn? Sure, Jan. I’m certain whatever final confrontation he has with Q will circle back to that memory – at least if the writing is at all good as you don’t draw out a reveal and then simply drop it, especially when it appears that memory was one necessary for Picard’s continued growth – but it’s an odd time to reveal it (assuming the audience hadn’t already guessed that’s where we were headed, as they haven’t exactly been subtle about things). While we’re wrapping one arc up and sloppily returning to one that seemed complete, just drop the bomb about Picard’s mother’s suicide? It didn’t really feel like it fit where the story was driving.
Just last week, it seemed like the major impediment to stopping Renee from making history was Soong and the Borg Queen. Now, with the Queen dispatched to . . . somewhere (The Delta Quadrant? The future? Somewhere else in the Alpha Quadrant?) to start a collective of willing teammates* and Soong presumably gearing up with Q (maybe?) for one final push to stop the launch, we’re handed a riddle about there needing to be two Renee’s. That’s a lot of storyline twisting this late in the game when things should actually be simplifying out. On the plus side, I genuinely don’t know where the series wants to go from here. We’ve effectively removed Jurati from the equation (assuming she isn’t still kicking around when they return to the future), Elnor seems to be truly dead – especially after he received that lovely moment with Raffi (which, speaking of stunted emotional moments, that chat seems to have healed a whole heck of a lot of what ailed Raffi, another character who has been treated pretty poorly with bad character development in these last several episodes), Seven is back to being Seven (which accompanied another truncated emotional beat, with her rather quickly accepting that she lost the thing she thought she wanted only to realize she needed to be herself from the beginning of things), and Picard seems to be ready for his final showdown – and willing to wholly ignore the riddle presented to him. It’s just a weird place to leave things with only one episode left.
*Someone who understands the principles of how time travel changes impact the future will likely get more into this, but the decision to allow Jurati Queen to fly off and create a better, nicer Borg in the past means that EVERYTHING in Trek is bound to change moving forward, right? Like Picard won’t be Locutus, Seven likely wouldn’t have gotten assimilated (although she was again here so I guess that’s moot), Wolf 359 never happens, etc. Which means that they have effectively created a completely new timeline that no longer aligns with the classic Trek shows of the 90s.Voyager, TNG, DS9 are all moot now. Janeway didn’t have to fight off the Borg to get back to Earth. Picard never was assimilated. Sisko’s wife never died in the attack on Wolf 359. I’m genuinely flabbergasted that this was A. allowed and B. happened. I guess we’ll see what future exists when they return there – assuming Q doesn’t just retcon it all, which is looking more likely than ever – but considering the massive change to the future the team just allowed to happen, why are they still so concerned about Renee? The future has already been massively altered – and they all lost their guaranteed way home – so why do we still care so much about the Renee element?
One of the things I loved about the season so much in its initial episodes was that it seemed to be much more focused on putting character first and the flashes of plot and narrative hijinks second. Now, the balance has massively shifted as the writers inject more and more plot into a season of television that was doing just fine with the story it was trying to tell: Q sends Picard to a changed future in one last attempt to connect as he begins his own descent into death. When that was the focus – solve the riddle, save the girl, save the future – there was time for the characters to breathe and for us to journey deeper into their stories. But as additional plot points have been layered on – some successful, like the initial introduction of Jurati Queen and Soong, some much less, like the FBI agent (who has now disappeared?) – now the show is starting to strain under the weight of plot at the expense of character. What’s the goal now? Stop Soong from stopping the launch? Stop Q? Find Q? End this experience and get back to the future? I’m honestly not entirely sure. But we’re in the end game now and presumably something is going to be solved and righted in the coming episodes. I just wish the show was a bit more focused and able to let us understand what it’s trying to tell us.
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