If there’s one clear theme in this final season of Picard, outside of the delivery of fan service by the truckload – done in such a way that it neither feels like it’s pandering nor like it’s simply checking a box, no small feat indeed – it’s family, both in the Fast and the Furious sense of the word (aka Found Family) and in the biological sense. And no episode has driven that point home more than “The Bounty,” which saw not only the complete reunification of the main crew of the USS Enterprise (well, in that all of our characters are now present and accounted for in a single episode, rather than all breathing the same air together in one place) but also saw a few parent-child relationships take center stage in truly meaningful ways over the course of the hour.
This week, we got what seems to be the full culmination of the Jean-Luc/Jack parent-child situation, as the duo (along with Beverly) discovered just what was wrong with Jack. It turns out it isn’t anything all that nefarious – he’s not a Changeling, he’s not from a Mirror Universe, he’s not a synthetic. Jean-Luc simply passed along his genetic predisposition for the dangerous and ultimately deadly Irumodic Syndrome, which has manifested itself in Jack’s brain. As you might recall from season one of Picard, this disease had ravaged Picard’s mind by that point in time and it was only him receiving a new, synthetic body that saved him from its effects. There’s no cure at this point, so poor Jack has to grapple with the fact that, unless he gets a similar reboot, he’s going to fall victim to its painful effects at some point. Hardly the stuff of father-son bonding, but the pair manage to eek out a brief conversation at the start of the episode before coming around to a better understanding of each other by episode’s end. I’m thrilled that the series has allowed the pair to reach some level of understanding prior to the ultimate climax of the season – while it was interesting to watch them spar and try to feel out their place in each other’s life, it doesn’t make for great television to draw it out over the full season when I suspect we’ll need them to be on good terms for a climactic twist to come (I mean, you can’t believe we’re getting out of this one without either Jean-Luc or Jack sacrificing themselves to save the other, right?). Sure, they haven’t solved all their interpersonal conflict and they aren’t professing their love for one another at this stage, but they’ve reached a détente that should carry them throughout the rest of the season, allowing other, more complex arcs to slot into place around them. Smart, sharp writing.
Our other major parent-child confrontation this week came from the return of Georgi La Forge, now the curator at the Fleet Museum – and rightfully wary at that thought of having the full Fleet on display for Frontier Day (it seems that even Commodore La Forge can’t get his complaints to be read and/or taken seriously, so Ro was absolutely right last week that there is someone or something of the Changeling variety acting as interference between high ranking members of Starfleet in the field and the major Admirals at Headquarters). After spending much of the season getting to know Geordi’s daughter Sidney, we finally get to understand her reticence to be compared to her father. It seems the pair have had a falling out over her desire to be a pilot and not an engineer (it seems that her sister Alandra – who is played by Levar Burton’s real-life daughter, Mica – opted to follow in dad’s footsteps). But in true father-daughter fashion, all it takes to get Geordi on board with helping Picard and the rest of the Titan out of a tough spot is the need to protect and help his little girl when she gets herself into a scrape she can’t quite get out of. I mean, stealing the cloak from the Bird of Prey was smart. Doing so when you have one of the greatest Starfleet engineers on board to help out? Now that was unintentional genius level planning there.*
*As soon as it became clear that the Titan wasn’t going to be able to outsmart the rest of the Fleet, my initial reaction was “Man, if only they could cloak…” Which turned out to be rather prescient as soon as The Bounty appeared. One of the best parts of this season is that the narrative arc makes sense. What could solve this issue the ship is facing? A cloak. Where could you get one? The Fleet Museum. How could you install it? Use Geordi. Each question leads to an answer that makes sense and isn’t out of left field. The storytelling is grounded in this reality. This is what good writing is. Taking what you have on hand, molding it around key character beats, and solving problems you put in the paths of those characters.
Outside of the key parent-child moments that led to the Titan gaining the upper hand in their quest to run from the compromised Fleet, we also got the reunion of the original, surviving Enterprise crew with the theft of the Data/Lore/Lal/B-4 synth (or, as I like to think of him, Brent Spiner’s chance to really let loose). I’m a gal who loves a good heist, and boy, was this a great double heist episode (with the cloak being the second item lifted from under Starfleet’s nose). Unlike most heists, we didn’t get a ton of time following the thieves as they made their way to find their prize (although that return of Moriarty was handled beautifully, including the callback – with a flashback, how young Spiner and Jonathan Frakes looked! – to Data needing Riker’s help to finish the tune Pop Goes the Weasel), but we did get the necessary big sacrifice at the last moment to ensure the heist could be completed. Losing Riker to Vadec was a blow – I’m starting to wonder if one of our major legacy characters won’t make it out of this alive, although I know Riker won’t be the sacrificial lamb in the end – but it also meant the return, in the flesh, of Troi, which is a great trade-off. If you want to raise the emotional stakes, put the love of Riker’s life in danger, in front of him. Then let’s see how willing he will be to betray Picard. It will be a hell of a showdown next week.
The idea of a starship crew as a family is one that has been around since the advent of Trek way back in The Original Series. After all, these co-workers live together, work together, spend months in the same place – or, in the case of Voyager, seven years traversing a hostile quadrant trying to return home. Seven’s speech about what Voyager meant to her – and what she has lost in terms of a found family now that everyone has been back for some time and has gone about their lives on their own – was touching. Seeing how close the Enterprise crew remains, despite decades apart in some cases (it’s been 11 years since Worf saw Picard, which is a long time!), helps to drive home that point. And watching how closely they work together, how moments after reuniting they manage to hit the same notes, to know one another on a level that most people could only have with their closest friends and relatives, well, that’s a testament to the deep bond these characters have forged over working so closely, for so long, with one another. And it’s a testament to the closeness of this acting troupe as well. You can feel the care, the respect, and the chemistry that still seeps into their performances. This whole season may have been concocted to provide fans a final chance to watch this great crew work together on one final adventure, but boy is it paying off in spades. I could not be more excited to see where this story is going to go – having Picard’s genetic material in the hands of the Changelings is very much not good! – but I also find myself sad at the prospect of saying goodbye to these friends, this television family, one more time.
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