Star Trek: Picard – Dominion Review

Oh god. Poor Tuvok. For some reason, until that reveal – and the rather graphic description of just what torture Tuvok was being forced to endure – the true danger of the Changeling infiltration hadn’t really hit me. Sure, they might (read: almost certainly will) try to blow up the Fleet at Frontier Day (along with anyone else there – and now that we’ve had yet another Janeway name drop, I think we can pretty much guarantee that Kate Mulgrew is going to be making an appearance before the series is through). Decades of action movies have set us up to be rather desensitized to attempts to destroy mass gatherings of people. It’s hard to really care about a bunch of people we don’t really know other than to wish that they emerge unscathed. But learning that a beloved character has been tortured to the point where he – a Vulcan, mind you – would find death to be a mercy? That puts the current threat posed by the Changelings in perspective. These aren’t the cerebral villains from Deep Space Nine who would kill as needed – since solids are below them – but rather a truly enraged, vicious foe who is willing to do whatever it takes to gain their revenge. Oh, and it looks like they aren’t even the real Big Bad this time around. There’s someone else, who appears to be particularly nasty, pulling Vadic’s strings.

As the first half of the season climax, “Dominion” offered a host of answers and brought us to the edge of the season’s largest reveal: What is Jack Crusher? But it also took us back a bit – and for fans of Deep Space Nine who were wary of Picard’s explanation of how Starfleet apparently magnanimously offered a cure for the Changeling disease last week, a touch of vindication – to remind us just how heinous Section 31 was in its creation of the virus that nearly killed all the Changelings. It turns out that the virus – which was created by Section 31 and given to Odo, who then spread it to the Female Changeling when he linked with her, thus setting off a chain reaction that nearly killed the entire race until Doctor Bashir concocted a cure which Odo later provided, against the wishes of Starfleet – wasn’t the worst thing Section 31 was doing. No, they were channeling Doctor Mengele and performing horrific experiments on their Changeling prisoners of war, in hopes of creating a perfect, untraceable weapon to be used as an assassin at will. Now, Section 31 has done some awful things in the course of Star Trek, but that sequence, watching the scientist experimenting with the Changelings while their screams played in the background? Well, that was about as horrific as Trek has ever gotten with that organization.

To create a great villain, you must create a level of sympathy between the villain and the audience. “Dominion” was the episode that completed that bond, from seeing Vadic’s fearful reaction when faced with the threat from her boss (I’m open to guesses on who that might be – Romulan? Cardassian? Someone within the Federation already? Who out there has a greater desire for revenge than the Changelings?) to hearing the truth about her creation, it’s nearly impossible to not have sympathy – or at least empathy – for Vadic’s situation. You can easily understand why she wants to enact her plan of revenge on Starfleet. And Picard’s “I didn’t know” did just what it was meant to – increased our feelings of anger at Starfleet, because after hearing a story like that, “I didn’t know” doesn’t cut it at all. Starfleet let Section 31 run around unchecked for years and you know what? They brought this particular attack on themselves by not taking control of their rogue agency when they had the chance. Sure, 31 appears to be on a tighter leash now, but that doesn’t undo the harm of the past. And boy, was there a hell of a lot of harm.

But outside of that stunning reveal of Starfleet’s inaction with regard to the treatment of the Changeling POWs, the episode also tried to grapple with a question that Deep Space Nine handled in perhaps its greatest episode, “In the Pale Moonlight”: How far is too far for a Starfleet officer to go in terms of stopping the enemy? This time, it was Beverly Crusher and Jean-Luc Picard – almost always a bastion of protocol and balance – debating if the creation of a new biological weapon would be justified in light of the actions taken by the Changelings. Which is a hell of a discussion to have, considering just who is having it. Now, in DS9, Captain Benjamin Sisko decided he could live with the actions he took to help convince the Romulans to enter the Dominion War on the side of the Federation. But something tells me that Picard might not be able to make that same choice – although we saw that Beverly might be ok with it. The reveal that there’s a particular isotope that can be isolated in the Changelings was a bit of a deus ex machina in that it means the series might not need to force its characters to make the hard choice in the end (which, on one hand, is disappointing as it could have been a hell of a debate to watch, but on the other, with only three episodes remaining, I fully understand that there’s more than enough story to get through), but still, I’m happy it was at least broached as a topic and that we got to see where at least two characters would fall on the issue. Science fiction has always been a means for writers to take issues from our current world and allow us to see how a future might approach them with the hindsight of our own failings. Big swings are a must from the genre, and this series has shown that Star Trek still has some swings left in it.

The only thing that didn’t work as well as it could have was the Lore of it all. While I’m always happy to see Brent Spiner get a chance to let loose, having Lore take over and sabotage the ship was, well, perhaps not the best use of the character. Yes, we needed Vadic and her goons to be able to commandeer the ship. But allowing that to happen only because Lore decided he wanted to ensure his own freedom meant that the story took some of the power away from Vadic as a villain. Plus, adding Lore into the mix as yet another potential roadblock for the Titan to overcome to save the day – especially at this late point in the game when the series has taken so much time to establish Vadic as our chief antagonist – makes the series a tad cluttered when we’re hitting a point where things should be starting to simplify. But in the grand scheme of things, it’s a minor quibble. And that sequence did give us the great moment of Geordi telling Data/Lore how much Data meant to him – a wonderful sequence for Levar Burton.

I’m excited to finally discover just who or what Jack Crusher is next week – whatever it is, it certainly looks like he’s not quite the human we all thought. And the reveal that Jean-Luc had something else wrong with him – or someone else within him? – rather than Irumodic Syndrome was also a blink and you miss it piece of information. So, what’s the deal with Jack and Jean-Luc? And will they be able to get in touch with anyone in Starfleet before it’s too late (you know that if Janeway isn’t taking Seven’s calls, things are dire)? I can’t wait to see what’s in store for us.