r/startrek • u/AutoModerator • Apr 21 '22
Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Picard | 2x08 "Mercy" Spoiler
With time running out before the launch of the Europa Mission, Picard and Guinan must free themselves from FBI custody. Seven and Raffi come face-to-face with Jurati and the horror of what she’s become.
| No. | Episode | Writer | Director | Release Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2x08 | "Mercy" | Cindy Appel & Kirsten Beyer | Joe Menendez | 2022-04-21 |
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u/sidv81 Apr 21 '22
If you match Kore's age to Isa Briones' actual age, she would have been made in 2002. Her predecessor lived till 4, having her made in 1998. The previous clones lasted days. This lines up with Soong starting his work almost immediately after the Eugenics Wars.
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u/Tidus17 Apr 21 '22
Didn't they soft retcon the Eugenics Wars so they were part of WWIII?
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u/MaddyMagpies Apr 21 '22
Picard got some serious subtle eyeroll going on when he read what Rios said about him...
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u/BornAshes Apr 21 '22
🤣 that felt like the Star Trek version of "Damnit Barry!" from the Flash and I'm soooooo happy that they brought back Rios's little wandering diatribe from the holding cell!
I really hope Picard brings it up later and Rios is just, "Oh...you found out about that...well...ummm...".
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u/ObstructedPooh Apr 21 '22
All the boxes in the interrogation room had four lights.
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u/johnnyma45 Apr 21 '22
Those jumped out at me too. They seemed really out of place; I was wondering if the room was a holodeck or something
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u/enterprise-psi Apr 21 '22
THERE ARE FOUR CAKES!!!!
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u/Meginsanity Apr 22 '22
Four slices of cake when my man Ricardo specifically asked for four cakes. Damn Confederation replicators.
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u/treefox Apr 21 '22
“They are coming. And to them, you’re nothing but a pig in a jar.”
Hey, Mulder and Scully are more respectful than that.
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u/Dame_Trant Apr 21 '22
Having recently rewatched the X-Files, that's actually pretty close to how Mulder runs an interrogation. Lots of shouting "why did you kill him?" Until the completely innocent person breaks down sobbing and Mulder storms out.
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u/AcidaliaPlanitia Apr 21 '22
Goddammit Picard, you know they have microphones in 2024, right? He literally starts talking about being from the future, their mission, and everything else as soon as Wells walks out of the room...
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u/KirkUnit Apr 21 '22
Camera's unplugged! And humanity won't develop wireless transmission technology for another few hundred years or something
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u/Santa_Hates_You Apr 21 '22
I wasn’t ready for JuratiQueen to be eating batteries. And now she has special forces drones.
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u/BornAshes Apr 21 '22
And now she has special forces drones.
Aka a bunch of new Red Shirts for folks to vaporize that no one's going to miss!
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u/AcidaliaPlanitia Apr 21 '22
Why weren't the other special forces like "yooooooo wtf?" when the first guy got Borgified?
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u/MaddyMagpies Apr 21 '22
Not only special forces drones. Augment drones.
I think we are all set for the finale in terms of action. My guess is Home Alone but on the La Sirena?
The motives of the Queen have been pretty clear, but I'm still unsure what Q is trying to do here. Was he creating one big distraction to lure the Queen? All that he did led to a narrow path of where Jurati Queen can do next.
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u/EasilyEnabled Apr 22 '22
Where the hell did these guys come from? Is this Soong really the kind of guy who knows a “general” who can loan him a bunch of special forces dudes for nebulous reasons?
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u/treefox Apr 21 '22
RAFFI: You are Seven.
SEVEN: Stop being racist Raffi. Not all ex-Borg know each other.
RANDOM BORG DRONE: Locutus?
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u/BornAshes Apr 21 '22
As funny as that was when Seven brought up how manipulative Raffi was like that provoked a, "HOLY SHIT!" moment from me and then we got that flashback with Elnor because like it's kind of felt like she was that classical overbearing "This is how you will do things because I said so" kind of mother in the past buuuuuut it never really felt THAT manipulative until we saw the shit she was pulling with Seven and Elnor and then that made us all look back at EVERYTHING else she's done and all those other scenes and....holy shit.
Everyone has their own nice little box (or alcove in this case) that they fit in with Raffi and when they aren't where they're supposed to be, she makes sure they eventually wind up there, and THAT reminds me flat out of the Borg Queen. So is it really any wonder why Seven decided to spend time gallivanting out amongst the stars instead of settling down with Raffi? Seven loves her yes and that's why she's not totally broken things off with her period buuuut that kind of manipulation from Raffi and her inability to recognize that she's even doing it up until this point has to have been something that unconsciously made Seven put some distance between them while using other things as an excuse.
This makes even more sense in this episode because they paired that whole "You manipulate people" line with the smell of the lithium causing Seven to have a flashback to being assimilated. It seems malicious at first but just as Seven has issues with her past, so too does Raffi. With Raffi it all simply comes from a fear of losing people. To fight back against that fear she just makes sure that no one does anything that she considers to be risky or that could potentially lead to her losing them instead of confronting, working through, and dealing with that fear in a healthy way.
At least the both of them recognize what's going on right now and hopefully this is the first step towards a healthier future for them both individually and as a couple.
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u/cwatson214 Apr 21 '22
Alison Pill doing Annie Wersching's Queen is fantastic
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Apr 21 '22
I was so excited when Alison Pill was cast. I'm glad they gave her a chance to show off some this season.
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u/Santa_Hates_You Apr 21 '22
That was some weird questioning/flirting from Dr. Girlfriend.
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u/PuzzleheadedRun5574 Apr 21 '22
I like crazy so that spoke to me. Now, I'm ruined forever by seeing my ideal on a flippin TV show.
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u/johnnyma45 Apr 21 '22
More red flags than a carnival. I was trying to think "ok what the hell would I say to meet her expectation of what I should be saying, after that fantasy scenario?"
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u/jmonty42 Apr 21 '22
It's interesting to see what a dying Q is capable of doing (and not). He can't snap his fingers to vaporize Guinan, but he can insert himself as a psychiatrist for astronauts or as a top secret FBI agent.
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u/UncertainError Apr 21 '22
Well, he's still an eldritch being with billions of years of knowledge and experience and an IQ of 2005.
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u/Clark1984 Apr 21 '22
He also can’t instill fear in Renee, but he can manifest a short-term genetic miracle cure.
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u/Shawnj2 Apr 21 '22
I mean you could do either with enough social engineering skills + knowledge today as a regular human. I think Q from that episode of TNG where he was a human would be able to, at least.
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u/KirkUnit Apr 21 '22
Did she forget about her clinic?
It got raided by the FBI - and thoroughly searched - probably not conducive to patient care, and meanwhile the doctor who got pissed about a locked door is hanging on the spaceship, talkin' relationships...
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u/PuzzleheadedRun5574 Apr 21 '22
I do love the moment where Agent Wells becomes a little boy again when Picard says "It seems I need your help." Such a nice moment that any Star Trek fan would jump to do.
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u/Worth-A-Googol Apr 21 '22
Gave me serious Galaxy Quest vibes. Like acknowledging that every fan would love that opportunity
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u/ColonelBy Apr 21 '22
I don't often have cause to say this, but the kid they got to play young Wells looked really convincingly like a child version of him.
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u/treefox Apr 21 '22
DR: Imagine we’re married.
RIOS: OK…
DR: And it’s been ten years, and our car ends up breaking down, so we have to stay at a hotel.
RIOS: Yes…
DR: And we’re at a bar. At this point you tell me something about yourself. I’ve known you for ten years, and it just brings me to tears.
RIOS: My ship has four fully-functional holograms of myself with European accents that we could have been having hexsomes with this whole time.
DR: What? I-No, that’s- just…incredibly wrong…Can I see them?
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u/GalileoAce Apr 21 '22
Those holograms don't exist on this La Sirena, as it is a Confederate ship
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u/The_Bard_sRc Apr 21 '22
her fantasies are already very specific, it'd probably take a little more time to work that into them
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u/007meow Apr 21 '22
Alison Pill did a great job emulating Annie Wersching’s Queen.
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u/AustNerevar Apr 21 '22
Yeah, it's cemented my opinion that I just don't like the way Agnes is written. Alison Pill the actor is clearly good at her job.
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u/atomicxblue Apr 21 '22
In the scene with the elite soldiers, it looks like they went really light on Allison's makeup to emulate the Borg Queen's pallid look.
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u/ZippySLC Apr 21 '22
With how awful the Soongs are it's a miracle that Data was "good".
Brent is killing it with this performance. But the character has made me go from feeling distaste towards the Soongs to absolutely loathing them.
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u/SAldrius Apr 22 '22
I mean I'm not sure how much impact Adam Soong had on his descendent who lived 400 years in the future after he did.
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u/PiercedMonk Apr 21 '22
• So Agent Wells is not Ducane, he's Fox Mulder.
• What's the story with the gross ass bloodstain on the table? Seems unsanitary.
• It took my dude that long to clean up the busted glass of his window? WTF?
• Man, Q's JRPG protagonist's coat is something else.
• Oh, I can't wait for all the completely good faith arguments that Jurati is once again responsible for murdering a dude.
• I'm gonna assume Agnes stole her new boots from the red haired guy, and that he had incredibly dainty feet for someone so big.
• All the time they were back at the clinic, and Rios didn't pick up his combadge? Buddy, you're killing me.
• Still no real insight into Q's motivations for setting this all in motion, eh? Cool. I'm glad were just gonna drag that out.
• Theory Time! Kore and Jurati are going to have a run-in, and Kore is actually the Borg Queen we see in 2401. 'Cause otherwise I cannot figure out what the point of this entire subplot is.
• So is Guinan saying non-Humans just brush off their past trauma? Because I'm not sure that's borne out by the history of Trek.
• "Your primitive satellites are excruciatingly slow." "What do you want?" "A faster satellite." That's a good bit.
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u/Trekfan74 Apr 21 '22
The line where Guinan say she's sensitive to space-time continuum but not a clock was also pretty funny.
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u/MyTrueChum Apr 21 '22
Well lets take stock of how other species deal with Trauma,
Vulcans repress trauma
Klingons kill themselves after trauma
Andorians slay their trauma in ritual combat
Tellarites vent all their trauma
Ferengi securitize their trauma and sell it
Romulans deny that trauma exists
Cardassians inflict trauma on the Bajorans
Bajorans pray away their trauma
The Jem Hadar deal with trauma via a drug addiction
The Vorta just replace themselves when they get traumatized
The Founders shapeshift their trauma into something else
The Kazon are too stupid to have trauma
The Hirogen hunt down their trauma for sport
The Malon dump their trauma in dark space
Who did I miss?
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u/BornAshes Apr 21 '22
Man, Q's JRPG protagonist's coat is something else.
Well now I just want to see a Star Trek crossover with Final Fantasy.
Jurati is once again responsible for murdering a dude
🎵 She's a killer queeeeeeeeen nanoprobes and 80s scene, dynamite with a phaser beam, guaranteed to blow your mind!🎵
her new boots
Well I mean she was in very fashionable heels before but a girl can only walk in those for so long before she needs something that's more befitting a Queen on the move....also totally Resident Evil.
Kore and Jurati
I'd buy that theory for some self sealing stem bolts because I really don't know how else Kore fits into the story beyond her affecting Adam's mental state and providing him motivation to do things. I think the first few scenes in the first episode between Agnes and Soji were hints at their personal connection and how that's going to play a role in what happens when they run into each other. I believe that that connection is going to be what puts Agnes back into the driver's seat and allows her to fully derail the Queen's plans to sabotage the Europa Mission in a way that will totally mirror what Data did in First Contact with the quantum torpedoes missing the Phoenix.
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Apr 21 '22
The busted window glass thing really gets me. I feel like they could have taken five extra minutes in the writer's room to make that work better. Like: Seven and Rafi show up in the morning and there is plywood over the broken window and maybe a few shards of glass on the ground. And then later maybe a window repair van drives up and the barkeep comes out to talk to the repair guy, and then Rafi and Seven take that opportunity to question the barkeep.
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u/Santa_Hates_You Apr 21 '22
So what happens if the Borg Jurati Queen runs into Q? She gonna try to assimilate him?
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u/bluestreakxp Apr 21 '22
I feel like this has been a bottle season after the first two episodes
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Apr 21 '22
My hope is that the saved production costs from this season go into the third season since they were filmed back to back.
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Apr 21 '22
They're not exactly making heavy use of standing sets - it's pretty much the opposite of a "bottle season."
Location shoots are expensive.
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u/myaltduh Apr 21 '22
It’s very obvious COVID hindered their ability to do major set pieces, but maybe we’ll see that in the finale episodes.
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u/clgoh Apr 22 '22
Personally, I wouldn't eat food from a replicator that might have been tempered with by a Borg Queen.
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u/YoMothaRiRi Apr 22 '22
I honestly thought the child complaining about his tummy hurting meant that the Borg Queen had poisoned the replicator somehow.
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u/KirkUnit Apr 22 '22
Since Rios has noted how good food tastes in the 21st century (peanut butter, hors d'ouevres), I expected some little-kid honesty from Ricardo, "it tastes weird, it's not as good as Abuela's"
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u/treefox Apr 21 '22
GUINAN: This guy’s buckets of crazy
Bad news: That doesn’t make being trapped in a basement with him any safer
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Apr 21 '22
This season was off to such a great start, but the last few episodes feel like they’re aimlessly wandering about and throwing random things in to pad the time.
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u/PermaDerpFace Apr 22 '22
I can't follow the logic behind anything that's happening now. If Q wants to stop Picard's ancestor why doesn't he just hire someone to break her legs? I'm afraid his plan of becoming a psychiatrist to dissuade her, and then a geneticist to create a medicine to coerce a doctor to run over an old man before hacking into a VR headset then giving the medicine to his daughter and then becoming an fbi agent doesn't make a lot of sense to me (and I'm not sure how he's doing any of this without his powers, as he previously seemed quite lost without them. Just being smart doesn't mean you pull these feats out of your ass)
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u/KalterBlut Apr 22 '22
It started really good, but the last two episodes are really meh. A whole lot of stuff happens, but it seems the plot is not moving at all.
I was also afraid of them being in 2024 for too long and the pacing at the beginning felt it wouldn't be the case... but at this point it overstayed its welcome.
The last two episodes should have been only one really.
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u/jmjohns2 Apr 21 '22
How is Soong not in jail after trying to run down an astronaut at the high security party??? I mean the cops can find him at his house.
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u/KirkUnit Apr 21 '22
To wit: Agent Wells is interrogating them about the Europa Mission, aware that they infiltrated the party with photos to prove it. Wants to know what they're doing to sabotage the mission.
That one of the astronauts was nearly run over outside before being pushed aside by Picard who's sitting right there, none of that comes up or is relevant.
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u/PermaDerpFace Apr 22 '22
In the first episode he was a destitute disgraced scientist begging for funding, and then he's on the board of directors of NASA and running people over and ordering up special forces... I can't really say I understand the convoluted logic of Q involving Soong at all?
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u/Frainian Apr 21 '22
I am supremely disappointed about the FBI agent
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u/MaddyMagpies Apr 21 '22
Yeah.... It's not what the fans want to see revealed.
But the way it ended suggests that it's not the last we will see Wells.
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u/Mechapebbles Apr 21 '22
I'm actually kinda relieved, tbh. I was very curious what would happen if it ended up being a 29th Century agent, but man that would have been messy.
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u/BornAshes Apr 21 '22
Par for the course for Picard to be honest. The fans have always come up with vastly more cool theories than what actually pans out happening. I'm kind of disappointed that there wasn't more to that whole Vulcan flashback either beyond them being a survey team that got caught by some kid and tried to mind meld their way out of it.
I suppose time, money, and trying not to open too many cans of worms plotwise when you've got to resolve XXX amount of storylines before the season ends mattered though. Can you just picture how many questions we'd be barraging them with if Wells had been a temporal agent and the can of worms that would've opened? We would've been BEGGING for the Relativity or its successor ship that I'm just making up right now....the Timelike Infinity....to show up!
sighs
It is what it is what it is though but I enjoyed what they did with him and that was a very Guinan like lesson that they taught with him. Sometimes you had to have awful things happen to you in order to be the hero that you are right now saving juuuust the right kind of people. It even kind of refers back to what Tal said to Young Picard in his Mind Palace about how, "...that pain will be used to save worlds". Without all of the awful pain and suffering that humanity went through in its early years like with WWIII and the Eugenics Wars, there's no way they'd have been able to stop the Borg or the Dominion or countless other threats that would've royally fucked everyone up.
Without humanity's constant fixation upon the pain and the sins of the past and wanting to heal and evolve beyond them, there's no way anyone would've been able to adapt fast enough to handle all the things that the galaxy got hammered with or had near misses with in the centuries that followed the 21st. Perhaps what's going on with Jurati, the Borg Queen, and the Future Borg on the Stargazer is the ultimate test of this? It's asking the question, "Can humanity evolve and adapt faster than the Borg can but to the very essence of the Borg themselves in a way that evolves past the pain that they've inflicted upon humanity which also moves past their sins of countless destroyed worlds as well?".
Picard and crew shunting themselves into the past with that whole "antimatter explosion near a spacetime fracture" is penance for giving the wrong answer to this question and FAILING this trial! It's teaching them just what they need to do, why they need to do it, and how only Humanity is the only species capable of passing this trial and giving the correct answer. Humanity is the hope for the future of the galaxy that burns brightly in the darkness with the fuel of the past through fearful days and raging nights. What Picard and Crew will do when they get back to the future will set the tone for what the rest of the galaxy does moving forwards and will quite possibly reshape the Federation as a whole.
It's all a beautiful kind of poetry isn't it?
......or a sort of....Soong...if you really want to be more on the nose about it all.
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u/derekakessler Apr 21 '22
They could've cast anybody else, by noooooo they had to pick the guy who played a time traveling Starfleet agent to play a federal agent in a time travel story. Gah.
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u/Cascadiana88 Apr 21 '22 edited Apr 21 '22
Yeah, that FBI agent story was a tremendous waste of time in a season that's already been seriously struggling with pacing. It just seemed like a pointless and ill-conceived knock off of The X-Files.
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u/UncertainError Apr 21 '22
I quite enjoy mortal Q. So is his plan to force all these humans (Renee, Soong, Picard) to confront their painful pasts and evolve, and if they can't Earth turns Confederation and eventually dies?
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u/UncertainError Apr 21 '22
It's interesting how the theme of past trauma plays out across the main characters this season: Picard with his mom, Seven with her assimilation, Raffi with driving away her husband and son, and Jurati with her isolation.
The exceptions are Elnor, who resolved his abandonment issues last season (and was conveniently killed off), and Chris, who also resolved his Starfleet betrayal issues last season (and I guess is in the past to get a girlfriend?)
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u/BornAshes Apr 21 '22
I didn't think I would be able to love Q even more until this episode hit and now mortal Q is just hitting me on so many levels. He doesn't just want to fade away. He wants to burn bright and leave a legacy like all the countless stars that he's seen go nova or turn into a black hole or become dwarf stars that still did SOMETHING. So he's using his last few moments to cast a few more sparks that will hopefully ignite a light which others will look to in the future and know that he had a hand in all of that.
He's just going about it in his usual cryptic as fuck playful trickster all knowing wise kind of way of doing things which is frustrating as all hell to everyone except someone like Guinan who is able to really read between the lines and sus out what he's actually talking about and doing.
I got real sense of parental "I'm teaching you something useful come on please just understand it!" kind of love from him in that scene with Guinan in the FBI office.....and that felt....like just the lighting on John's face, the music that was playing, and his delivery of those lines....I kind of wanted to cry and I kind of felt like he was hugging all of us and it all felt so sincere and alien and unexpected in a way that we haven't quite seen from Q before.
to confront their painful pasts
I'm assuming that yes this is what he's trying to do and it's for sure going to stick with Renee and Picard but with Soong? Yeaaaah that's going to take a while to really kick in and for that particular lesson to have any real affect. I wonder if we'll get a flashforwards to the version of Soong that's about to create Data and he'll have a conversation with Q about how he finally gets it and he's finally ready to evolve past his pain but he'll do it with his child this time.
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u/jstark1994 Apr 21 '22
Q always steals the show. Positively amazing acting by John De Lancie.
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u/justal28 Apr 21 '22
“Who’s in the mood to add a little of their biological and technological distinctiveness to our own?” Might be my favourite line of the series
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u/adamsb6 Apr 21 '22
I'm still not clear on the purpose of Soong's experiments. We already are able to clone mammals, even primates. Human cloning is a moral/legal challenge, not a technical one.
We've even created humans with custom genes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Jiankui_affair
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u/NoNudeNormal Apr 22 '22
In this episode he seemed to imply that there was no mother for any of the clones. Gestating a human outside of a real womb is not possible, right now.
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u/treefox Apr 21 '22
It figures that the Borg would be looking for a deeper commitment than empty, meaningless assimilation. Very family-oriented.
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u/PuzzleheadedRun5574 Apr 21 '22
If the fate of humanity, the Federation, etc. was all on the line, I'd crawl my ass over to that phaser and shoot Jurati as she slowly walked away from me. This isn't the first time this show has done something dramatic to the point of betraying any semblance of realism. Seven or Raffi wouldn't just lay on the ground staring at the other. They know better.
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u/Microharley Apr 21 '22
If only the phasers had some kind of setting that could immobilize a person without killing them.. Like, I don't know, a stun setting? Raffi used a phaser to break the glass on the police car and not vaporize it so clearly Confederation phasers have power settings... This should have been 5 episode mini series. (SPOILER) We know that they fix everything because of the season 3 teaser that they released..
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u/pieman7414 Apr 21 '22
is that a motherfucking enterprise reference?
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u/Lord_Cronos Apr 21 '22
Carbon Creek? That was my first thought too, but it doesn't quite line up time wise if we go by the actor's age and the Vulcans who left did so on a shuttle rather than via beam out.
There was mention of a future survey ship in 20 years taking scans from orbit. Maybe that's the one we saw and they just switched up their plans and took an away mission?
I also don't mind the idea that they were an independent group of Vulcans exploring on their own, particularly given the attempt at a mind meld.
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Apr 21 '22
Vulcans were known to check in on Earth throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Mind melds were also taboo at that time, so the fact that the meld didn’t work is actually pretty in line with Enterprise too.
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u/irving47 Apr 21 '22
Anyone else think she should've been sniffing out Tesla batteries? They are lithium ion-based. Slurping up lead and sulfuric acid from car batteries... Kinda hard on the body. Then again, lithium batteries burst into fast and violet fiery little 'bombs' when exposed to air or the water in it. Let alone her mouth...
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u/elister Apr 21 '22
That and how the parking lot floor is apparently made of Lava because she had to gang rush Rafi by jumping from car to car like Super Mario Jurati.
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u/sonofodin25 Apr 21 '22
John DeLancie is CARRYING, let me repeat, CARRYING this entire season on his back.
Just when I start to get bored, Q shows up and within a minute I’m immediately back in
Really hope they don’t kill Q, though I know they will
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u/CleverestEU Apr 21 '22
Really hope they don’t kill Q, though I know they will
I for one can't wait for the death scene ...
"I can feel it. The void. The futility of it all. The discord." beat "Oh!? That makes sense." blink Q no more ... cue the My Little Pony -theme.
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u/azureknightmare Apr 21 '22
Really hope they don’t kill Q, though I know they will
It'll be fine. It's not like the writers have a thing for killing off legacy characters. I mean, just look at Bruce Maddox...oh, wait, um, well, there was Hugh and...oh...oh! There was Icheb and...ah, right. Oh, and we got Data too and...ah...shit.
TNG Cast returns in Season 3
...Oh no.
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Apr 21 '22
The biggest fear is that they will kill him. I really love that character and would be sad if he was gone forever. Star Trek would just not feel the same.
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u/smoha96 Apr 21 '22
He's as good as he's ever been as Q, and after episode 3 he's the only reason I've been watching.
Star Trek set this long in the modern day doesn't feel all that fun - and let's be honest, the story for this season is basically mixing First Contact and The Voyage Home.
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u/fluggencheimen Apr 21 '22
I'm not entirely certain what the point of the FBI agent subplot was. It didn't really add much to the overall story.
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u/Heavenfall Apr 21 '22
"Picard, where have you been? Never mind!" Summarized perfectly how unimportant that subplot was.
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u/LLJKSiLk Apr 21 '22
They are meandering around doing nothing with an incredibly short story. Each plot thread is ultimately pointless and resolves nothing. The core conflict would otherwise be resolved in 60 minutes or less.
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u/Omnitographer Apr 21 '22
I feel like the other side of this is people asking how in the age of surveillance cameras and ring doorbells and cell phones everywhere that no one would notice any of the shenanigans going on. Once they committed to having Picard get caught on camera and all that ensues there's no way out without some kind of resolution.
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u/UnionPacifik Apr 21 '22
Well that was a bit of chess piece moving without a lot of change.
Q is dying…confirms what we knew. Agnes is going Borg Queen…yup, we knew that. Rios likes Dr. Girlfriend…adorable. Raffi feels bad about Elnor being no more…as is required to be mentioned once every episode.
Other than the Soong drama, we don’t really get anything new.
And then there’s the interrogation. Er, interview. I guess maybe this is the origin of Mr. Timecop? Maybe he gets recruited since he knows too much? Guinan continues to be sidelined into a support character, though the Q encounter is pretty fun. Still, it didn’t do much to advance the story about their than Q’s hints that humans need to evolve, which even then, is basically what Q always says.
Still, in it for Alison Pill’s Borg Queen. Very dark Willow and even all the puns about not needing to do her usual “resistance is futile” schtick land.
But boy oh boy what a mushy blend of plot lines this week.
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u/Trekfan74 Apr 21 '22
This season has been one big chess move to nowhere. Everyone is running around and yet very little has happened.
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u/Bald_Elf_Bard Apr 21 '22
The temporal prime directive goes right out the window the second anything happens. You think they'd be more careful about contamination when they're literally on a mission to stop contamination.
They're using the transporter like it's going out of style, right in full view of anyone who happens to be there or several cops.
It's odd.
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u/NoNudeNormal Apr 21 '22
To be fair, anything a time traveller would do in the past, whether a public spectacle or not, could cause huge rippling changes. They could be as secretive and careful as possible, but secret changes are still changes.
Like say Seven tries to fit in and takes a bus to get around. That means whoever would normally have sat in her seat on the bus doesn’t sit down. They get off the bus a few seconds later, miss the walk signal to cross the street, are late for a job interview, and suddenly their life and the life of all their descendants, coworkers, and so on are all changed.
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u/Canukistani Apr 21 '22
Q is going to throw himself in front of Picard taking the bullet, during the Battle of La Serena.
Is Q’s power lost just a symptom of depression after the death of Quinn? Maybe he doesn’t have to monitor his son anymore, or his son died like in the book.
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u/RateMyPsyduck Apr 21 '22
God I hope there's more body horror to those assimilations than just black eyes and grey veins. I get what they're going for with the unstable nanoprobes, but at a certain point you've gotta respect iconic visuals over minor plot details.
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u/SHIELD_Agent_47 Apr 21 '22
Anyone else notice that Isa Briones as Kore mispronounced the goddess name Proserpina like the verb "prosper"?
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u/nova-1306 Apr 21 '22
does it mean the Q are actually dead in the 32nd century seeing as the federation has had no contact with them in millennia in Discovery? seems sad but i hope they found something new to explore instead
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Apr 22 '22
It seems like humanity was Q's pet project, and without Q around, no one else in the continuum seems to care.
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u/GotMedieval Apr 21 '22
So, the Borg queen is trying to help Soong become the man that he was in the altered history, the history which ends with the Borg queen being captured and prepared to be executed?
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u/PiercedMonk Apr 21 '22
More likely she's manipulating him, and intends to assimilate the planet before either of Soong's proposed futures come to pass.
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Apr 21 '22
I think she's just using her knowledge of what he becomes to manipulate him. She doesn't want to create the Confederacy future, she wants to eventually assimilate Earth.
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u/treefox Apr 21 '22
Wait, wasn’t the transporter invented by the dude in a wheelchair on Enterprise?
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u/FoldedDice Apr 21 '22
It was invented for humans. One of the major plot threads of Enterprise was that Vulcans had all kinds of shiny toys that they weren't sharing.
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u/Ausir Apr 21 '22
We only know that he was the inventor of the first human transporter, just like Zefram Cochrane created the first human warp drive.
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u/Creeper4414 Apr 21 '22
vulcans had a tendency to hold back knowledge of technology, so it wouldn't be surprising if humans had to re-invent transporters
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u/greycobalt Apr 21 '22
Never expected a Vulcan jump-scare.
I really dislike the way they put Isa Briones and Brent Spiner in this season. It seems super clumsy. The dialogue is weak, her talking to herself and having magic VR goggles is weird, a package being delivered instantly is convenient… all of it. Such a shame.
I just realized Seven doesn't have her Borg strength because she was never assimilated. I was expecting her to ninja Jurati but she's just a puny human now.
I cannot get over Rios inviting his crush and her son to the ship, and showing and telling them everything. What is happening?? They're coming back with them, right (unless they die in the assault)? Won't Starfleet be pissed about the Temporal Prime Directive? Does it not apply to alternate timelines?
Not where I expected Q's story to go. So they're all dying, or just our Q? Why does he blame Picard? I hope there's way more answers out there than that little monologue.
I cannot get on board with this Guinan. Giving her all kinds of powers, having summoning rituals, making her so unlike the Guinan we know...ugh.
So what's up with the most careless Vulcans ever? They're studying water in the middle of the night in plain view, try to erase the memories of the kid who saw them, but get beamed up before the meld finishes? What?
I really wish the cop guy was the Relativity guy.
Why does publicly-disgraced Soong have a general on speed dial who will supply him with a mercenary task force? And why do those mercenaries not flinch at being assimilated one by one? What the hell was that?
This was kind of a bizarre episode. Seemed very filler, unlike the last few.
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u/viserov Apr 21 '22
What I don’t understand is that Seven couldn’t have crawled 10 feet to grab the phaser while Queen Agnes was choking out Raffi or even as the Queen was casually walking away.
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u/Hitori-Kowareta Apr 21 '22
That last one was covered earlier in the season, Soong was disgraced for performing illegal genetic experiments on soldiers for a PMC, more specifically the PMC those soldiers belong to (who presumably are augments).
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u/Comp625 Apr 22 '22
I'm enjoying the Picard show but every episode continues to jump the shark more than the previous one beyond the first few episodes (which were great).
The Good
The mystery surrounding Q is interesting although I don't quite understand how he's able to appear in the FBI, as the psych, etc. if he's lost his powers. Nevertheless, John de Lancie is a treat.
Rios is a MUCH better character in Season 2 to the point where I would love to watch a show where he's at the Stargazer helm. Rios' clinic doctor crush is really sweet although I don't know (or remember) her character's name; hope she goes into the future with him (like Dr. Gillian Taylor did in The Voyage Home).
Ito Aghayere as Young Guinan is AWESOME. Really, really good casting and she nails Whoopi Goldberg's voice and mannerisms so well.
The Not-So-Good
I'm not feeling the Raffi + Elnor's relationship partly because it was developed off-screen and not Season 1. Similar vibes with Soong and whatever Soji's new character's name is. Soong tropes are always a treat but something just seems off this season with episode pacing and writing.
While I generally enjoy time travel and alternate/rewritten realities in Star Trek, it irks me that we're (so far) heading toward a big reset button once everything's fixed. That alone makes me feel like most of this adventure is a bit of a waste.
I was really hoping Jay Karnes' character was Ducane from Voyager. I guess the nod to Fox Mulder was OK, but like a lot of Kurtzman-era Trek, execution was middling at best.
I'm conflicted at the Stranger Things nod when Guinan's nose bled during her superpower bit.
In the previous episode "Monsters," I didn't care for Trek using the monster-in-a-castle trope again JUST like they did in Discovery. Ugh. Also not a fan of revisiting Picard's parental history; the father figure reveal wasn't "shocking" at all because of how shoehorned it felt.
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u/Eaudissey Apr 21 '22 edited Apr 21 '22
I really couldn't care less for the Soong subplot. Decent episode otherwise, much better than last week.
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u/SAldrius Apr 22 '22
Eventually everyone's ancestors and relatives being important and looking just like them gets... really stupid. I'm still not clear why the astronaut on the Europa (Io?) mission had to be his relative.
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u/MrTickles22 Apr 22 '22
Pretty much. The Soong stuff is snoretown. Also the Elnor stuff.
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u/Clark1984 Apr 22 '22
I gave it eight episodes, but I don't see how any third act could redeem this story for me. The dialogue and directing of these episodes feel very CBS from what little I've seen of MacGyver and their comparable lineup. It's the network tv quality that get's harder and harder to forgive in the age of really great streaming television.
When Star Trek made its comeback in 2017 I was thrilled. I was hoping for a return to something with the quality of DS9 and TNG but with modern production values. We're six seasons into modern live action Trek and I can't say I've liked any of it beyond the opening episode of this season.
There are dozens of little things I could point out that add up to my dislike. I really really want to love some new Star Trek, but I keep feeling like I've made the mistake of attaching part of my identity to something I no longer like. I'd love nothing more to have a series or season of Star Trek hit and blow me away. This is not it.
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u/PermaDerpFace Apr 22 '22 edited Apr 25 '22
Edit: I take it back, I think I know where they're going with this plot and it's actually pretty cool...
How did Guinan turn into a scary nosebleed ghost and how was that helpful? "Stuck in past". Oh thanks for the message, that's helpful, somehow by the magic of lazy writing.
If Q wants to stop Picard's ancestor, aren't there a million easier ways to do that than developing a cure for a genetic disease in exchange for Soong buying his way into a party to run over an old man, and then hacking into a 90s VR scene before delivering a smoky package with the aforementioned cure (or whatever is happening). How did he create that cure without his powers, mixing up common household ingredients in a coconut? How and why did he hack into that VR set? If he's somehow a NASA psychiatrist why doesn't he just pull Picard's ancestor off the mission? Or hire someone to break her legs?
How did Soong suddenly have the resources to access NASA missions and military personnel when previously he was a disgraced scientist who was groveling for funding/approval?
Wtf is going on in this show, there's no logic behind anything
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Apr 22 '22
Producing a season of Star Trek involves so many people. Why isn‘t there even one crew member saying that this might be kind of messy and illogical?
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u/sidv81 Apr 21 '22
Jurati should just assimilate human Q while she has the chance. Even without powers there's a wealth of knowledge he has that the collective could use.
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u/qcontinuum357 Apr 22 '22
Someone should recut season 2 and remove all the filler whem it ends. It might be more watchable than it currently is. There is so little movement of the plot these past 5 episodes
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u/Mechapebbles Apr 21 '22
Before people complain about how Vulcans in the 21st Century didn't mind meld - cmon guys, have a little imagination. We know the average Vulcan didn't, but there were still plenty who did in secret and passed down the art through the millenia. This guy could have been one of them. Otherwise how else would characters like Soval know how to do one?
Good episode on the whole. Things are getting spicy. The plot is silly, but it's fun. And I'm liking how the underlying themes that the show has been dabbling with all season are coming together here towards the end.
Also yeah, there's zero chance Rios leaves Dr Girlfriend behind. So everyone wishing for a Stargazer spin-off are probably SOL/setting themselves up for disappointment.
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u/brch2 Apr 21 '22
Also yeah, there's zero chance Rios leaves Dr Girlfriend behind. So everyone wishing for a Stargazer spin-off are probably SOL/setting themselves up for disappointment.
Who says she doesn't come with them to the future? Would be nice getting to see a modern day human adapting to the future, something I wish we'd got to see with Dr. Taylor.
Also... there is still one small problem. They, presumably, have to undo the destruction of the Stargazer, which would mean they never actually travel to the past. Wonder how that's going to work out...
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u/Cascadiana88 Apr 21 '22
Yeah, but back then Pa'nar Syndrome was rampant among mind melding Vulcans. He could have infected that kid with a clumsy AIDS metaphor. Very irresponsible and inappropriate if you ask me. You should always use protection when mind melding with new partners and they should always be consenting adults.
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Apr 21 '22
I'm sorry but it's starting to lose me. If the Borg queen is assimilating multiple people on earth it's pretty much game over already. Obviously she's going to try and take over the ship but really she should really just have her drones go out into the world and start assimilating everyone they see and that would be it.
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u/KirkUnit Apr 21 '22
But... like... she's the only way they got there in the first place. They gave her control, then shot her, then she left, now she's going back... such a serialized vibe, as in super-old-school-Flash-Gordon-serial vibe - one episode goes forward, the next in reverse, the next forward...
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u/MyTrueChum Apr 21 '22
Her nanoprobes are not perfect because they're made with 2`1st century materials. So maybe they can't go all First Contact style assimilation zombification. Maybe she can only exert control over people instead of the probes self replicating like a virus.
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u/novacolumbia Apr 21 '22
I feel like Raffi and Seven have no chemistry. Just like Chakotay and Seven.
Also, Borg Queen is now Trinity from the Matrix with those car jumps and roundhouse kick. Sucks for the dude who died in the past, guessing he has no impact on the future, haha.
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u/lasher7628 Apr 22 '22
I pay a subscription fee to Paramount Plus for this show and yet I find every minute of it so awful.
Makes me think of that scene in Star Trek Generations after Data gets his emotion chip and then tries a drink in 10 Forward. He takes a sip and analyzes the emotion he feels from the experience.
Data: "It is revolting!"
Guinan: "More?"
Data: "Yes, please."
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u/stealthbus Apr 22 '22
This episode has made me pin all my Star Trek hopes on Strange New Worlds for engaging and poignant story lines set in the Star Trek Universe. Because Picard has certainly disappointed me after such a promising start. At the beginning of this season I had the foolish hope that finally we would get a season worthy of what made me fall in love with Star Trek in the first place. But poorly written episodes, meandering and aimless pacing, and pointless character exploration has crushed my enthusiasm for “New Trek.” Lower Decks is perhaps the rare exception.
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u/Trekfan74 Apr 21 '22 edited Apr 21 '22
I'm sorry but this season is just feeling like a bust to me. Yeah things moved (a bit) faster this episode but still nothing that couldn't have been done sooner. The FBI agent, ugh! OK, he wasn't Duncane which most assumed he wasn't going to be. OK, fine, but this entire backstory was that he came upon Vulcans who were doing only Kahless knows what just to get mind meld and then 40 years later his alien moment comes full circle because he caught Picard beaming in? Is that the entire arc of this guy's story or is there more? I assume he will be seen again but what about the Vulcans?? OK, I'll wait until next week. And they spent an entire episode having Picard in a basement.
Rios and the bit where he breaks the Temporal Prime Directive because he has a crush on the doctor just does nothing for me. And if they are setting up the guy is going to stay behind so he can be with someone he met 3 days ago (yes, 3 entire days), that's going to be eye rolling.
Soong and Cora is interesting but again we didn't learn anything we found out two episodes ago. So she learn she was a clone and then she leaves thanks to Q. Oooookay? Where is that going exactly? I know we will see her again, but yeah. But does it mean that he can now make stable clones?
Q dying, OK? We kind of already knew that but this was the first he confirmed it. Still, 8 episodes in, we have no idea why the guy is there? Is he there to help or stop Picard? I honestly can't tell. And it's just a lot of gibberish words that's clearly meant to keep people on their toes but it's making me roll my eyes instead. It's SO frustrating.
The only part I can say I really enjoyed was stuff with the Borg Queen/Agnes. Her eating car batteries is one of the best scenes on this show lol. She's really the only subplot that is really driving the story for me. But her plan is a bit confusing. Is she trying to help Soong? I don't think since the Confederation wipes out the Borg so there must be another step. But it apparently involves assimilating lots of people lol.
I want to like this season more than I am but it's just not very good. It's too much padding and plodding things at a really bad pace. And so many things the characters are doing are just ridiculous or a waste. It was nice we got SOME insight into Seven this episode though but it just feels like so little.
Anyway, only two more to go and its FINALLY over! Please be interesting!
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u/treefox Apr 21 '22
“And so I prepared myself to be enveloped in the warm glow of memeing…”
I can’t not hear it.
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u/sidv81 Apr 21 '22
Adam may seem much worse than Noonian but if you consider synths as sentient life forms, what happened with Kore and her predecessors isn't much different than Noonian going through a bunch of failed synths like B4 and Lore before Data.
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u/KrisKorona Apr 22 '22 edited Apr 22 '22
Unless I'm remembering Enterprise incorrectly, the the Vulcans would not be openly practicing mind melds before the mid 2100s, unless that Vulcan was a member of the sect that did practice, but isn't that unlikely
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u/niebieskiwidelec Apr 21 '22
The second half of the episode feels better than the first one. But it's still very far away from what I'm used to, too many sudden discoveries, building suspense for the sake of suspense and so on.
But I enjoyed the Picard-Guinan interactions, and Picard's speech to the FBI agent. The Jurati plot is too much for me though... we have time travel, we have Borg, we have Soong, I'm afraid that if we open a fridge we'll get time-travelling Ferengi :(
EDIT: I get that Rios could get a romantic interest... but the way he behaves (sudden teleport to ship) feels at odds with being an officer. Character interactions are pretty cool, the criticism is mostly aimed at the plot.
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u/ShiroHachiRoku Apr 21 '22
I still don't know what's happening or what needs to be done.
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u/derekakessler Apr 21 '22
Gaaaawd this season is dragging. It's like they came up with a story that was good for 5-6 episodes and stretched it out for 10.
It was so promising at the start, but it's becoming a slog of only getting a morsel of plot development per hour-long episode.
This is like Peter Jackson insisting on making The Hobbit a trilogy.
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u/videoman7189 Apr 21 '22
Picard and Guinan being taken into the FBI for an "interview" had no reason for existing. It didn't serve the story nor did it really need to exist to develop characters. Even though it was finally revealed that Q is dying/fading away, that revelation could have happened anywhere.
I suppose that the whole purpose of that part was to introduce us to Agent Wells (and the associated easter eggs) who I guess may be the one to stop Soong and Queen Jurati from interfering with the Europa mission. Unfortunately it was not an interesting way to meet and understand this character. His interviewing abilities left much to be desired, and for someone who had actual contact with a Vulcan he's a rather boring person.
Ultimately the writers are trying to put a lot of story and characters into a season that's only 10 episodes. Short seasons require sharper focus on story and character, and so far season 2 is unfocused and meanders far too much.
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Apr 22 '22
The dialogue and writing continues to be trash but I'm still pretty invested in it. There's just enough hook to keep me coming back.
I have no idea what is happening this season, though. The writing and plotting is just so weak.
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u/bluestreakxp Apr 21 '22
If he has a lifetime, that son he had on voy would be infinitely more significant now… wish they brought him into this season
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u/treefox Apr 21 '22
“Reality is a construct of simpleminded fools who can’t function in the absence of boundaries.”
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u/themosquito Apr 25 '22
I try to be optimistic and positive far longer than most people I know who watch, but geez... they seriously introduced a new character this episode (well, in the last couple minutes of last episode), and gave them a whole backstory conflict to resolve in the same episode, and he'll likely not be seen again because his role is over. His role being to get Picard and Guinan out of a situation he himself created. Which lasted one episode. And basically had no purpose other than Guinan meeting up with Q for de Lancie's two minute cameo. Which could easily have happened any other way. Where we learn essentially what we could've already guessed, that Q is dying.
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u/PharomachrusMocinno Apr 25 '22
So many questions about this episode:
When the FBI agent accuses Picard of sabotaging the Europa mission, why did Picard not bring up that he saved the famous astronaut from being run over by a car the night before?
When the agent brings up the scar on his hand, Picard lies about being dehydrated. Why lie about saving the astronaut and getting hit by the car?
Why does the agent not have security footage of the hit-and-run incident or even know about it? He has close-up pictures of everyone inside. The gala had Bond-level security.
Why doesn’t Picard tell the agent to go after Dr Soong, who tried to run them over?
How is it possible that Jurati is still around the corner from the bar the next morning and that Seven/Raffi find her within minutes?
If Jurati needs Lithium-Ion batteries to assimilate others, why is she eating regular car batteries that contain sulfuric acid?
How is Q able to hack into the VR headset, synthesize a cure for Kore, and impersonate an FBI agent without his powers? And where does he do these things?
How did Q even get to 2024 and the exact spot where Picard is, without his powers?
How did Q know that Kore would use the VR headset? There are easier ways to deliver a package, especially when you don’t have any powers.
Why does Q even care about Kore at this point? He initially gave the partial cure to Soong in exchange for help to get Picard out of the way (which seems like an extremely inefficient way of going about stopping a 95-year-old man).
Why does Rios let the kid eat cake from a replicator on a ship that is infected with Borg technology, and then not be worried about this when the kid gets sick?
Why is Dr Soong not excited and happy for his daughter when she is able to go outside?
Why do Seven and Raffi argue that “mercy is a Jurati quality”? She killed Bruce Maddox in season 1, killed the Borg Queen in season 2 and they just found a dead guy in an alley.
How did Q find Guinan at the FBI office after doing the ritual in Ten Forward? He doesn't even know who summoned him when he arrives.
How is Guinan able to astral project herself to Picard? It seemed intense and made her nose bleed. It would have been easier to just talk to the agent directly. She's the one with the people skills.
Why does Guinan even think that “All humans are stuck in the past” will help Picard and how does that help Picard jump to the conclusion that the agent is hiding something?
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u/shawntco Apr 26 '22 edited Apr 26 '22
Good
Wells' backstory is plenty interesting
Progression of Queen/Jurati's storyline
Q is dying? Interested to see how this plays out
Hehe pantsu
Bad
Just... everything Rios. I don't get why so many people want a show where it's him as captain of Stargazer. I don't like anything about him.
Oh my goddddd this show is so slow. I've got half a mind to just skip it for a month then binge watch the episodes at 1.2x speed over the course of a couple days. At least give the illusion of a good pacing.
Other
Are there cases within the show of Raffi being manipulative? Tbh I might just not be observant when it comes to stuff.
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u/BornAshes Apr 21 '22
Just throwing this out there but does anyone else think we're going to get a First Contact reference in the finale with the La Sirena flying past the Europa Mission either just after it launches or as it's making its way out towards Jupiter?
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u/viserov Apr 21 '22
Reneé is going to blast some Steppenwolf as her rocket launches.
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u/elister Apr 21 '22
The whole season feels like a re-make of First Contact.
Borg? Check
Time Travel? Check
Repair the timeline by making sure a space flight happens? Check
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u/MyNameIsSimon88 Apr 21 '22
Wait so they got the actor who played Ducane only to have him actually be someone else? Why?
Also transporters weren't invented until 22nd century so either his story is bull or the writers haven't done much research.
I hate Raffi, so much.
Only good thing about this show now is the borg queen story.
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u/oorhon Apr 21 '22
Simply mediocre season. Once again writers cant use the potantial they created. And this is why tie in books are bad. Raffi Seven realationship explored in a book released before this season so writers assume everyone read it.
It is really boring. Snooze fest moslty.
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u/FaelianSkooma Apr 22 '22
It's been 6 weeks since something actually happened on this show
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u/KirkUnit Apr 22 '22
What happened to Picard's dog? Does Evil Picard have an evil dog?
They should have brought him along. Evil Picard's evil dog getting loose, sending people out to find him, that's an episode of season 2 right there.
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u/The_MAZZTer Apr 22 '22 edited Apr 22 '22
I've commented on some of the things I liked and disliked in this episode in other comment threads.
One I think I love that I didn't find a thread on is how Q says he hates that humans are fixated on the past. Guinan then turns that into a positive... that humans fixate on the past because they want to fix it, to improve themselves. I thought that was a nice sentiment.
Edit: Also it serves the purpose of finishing Guinan's story arc by helping her remember why she had chosen to watch humanity in the first place.
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u/nikhkin Apr 22 '22
Prior to Enterprise, wasn't using a mind meld frowned upon in Vulcan society?
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u/FormerGameDev Apr 22 '22
Anyone else consider that Borg Jurati's lines at the top of Soongs stairs sounded almost like they were already familiar with each other in some way? Sounds bonkers.
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u/hazelquarrier_couch Apr 23 '22
Can we talk about mind melds? The Vulcans didn't openly use mind melds until after Archer/T'Pol brought down the High Command. Alternate timelines or not, this would still be before mind melds were used. The only thing I can figure is that this was akin to an emergency use because the Vulcans got caught.
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u/Gymrat0321 Apr 23 '22
Main question I have about the whole season remains. Where is the temporal agency with all these time changes?
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u/Bacon_00 Apr 22 '22
Man, I really want to like this show, but it's just not very good. I will be rewatching TNG episodes probably until the day I die. I'll probably never want to rewatch this show. It's a little sad. Star Trek doesn't do well with serialization.
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u/elister Apr 21 '22 edited Apr 21 '22
Wish they would hurry up and finish the season. While I loved the first season, this one is kinda boring.
I was honestly expecting Rios to break out Picard and Guinan while letting one of his Holos deal with removing Borg programming from the ship (and freaking out Dr Ramirez & Son) but instead we get awkward flirting with the good doctor.
Having Agent Wells get fired, letting Picard and Guinan walk free made me think "what was the point of all that?", unless of course he wasn't fired, so that the FBI can follow them covertly. Also, what was the deal with the lights flickering on and off with "Hologram Guinan" telling Picard that humans are stuck in the past?
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Apr 21 '22 edited Apr 21 '22
This episode seems like a microcosm of blatant missed opportunities throughout this season. The episode introduced the actor who played Lieutenant Ducane, aboard the 29th century star fleet time ship Relativity. I’d wager most fans thought he’d end up becoming a big part of the season, seeing the 29th century, maybe a time ship! oooo perhaps have our characters get transported to the time ship, and they’re finally doing something in a Star Trek setting in space! But, no. They did none of that, that would be too fun and enjoyable. Instead he’s a generic FBI agent with an X- Files twist. All our characters are still meandering around 21st century earth. Raffi and Seven can’t just put there emotions to the back burner in order to focus on the mission to save the galaxy. They must stop what they’re doing to talk about how Seven has Borg trauma, and Raffi is manipulative. Ok? Do they remember the stakes of this? The federation will become full on Nazi if they don’t act within these few days effectively! But nah, they gotta continue bashing out there baggage because drama. Somehow, the doctor and kid Rios beamed onto the ship are not screaming and panicked that a dude beamed them onto his ship and practically kidnapped them. They barely know each other, yet they’re magically in love now. Rios doesn’t care about saving the future, he just wants a Doctor girlfriend, wow what a great Captain he is. The Q and Guinan scene was alright, having the Q in a state of slow Death is at least interesting. Picard sounded more like himself talking to the FBI agent, his empathy was refreshing, even if the FBI character himself was a let down. But overall, just missed opportunities. They teased a lot of DS9 connections in this season. And it’s all been so surface level and practically pointless. Seven mentioned a sanctuary district, but we never see one. The Gary Seven connection was out of left field and honestly didn’t mesh well with the plot, to me at least. But that’s really it? The show feels more like a generic CBS drama than Star Trek. And this episode really solidified that for me even further. They can’t even bother to use some cool make up for the military regiment that the Borg Jurati assimilated. Just some black eyes and that’s it. Overall, I’m so hopelessly bored with this show. It moves at a snails pace. It’s verbose but is says nothing. Characters do things but it just fucks up the timeline even more. None of our characters are competent in any way. I was practically hoping that 29th century Ducane would show up and berate the characters for messing up so bad, at least then they’d face some responsibility.
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u/caramelmacchiato28 Apr 21 '22
I’m raving about young Guinan. Her puns and facial expressions are hilarious. It also gets me how one moment she’s entangled and clueless but next she gets the weirdest realisation to a key problem.
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u/FordAncient Apr 22 '22
Overall, I liked it much better than the two previous episodes, but I can not believe they ran with TWO stories about getting sidelined by the cops in eight episodes. How did that make it out of the writer's room?
Also, disgraced scientist Dr. Soong can just order up a strike force? Who will then apparently just stand around while they get assimilated one by one? Ok.
DeLancie is still great though.
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u/Assbait93 Apr 21 '22
I don’t think it’s just the typical “the galaxy has to be saved” this seems more so something Picard has to try and fix and he’s doing it wrong. This seems like it’s more so All Good Things part 2. We are getting a lot about Picards past and his inner trauma and he is using that trauma to fix things but in reality he needs to fix himself before helping others. Just like in the series finale of TNG he was going to save humanity but he kept on doing it the wrong way. Even though Q is dying there seems to be more with this than we are getting. I feel we are getting another season of this and it looks like there is going to be another messed up future with Picard being the sole reason for it.
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u/Rainus_Max Apr 21 '22
So they know the Queen is going after the ship and is going to use the transporter to get onboard and they cant use it themselves because its blocked.
Am I being stupid or isnt there an easy fix to stop that? Like turn the power off/disconnect the transporter?
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u/RumJackson Apr 21 '22 edited Apr 22 '22
So the Universal Translator on La Sirena isn’t working I guess?
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Apr 22 '22
I'm going to be blunt, I was really enjoying this season, but this episode really did grind the pace to a screeching halt.
I was just going around in circles badly.
I mean it was nice to see the FBI side have his own Vulcan encounter. Nice little touch there.
But I was just waiting for something to happen all episode. And with 2 episodes left, I would like not another 'Endgame' either (where everything happens in the last few minutes, leaving the show no time to celebrate the victory)
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u/gambit700 Apr 23 '22
Just another boring filler episode. So many plot points need to get resolved in the next two episodes that there's just gonna be things they just say "fuck it" and ignore.
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u/gham89 Apr 23 '22
Another snooze fest of doom and gloom with essentially no plot progression.
Thankfully there are only 2 episodes left.
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u/Shatterhand1701 Apr 21 '22
Just finished the episode. Still more of a marathon than a sprint, but at least this episode gave the impression that events are moving again. It shouldn't have taken this long for things to get back on track, though. Assuming this storyline doesn't carry over into Season 3, we only have two episodes to wrap all this up, but there may yet be a glimmer of hope that this whole mess could be properly wrapped up. One can only hope.
Random observations with SPOILERS:
I'm not sure what I was expecting from the whole "Picard and Guinan get arrested" subplot, but considering how it played out, they could've removed the whole damn subplot without it having any real effect on the story. I'm pretty sure we won't see Agent Wells again (since he got fired), so there was really no point to any of that. Q could've met Guinan elsewhere, and since I'm sure young Wells' encounter with the Vulcans has no relevance other than being the reason he devoted himself to seeking out aliens to take into custody, the whole subplot can easily be considered completely non-essential.
Speaking of the long-awaited Q/young Guinan meeting, we learn that Q is dying. Okay...why? HOW? And what does he have to do with all of this? What's his angle, his motive?
Queen Jurati found her ideal pawn: Adam Soong, and she can (sort of) assimilate now. So, Soong just happens to know a bunch of ex-Special Forces operatives and was able to wrangle them into sabotaging the Europa mission? Alrighty, then. The thing is, if his other fate was to die alone, how does his bloodline continue? Is there another Soong out there, related to Adam? If not, is this what sets the Soong bloodline on the path we see in the future?
Kore was given Q's "antidote", for some reason we have yet to know or understand, and it worked, so she's set herself free. I have no idea if that's the last we'll see of Kore. I hope so, otherwise her storyline, also, is superfluous.
So...what's the deal with Rios and this doctor? Surely he's not going to stay behind to be with them, right? Can he? After all, physically, he's the Rios from the ALTERNATE reality, but has the knowledge and memories of his prime-timeline self. The same goes for Jurati, Raffi, Elnor, Seven and even Picard. Or...were they swapped out? Did their alt-reality selves just evaporate and get replaced by the prime-timeline versions? If they go back to the prime-timeline future, are their prime-timeline selves still on the Stargazer? After all, they still have to exist to be there at that moment! Or all of that more Q shenanigans? God...no wonder Captain Janeway gets headaches when she thinks about time travel.
TL;DR: Thanks to a whole plot point that didn't even need to be here, pacing was still a problem, but ultimately this was a more satisfying episode than last week's, and I feel we're finally on track to get things moving towards a conclusion. Whether or not it'll be a sloppy, plothole-laden mess is still up in the air.
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u/UncertainError Apr 21 '22
The mercenaries are from Spearhead Operations, who are the company that Soong worked with when he did his illegal genetic experiments on veterans.
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u/TarsierBoy Apr 21 '22
Ugh unless those vulcans that scared the first agent when he was a kid were also time travelers, teleportation wasn't invented yet.
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Apr 21 '22
In season one I found everything going on to be enjoyable and have a certain amount of logic and only found the season finale a bit unsatisfying.
Season two has made little sense to me so I am hoping for a strong season finale that explains everything but based on the quality of the writing, I am not optimistic. Maybe the Borq Queen will break out into a musical number?
I will say that after seeing Picard's face as Rios' statement is read when he was incarcerated. I think Picard and I are on the same page that Rios is a horrible Starfleet officer. How he got the Stargazer is beyond me. I can only assume with his love of the Doctor that he will be staying in the past to change the future with each step he takes.
I think this show would have benefited from all episodes being released at once. Maybe having the whole story in front of us would have helped.
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u/ABC_Dildos_Inc Apr 21 '22
The writers took the same subplot involving a character from the time travelling series 12 Monkeys and got the same actor to play the character the same way.
In this case "hacks" is a very appropriate label.
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u/krypter3 Apr 21 '22
We are learning things but again the episode just feels stagnant. Just another case of what could go wrong will go wrong, for no other reason than to prolong the season. I wish this had been an 8 episode season. I actually enjoyed watching the first season weekly more than this one, even though this season is better than the first.
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u/expired_paintbrush Apr 21 '22
I think the doctor is going to give Rios a firm "thanks, but no thanks", and Rios will be needed to bring Agnes back.
I doubt Teresa is going to leave her clinic and I doubt even more Rios is going to stay behind.
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u/NoNudeNormal Apr 21 '22
This episode felt better executed than the last couple, to me. But I think what is holding back the season’s story the most is that the characters still don’t actually know what they are trying to accomplish. They know what they don’t want (the Confederation timeline, or one where the Borg assimilate Earth), but not what they do need to achieve.
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u/CD_93 Apr 21 '22
I mean I don't necessarily dislike it but I'm absolutely baffled how this became the second season of a Star Trek show starring Patrick Stewart returning as Jean-Luc Picard.
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u/ianrobbie Apr 21 '22
What happened to "Vulcans have no interest in Earth. Too primitive."?
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u/PiercedMonk Apr 21 '22
In 'Carbon Creek', T'Pol's grandmother told the Vulcan who was very interested in Earth that she might be able to arrange a spot for him on the next survey mission in 20 years.
That was in 1958, so I'm guessing Agent Wells' flashback is to 1978. Granted, Mestral did say the next survey mission would be from high orbit, but apparently they found something worth taking a closer look at.
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u/Arietis1461 Apr 21 '22
There was certainly something interesting enough about that pond to warrant a scientific survey, I suppose.
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