Star Trek: Picard - Season 2 Review, Part 1

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the second season of Star Trek: Picard! 

The series was under new management this season, with Strange New Worlds showrunner Akiva Goldsman and 12 Monkeys showrunner Terry Matalas taking over from Michael Chabon, who's been busy developing a different show based on his novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Though Goldsman and Matalas were busy too, with Goldsman helping create a new Trek series and Terry Matalas switching his focus to the third season halfway through, so things were a bit messy behind the scenes. That's normal for Star Trek to be fair, the shows often don't settle down until season three, but Star Trek: Picard's only getting three seasons so it'll be nice if whoever was left minding the store didn't screw this one up.

I'm going to be covering the first three episodes here:

• 2-01 - The Star Gazer
  
• 2-02 - Penance
  
• 2-03 - Assimilation

This means that there'll be SPOILERS for each of these stories and probably some earlier Trek stories as well. I wrote each review right after watching the episode for the first time however, so couldn't have spoiled anything that comes next if I wanted to. And I didn't want to.

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Note: I rate episodes on a 1-9 scale, with 5 being where my attention starts to fail.

Star Trek: Picard - Season 2
2-01	The Star Gazer		8
Episode: 011 | Writer: Akiva Goldsman & Terry Matalas | Director: Doug Aarniokoski | Air Date: 03-Mar-2022 A Federation starship has some significant issues when a Borg Queen on the bridge starts hacking into its systems, so Picard activates the auto-destruct before it's too late. 48 hours earlier, Picard messes up a chance of love with Laris, gives a speech at Starfleet Academy, has a drink with Guinan, and flies to the USS Stargazer on a mission for Starfleet. All his friends are there too, including Captain Rios! Turns out that an anomaly has opened up and someone's calling for him by name, someone who apparently wants to join the Federation. But then a Borg Queen beams onto the bridge and everything goes to crap like in the teaser. There's an explosion and Picard wakes up back home in Château Picard... but now he's in the bad timeline, and it seems to be all Q's fault. Hey they changed the opening theme a bit! I like it. It's a lot more dramatic. Season 4 of Star Trek: Discovery has put me into 'try to look for the positives' mode, as for every scene of that series I like it goes and throws in a really dull one of the characters being supportive to someone who's been through trauma to balance it out, so it was nice to watch an episode of Star Trek I could just enjoy from start to finish. Even if it did pull that overused "48 hours earlier" trope at the start. It's like it was trying to become my enemy. I mean okay the episode does have a long scene of Guinan being supportive to Picard as he deals with what was apparently some trauma in his past, but the difference is that it had my full attention. I blame Whoopi Goldberg for that, though I suppose the writing also helps. Also that bar set was awesome. I don't know why Guinan went to so much effort to find a location that let her use the name 10 Forward again, but I guess she grows attached to things. She's also aged a bit, and the episode explains that about as well as it could've done. Personally I would never massively speed up my aging to make humans feel more comfortable (especially if I can't undo it afterwards) but I can kind of buy it as something Guinan would do. And the writers dealt with John di Lancie's aging absolutely perfectly. We even got a classic Q flash as he aged up to match Picard! Well, a slightly updated version. Speaking of awesome sets, the Stargazer looks amazing... kind of. Sometimes I look at it and I see a perfect update of the style introduced in Next Gen then iterated on through Voyager and the movies, and sometimes I look at it and I'm blinded by the needlessly reflective floors. I know everyone mocks the Berman era's carpets, but I loved those carpets! Plus the trouble with all the series trying to look up to date and believable to modern audiences, is that every time period is starting to look the same, with shiny surfaces and Tron lighting. Well, from the inside of the ships anyway. I can't say they didn't nail the exteriors this time. Look at these beautiful ships! Well, okay some of them are more beautiful than others, but at least this season they look different to each other! And hey there's a Luna-class up at the top! It's already shown up in Lower Decks but this is the first time it's appeared in live-action. I think Lower Decks could probably calm down a bit with references, I'm not too keen on them 'Ready Player One'ing stuff up, but I love seeing ships I recognise. Because in Star Trek the ships are the setting, and just glancing at the picture above lets me know we're in the Prime Timeline, a few years after Star Trek: Nemesis, and these are the good guys. It's a real contrast to Discovery, which seems to go out of its way to avoid showing anything familiar. This is proper post-Next Gen era fleet, with a mix of new variants of classic designs, and some returning late Berman-era vessels like the Akira-class and (for the first time on television) the Sovereign-class. In fact they made sure to throw in a whole bunch of Sovereigns in there so we wouldn't be wondering if the Enterprise-E had turned up. We do have an appearance by the actual Excelsior though... just not the one we know. It seems to be a brand new design, introduced here for the first time. Picard's designers also worked with Star Trek Online to get some extra vessels to fill out the fleet, so some of the new ships are video game models that are being canonised here for the first time. I mean they literally used models from the video game and kept far enough in the distance that we can't tell. It's like how they used to fill out the DS9's fleets with cheap kitbashes, I love it. It's a shame that we're pulled away from the Stargazer so soon, but the characters will obviously be back. The production crew didn't spend so much time making sets this elaborate just for one episode. It's like the Discovery episode Such Sweet Sorrow all over again, where the Enterprise bridge set basically confirmed we were getting a Captain Pike spin-off just by itself. I was actually a bit surprised about how things played out in this story, even though the trailer had given away a lot of clues. I already knew about the characters getting stuck in an alternate timeline and running into the Borg Queen there, but I didn't expect she'd show up in the Prime Timeline as well. A weird masked version of her at least. And I still don't know what she wanted. All we know is that she came to hijack their fleet after making a request for the Borg to join the Federation, she was shooting to stun, and Picard made the choice to self-destruct the ship and kill her. Was that the wrong choice? Was her offer genuine? It's all a bit of a mystery so far. Seven knows the Borg better than anyone and she claims that they're being deceptive, but we're starting a new arc here, so I imagine some strongly-held views are being established here so they can be shaken by the end. Incidentally we apparently get confirmation here that the events of Voyager's finale did leave the Borg severely crippled, which is exactly the kind of follow up to past stories that I want from Picard. Also Starfleet is starting to incorporate Borg technology in their starships! I'd say it was a design flaw considering how the Queen tapped into it to take over the Stargazer, but then she used the Stargazer to take over the other ships, so it seems like Starfleet computer security is pretty crap on every vessel. That was kind of poetic justice by the way, after Starfleet used the Borg's interconnectedness in Best of Both Worlds to hack into the Borg Cube through Locutus and tell them to sleep. Will the season end with time being reset and Picard making the other choice, of trusting the Borg Queen and bringing the Borg into the Federation? Personally I think there really is a possibility that they'll make some kind of peace. The Federation have allied with the arch-nemesis the Klingons, so I think they could ally with the Borg as long as they adapted and restricted their assimilation to their Borg babies and volunteers. (I mean we did see drones in a future Federation school in Lower Decks already). But the Borg seriously need to stop being weird and start talking normally first! Ambiguity and misunderstanding is what leads to sad faces and self-destruct sequences being activated. Sure the Queen was just stunning security officers and not killing them, but that's not generally a good thing with the Borg. They prefer to assimilate people while they're alive. There's a lot of other stuff being set up here as the episode establishes where all the characters are right now and what they think about their situations. Picard is tormented by how he can't settle down with the woman he loves, Seven is still helping people, despite suffering hate and fear because of her Borg implants, Soji is busy elsewhere, and Jurati has been pardoned but is clearly a bit... troubled. There's lots of drinking in this story and most of it is by her. There's smoking too, weirdly. I was not happy when I saw Rios with a cigar on the bridge of his ship, especially as we also see him with a lighter. But I guess this may be a 24th century cigar which isn't going to fill the bridge with second-hand smoke. Sorry, I mean 25th century, as there's been a bit of a time jump. We're in a whole new century now and Buck Rogers could turn up at any moment. Zhaban probably won't however, not in the happy timeline anyway, as he's dead. Zhaban dying off screen just to set up a relationship between Laris and Picard was a bit harsh. But it makes sense for the story, especially if this season will be dealing with what drove Picard to leave Earth and keeps him from getting into lasting relationships. It's bit of a concern that his flashback hints at some kind of domestic abuse situation but I'll see what they do with it. The writers have done a lot to win my trust this episode. In fact this is my favourite Star Trek episode since the last season of Lower Decks, so Star Trek: Picard is making a habit of kicking off each season with a fantastic first part. But is the first episode of Picard season 2 better than first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation season 2? It's up against The Child, where Dr Pulaski arrives on the Enterprise and Troi wakes up pregnant. The Child's a bit of a divisive episode and doesn't have a whole lot of fans, but I thought it was alright. I thought The Star Gazer was great though, so I'm giving this to Picard.
2-02	Penance		8
Episode: 012 | Writer: Akiva Goldsman & Terry Matalas and Christopher Monfette Director: Doug Aarniokoski | Air Date: 10-Mar-2022 The former La Sirena crew find themselves having to pretend to be their evil doppelgangers while they come up with a plan to fix the timeline. They decide to grab the Borg Queen on the night of her execution and use her to get Evil La Sirena back in time to the year history was altered. Unfortunately Evil Seven's evil husband catches them after they beam to the ship and Elnor is shot. People have complained about Picard's slow pacing and that's becoming pretty obvious here. I mean Discovery reached the evil universe by the end of episode 9, but Picard didn't make it there until season 2! Actually to be honest I am getting a bit impatient waiting for them to time travel already, but that's mostly just because I already knew it was coming because of the trailer. And because it's the premise of the season. The episode itself moved pretty fast, with the crew finding themselves in a bizarre situation, coming up with a plan to deal with it, and very nearly pulling off the whole scheme in just one episode. I suppose another slight complaint I have is how Earth's depicted as being strong enough to defeat the Borg in this timeline. That's nothing new for Star Trek, all evil universe Earths are conquerors (at least until their empire collapses), but how the hell did they manage that trick? Is this the universe where Picard went ahead with the Borg genocide plan in I, Borg? In retrospect the previous episode had been setting up how awesome the real timeline had become, while this episode's job is to show us a future terrible enough for the heroes to risk everything to change it back. I mean their own lives aren't generally all that terrible in this timeline, and the Earth itself is actually doing fairly alright as well... if you're human. In fact this timeline seems far less absurdly harsh than the Mirror Universe in general, aside from Picard literally collecting the skulls of his conquered enemies.  We could've gotten all kinds of cameos in this story but instead we got Dukat, Martok and Sarek's skulls on display! Anyway, the evil timeline is depicted as bad not because it's unpleasant for our characters (Elnor aside) but because others are suffering. In fact the heroes aren't just part of the machine of oppression, they are the machine. I mean Seven's the President of Earth, which is something that the trailers actually did manage to keep quiet about! It's another Emperor Georgiou situation, but slightly more forgivable because it's very possible that Q meddled just enough to put the characters where they needed to be to pull off their plan, and it's not hard to imagine people like Picard and Seven rising to the top given half a chance. Each of them had their own reaction to appearing in a strange reality, but they were all on their feet very quickly. Especially Seven, who immediately confirmed her sanity and then masterfully acquired information and established Rios identity without raising suspicion.  It's great watching smart, experienced people get the job done as a team, and the writing really gives the heroes opportunities to shine here. It also gives Q a chance to do his thing, with John de Lancie playing him like he just walked out of a time portal from 2001. Well, not entirely, as the character's a bit... off somehow. Punching Picard wasn't the first clue that Q's not well but it was certainly the most visible. It seems like he's definitely the reason they all survived the Stargazer explosion and can remember what happened, so that mystery's cleared up, but now we've got the mystery of what exactly is wrong with him. I loved Jurati as well, even if she is the typical frantic computer person trope here. She really sold how terrifying and fucked up this whole situation was. Plus we got a little bit about her own issues as well. And Seven's commitment issues. Less about Picard's issues, but he's apparently 'the board the game is played on' so I'm sure the season will come back to him soon. He's got to fix himself while he's fixing time or else he won't be able to kiss Laris at the end. It's interesting that the story's set up like The City on the Edge of Forever, where they have to go back and change the thing back to save the timeline, except the real timeline leads to them all dying on the Stargazer and it doesn't seem like their trip in time is going to fix that. There's more going on here than just time being broken, and the Borg are up to something too. Incidentally I was a bit thrown off by the performance of the Borg Queen here, as it was very different to how she's been in other appearances. Less seductive, more computerised. I don't feel like I want to give this episode my highest score, but I've been struggling to figure out why. Maybe it's because there's still some lingering nastiness from Picard's first season, with guards getting gunned down and Elnor slicing people up with a sharp combadge. Maybe it's because it makes the same mistake as Prodigy and has the characters leave the cat behind .Despite that it's still a really good episode which gives the pros in the team a chance to show off how it's done. But can it beat Where Silence Has Lease, the second ep of Next Gen season 2? That's the one where the Enterprise ends up stuck in a space hole being tested by a godlike being. The episode did give us the scene of Worf freaking out and yelling "One Riker, one bridge!", and that meme of a red shirt dying, but I think I prefer Penance.
2-03	Assimilation		7
Episode: 013 | Writer: Kiley Rossetter & Christopher Monfette | Director: Lea Thompson | Air Date: 17-Mar-2022 The team manages to get the upper hand on La Sirena, defeat President Seven's evil husband, and travel back in time to the 21st century, but Picard has to choose between saving the Borg Queen or Elnor and chooses the Queen, driving a wedge between him and Raffi. Picard and Jurati try to connect with the Queen to get more information while the others beam out to search 2024 Los Angeles for signs of advanced technology. Unfortunately the damage to the ship causes them to transport to separate places, with Rios being injured as a result and ending up in a clinic, which then gets raided by ICE! Jurati's plan is more successful as she's able to find out what they need to know, but the Borg Queen has taken an interest in her. Star Trek has a tradition of using its trips to the past to make comments about how barbaric our real world is and this episode dives right into that, starting with an echo of The Voyage Home's method for determining the year using the pollution content in the atmosphere. Though the actual Voyage Home/Past Tense time travel adventure doesn't start until halfway through, so the characters don't have time to get much done in this story. Plus I was a bit put off at the start of the episode by the non-Trekness of the space battle, the way the Confederation of Earth uses Federation ships, the selective vaporisation of the hand phasers, and the fact that the Magistrate uses the fact that his wife doesn't know his name to prove she's a doppelganger. What, is the guy's name so secret that a spy who's infiltrated the Confederation to its very highest level would know it? I would've also preferred a little more Q. Q split-second reappearance in the episode reminds us that despite this being 'penance', Picard may still be being rated on the morality of his actions during his adventure, and Raffi's definitely not impressed one bit with his decision to let Elnor die instead of the Borg Queen. The season's already forcing Picard to make difficult choices and so far they've killed a bunch of people who may never exist and let a team member die in order to save the future. But after this point all the consequences allegedly stick, so maybe it's actually for the best their murdery super-ninja has been benched, even if it's a shame to lose him for a bit (or maybe forever) and we never even got to see him have to hide his pointy ears. Plus in Picard's defence, biobeds aren't traditionally used to keep people alive, they're more for reading lifesigns, so it's unclear what powering it up would've actually achieved... but yeah, that was a serious choice and it led to the second big decision this episode: do they let Jurati get half-assimilated?  I was a bit surprised by this story, because I expected the title Assimilation to be cleverly misleading, and actually refer to the characters trying to assimilate into 21st century culture. But it turns out that Dr Jurati also gets properly assimilated... at least mentally. I'm not actually sure how that works, or how plugging a cable into her neck connected her to a wired collective of two, or what the hell that whole "rattling at the doors of emotions" thing was about, but Allison Pill basically makes the concept work through sheer force of acting. Plus I loved the resolution, with Jurati revealing her "Shit I stole from the Borg Queen" file and the Borg Queen warning her that she's impressed. There's a real hint that there are going to be consequences from what Jurati's done here and not all of them good ones.  It seemed like they were going with a different take on the Borg Queen for this series, but now that she's been brought back to before time was broken she's much more her regular moustache-twirling evil self. The series has raised the question of whether Picard made a huge error by acting out of fear on the Stargazer and blowing the ship up instead of trusting the Borg Queen, and that's still up in the air, however it's abundantly clear that this particular Borg Queen is absolutely not to be trusted. She's still the scorpion who'll stab you in the back just because it's her nature. In fact they're really lucky she hasn't gained total control of their ship and pulled a First Contact on the past, and I'm not entirely sure what's stopping her. It's also pretty convenient that no one comes to investigate their crashed spaceship, especially as it seems to have come down either next to Picard's vineyard or in the outskirts of LA. All I know is that there are trees around... probably. Plus I'm also starting to suspect that La Sirena is considerably more durable than a shuttle, as this is the second time it's slammed down onto a planet like this and survived in the last five episodes. It's like it's trying to break Starbug's records on Red Dwarf. I was impressed with how well the team dealt with waking up in an altered timeline last episode, but they're less impressive here when they finally spring into action. They have to split into different isolated teams (thanks to Covid complicating production), and they don't actually get a whole lot done here. Seven and Raffi do some social commentary, get into a building, perform a bit of a scan and that's about it. To be fair there's more to their story than just the plot. The two characters are in very different places right now, with Raffi powered by grief, anger and denial, and Seven discovering to her joy that little girls and security guards like her now that she's lost the creepy Borg implants. Meanwhile Rios plays the Star Trek 4 Chekov role in reverse, getting treated for an injury and then being captured by ICE afterwards. There's some more social commentary for you here, as the episode is clearly making the case that the US is already the road to the fascist future. Here we learn that Rios has got a solid skull, his mother was in Starfleet, and he broke piloting records when he was just 8 (well, that's how he remembers it anyway). We also learn that Rick and Morty is canon, which is reassuring to me somehow. It also seems like the doctor and her kid might be sticking around a bit, seeing as he accidentally got her arrested and his combadge is still at the clinic. I've got not problem with that, as I liked their scenes and the crew's going to have to end up recruiting someone from this time period to help out eventually, as that's basically a rule. Anyway, this episode was definitely a chapter in an ongoing story, not really a story in its own right, but I'm okay with that. So far, at least. I'm not sure I'd want the rest of the season to hang around in the 21st century like this, but I have a feeling the heroes are going to be travelling a bit closer to home before it's over. There's two-thirds of a season left and plenty of Star Trek history to visit. Is Assimilation better than Next Gen season 2's Elementary, Dear Data? It's a tougher choice, as Next Gen's bringing a stronger story than the previous two episodes and Picard's episode is a bit of a step down from the excellent opening, but I have to give it to Picard again. Elementary, Dear Data starts off fun and has some great looking sets, but the ending's a bit of an anti-climax.

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NEXT TIME

Star Trek: Picard will return with Watcher. But next on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm taking a look at the first three episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds! The internet seems to love it, but will it win me over?

Thanks for reading by the way! Leave a comment if you're in a commenting mood. You could talk about lots of things, like spaceships, or how Elementary, Dear Data is a way better story than Assimilation and I don't know what I'm talking about.