| Episode: | 28 | | | Writer: | Matt Okumura | | | Director: | Deborah Kampmeier | | | Air Date: | 06-Apr-2023 |
This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm reviewing the season 3 Picard episode titled Surrender.
It was written by Matt Okumura, who wrote Hide and Seek for Picard's second and absolutely nothing else. Well, nothing in Star Trek anyway; he's had experience writing for Leverage: Redemption and Blood & Treasure, which are two series I'm not sure I've ever heard of.
If you don't want to see SPOILERS for series like Discovery, Strange New Worlds and Picard, you should stop reading here.
RECAP
Vadic still has the Titan-A's bridge crew as hostages and she's still after Jack Crusher. So he finally heads to meet her on the bridge... carrying a thermal detonator, or something.
Meanwhile, Data is fighting a mental battle against Lore to decide who will continue to exist in the android body they've been put into. Data knows he cannot defeat Lore so instead he gives over his memories willingly, everything that makes him who he is. Lore can't resist taking it all, oblivious to the fact that if he takes everything that makes Data who he is, he makes himself Data. The new and improved Data takes control of the Titan, flushing the Changelings into space while Jack's mysterious grenade turns out to be a shield to save the bridge crew. So Vadic's dead I guess!
Over on the Shrike, Riker and Troi are saved by Worf and Raffi, who infiltrated the ship using a cloaked shuttle. They discover that the Changelings took Picard's former body to remove the parts of his brain affected by Irumodic Syndrome, so that's a bit weird. Once everyone's back to the Titan they're able to destroy the Shrike, crossing one problem off the list. Plus now that Troi's here she'll be able to use her powers to see what's up with Jack.
REVIEW
Surrender is certainly another episode of Picard: Extreme Tactical Operations and Heartfelt Chats. I don't want to belabour the point about how dark the series is, but the episode literally starts with Vadic listening to the screams of Starfleet officers like it's a symphony while someone's lying there with a blade sticking out of them. She's very much an action movie villain in this one; she even makes a quip before she dies.
I was going to put together a big spoilery picture of all the times I've seen the bad guy sitting on the captain's chair in Star Trek recently, but I'll just say I've seen it enough to know that I don't really like watching moustache-twirling villains revelling in all the evil they're going to do to the crew. I prefer Trek to be a bit more believable, Khan is like the upper level for that kind of performance for me - this far, no further. But I can acknowledge that Amanda Plummer did a good job with the role she'd been given, and that's part of the reason I'm so surprised that they killed her off with two episodes of the season left.
Of course she's a Changeling, so if anyone can survive being flushed out into space, frozen and shattered, it's her. But I think being incinerated by an exploding Shrike probably did the trick.
Incidentally it's funny how the Titan has to pull up when firing photons, because the bottom of the saucer is in front of the launcher. Yeah I know that they're guided torpedoes and can just fly under it, but it just looks weird. Not the torpedoes themselves though, they look very Star Trek.
Anyway, with Vadic gone I'm starting to worry that Jack Crusher is going to make a heel turn and become the replacement villain. They've certainly been hinting at it.
Jack listened to reason instead of giving himself up, he came clean about his telepathy, he attempted to use his powers to do recon and take back the ship, and the mysterious bomb-shaped gadget ploy was great. I mean I rolled my eyes at first when he literally pulled out a thermal detonator from Star Wars, but that just means it made sense that Vadic would take it at face value.
Data was using his head as well. In fact, most of his scenes took place inside his head.
I caught onto how Data was going to resolve his split personality fairly early, but that's not a flaw. They certainly put in enough clues that he was adding his nurture to Lore's nature in order to overcome him. He even told his brother that he is the product of his memories, but the dude was too busy being smug to figure it out.
Picard keeps justifying its habit of dwelling on Trek references so well that I can't really complain, and in this case it was the whole point. Your memories are, in part, what makes you who you are... and that includes your memories of that 90s sci-fi series with the robot who can't use contractions. It's a very straightforward, kind of cliché scene, but it resonated with me.
Also they gave us a Tasha Yar cameo right at the point where I was hoping for one, so I'm happy.
The long-awaited reunion of the entire Next Gen crew was nice, even if Worf's being a comedian these days. It kind of works for me, I just can't tell how much is him deliberately trying to be funny and how much is supposed to be cluelessness. I mean, that line about him slaughtering his enemies and sending his friends their heads was... strange.
Also, I'm sure I heard Riker say he gave over the codes to the Titan-A because he couldn't bear to see Troi being tortured and he knew that Picard was going to save the day, and that seems kind of bad. Especially after his badass line last episode about not betraying Starfleet for 35 years or whatever. Reset the counter I guess.
Fortunately, the two of them have been rescued thanks to Worf and Raffi infiltrating the Shrike off-screen. Surprise! I can't even complain as they did set up that he was going to go find Riker a couple of episodes back. So that means the crew now has the best Changeling detector they could hope for... just in time for the Changeling paranoia arc to be over.
Overall, I found this to be a pretty satisfying episode, even before the surprise catharsis of Vadic's death and the destruction of the Shrike. Some people might take issue with her being killed off before all the secrets are out, but I was cool with it. We really need to learn what's up with Jack by next episode though, because they've been dragging this out long enough.
RATING
I've been putting each Picard season 3 episode up against its counterpart from Next Gen's third season, which means Surrender is going up against The Price, the episode where Troi falls for an amoral Betazoid bidding against Riker to acquire a wormhole. That was the first Star Trek episode to reveal that the galaxy is split into four quadrants, and Surrender's Data vs Lore battle demonstrates that elements like this are what make Star Trek into what it is.
With that addition, writers were inspired to open a wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant and strand Voyager in the Delta Quadrant, which then gave us Changeling infiltrators and Seven of Nine... and eventually Picard season 3. The show has been accused of relying too much on fan service, but continuity is about more than familiar faces and spaceships, and Surrender is the result of Star Trek being a living universe made out of pieces of all the stories that came before.
Anyway, The Price isn't considered to be a stand-out classic, so I don't think it's too weird I'm giving this battle to Surrender. It had at least as much good in it as the best episodes this season and less of the things I've grown tired of. No visit to 10 Forward, no return to the M'Talas alleyway, the Starfleet officers were extremely Starfleet, and Shaw mostly just suffered. So I'm giving it...
9/10
COMING SOON
Next time it's the penultimate episode of Picard, Võx,
I wonder how much time Lore has spent active. I mean, there are probably just a lot more of Data's memories than Lore's, so it was like Lore wishing for a million dollars and getting it in pennies dropped onto his head.
ReplyDeleteData must have had about 4 times the life experience and his time on the Enterprise was filled with things he actually cared about and had affected him. Lore didn't give a damn about anything and had spent maybe a fifth of his life just floating in space waiting for a Pakled to pick him up, so yeah I see what you mean.
DeleteDumping the series villain two episodes before the end of the series is a bit weird, and I'm still not sure if I think it's bold and clever, or choppy and messy.
ReplyDelete