The pieces come together. Spoilers.
Picard doesn’t drive the episode, but gets several great scenes – with Soji, with Jurati, with Admiral Clancy, with Raffi. That seems to be a trend of the second half of this season – Picard set the ball rolling, but others are allowed to carry it forward. I’d be keen to watch a show that continued with stories of Rios, Raffi and others, with or without Picard.
But really everyone gets their moment to shine – for a show called ‘Picard’ it’s actually quite an ensemble piece. Rios gets his breakdown, Soji becomes active rather than reactive, Jurati comes to terms with what she’s done. From a plot perspective it’s clearing the decks and setting up for the finale, but it feels earned and consistent with the characters we’ve seen.
Raffi has gone full conspiracy paranoid, with total justification. While this is a very ‘bitty’ episode, she’s the driving force behind most of the s scenes on the ship. The emotional journey is perhaps a little rapid (perhaps because starting from ‘pulling a gun on your mentor’ is hard to get back from), but there’s a good little mystery-unraveling sequence.
Plus there’s a fairly short but well executed sequence on the Borg cube, as Elnor and Seven of Nine clean house.
*Neopenthe* is a better standalone episode, but this was for me a more enjoyable 55 minutes of TV because there’s a lot of payoff here for the 9 episodes that went before it.
Quick hits:
– Yep, Commodore Oh is a Romulan. Surprise surprise.
– Why keep this secret? Could just be a Romulan thing, but if there’s concrete proof in the form of this artefact why not tell others?
– Woohoo, more Seven of Nine.
– ‘The Windmills have turned out to be giants’ – beautiful.
– Raffi really should be all better at spotting holograms on that ship by now.
– Giving the Emergency Engineering Hologram a Scottish accent is a predictable delight.
– Santiago Cabrera is absolutely having the most fun playing all the different holograms, it’s a great performance. (I wrote that *before* the scene with all the holograms, so let’s just double it for that scene).
– I wonder if the ancient civilisation is Iconians? Will they draw in Picard-the-archaeologist? There’s no mention in this episode, which honestly felt like a plot hole to me.
– Jurati’s joy at the creation of Soji is very in character, and creates an internal tension that Allison Pill acts well.
– Speaking of great acting, need to mention Jeri Ryan as well when she goes full Borg Queen.
– Peppermint ice cream should not be pink, not even in a distant future.
– Still keen for the Elnor/Seven spin-off.
786 down.