The Pirates of Penance maybe? Spoilers.
Another strong episode, which does a great job of setting out the stakes and the action of the series economically, while still having lots of good Star Trek moments and good character scenes.
I was apprehensive about dipping into both the Mirror Universe well and the Borg well – both very tired sources of stories for Star Trek. But even if this is the official Mirror Universe (probably not given the alternate timeline plot), it’s being done in a much more interesting way than certainly what DS9 did. I do wish we’d seen at least one main cast member from a series in the alternate timeline as well (maybe Chakotay as the Magistrate?).
The opening scene with Q and Picard is fantastic. De Lancie is superb as Q, and we get a nice build of the world we’re in combined with a fantastic performance and back and forth. More please!
From one perspective, adding in time travel as well is making this a bit of a trope soup, hopefully that will only be a small part of the season. But it’s probably the repetitive trope with the highest hit rate, so why not.
Quick hits:
– “How yesterday’s enterprise of you”. LOL.
– Some nice continuity porn in Picard’s study, with stories that beg to be told.
– “Colombian Roast, Black” – yep, that is what MU Picard would drink. Nice work.
– Nice to see the MU has gotten some better tailoring, and moved away from leather.
– General Sisko! But does this mean that this isn’t the official MU, as I think all mirror Sisko’s were dead.
– I would say there’s a zero percent chance this channel between Seven and Rios isn’t being monitored.
– OK, I need a domesticat. So cute!
– Dr Jurati is just an incredibly bad secret agent in a very entertaining way.
– At least this alternate timeline has heard of the concept of security in at least a rudimentary way.
– Attention Discovery – the Rios/Juradi scene is how you do relationship stuff without losing momentum or tension.
– Alison Pill is such a superb actor, it’s incredible. She manages such a range of performance.
– 2024 is an interesting choice – not quite today, but close enough to make little difference.
844 down.