Pieces come together (and fall apart) in Picard Season 3 Episode 8

With the Titan captured by Vadic, Picard and the gang make desperate, life and death choices. But will they prevail or must they “Surrender?” Picard Season 3 episode 8 written by Matt Okumura, directed by Deborah Kampmeier.

Mark Turetsky: Will! I had the most horrible dream! I dreamt ComicsXF, and all of our thoughtful* discussions on Picard had disappeared. But then just as they were being absorbed into the void, ComicsXF just kinda became our Picard discussions, and then new discussions appeared, some up to two weeks late! 

Will Nevin: It’s like Inception, Mark, but with a much simpler plot. Anywho, I promised to stop installing extra l33t cracked warez on company computers, so maybe we’ll be ok to get this review in. 

Attack on Titan

Mark: So, due to the fumbling of Picard’s cunning plan last week, things aboard the Titan are… not going so great. The already reduced skeleton crew gets further reduced by the Changeling raiders. It doesn’t help that Jack does his remote control trick on another crewmember and very quickly gets them killed. I’m starting to think Jack’s eye color change isn’t actually part of the diegesis of the show, but rather a filmic convention. Otherwise, I think that Sydney would freak out because she looks directly at him as he goes through the change.  

Will: You ‘member in Undiscovered Country when the Rura Penthe Klingon commander was about to explain the whole damned conspiracy and then Kirk and McCoy got beamed to the Enterprise? I thought for sure — like some stupid asshole, I guess — Vadic was going to pick it up this episode and finally fuckin’ explain Jack Crusher’s whole damned deal. LOL NOPE — looks like we’ll have to wait another week for that.

But, yeah, it was strange that Jack, uhh, assumed command of some only to have them immediately die. Unless you’re a character with a name and a lot of screentime, it seems like your life expectancy on board the Titan is not long — especially when Vadic decides to get ruthless.

Mark: And Vadic really does go ruthless. She teases the different officers she might kill off, including the Bajoran lieutenant Mura (whose full name is Matthew Arliss Mura, so half-Bajoran?), ensign Esmar, and finally settles on vaporizing T’Veen, the Vulcan (possibly non-canonically part Deltan as well). I gotta say, of the options of very minor characters to kill off, I think T’Veen was the one that would hit the audience hardest. I think Trek has a special place in its heart for Vulcan science officers wearing blue, and it would have been fun to have Stephanie Czajkowski on the rumored, please-watch-our-show-and-demand-Paramount-produce-a-spinoff Star Trek: Legacy. But alas, not to be.

Will: Folks are getting a little…thirsty for that Legacy spinoff, aren’t they? I haven’t seen anything indicating that Alex Kurtzman is on board with it, so at this point it seems a little doubtful. 

Mark: Terry Matalas is already promoting its possible existence at some point in the future if we believe hard enough. It worked for Strange New Worlds, didn’t it? And I feel like this season of Picard has been much better received that season 2 of Discovery was.

As for the continued Jack teases, I think Lost has poisoned so much of television for the last 20 years. But at least in this case, I have to assume the producers knew where this was going when they set out, unlike Lost (and Battlestar Galactica. and Heroes, and…the list goes on). Here’s my theory. Strap yourself in, young man. 

Clearly Picard was misdiagnosed as having Irumodic Syndrome. The Changelings were only interested in the affected parts of his corpse’s brain, but I assume they didn’t get what they needed from it, so they needed his living heir. So what’s a notable time when someone seriously messed with Picard’s brain? I posit to you that this all started when he got “Inner Light”ed by the Ressikan probe. It gave him quasi-prophetic visions, the feeling of inhabiting someone else’s body. It’s not a perfect fit, but maybe the skills got refined in the next generation to have it. 

Will: If there’s not a Borg collective behind that red door, I think my brain might melt. I do like your idea, especially since “Inner Light” is one of the best Next Gen episodes and clearly so important to the Picard character. But, come on, it’s gotta be something Borg, right? 

Mark: Okay, but why not care about Seven at all? Maybe because Locutus had some kind of leadership role, so had some kind of ability to take control of other people? We theorized in chat that maybe Jack creates some kind of biological Borg nanoprobes, which he transferred to Sydney when he touched her hand, but here he took control of people he didn’t seem to have been in contact with, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. The Borg have been a through-line of the rest of the series, and so the utter lack of Borg content in this season stands out, and points to this possible connection.

The other thing is, this puts Picard’s “Irumodic Syndrome” back in season one into a whole new light. Remember how he was having vivid visions that led him to Dahj and Soji? It’s now been retconned to be related to whatever is going on with Jack (I can’t imagine that this was planned, considering the show’s now had a separate showrunner for each season). 

And speaking of past seasons, remember how episode 9 of last season featured Tallinn using her mind device to psychically merge with Picard to confront something in his past, represented by a closed door he needed to open? Well, plus ça change… as they say in France. 

Will: Yeaaaaahhhhh. Not exactly original, is it?

Mark: Still, it’s nice to see that Deanna will have something to do aside from being a hostage, and also this provides a good plot reason for Deanna to have been absent for so much of the season. Had she been around earlier, it would have broken the plot entirely.

Will: We can (and will!) talk more about her, but it was nice to see her with something to do in this episode, both with Jack and her reunion with Riker.

Mark: By the way, when they continuously refer to Jack as “that boy,” when he is clearly a grown-ass man, I can only think of this:

Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

Will: In a season that’s been decompressed as hell, we actually got one plot that appeared to wrap up within two episodes, as last week’s eternally tormented golem Datalore became this week’s new and improved Data. The need for the final showdown was a bit contrived (a thing so fundamentally baked into this series’ DNA I should stop bringing it up), but I think we got to a good place with a more evolved and humanlike Data. The actual confrontation between Data and Lore gave me some Neo v. Agent Smith Matrix vibes but without the super huge budget. Again, overall, pretty good stuff. 

Mark: It was also done in precisely the same way in The Order of the Stick a few years ago when Durkon blasted the vampire soul that had possessed his body with all of his memories at once, which turned the vampire into, well, him. I have some quibbles with this device, in that while I think that our memories greatly affect who we are, a large portion of our general personality seems baked in. I can see it in my own kid, who has had precisely the temperament she has now since the day she was born, but with better cognitive function and language to express herself. 

But in this case I’m willing to accept it because Data is a) made up of data and b) he didn’t seem to overwrite Lore entirely, but rather gave him the memory of a life where he was loved and accepted, and that’s a good moral to the story. Still, it’s not so much the episodic memories we have, but the emotional attachments we make to them. Why wouldn’t Lore look at all of these memories and attach to them a sense of resentment that those things didn’t happen in his own life? Why should he associate those memories with the touchy-feely feelings that Data does?

I would have enjoyed seeing Data share with Lore all of the logs, letters and diaries of the colonists that Lore killed off, just to maybe teach him a lesson in guilt and atonement, but that might just work against Data’s intentions. I like that this Data is a bit sassier. He’s not just the Data of the movies, where the emotion chip was the big character difference. He’s got some of Lore’s best qualities now.

Will: I think you said that the outcome here was probably some melded personality with Data at the forefront, and I think that’s what we got. You’re also right that this Data is a bit spunkier — he almost seems capable of dropping a one-liner or two that might be worthy of Ash Williams. (“Listen up, you squishy screwheads.”) I don’t know who is interested in continuing on post-Picard, but it feels like a real shame to not spend more time with this Data. Does he re-enlist in Starfleet? Does he explore the galaxy? Plenty of things to explore with him…but I get the sense we’ll have to leave that for the novels.

Mark: I was wondering a few weeks back if we’d learn anything about how Data felt about essentially having his mind and body enslaved by Daystrom to act as their security system (I’ve been listening to the excellent Murderbot Diaries), and while that still might come up, it seems like it’s not going to be a major factor. The other thing is: with Altan Soong’s memories, he now knows there’s an entire colony of Soong-type androids. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up going to live with his people, at least for the time being. 

They also made sure to deal with the virtual Data’s death, and respecting that copy of Data’s wishes. I mean, that software version of Data was relegated to a kind of endless limbo/hell, so unsurprising that he’d want it to end. But this Data gets to have it all: become human after everything, reunite and reconcile with his wayward brother, hang out with his best friends. Of course this Data would want to live.

Will: Of all the characters from Next Gen, I think Data deserves a happy ending the most. Good for him.

Reunification

Mark: The big highlight of the episode was the reunion between all of the remaining TNG cast. They even get to do their favorite thing: hang out around a long table and have a meeting! Worf’s reunion with Deanna was an especial highlight for me, as his character has been this whole season. His clear need for her approval in his new, kinder, gentler self was adorable and puppyish, in a manly, Klingon sort of way.

Will: Aight, so here’s the deal: Overall, I think this new Worf is fine. But some of his dialogue, his new-found lack of self awareness, is writing him too close to Elnor. Would the Worf we last saw on DS9 *actually* say he thought about sending his friends decapitated heads? Would Worf *actually* spill his guts in front of Troi *and* Riker, when he knew his relationship with the former was a sore spot with the latter? Come on. That was some goofy shit that Michael Dorn should have not done.

But, yes, eight episodes in, and we’ve got the whole gang around a (smaller) conference table. Felt like coming home, Mark.

Mark: Did I find it weird that for some reason Seven, Shaw and Raffi weren’t in this meeting? Sure! It’s 100% fan service, but I don’t say that pejoratively. A little fan service is perfectly fine, and we’ve been waiting 21 years for this reunion. 

Will: We can have a little fan service. As a treat.

Mark: As for Worf, it’s funny: for all of TNG, except in episodes where he was the focal character, he was mostly there as comic relief. This seems like a reversion to that. But I think in this case, maybe it’s like how when you hang out with parents or siblings, you slip back into your old patterns of being with them. That, or Worf is 100% self-consciously playing up those aspects of himself because it’s fun, and funny. Same, to a certain extent, with Data. 

Let’s talk about our lovely scene between Riker and Troi. It’s amazing, it could so easily have been a replay of Han and Leia in Cloud City after Han had been tortured, but it’s not. It’s a charming reunion between two actors who have such amazing chemistry together. It’s a shame we haven’t gotten more of it this season, but I thought it was worth the wait. 

Will: I have hate-watched a good 60 percent of this series, and for each of its very lowest lows, it somehow manages to come along and do something beautiful. Riker and Troi were the highlight of the first season (aside from Data’s death), and here, they manage to recapture the same believability they had the last time we saw them. This isn’t two former lovers reconnecting like we saw in “Encounter at Farpoint” or them falling back in love like in Insurrection. These are two people who have been through the darkest valleys you can have in a relationship, and it felt so genuine. Both Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis deserve all the credit for what they were able to accomplish in that scene — before, of course, it got interrupted by a little deus ex Worf.

Mark: The present recapitulates the past! Also, did I miss something, or how did Raffi and Worf get ahold of a cloaked shuttle? Why not just have it be the La Sirena? If we’re giving out cloaking devices willy-nilly, just give that ship one as well, why not? 

Will: This was not expressly stated, but it was the best I could gather: The H.M.S. Bounty’s cloaking device was installed in the Titan, which was then schlepped to the shuttle before it was reinstalled in the Titan. Kinda dumb, but it served the story.    

Mark: Yeah, I suppose if they were sending Worf and Raffi off on a top secret mission while their job was to be a sitting duck, that makes sense.

Will: Final observation: Vadic’s not dead, right?

Mark: I go back and forth on this: she’s radically changed her biology, where she’s specifically given up her longevity in exchange for being able to impersonate solids more easily. And we see her freeze and shatter into a million pieces before her ship blows up right next to her. 

And yet. 

Laas, from Deep Space Nine’s “Chimera” was able to shapeshift into a spacefaring form that could keep up with a runabout. I certainly hope that wasn’t the end of Vadic, but it certainly felt like her big death scene.

Will: I think you’re right — she sure does seem Rasputin-esquely dead. But to ask you a final question (distinctly different from a final observation, mind you!), who is our Big Bad in these last two episodes? Who’s the hidden hand trying to bring down the Federation?

Mark: 

“When you return to The Link, what will become of the entity I’m talking to right now?”

“The drop becomes the ocean.”

“And if you choose to take solid form again?”

“The ocean becomes a drop.”

That’s all I got.

Make It So On and So Forth

• Love that we got the holo-memorial of Tasha Yar. Maybe if Star Trek: Legacy ever gets off the ground, they can bring back Denise Crosby as Sela.
• Showrunner Terry Matalas promised we’d get a Tasha reference, and by god, we got it.
• I’ve [Mark] had arguments online with people who insisted that Riker is canonically a good cook, based on the pizza thing from season 1. Glad that we’ve had it acknowledged onscreen that he’s shit at pizza.
• “Raktajino lattes” is a great concept, especially because “raktajino” is clearly supposed to sound like the Klingon word for “cappuccino.”
• Did they think to retrieve Picard’s original body from the Shrike before blowing it up? 
• Reminder: Ed Speleers is 35.

Will Nevin

Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.

Mark Turetsky

Mark Turetsky is an audiobook narrator and voice actor who sometimes writes about comic books. Originally from Montreal, Canada, he now lives in Northern Louisiana.