Spoilers for Episode 7 of Star Trek Picard Season 3
Uiuiui, episode seven of the final season of Star Trek Picard was already hard on my trash tolerance level before she hit the red button and dropped a massive exposure bomb over my head with Vadic’s Origin story. I’ll admit this episode tugged at my tortured enthusiasm for this season again quite a bit. So far it has been held together more badly than right by a two-component adhesive out of nostalgia for the series of the nineties and disenchantment with the TNG movies. And now several things are happening at the same time, which provide a lot of drive and tension, but are difficult to swallow.
Basically, this has been going on for the whole time through season three. But I have to think back to the first episode or two if I want to conjure up eye-rolling moments like the seventh chapter that aired today. Where should I start?
Maybe first with the fact that I can definitely live with Vadic’s background. If the Federation is morally capable of developing a biological weapon against the changelings, experiments on nine individual specimens are also conceivable. One wonders why the scientists thought it was a good idea to make the guinea pigs even more powerful. But okay, I like to leave the answer to that floating around in the blur between what the flashback revealed and what we didn’t see.
What I find harder to believe is how easily Lore was able to take over the ship. I thought it was far-fetched that Soong Lore and Data would even unite in one body – and I didn’t like the explanation for it either. But because the crew just put up with it, I assumed that some kind of security protocols were in place to prevent exactly what happened: Lore’s takeover of the ship at a dramaturgically tense moment. There it was right back: The terribly fitting drawing board plot that creates exactly the most (melo-)dramatic situation that is needed at the moment.
I’m not even sure which I find lazier. This construct created purely for the purpose of suspense – or the fact that a person gets through to a computer with an emotional speech. After all: Brent Spiner was allowed to do some acting acrobatics in some of these scenes when switching between the two roles. It’s always fun to watch him.
I liked Seven’s reunion with Tuvok, who also turns out to be part of the conspiracy. The fear for his true intentions and the will to trust him were tangibly implemented in the scene. Tim Russ plays it with a lot of joy and unusual hints of deviousness, that we didn’t get an extra show of his status at the moment was a smart move, even if I could have done without the Will Riker imitation. That was a number over it.
Most of all, I’m really worried about how the creators of the show are going to explain Jack Crusher’s strange abilities to us. His mind reading with Sidney started out exciting, but then culminated in a wireless mindmeld with somersaults, which I found so stupid that I can’t find the words. Why is Sydney’s thought “Jack, what do you want me to do?” instead of “Shit, that’s it for me then!” or “AAAAAAH, I don’t want to die!”? What if Sidney can’t do a somersault? I know a few people who can’t do somersaults (okay, two of them are three and five years old, but still). questions upon questions. In any case, I have little memory of the exact course of the scene and what was said, because my mind seems to be trying with all its might to block it out. What all this means, who knows. There’s obviously a connection to the changelings, but right now what’s seen doesn’t add up front and back. I’m emotionally ill-prepared for an esoteric changeling Jesus story or contrived crusher experiments. As I said: It needs a good explanation, then I might be back on board.
And just smuggling a Picard imitation onto the festivities won’t be the end of the plan. There must be more behind Jack’s vision and skills. The supposed attack on the Federation festivities somehow seems like a flimsy pretext anyway. The entire fleet united at one point? Who thinks this is a good idea? That seems neither logistically feasible nor wise from a security perspective. Shouldn’t something like this be called off after, as far as I know, unaccounted terrorists dropped the federation recruitment center on the city? Oh, that’s right, if the fleet weren’t united at this one point, the authors wouldn’t be able to make the most epic possible attack on the subject of their series (see above: drawing board!).
Oh man! I have to say, as someone who isn’t normally very receptive to fanservice, as my reviews of relevant shows here attest, I’ve been surprised at how well I’ve been able to live with this third season so far. But by episode seven, the excitement of what happens next turns into a worrying uncertainty about what they’re going to put me through in the next episode. I liked the three, four episode lasting feeling of putting my nagging mind on the back burner and letting this tourist attraction disguised as a Star Trek show take me along. I hope it returns next week.
