Picard's team is able to take La Sirena back in time, but at a very high cost. There, the search for the mysterious Watcher begins... but an accident befalls Rios before he can even get started, and he soon is in a delicate situation. Meanwhile, Dr. Jurati must take a dangerous trip into the mind of the Borg Queen to extract information that might help them all.
Let me start with the interesting name on the back of the director's chair for this episode: Lea Thompson. On the one hand, I had no idea that she had taken up directing... though on the other, it's an all-too-common career path for actresses that Hollywood lamentably discards once they reach a certain age. Thompson's directorial resume seems to be a mix of sitcoms and sci-fi shows, though Picard certainly seems like the biggest production she's yet tackled. She did it expertly in every way, getting fantastic performances from the actors, serving up loads of intriguing images, making many dynamic camera moves. If there's any justice, she'll be getting more calls to direct with this work added to her reel.
The episode opened by resolving the cliffhanger from episode 2, of course, and I was pulled in different directions by how things unfolded. On the one hand, I'm sorry to see Elnor dispatched so suddenly (even if the time travel conceit of the season provides an easy way to undo that before season 3). On the other hand, I'm glad the show honored the truth of the situation they'd set up: Elnor was shot by a weapon that should have been lethal, and there really needed to be stakes-setting for this opening act of the season-long story.
That took us to the time travel, which paid homage to Star Trek IV in just the right way. Without indulging fully in the pretentiousness of how time travel looked in that movie, we got some intriguing manipulation of the photography (forwards and backwards, dropping frames). And though this is jumping around the episode a bit, it was not the only homage here: signs for the "Sanctuary Disticts" of LA connected us with Deep Space Nine's "Past Tense" two-parter. More indirectly, the episode story was an homage to great Star Trek naturally including social commentary.
The Rios subplot was, of course, the key vehicle for that, and was a compelling element of the episode. I like that the team's clearly suspect plan to trust in compromised technology led to immediate consequences. (Damn, what a hell of a stunt for Rios' arrival!) Most times that Star Trek takes a trip back in time, they pick up an ally among the contemporary locals. Teresa joins a long tradition including Rain Robinson, Gillian Taylor, and more, and I hope that the character has a longer role in the season ahead.
The Seven/Raffi banter was the comic relief of the episode, and a great use of both characters, as neither is really in their element -- not within character using subterfuge, and not as a story device being the lightness of an episode. Both were a lot of fun. (Way more fun than Kevin the unseen guard. Screw that guy.)
But the best scenes of the episode, far and away, were Dr. Jurati's infiltration of the Borg Queen's mind. Annie Wersching continued to give us a chilling and creepy take on the Queen. ("You've impressed me" was one of the most menacing thing the character has ever said.) Meanwhile, Alison Pill more than rose to the challenge of her difficult moments -- flipping back and forth between Jurati and the Queen, switching between different high-pitched emotions in an instant, and generally making the encounter seem truly dangerous. It's interesting to me that the first season of Picard cast Jurati as the "traitor in our midst," and now this interaction with the Borg Queen positions her to potentially be that again in season two. Yet it doesn't feel at all like a "rehash" to me, and I'm truly interested to see where things go next.
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