Picard: Hide and Seek

As we approach the end of the second season of Star Trek: Picard with the penultimate episode "Hide and Seek," I feel the show has been taking a turn into Discovery's wheelhouse -- for all the good and bad that entails. The acting is great. The emotional arcs and destinations in the story are well considered and well delivered. And the particulars of the plot used to get there? Not so solid.

The Borg Queen has come for La Sirena, and our heroes must defend it lest she get a four century jump start on assimilating the galaxy. A battle on the grounds of Chateau Picard will force Jean-Luc to fully face the memory he's locked away, while a struggle inside Jurati's mind may be their only hope.

If you focus on just the emotional destination, the final revelation of Picard's past was excellent. Everything locks into place with remarkable clarity. Of course Jean-Luc wanted to leave home after the death of his mother. Of course his (still unseen) brother would carry resentment there. And yes, the writers paid attention to a scene from The Next Generation that actually showed Picard's mother as an old woman, then specifically wrote "in conversation" with that scene to lend it extra poignancy.

On the other hand... how Maman Picard meets her end is quite simply horrible. I can make peace with her dying of a mental illness; Star Trek is always showing us new "future diseases" beyond the reach of advancing medicine to cure. But what's unexplainable (and rather unforgivable) is that mental illness still apparently carries such a stigma in the future that families still don't seek help for their issues, and see locking a person away in a room as the only workable solution. The Next Generation had already established Picard's family as being a little technologically regressive. But this emotionally and intellectually regressive too? (And I think all we needed is a little clarity of timeline. Tell us explicitly that all this happened in one night, and that they were going to take her to get help first thing in the morning!)

Elsewhere in the episode? Well, let's just say it's gotta be hard writing for modern, serialized television. The tightrope you have to walk is so narrow. On the one hand, you seed episodes with appropriate markers of the plot to come, and risk giving everything away too early. On the other hand, you withhold information to preserve the surprise, and risk plot developments seeming unearned when they're revealed.

The Borg Queen / Jurati story was a case of the former. The relationship between those two has been a slow simmer all season. And the specific method by which the Queen "conquered" Jurati -- using her emotions to gain control -- clearly set up a two-way street by which Jurati could fight back later. The ultimate destination of this subplot has been clear all along, and all that remains now is for us to get back to the future next week and see that the mysteriously masked Borg Queen of episode one was Jurati all along. It all makes sense, but it's somewhat less satisfying since it was always there to anticipate.

I guess you have to find the satisfaction in how the themes all tie together... because it's absolutely no coincidence that in the same season that a major plot line was about creating a new Borg collective principled on accepting "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses," a major side plot was specifically about showing us how ICE treats immigrants. There's your classic Star Trek social commentary, and in case the message was too subtle: we're worse than the Borg. Or if you don't like that read, then just enjoy the clever visuals of laser gun sights appearing as Borg lasers.

On the other hand, hiding details in the hopes of generating surprise, we have a new mystery dropped at the last minute, with just one episode to go: one Renée is fated to live, and another to die. That was clearly only put on the table now specifically so we wouldn't think about it too long. Still -- I think they gave us an awfully big clue in happening to also mention in this episode that Seven was rejected from Starfleet after Voyager returned home, and that Raffi specifically found that to be a grave injustice. I predict that's all going to tie together... even if fleshing out the relationship between Seven and Raffi even more would have been very welcome earlier in the season than this.

But then, you did get the emotional satisfaction of Raffi finally saying everything she wished she'd said to Elnor to his hologram, at least. (And as for actor Evan Evagora -- when you don't have much to do all season, that's more time you get to spend rehearsing neat fight choreography!)

I liked a lot of the emotions and themes behind the story this week. I just didn't often feel like the ends justified the means. I'd give "Hide and Seek" a B-. We'll see if the finale revises my thinking on the season as a whole.