Picard and Riker learn more about Jack, Beverly's son, as all three face off with the menacing Vadic. Even a possible rescue by the Titan may not be enough to save them from the terrifying firepower of Vadic's ship. Meanwhile, Raffi pursues an investigation into the quantum tunneling attack -- even as her handler warns her off, and even at great personal cost.
In many ways, this episode was a long walk to get to exactly where you assumed it was going. I didn't find that made the journey unsatisfying, per se... though I did occasionally feel like, with only 10 episodes overall in this season overall: shouldn't we be picking up the pace a little?
I think everyone knew that Beverly's son Jack would be revealed as Jean-Luc's son too. In a season that's about The Next Generation crew reuniting, there's really just no interesting story to be found in Jack having any other father. The fact that it took until the end of the episode for us to get to the full revelation of that might have been a little too tedious... but we did get some great moments along the way. Riker needling Picard about "not seeing it" felt pitch perfect. And the wordless exchange of looks between Beverly and Jean-Luc was appropriately dramatic.
Jack himself was set up as a roguish character. Ed Speleers clearly has that gear as an actor, but we'll need to see more than swagger as the season goes on. How his character is ultimately written to work with the team is going to weigh heavily on how successful the character is overall. (But I do have one question: are we supposed to think his British accent is like... genetic or something?)
Another expected element of the story was the introduction of a major villain. Still, Vadic made a great impression thanks to a delicious performance by actress Amanda Plummer. We know from Pulp Fiction that she could have come in here screaming and spitting venomous rage all over the screen. Instead, she gives us a a villain who's chilling because it's clear how much delight she takes in all of this. The way she toyed with our heroes, toyed with her words, cast her much in the same mold as the villain played by her father Christopher in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. I look forward to more from her in the episodes ahead.
Raffi's subplot in the episode was perhaps the least engaging element of the story, for all the tropes it drew upon. On the one hand, I do appreciate them using her backstory of addiction and obsession. On the other hand, the choice force upon her by her ex-husband felt weirdly villainous, and I wasn't exactly a fan of the "do drugs to prove to me you're not a cop" trope.
On the other hand, this same subplot gave us some thrills too. Star Trek got its first notable Ferengi in some time in the form of Sneed. He served up nastiness with a side of Slug-O Cola in an effective way: sometime fun in the manner of a Quark-type character, but with enough gangster attitude to feel reasonably dangerous. And of course, he led to the arrival of Worf in the plot. You probably guessed that Worf would be Raffi's handler, noting the talk of being a "warrior" in the first episode and cross-referencing with Next Gen characters yet to be seen. Still, it was immensely satisfying to see Worf show up and kick ass. (Violently taking advantage of the fact that this would not run on broadcast television.)
Side note: showrunner Terry Matalas gave 12 Monkeys fans more to revel in: one of Jack's aliases was "James Cole" (the main character of that show), and Sneed's drug was called "splinter" (the time travel technology from that show). Then, bridging both those references, Sneed was played by actor Aaron Stanford, who played James Cole in the series!
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