As Worf, Raffi, and Riker board Daystrom Station to discover what's been stolen, the Titan hides out at the Starfleet museum and Picard seeks help from an old friend.
Earlier in the season, I noted that it was an effective and correct choice to slowly bring in The Next Generation cast over the course of many episodes. But now that we're halfway through, it's time to stop stretching that taffy; the writers agreed and gave us this episode that actually includes all the original cast members. (Mostly. Troi and Beverly's roles were quite small indeed. But we have four more episodes to go.)
First, there was LeVar Burton's return as Geordi. I welcome the idea that not every old crew member from the Enterprise was eager to jump back into a new adventure. Still, Geordi's reluctance to help felt a little too hard in the face of the stakes -- all the Federation is threatened, Geordi himself had already sensed this (arguing against bringing the fleet together for Frontier Day), and yet he still doesn't want to help?
On the other hand, he did have a reason to be reluctant: his concern for keeping his daughters out of harm's way. And just as this season has already given Beverly Crusher and Will Riker their best scenes ever, so did this lead to some of Burton's best work as LaForge. The one-on-one conversation between Geordi and Sidney allowed LeVar Burton to channel the vulnerability he's so easily able to access as an actor -- while underlining just how criminal it was to cover his incredibly expressive eyes for seven years.
Someone was arguably even more thrilled than me that Geordi was there: I loved seeing the heretofore cranky Captain Shaw absolutely fan out over one of the classic characters. It made sense for Shaw, giving him a new dimension without compromising anything we've seen of him until now.
Brent Spiner's return to Star Trek: Picard was less momentous, given that he's been in both prior seasons. Still, the concept behind his new character is interesting; Spiner has played every member of the Soong family, and now he gets to do them all at once. The late scene back on the Titan, that saw him flipping between characters, showed that each of the characters truly is different and has recognizable speech patterns and mannerisms that instantly tell the audience who they're seeing.
I liked seeing the next next generation try to grab the reins a bit in this episode; Jack and Sidney's team-up to steal a cloaking device for the Titan was a fun idea. I wish the budget could have been big enough for us to see actual scenes aboard the Klingon Bird-of-Prey from Star Trek IV (more on that in a moment), but I hope the few sparks of chemistry between the characters is nurtured into a small flame in the coming episodes.
Speaking of Jack, this episode seemed targeted to calm my nerves about the last one -- it pinned his hallucinations not on possibly being a changeling, but on having the same disease as Jean-Luc. I do hope that's the truth of it and not a fake-out, because not only does that strengthen the family connection between the characters, it sets the stage for big personal stakes at the end of the season: what will Picard do to save his son's life?
There was some awkwardness to the episode, though. First, it simply makes no sense to me whatsoever to put the Data-amalgamation synth in charge of Daystrom security. Just two seasons ago, synthetic life forms were banned in the Federation specifically because they were not to be trusted. How did we get from there to using a synth to protect the most important facility in all of the Federation? (I get it... we need to work Brent Spiner into this final season somehow. But this is a real stretch.)
The brief Moriarty appearance left me pretty cold too. The whole thing felt like a fake-out specifically for the season trailer. (Which, I suppose, is exactly what it was: "let's put Moriarty in the trailer and everyone will lose their minds!") He's only there for a minute, acts nothing like Moriarty while he's there (whipping out a gun and shooting up the place), and had no particular connection to the characters in the scene with him (if you're going to do Moriarty, Data or Geordi needed to be there).
Then there was another very small moment that for me, at least, caused an outsized mental stumble. We're told at one point that all Starfleet ships are now networked together... which to me sure made it sound like the thing to do was to go steal one of the old ships from the museum (presumably not networked) and "trek" off in that. I get that the series spent the money on the Titan sets, didn't have the money to spend on recreating some classic starship, and wouldn't want to even if they could have. (You wouldn't want to spend the rest of the season aboard a ship that looks dated.) But why even raise the question if it couldn't be "answered?"
Still, there were enough other delights to distract from those few elements that didn't work so well. All those classic starships, for example -- the Klingon Bird-of-Prey, Voyager, the Enterprise-A -- each one appearing as a spray of its theme music played in the score. Then there was the Daystrom Station, a fire hose of Easter eggs blasting the audience from every direction. Another Genesis torpedo for the movie fans. An even more weaponized tribble (who hates Klingons, of course) to give us a good laugh. The tease that James T. Kirk's body was stored there (setting up the reveal at the end of the episode). There are surely more references I missed... and erstwhile Photoshoppers have made my social media feed a delight for the past several days, imagining up other Star Trek artifacts that could have been stored here.
Overall, this season of Star Trek: Picard continues to deliver for me. I give "The Bounty" a B+. Now that the whole crew is back together (in an episode, at least, if not actually in the same place), my hopes are high for the next episode.
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