With Vadic in control of the Titan, Jack Crusher considers turning himself in to save everyone else... though perhaps his emerging mental abilities offer another way out. Geordi is persuaded to risk Data's life in a desperate bid to retake the ship. Meanwhile, Riker and Troi reconnect emotionally while imprisoned aboard the Shrike, unaware that rescue is on the way.
This final season of Star Trek: Picard has been at its best in the scenes where two classic Next Generation characters have truly delved into big emotions, and this episode was no exception. Aboard the Shrike, Riker and Troi confronted their own reactions to the death of their son. It had bothered me at least a little that this season's Will Riker seemed to have "backslid" a bit on his emotional journey since Picard season one... but given that, this episode offered a satisfying exploration of how and why. Both Will and Deanna had made mistakes, it seems, but are now ready to move forward.
Elsewhere in the episode, Brent Spiner extended what must surely be his lead for "acting opposite himself" more than any other Star Trek actor. Dramatizing an "internal struggle" isn't easy, but this episode did a credible job, presenting a conflict between Lore and Data that built perfectly on this season's themes of nostalgia. (In particular, I love that the writers found a subtle way to include Tasha Yar in this grand reunion.) Then there was LeVar Burton, crushing it once again in his scenes. His pained reaction to the apparent death of Data tugged at me, even anticipating the coming reversal of fate. And the subsequent scene in which Geordi and Data speak plainly of their friendship actually choked me up a bit.
This episode turned out to be the end of Vadic, and I enjoyed Amanda Plummer's larger than life performance to the very end: all whim and demented glee, theatrical and epic and wild. The character's actual death was all of those things too, as she shattered to pieces on the hull of her ship (moments after delivering the most on-brand final words imaginable).
Finally, this episode put all 7 of the main Next Generation cast members together in one room -- and, of course, that was for a scene around a conference room table. (Nothing else could be as fitting.) And the road getting there was paved with fun touches of humor along the way, from more Worf one-liners to Troi's wish that Riker would learn a new Betazoid word to Geordi and Jean-Luc's wine-based test of each other's identity.
The fact that all this good stuff was happening in this episode made it easier to overlook the elements that weren't as strong. And unfortunately, there were a fair number of those. Some were small: if you're going to dunk on the writing of Picard season one, why pick "Nepenthe," the season's indisputably best episode, rather than the scattershot season finale? Why is Raffi fighting changelings using bladed weapons; how can that be effective? (Vadic's masked goons are changelings too, right? Am I the only one who's a little uncertain about this, even after eight episodes?) But a lot of the things that gave me pause were bigger, structural kinds of questions.
Why set up that B-4 and Lal and other Soong-android personas were also inside the Daystrom synth if it was only ever going to come down to a struggle between Lore and Data? Do the writers have another trick besides "teeing up the most important thing for next episode, only to not deal with it in the next episode?" (Last episode ended with Vadic telling us all we'd finally solve the mystery of Jack Crusher, but that's where this episode also ended.)
And strangest of all, to me at least, was the decision to kill of Vadic in this episode. She died before we ever got to learn what her plan was really all about. She never revealed the truth about Jack, or what she wanted with him. Sure, we're still poised to learn those things in the two episodes remaining, but I still find it wild to have a villain whose Evil Plan is never even revealed before they're dead. And yes, there's a "bigger baddie" out there still (whoever Vadic was speaking to when she "talked to the hand"), but it feels equally weird to trade out the only villain we've really known this season for a new one with just two episodes to go. Maybe all this will make more sense in retrospect, when the season is over?
No comments:
Post a Comment