First order of business: I coulda sworn I’d mentioned this last time but apparently I forgot. When they’re interrogating the assassin, Laris pokes him in the brow ridge and calls him a “northerner” (like Zhubin). So I guess the Romulans with brow ridges are “northern”. Lots of planets have a north. There might be more to it than that (They’re both also bald, so for all I know, ridged-with-hair is, like, “western” or something), but we’ve got a nice straightforward acknowledgement now. Also, I think last week’s episode is the first time we ever saw dark-skinned Romulans. I believe all the ones we saw were bald and ridged, so presumably “northern” unless there’s some further distinction.
This show is becoming a real weird exercise in how artfully and beautifully and well-acted they can utterly avoid accomplishing anything. We are now 40% through the season and this episode is still in “Avengers, assemble!” mode, being mostly backstory and character introduction. In case you hadn’t gotten enough of that yet.
As appears to be usual now, we start out with a lengthy “fourteen years ago” flashback, this time covering the moment Picard learned of the Mars attack. Picard beams into a Romulan relocation site on Vashti, a town that has a kind of Indiana Jones vibe to it. A sort of used-exotic 1930s pulp adventure sort of place that’s got a mix of Wild West and Southeast Asia motifs. Kinda reminds me of the Asia section of Disney’s Animal Kingdom. A bright-eyed scampish little boy nicks a dragonfruit (I mean, it is definitely a dragonfruit but is probably meant to represent some weird exotic alien plant, because dragonfruit is a good choice for that sort of thing) and gets called “sisterboy” by the shopkeeper. Picard shows up in a white suit and Panama hat. He’s wearing a commbadge, though when we see him contact Raffi, he does so by tapping his ear. I’m going to assume Picard is out of uniform to make the Romulans more comfortable, but there’s no explanation for why he’s dressed like a tourist on Safari. He’s here to visit the Qowat Milat, an order of all-female warrior monks who follow a code of (incoming title drop) “absolute candor”. If you think this is a weird code given how much effort they’ve put into reminding us that Romulans are secretive, you’re right. The Qowat Milat are explicitly enemies of the Tal Shiar. The fact that larger Romulan culture treats them with a kind of respectful awe rather than like a bunch of weirdos might be telling us something else about the Romulan culture of secrecy – that it’s based in self-preservation, perhaps. The boy from before, Elnor, is their ward, though Picard reckons they ought to find him a permanent home that isn’t a gender-segregated monastic order. Him and Picard bond over The Three Musketeers and swordfighting and clearly we’re meant to see Picard as a father figure here, and he presumably is hoping Jean-Luc will adopt him. Unfortunately, Raffi calls him up and tells him about Mars, so Picard is off, and though he says he’ll be back as soon as he can, we all know how it’s gonna go.
In the present, La Sirena jumps to warp, having dropped out of it for… reasons. Jurati is bored with space and tries to Meet Cute with Rios, but he’s not really interested. They are mercifully interrupted when Raffi shows up to be angry about Rios changing course so Picard can make a pit stop at Vashti. Picard is looking around a holodeck recreation of his office in France assembled by La Sirena’s Emergency Hospitality Hologram, which gives us (a) a way to keep using the chateau sets from the first three episodes, (b) a chance to have a little chuckle at the conceptual absurdity of a hospitality emergency, and (c) a handy way to introduce the fact that La Sirena came standard with a whole bunch of Emergency Holograms who all look like Rios.
Raffi deflects questions about why she’s jonesing so hard to get to Freecloud, and instead challenged Picard on his own guilt trip about going to Vashti. Picard has an official reason for going: if he can convince the Qowat Milat that his cause is worthy (according to criteria he is pointedly evasive about), one of them will swear an unbreakable oath to help him with lots of sword-based murder, and let’s face it, the current adventuring party consists of an elderly vintner, a drug addict, a theoretical academic, and low-budget Han Solo. A Romulan Ninja-Monk would be a serious boon to their Initiative rolls. But… Yeah, really it’s because he’s on a guilt trip and he knows he doesn’t have a whole lot of time left to resolve his various angsts.
It is not until this point that Rios chooses to bring up the fact that Vashti has kinda gone to hell over the past fourteen years. And, like, it makes sense that with Picard having spent the past fourteen years hiding from the world in a lowkey depression, he hasn’t kept up with things. But… Picard has basically been surprised by every single thing that has gone badly since he retired. Shouldn’t he have done a little research when he decided to go on this adventure? Were a long way into this series for Picard to still be constantly surprised that things have gone badly and that people are not happy to see him.
So Vashti used to be under the protection of the “Fenris Rangers”, which is an organization which sounds so fucking cool that we will not see or hear anything else about them. But the Fenris Rangers don’t have the resources to take care of the place any more, so it’s being run by a minor warlord/crime boss called Kar Kantar, who sounds like a pretty cool greasy mid-level villain who could provide some interesting conflict, so we will not see or hear anything else about him, except that he’s got an “antique” Romulan Bird-of-Prey, which we will see one time. It’s probably meant to be the same class as the TOS-era Bird of Prey from “Balance of Terror” (It doesn’t look exactly the same, but there’s no way to know whether that means it’s a slightly different class or a Discovery-style “visual reboot”) Why didn’t we bring this up sooner? Fuck you, that’s why.
In addition to the strangely-calibrated threat of the hundred-year-old Romulan ship (Seriously, there’s a weight and portentousness to the Bird-of-Prey that is odd. It’s set up as a major threat, but when it does come to blows, they’re fairly explicit that La Sirena outclasses it considerably. Remember: even in TOS, the Romulan ship was not even close to being able to take on the Enterprise in a fair fight. It was a submarine analogy: a submarine can’t take on a battleship in an equal fight; all it’s got going for it is stealth), Vashti is protected by a planetary defense force field that only opens up every half-hour and blows you up if you don’t have permission to approach. Picard is, of course, surprised that just telling them who he is does not get them permission, so Rios suggests a bribe. Which I guess they do off-screen as it isn’t mentioned again.
Meanwhile, Soji emotes over an unconscious Rahmda, and watches a pre-Borg interview with her. Recorded Rhamda talks about “THE DESTROYER” of Romulan mythology who will command the unshackled demons at the day of armageddon and destroy all sentient life in the galaxy. So there’s that. Karen comforts her by showing her how to use the Borg HVAC system as a Slip ‘N Slide. But then he casually mentions that there’s no record of her ever having been on the ship she supposedly left Earth on, and she gets mad at him for calling her a liar and also spying on her.
He takes a nap later and is woken by Rizzo seductively futzing with his facial hair in a way that suggests that they are not actually siblings. She’s increasingly upset about him not having tortured her to death, but he insists that if he pushes too hard, she’s going to activate and they’ll have to kill her before they find out where the others are. Rizzo is clearly unconvinced about his commitment to android girl murder, and possibly he has some tangential obsession that is interfering with his main mission (It is not clear to me at this point which of the ten million conspiracy threads going on right now is the specific one he’s supposedly obsessed over).
Picard beams down to Vashti and tries being friendly with everyone, but no one will say hi and they all give him the stink-eye, and there’s a “ROMULANS ONLY” sign at the bar. He makes his way to the convent and catches up with the head nun, who is the only person who has actually been happy to see him in this whole series. She suggests that he hit up Elnor for the whole “blood oath” thing, because even though he technically can’t join their order on account of the “is a man” thing, he’s fully trained, and she’d like him to go off and do something exciting that gets him killed in a more exciting way than he is liable to get killed here. Picard tells Elnor his sob story, but he’s bitter about the abandonment and, like Raffi, real offended that Picard has only shown up now that he needs a favor.
Presumably in the mood to get beaten up, Picard goes back to the bar, tears down the “ROMULANS ONLY” sign, and orders a drink. A former senator starts a fight with him, bitter partly over being abandoned by the Federation, and partly over having been persuaded into accepting help from outsiders in the first place by Picard’s famously silver tongue – he reckons that the Romulans could’ve handled the relocation themselves if they hadn’t been manipulated into relying on outsiders. He gives Picard a sword and tries to duel him, but Picard drops the sword after a parry or two, refusing to fight. Elnor shows up and tries to trick the audience into thinking he’s giving Picard a pep talk by telling him to “choose to live”, but you should really be quick enough on the uptake to realize he’s actually talking to the senator, who he proceeds to effortlessly decapitate when he takes another swing at Picard. Elnor swears himself to Picard’s cause and cautions everyone else not to fuck with the old man. Picard apologizes to all present for the whole, “Dropped the ball on saving your race” thing, and the two beam back to La Sirena just ahead of one Romulan who reckons that Elnor’s swordsmanship is great and all, but no match for a gun.
Kar Kantar has shown up in the mean time with his ancient Romulan ship, prompting fears that we might actually get a big exciting space battle. And… It’s an okay space battle. A little cluttered but not too bad. They make a point that the Bird-of-Prey isn’t really that big of a threat to La Sirena per se: the actual threat is the planetary defenses. The Bird-of-Prey doesn’t actually have to outgun La Sirena if it can shepherd it toward the planet. Rios summons “Emmet”, the Emergency Tactical Hologram, which is also played by the same actor, but tattooed, discheveled, and Spanish-speaking. An unidentified ship suddenly comes to their assistance. Emmet identifies it as an ugly ship, though Rios is impressed by the pilot. It buys them an opening that allows La Sirena to zap one of the nacelles clean off the Romulan, but it takes a pair of disruptor hits that send it into the planetary force field. Rios consents to beam the pilot aboard, and everyone makes sure to refer to the pilot as “him”, so you know darn right well it’s going to turn out not to be a “him” at all. Though they’ve never met face-to-face before, their mutual reputations precede them, allowing Jean-Luc to identify their new passenger as Seven of Nine. She just has time to tell Picard he owes her a new ship before passing out.
Next week: Everyone dresses up in extravagantly ridiculous cosplay for some kind of heist!
Well, we got a swordfight and a space battle. And Borg Slip ‘n Slide. They are really getting good at making things extravagantly fail to happen in this show. I don’t even. Somehow this is the most exciting episode yet and also the one in which the most extravagant amount of nothing actually happens. Look, I’m fine with a show that just lets us trade on nostalgia and enjoy the presence of Patrick Stewart playing a more relaxed Picard. But they coulda just done the “Old Man Picard at his Vineyard” show I wanted rather than this overly-complicated conspiracy thriller that keeps on just not going anywhere.
Other things:
- Rios is reading a print copy of The Tragic Sense of Life. His copy is in English, which is a little weird since it was originally written in Spanish and we’ve established that Rios speaks Spanish.
- I guess we do indeed need to consider the holograms as separate people, since Emmet is completely different from the others.
- I’m glad that Soji indicates that she kinda gets that Karen is a spy, given how obvious he is about it – his casual flaunting of the rules along with the fact that he has no acknowledged job or rank, yet has unrestricted access to everything.
- Picard keeps forgetting himself and trying to give orders before deferring to Rios. This stops being cute quickly.
- Is Seven a Fenris Ranger? That would be cool. Particularly if it means she can Henshin.
I had this dream the other day based around Star Trek: Picard. It was a scene from a hypothetical season finale, and Picard and his band have split up and are all going to their respective peoples to try to rally them to set aside their differences and work together to defeat the common foe. And it’s done as one of those intercut monologues, where they cut around between different people giving diagetically different speeches but the editing puts them together into a coherent whole. So you’ve got Picard giving this Shakespearean speech about human potential to Starfleet, intercut with the team Vulcan giving a speech about the logic of teamwork to the Vulcans, and the Klingon giving a speech about honor and glory to the Klingon fleet, and soforth. Only in the dream, one of the members of Picard’s gang is a Gorn. And, again, in the dream, not in canon, the Gorn form of an inspiring speech is always performed in the form of creating a hologram of a giant flaming lizard skull floating in space, screaming incoherently. So the Big Damn Hero speech was assembled sort of like:
Picard: So what say Hamlet said with irony, I say with conviction: ‘What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god!'”
Vulcan: It is illogical to let our differences divide us in the face of a threat which challenges every one of us. Logic dictates that the needs of the many must outweigh our individual animosities
Ferengi: Think of the profits to be lost if the galaxy is destroyed!
Klingon: Therefore we must take up arms with honor, for today is a good day to die!
Flaming Gorn Skull: AAAAAAA! AAAAAAA! AAAAAA! AAAAAA! AAAAA!
Considering how this shows going that gorn godzilla would be better then anything the show actual final will give.