Some Blundering About Star Trek: Picard 1×06: The Impossible Box

I guess last week wasn’t a fluke. Time to admit we are officially into the part of the season where things actually happen. To commemorate this, the de facto two main characters… Actually meet and almost have a conversation.

We begin, for once, not with a flashback, but with Star Trek: Picard‘s other main mode of opening: a dream sequence. Young Soji is frightened by a storm and goes to find her father, but he yells at her before she gets close enough to see him, waking her up.

Soji and Karen have patched things up enough that they are in bed together, and Karen is very concerned about her nightmares and encourages her to share them with him and the angle gives us a big old faceful of the thingy he has in his ear (It’s a communication device) to the point that I can’t really think of anything other than that it seems weird that he wears it to bed and Soji doesn’t question this. She asks him his real name, because, like Jellicle Cats, each Romulan has three separate names. He gets awkward and panicky.

Rizzo is losing patience with Karen’s “Be nice to the robot girl instead of torturing her” antics, but he reveals that he’s got a plan: he thinks that her dreams are the result of her trying to process the cognitive dissonance from the evidence that her whole life is a lie, and if he can get her to describe the details of it, they can find out where she came from without triggering her “turn into a super-powered killing machine” reflex. Rizzo approves. There is also some subtext about this Romulan Rubic’s cube puzzle box Karen habitually futzes with that I never mentioned before because it never slotted into the narrative.

Aboard La Sirena, everyone is trivially convinced by Jurati’s claim that Maddox’s heart just gave out because of his injuries. Elnor only knows the Borg by way of Seven, so it’s hard for him to process how traumatic going to The Artificat is for Picard. Jurati explains about Picard having been assimilated, and she’s kind of insensitive about it. This is probably meant, as Elnor observes, to because she, like Picard, is “haunted by something she would rather forget.” But I can’t help but get the impression that there’s an element of “Now that the writers no longer need to pretend she isn’t a plant, she can start being actively unpleasant.” She goes off to sleep with Rios in order to feel better about herself, and the writers completely forget how clear it had been in the previous episodes that Rios just wasn’t that into her.

Picard returns to the holo-chateau to google image search random pictures of the Borg that might be relevant. It shows him a cube and the Eiffel Tower and a Romulan government meeting and Hugh in both original and modern costume, then it shows him a picture of himself as Locutus, which he zooms a bit so that the camera’s POV through the holographic screen superimposes Locutus over Picard while he has a bit of an emotional crisis. I will note here that to make the shot work, the image he’s looking at must be mirror-flipped, since we’re seeing it from behind (and Picard is clearly reacting to it as though it’s a mirror-image: an unreversed image would show his Borg implants on the opposite side).

They still need a way onto the cube. Jurati suggests that they might be able to pose as researchers since she’s got the right sort of academic background. Picard counters that he is one of the most famous people in the galaxy, and the Romulans definitely will recognize him. Even if they don’t, the Borg will also definitely recognize him. And I know that Romulans and Borg are different and have different reasons for knowing Picard than Freecloud gangsters, but still, you’d think that Picard being famous should’ve been a concern last week. So instead, they’ll have to go with the honest approach: Picard is gonna show up and just ask for an official diplomatic meeting with the director, on the assumption that Hugh, unlike anyone else so far, will be happy to see him. This requires getting Picard some official diplomatic credentials, which Raffi, who has fallen right off the wagon, gets from a friend at Starfleet Command the same way I got my mom’s permission to drive out to St. Louis one weekend twenty years ago: “Would it make any difference to your decision if I told you I was already three-fourths of the way there?” Starfleet recognizes that the Romulans aren’t the sort of people who would find, “No, we didn’t send Picard on a secret mission to Romulan space without diplomatic permission. He just went on his own. We don’t even like the guy,” convincing.

Jurati is visibly bothered that only Picard is going to be allowed on board – again, now that the cat’s out of the bag, I guess she can be open with the audience about the fact that she’s probably going to try to kill Soji, unlike when she was incredibly skittish about doing anything dangerous. Elnor is also not happy about Picard ordering him to stay behind. I mean, Picard doesn’t like it either. He’s beamed into the cube, all alone in a dark, spooky hallway, because I guess they did not think it was necessary to have someone actually waiting right there to meet him?

The handling of Picard’s Borg-related PTSD is handled much better here than the rare occasions it’s come up earlier in the canon. Before, it usually just took the form of Picard making questionable decisions and the writers making those Moby-Dick allusions they are so fond of (Seriously, I think Moby-Dick is the only work of serious literature anyone on the Star Trek writing staff has ever read, though I’ll grant the Deep Space 9 writers probably saw Les Miserables). He immediately starts having flashbacks and anxiety which is not a great combination with fact that Borg design aesthetics do not include handrails. It does not help when a couple of Borg grab him to stop him falling off a ledge. Well, Ex-Borg, but Picard is too whacked-out to realize at the time. Hugh finally shows up and talks him down, and yeah, contrary to expectation, Hugh is the first person in this series to actually be happy to see Picard. He shows Picard around, and Picard is floored by the Reclamation Project’s work to show the Borg as victims rather than monsters. Hugh hopes Picard will advocate for them as “xBs” are still the most hated people in the galaxy. Picard explains about Soji. Hugh had already suspected something about her, and, I mean, literally everyone knew she was being boyfriended by a Romulan spy, so he agrees to help.

While this was going on, Karen had told Soji that her phone records had been flagged by the system on account of all of her calls to her mom lasting exactly seventy seconds. She tries calling her mom again, and even stabs herself in a failed attempt to not black out. When she wakes up, she takes a scanner to all of her personal effects – a photo of her and her sister, drawings from her childhood, an old diary, her stuffed Mugato beast – and finds that nothing she owns is older than three years. When she tells Karen, he dangles the possibility that she’s been brainwashed, and offers to show her a super secret forbidden Romulan medidation technique that might help her find the truth, though he has to bully the guard into letting him bring a “round-ears” into the medidation room. As proof of his love, he tells her his secret third name (or, I mean, tells her a name. Who even knows if it’s legit), and walks her through the medidation ritual. She recreates her recurring nightmare, but with Karen’s prompting, is able to continue the narrative, seeing her father (though unable to make out his face) and what he had been working on – a life-size wooden doll with her adult face. Karen tells her to look up, and through the skylight, she describes the moons. Listening in, Rizzo starts a search for a planet with the conditions she’s described. Karen kisses Soji, then tells her that she isn’t real. He then locks her in the meditation chamber with his puzzle box, which opens to release poison gas. At least he has the decency to feel visibly bummed about it.

Picard and Hugh find that Soji’s room has been tossed, and Picard realizes the implications. Hugh can’t find Soji on the internal sensors, suggesting that she’s been concealed. Fortunately, Karen’s careful plan to extract Soji’s unconsciously-held knowledge without awakening her to her powers, then lock her in a highly contrived death trap and walk away like a common Bat-villain goes exactly as well for him as it always did for Burgess Merrideth. Soji suddenly discovers herself able to punch a hole in the damn floor, and Karen can’t even go in and shoot her while she’s doing it, on account of the room being full of radioactive gas. Soji reappears on Hugh’s scanner, moving impossibly fast, and the two of them catch up with her while Karen calls out the cavalry.

Hugh leads them to the secret hidden queen’s chamber and reveals that this generation of Borg ship is equipped with a long-range emergency escape magic door for the queen. Picard has him set it for the planet Nepenthe, and calls Rios to tell him to meet them there. The first wave of Romulan guards show up while the spacial trajector is still warming up, but Elnor, having defied Picard’s orders, shows up and murders them. Despite Picard’s entreaty to come with them, and Picard releasing him from his oath, Elnor insists on staying behind to cover Hugh while he re-hides the room and shuts down the trajector. Soji and Picard zap off to Napenthe while Elnor prepares to take on the next wave of guards.

Okay, so, like, this show has baked its premise in deep with some serious issues. This whole thing of trying to marry up a nostalgic romp giving us one last outing for the squeaky-clean hypernoble proheroics of the TNG era with a melencholic reflection on our heroes growing old and fading away with the over-the-top antiheroic grimdark space conspiracy intrigue, it’s never going to feel quite right. But that said, if the show had started out with episoides like this one, I think we’d have a lot more goodwill toward it. There’s more plot in this episode than pretty much the whole of episodes one to four. And there’s a strange lightness on bullshit and wheel-spinning. How is it that they avoided the putfal of having Picard run into some mid-level Romulans with a grudge? And neither Narek nor Rizzo (Rizzo’s first name, or at least the one she gives, is “Narissa”. I assume that’s her “real” name. Still calling her Rizzo) is informed of Picard’s presence. They would definitely freak out if they knew he was there. But that’s not really relevant to moving the story forward, so we don’t waste time on it (Lots of xBs see Picard, but I don’t think any Romulans see him and live to tell). Even the nostalgia-heavy parts of Picard interacting with Hugh are in service to moving the story forward.

Other thoughts:

• I like that everyone knows Karen is a spy. More than that, spies are so prevalent in Romulan culture that it doesn’t even really matter that everyone knows. Of course he’s a spy. There’s spies all over the place. Everyone’s a spy around here.
• I have not been calling much attention to the easter eggs, because, look, you can find those on your own. But a callback I was not expecting is that when Soji starts punching her way out of the death trap, Narek goes to open the door, and the guard stops him because of the radiation. Maybe it’s not intentional, but it feels reminiscent of Scotty stopping Kirk from going to Spock in Star Trek II.
• After spending the first 40% of the series assembling the crew of La Sirena, it’s almost funny that the moment plot starts happening, they’re forcefully separated, with Picard and Soji far off on Nepenthe, Elnor on the cube and everyone else on the ship
• This is the first episode in a while without a single holographic Rios. I’m guessing we’ll see Emmet next week, though, as it looks like they’ll be shooting their way out.
• Maybe it’s nothing, but the whole thing with Romulans having one name for outsiders, one for family, and one for lovers reminds me a lot of Craft. It’s probably nothing, but it’d be a hoot if there’s an implication somewhere that Craft’s culture was influenced by the Romulans.
• We see a lot more of the xB-controlled part of the cube than previously. It’s well creepy. Up to and including the fact that it seems at times to possibly be alive itself, with bits of the walls moving.
  • Maybe. The walls clearly reconfigure themselves when Hugh opens the way to the queencell, but at other times, it might just be in Picard’s head.
• Even after the worst is over, Picard still has little flashes of trouble, like momentarily imagining a tall, bald xB as Locutus.
• Missed opportunity to not have Picard tell Soji to, “Come with me if you want to live.”
• Hugh is a Federation citizen. I don’t expect this to come up except possibly in the context of Rizzo flaunting how little she cares about the fact that torturing him for information is probably an act of war. But it’s a neat tidbit. (In context, it gives Hugh legal rights that the other xBs don’t have)
• The spacial trajector Picard and Soji use to escape isn’t out-of-nowhere; Hugh mentions that the Borg assimilated the Sikarians, who appeared in an early episode of Voyager as someone the gang unsuccessfully tried to hit up for a shortcut home.
• It’s weird that Elnor commits to staying behind before Hugh says anything about needing time to lock up the queencell. When he first announces his intention to stay, there’s no clear reason he can’t just go with them. It’s only well after it’s decided that we find out that they’re going to need someone to cover their retreat.
• How did he get there anyway? I wouldn’t have guessed that Elnor knew how to work a transporter in the first place, let alone knowing how to beam into a Borg Cube that’s under Romulan control in the middle of a major security incident and then find his way to Picard in a secret hidden room.
• There is no mention of why Picard and Soji can’t just beam back to La Sirena. I mean, it actually seems pretty obvious that you can’t just beam in and out whenever you like, but they never actually say that. We had two consecutive episodes where the logistics of being able to beam in and out of somewhere were important to the plot, but this time, they don’t say anything. It would tie things up nicely to just have someone say, “Be careful. We won’t be able to get a transporter lock on you once you’re inside the Romulan defenses.” We could live without it, except, how did Elnor get there? I can’t quite sort out a good explanation for how Elnor gets to Picard but Picard can’t beam out again.
• There’s an example of Raffi’s “Seeing what others don’t” superpower: after she sleeps off her bender, when Rios tells her that Picard has learned Soji is still alive, she immediately realizes that the Romulans must want something from her.
• Will I be willing to roll with it when Narek eventually turns face out of his love for Soji? Not sure.
• Will Jurati be the one to kill Soji in the finale? Forgivable only if “Whatcha Say” plays over it.
• I hope Elnor survives this. It just occurred to me that I could be calling him “Space-Legolas” and I will be sad if I don’t get a chance to.
• It’s increasingly clear that they will not have time to wrap this up for the season finale, which is disappointing because I don’t want a cliffhanger. Hoping that we will end on a “Immediate mystery solved; greater mystery unlocked”-type ending where we find out what the terrible secret of space is all about but are not actually left with the heroes in an inescapable deathtrap and the galaxy about to explode.
• This does not connect to anything in particular, but it needs to be said: Bring back Groppler Zorn, you cowards.