I suppose technically I could have been more wrong about how this week’s episode could go, but it wouldn’t be easy. I predicted this would be a “Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” episode with forces aligning to ensure things just kept getting worse for our heroes, in order that they could enter episode 9 at their lowest point. And, I mean, it was a close thing; they could easily have ended each story thread a few minutes early and this would have been a tense cliffhanger with Data gone forever, Vadic murdering the bridge crew, Jack surrendering himself, and half the cast under siege on the Shrike.
But modern Trek has learned the value of aftercare, so they get on with it, and at the end of this episode, Vadic is (probably) dead, the Shrike is destroyed, Zombie Picard is off the table, Data is back and better than ever, the Rikers have patched up their marriage, we had several minutes for everyone to just hang out around a conference room table and chat, spoon, smoke a cigarette, put a towel down over the wet spot, and the only real problem is that we do not have any idea what the next bit of plot is.
Actually, that is a bit of a problem. We’ve defeated the villains, blown up Picard’s stolen corpse (Anyone else notice how utterly chill Worf is about Picard’s corpse? “Do not worry; it’s not really, him, just his previous body.” While Raffi, who was there for the whole thing, is kind of a bit catty about it?), we’ve got Jack and he’s safe. Sure, there’s still changelings infiltrating Starfleet, but it seems like their actual big plan has been derailed at this point. I’m sure they’ll pick things back up, but at the exact point where the story this week stops, it seems like the right thing to do here is for the Titan to just light out for the west and spend a couple of days cloaked somewhere quiet so that Frontier Day can come and go with the conspirators bereft of their refrigerated French vintner, their war crimes mobile, the leader of the changeling faction, and Jack Crusher. I’m going to be upset if the Titan hand-delivers Jack to the climax specifically so he can play his role in nearly beginning armageddon.
Surrender is the title of the episode and also the name of the game this week. You could probably add, “But don’t give yourself away.” Once again, we amazingly have Jack actually talk to his parents about what’s going on with him. And while Bev does scan him to make sure he’s not hallucinating, they very quickly decide to roll with it and even exploit Jack’s mind-jacking powers on one of the captured bridge crew in an attempt to input Picard’s un-override code (In a brief aside, Riker reveals that he gave Vadic his own code to protect Troi, removing the need to imagine a Lore-Vadic alliance to justify her smugness last week). And that’s a really good scene. Vadic catches them, as you’d expect because it’s too early in the episode to turn things around. But it’s just, “She sees what he’s doing and stops him,” not “Turns out the whole thing was a trap and she was expecting them to do that and now her position is even stronger,” and it wasn’t a bad idea to try or hopeless from the outset: it just didn’t work out. Jack wants to surrender himself, like he did before, to stop the carnage, but Picard correctly points out that Vadic is definitely going to kill them all anyway. I mean, she’s cartoonishly evil. She even did the thing where she singles someone out, menaces them threateningly, then shoots the person next to them. Really sorry about that, Lieutenant T’Veen. They talked you up good in the promos. Maybe if they go to series, it’ll turn out that was a changeling infiltrator and Vadic was secretly doing her “Kill an underperforming subordinate” thing.
So Jack surrenders himself, but it’s a feint. And a double one. He shows up with one of them Thermal Detonator thingies like in Star Wars. He presents it as a legit surrender, but with insurance: he’ll blow himself up if Vadic doesn’t follow through on her promise to release the others. And she actually does, to her credit. Except that Seven refuses to be released, because she needs to “take responsibility” for failing to protect the bridge. Shaw had called her out on that before, and while we finally got the, “My name is Seven of Nine,” line out of her, Shaw really owns that exchange. She should have sacrificed him by blowing up the turbolift, rather than let Vadic take the bridge by using him as a hostage. But Shaw manages to bundle a bunch of stuff up into his accusation here. Because it’s not just Seven putting her personal moral code above her duty to the ship. We know what Shaw’s deal is now. This is not the first time that someone has chosen to save his life at the cost of others. Shaw’s survivor’s guilt has got to be triggered as fuck right now. Sure, Seven chose to save him rather than protect his ship, and that was not the logically correct decision. But more to the point, he failed to protect his ship, and worse, he failed to die rather than give up the ship.
I am not really sure what Seven meant to accomplish by staying behind. There’s a moment when you think she might have even made things worse by being there, but it works out okay. Really all she does is bear witness to Vadic almost-but-not-quite explaining Jack’s deep dark secret.
So about that secret. There really is no way whatever it is can be enough for the build-up. That feeling continues unabated. By the end of the episode, the heroes have some data from the Shrike that might explain what they wanted with the bits of Picard’s brain they took. It’s not clear whether those bits were still on the Shrike at the end, but I’m guessing those were already delivered, since otherwise there wouldn’t be any story left. Vadic knows Jack’s secret, even knows the red door imagery. Troi senses something dark and evil that is not of Jack but which is moving through him. There seems to be something evil and eldrich and very powerful which has been locked away and wants to re-enter the universe, and Jack, probably because of his inheritance from Picard, is the conduit through which it can.
There are two major popular theories right now about this. Neither one of them feels right. At the same time, both of them seem well-justified.
The first theory is that it’s the Pah-Wraiths, the Bajoran anti-gods who drove bits of plot arc in Deep Space Nine, with the final climax of the series being Benjamin Sisko sacrificing his corporeal form to defeat them. The Pah-Wraiths meet the criteria of being powerful, eldrich, and sealed away. Further, possession by a Pah-Wraith in Deep Space Nine was depicted with a similar red-eye effect as what we see when Jack uses his powers. Indeed, all the Pah-Wraith iconography lines up well with the “Red door” symbolism they’re using now.
The big problem, of course, is that the Pah-Wraiths are tied very closely to Bajor and Deep Space Nine, and have sweet fuck all to do with TNG. It being them would be the strongest argument yet that this plot ought to have been for a Deep Space Nine revival rather than a TNG one. There’s no justification whatever for Jack being connected to the Pah-Wraiths, and Picard even less-so. Picard’s brain issue was diagnosed well before the Pah-Wraiths were introduced into the franchise. It’s not a per se contradiction to use them here, but, again, a good story that serves as an endcap to the TNG era is not a naturally comfortable fit with a final reveal of, “Offscreen, before they were introduced, a secondary enemy from a different series that Picard never met or interacted with did something to his brain which was passed on to his son.”
The other contender is the Borg, of course, and here, we have the connection to Jean-Luc to lean on. Listening to Vadic talk about the secret thing behind the red door, the Borg make some sense: she alludes to Jack’s feelings of loneliness, his need to connect to others. Last season, we had this fantastic image of the Borg Queen not simply as the organizing element behind a horde of space zombies, but as someone desperate at a biological level for connection. And then there’s Vadic’s cryptic comment about it being fitting for Seven to be there to bear witness as she circumloqutes around explaining Jack’s deep dark secret. A Borg link would also make sense as an angle for destroying Starfleet, since last season established that the current generation of Starfleet ships are vulnerable to Borghacking due to their Borg technology – of course, you’d want a little more here to explain why this is a vulnerability different from the one last season, why Starfleet hasn’t patched their vulnerability after last season, and why they’re going to this much trouble when there is a nonzero amount of Borg technology and ex-borg you can acquire without all of this nonsense.
And, I mean, it probably is the Borg. That’s where the smart money is. But where this theory really falls short, though, is on the whole “ability to bodyjack” thing, and the implication that Jack is connected to a powerful entity beyond human comprehension that has been exiled from the universe at large. “The Borg left something in Picard’s brain” would be a plausible angle for a story, but I don’t think it works for this story, especially when the Borg still exist and are still out there, some of them on friendly terms. On the other hand, next week’s episode is titled “Vox”, which is Latin for “Voice”, and begs comparison to “Locutus” being Latin for “Spoken”. In fact, in the Shatner-ghostwritten novel “The Return” (Which the appearance of Kirk’s corpse brings to mind), “Vox” is the name of the Romulan analogue to Locutus.
But it probably is the Borg. Which will be unsatisfying. But then, so will anyone else it turns out to be. Unless they decide it is time to finally stop fucking around and it’s Groppler Zorn. Bring back Groppler Zorn, you cowards.
Meanwhile, we catch up with the Troi-Rikers and learn that part of Riker’s issue is that Troi used her Betazoid powers to mind-whammy him into getting over his grief. They don’t go into a lot of detail, but it’s a sad and lovely snapshot of a couple in pain. And then they lighten the mood by having her say that the changeling who captured her was good in bed but bad at making pizza, which Riker reckons is an accurate impersonation. It’s kinda weird that 100% of Riker’s interest in cooking seems to be pizza-making. And that somehow he is bad at it. I mean, it’s “Put random stuff on a disc of bread”. Now, clearly Troi is joking, but I still like the idea that they are in fact the kind of couple where Troi might actually decide, “I’m going to go ahead and bone this impersonator, because it will be a fun story to tell later.” This illusion is shattered when Riker gets jealous and uncomfortable when Worf pauses during rescuing them to gush to Troi about his self-work. The scene works, since “People are kind of uncomfortable about this whole Sensitive New Age Warrior thing” has been the shtick they’re going for Worf, but I’ve never liked the Jealous Riker scenes. Much more upsetting is the dismantling of what we saw back in season 1: Mr. and Mrs. Riker both hate their wonderful sylvan life on Nepenthe in their rustic force-shielded log cabin surrounded by weird animals that are all basically just Earth animals with bits glued on. I loved that episode, and I loved their happy sylvan lifestyle and Kestra running wild through the woods. Apparently Kestra is meant to have gone off to the academy now? Holy fuck, can anyone in this show have a life path that isn’t Starfleet without it being depicted as “running away”? God.
Okay, but I will grant that “Feral Nepenthean Girl tries to adapt to the Big City” does have a certain Pippi Longstocking kind of charm to it.
Of course, this week’s real emotional core, though, was the return of Data, and… You know how it’s going to go, and I think you also know how it’s going to get there, which is interesting, if it’s a choice. I dunno, did anyone not figure it out immediately? You have one of those Me-vs-Me-in-the-Existential-Void confrontations, like you get. They pretty much always go the same way. The bad guy seems to be winning right up until the end – well played here by the map of Data’s brain changing from blue to red – smugly gloating in his victory, then suddenly it’s revealed that the hero had been in the dominant position all along. Hell, this scene has played out so long that it’s been forever since I can remember seeing it played as simply as, “The bad guy really was winning, but he gloated wrong at the last minute causing the hero to rally.” Your range of twists were usually something like, “I could have won at any time, but I needed to keep you distracted,” or, “Actually I defeated you a while ago and have locked you in this existential void fighting a fake version of me,” or, “Instead of fighting we’ll just hug it out.”
Or the one they chose, which is that Data Doc-Ocks Lore. For those not in the know, there was this whole plot arc in Spider-Man a ways back where Doc Ock is dying and switches bodies with Peter, and at the end of their Existential Battle For The Body, Peter straight-up loses and gets to die in Doc’s body. Except that instead of fighting Doc, Peter rigged it so that Doc would get his body, but would also get his memories, and more, he’d experience them as his own. And it turned out that it was basically the lack of memories of a loving childhood and good role models was the whole reason he became a villain, and with Peter’s memories, Doc decided to actually be a superhero. He was still a dick, but he did the right thing mostly.
So that’s what Data does to Lore. It’s obvious the second Lore starts gloating about getting rid of all Data’s precious mental mementos, symbolized by him taking Data’s Sherlock Holmes hat and vaporizing it. It’s well-played, reinforced when Lore snipes at Data about his own empty life and how he never had all these happy memories and friendships as he zaps Data’s pocket-sized Tasha Yar Holographic Gravestone. There’s this shift in Lore where he’s less snarky and cynical and becomes sort of eager to claim Data’s memories. And Spot. Oh Spot. Data hands Spot to Lore, and Lore is visibly delighted, because KITTY. I get it. My own cats will not let me pick them up.
That’s when the reveal comes, as the last bit of Data winks out, he explains that, yeah, Lore was right. Data had all these memories, and Lore had an empty life with nothing to look back on but chaotic dickishness. But it’s Data’s memories that defined him, and now the emptiness in Lore has been filled up with 100% Data. Unlimited Data, if you will permit me to make that joke again. That was always the difference between them, and now that Data has closed the gap, there’s nothing left that’s distinctly Lore. We get a good loving closeup of Data’s brain switching back from red to blue, but the camera oddly doesn’t make a big point of the later reveal, which you kinda see in the background while everyone’s rejoicing at Data’s rebirth: the final state of Data’s brain diagram isn’t blue. It’s purple. Data didn’t trick Lore into erasing himself, or find a sly way to take over. He did exactly what Soong intended, and merged into one combined being. It’s just that Data’s traits dominate the new being’s sense of self because Lore never had an identity of his own, only ever being defined in terms of what Data was not.
Also Data can use contractions and jokes now. You kind of get the impression that they’re memory-holing the fact that Data got that emotion chip back in Generations (where he also started telling jokes). Not quite clear. Nemesis did the same thing. I think there’s a good angle here that neither Nemesis nor this show have had time for, that could have really made for a good Talky Scene with LaForge about Data’s capacity for emotion even with the chip and how it differed from Lore’s. The emotion chip was, as originally presented, a simplification of Lore’s emotional capacity. I think you could make the argument that even when Data had emotions, he experienced them as “other” – something that he could experience but were not part of his core sense of self. They never come out and say this, but it’s one interpretation of a lot of the scenes in the movie era that deal with Data’s emotions, and a better one than “Insurrection decided the emotion chip was a dead end, so they consciously omitted it, and then Nemesis forgot about it.” But the conversation never comes. (And now that I’m thinking about it, it would be very easy for such a conversation to come off as ableist, given how easily Data is read as autistic).
Another conversation that they don’t have is to justify Picard’s belief that they should remove the partition and let Data and Lore duke it out, and hope that them standing around begging Data to win is going to resolve the matter. Kudos, though, to Picard for taking the time to check in afterward and make sure Data is okay with being alive again, after they had that whole big Thing about Data wanting to die. Data is ultimately like, “No, this is cool too. I can do both,” and that’s very sweet.
Data retakes the ship and that’s pretty much the end of Vadic’s plot. I referred to the Mysterious Device Jack brought with him when he surrendered as a “Thermal Detonator” – it’s a little wonky that it just comes out of nowhere. The changelings can’t identify the technology, which is a key point, but we also never see where Jack got it from either, making it feel a little ass-pully. I like that comparison, because the scene feels sort of anti-Star Wars. Vadic talking around Jack’s experiences with the Red Door and the Voice and his mysterious powers and how she can unlock the secrets for him are pretty reminiscent of Palpatine’s seduction of Anakin, and we’ve seen the scene a thousand times where the Chosen One is tempted in a scene like this and hesitates at the worst minute, or worse, cuts off Mace Windu’s arms. But Jack doesn’t do either of those things. He turns on the device which turned out to be a personal force field and not a grenade after all, Seven is close enough that her being there isn’t even a complication, and, in a bit of “Here is a very cool way to make the fans shut up about it,” it turns out that the great big “vulnerable” window in the front of the ship is not a window: it’s an emergency hatch. Data opens it, and the changelings all get blown out into space, giving Vadic just enough time for last words that for once in the franchise, are the villain’s own, rather than quoting Shakespeare or Mellville: “Fuckin’ solids.”
Is Vadic dead? I think so? She gets blown out into space. Can changelings survive in space?Oh, now she’s frozen. Can changelings survive being frozen? Oh, she’s drifting toward the Shrike. I bet she’ll luck into the open hangar bay and get recovered that- And she’s shattered. She just got Terminator 2’d. Can she come back from that? I can’t remember if changelings can actually separate their bodies into discrete parts and then reconnect and survive, and it sure looked like it was difficult when she kept cutting her hand off to talk to the MYSTERIOUS FACE. But maybe? Oh, now they just fucking blew up the Shrike. Even if she didn’t get roasted in the explosion, she’s currently drifting in a million pieces in a debris field. If she’s not gone, it’s gonna feel cheap.
It’s a weird move to kill your antagonist at the top of act 3. But I like it because Star Trek has rarely been about the big dramatic villains – and this cast in particular have been especially bad with them. What the show is really about is what comes next: everyone sitting around a conference table and talking things out. The recurring image of modern Trek, which is a distillation of the decades that came before, is that the Heart of Star Trek is people working together to heal, and when they do that, not only can they overcome their enemies, it’s not even hard. Vadic was winning because the heroes were divided. Data divided against himself, Picard and Riker divided over how to respond to the Shrike, Troi and Riker divided in their grief, Beverly and Picard divided over Jack, Geordi and Picard divided by the Titan’s fugitive status. Once everyone was back on the same page, dealing with Vadic was as simple as opening the front door.
Which is how we go into next week: opening a door.