Contains Spoilers
As Star Trek: Picard builds up to its two-part finale, mysteries are solved and others deepen with the search for Soji’s homeworld nearing its end.
The last few weeks of Star Trek: Picard have continued to improve the once fairly stagnant plotting that seemed to grip the first few episodes. Part of that stagnation came from the show’s desire to keep ladling on mysteries that weren’t that tangibly exciting anyway. The most intriguing factor of it all is what does the Synthetic ban and Soji’s origins all have to do with an ancient Romulan prophecy. Most of those answers do arrive in this episode, one which puts the pieces into place for a finale that is genuinely hard to predict where it may go.
Many of the revelations that come within this episode come courtesy of Captain Rios. Once Soji and Picard beam back aboard the La Sirena, he is shaken by her appearance and shuts himself away in his quarters to brood. This leads to Raffi to try and figure out what has shaken him through talking with each of his holograms, all of which sport a different accent. It gives Santiago Cabrera the chance to have a lot of fun as different aspects of Rio’s personality, all the while deepening the character as more is revealed about his past Captain’s fate. It would seem he has encountered a sibling of Soji before during his time at Starfleet, which his Captain was ordered to kill by Starfleet, before killing himself. It may seem a little overkill to have everybody in Picard’s new crew have some kind of link with the greater conspiracy at play, but Cabrera’s performance and chemistry with Michelle Hurd’s Raffi.
The problem of Dr. Jurati is all laid to bear as well, with her coming to form her self-induced coma and confessing to Bruce Maddox’s murder and revealing that Commodore Oh, a Romulan posing as a Vulcan at Starfleet, showed her something devastating. That thing is the ancient prophecy. It is in this episode that we learn that thousands upon thousands of years ago, an ancient race deep in the galaxy developed synthetic life, only for it to bring hell upon them in the form of a visit from a mysterious being. With the federation close to reaching that same threshold, the Romulans have done all they can to put an end to synthetic life, before creations like Soji bring with it the same destruction that laid waste to ancient civilisations. The stage is set for a finale that’ll either deliver the prophecy or show that it is not all as it seems. Either way, it’s a doomsday clock element that creates a lot of potential for the two-part finale.
Elsewhere, Elnor receives assistance upon the Borg Cube from Seven of Nine after sending out a distress signal. With the Romulans making quick haste to escape the Borg Cube in order to also head out to Soji’s homeworld, but also keen to eliminate loose ends aboard. As they set about eliminating the reformed Borg, Seven of Nine is left with no other choice but to become the Borg Queen of the Cube in order to save those innocent aboard and find a way out for herself and Elnor. Such a concept for the character should carry with it a fair degree of weight and consequence, and while it may do further down the line, there’s the sense here that it’s all just done out of plot convenience rather than anything of much pathos or depth, again leaving the character of Elnor hanging around like a loose part. It’s a shame, as both Seven of Nine and Elnor have great potential, but feel a little like they’re not being utilised as effectively as they could be in this episode. Peyton List as the Romulan Narissa though is delightfully villainous throughout and has been a lot of fun over the course of the whole series.
As we enter the last two weeks of Star Trek: Picard one is left to think about how the journey has been so far. While it has often led to some decent character beats and decent performances, this is perhaps not the kind of show one would think it would be when it first announced that a character-driven series following one of the franchise’s most beloved heroes. Picard himself has often gotten lost in the whole mystery box plot, but it has developed what the future of the Trek-universe looks like, one plagued by conspiracy and mistrust. How it will all conclude, and what place it will leave us before heading into the already announced season two undoubtedly has me curious, if only to see if the show will deliver more on its potential, as episodes like this seem like a disappointment, particularly in the wake of last weeks excellent episode.
Star Tre: Picard is now streaming.
