Will the Watcher be revealed in this episode of Star Trek: Picard Season 2?
This episode sets up more parts of the second season, but also sheds some light on certain political aspects of our current era,
such as the deportation of people from the United States. This is a hot topic in the world right now, not just in the United States,
so Star Trek touching on this does make sense. Either way, it is rather interesting.
Anyway! SPOILER WARNING, we’ll be discussing the latest episode of Star Trek: Picard Season 2 Episode 4 in full detail, you have been warned.
Welcome to Trek Central! I’m your host, Captain Jack, and let’s get into it!
This episode is titled “The Watcher”, with its Teleplay written by Juliana James & Jane Maggs, who are both new to Trek, and the story being written by Travis Fickett & Juliana James.
Interestingly enough Travis Fickett has worked with Matalas before on a Trek project, writing the Hive comic with him.
And just like last week, this episode is directed by Lea Thompson of Back to the Future fame. Let’s see what this episode brings to us, and where the story will go from here!
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Okay, engage!
So let us start with Picard and Agnes. They decided to go down to Chateau Picard, and we got some very interesting information about the house.
But before they go down, they activate the La Sirena’s cloaking device, which the Confederation have.
This actually makes sense as even if the treaty of Algeron existed, which I doubt it would in the Confederation Timeline, the Confederation probably wouldn’t care.
It also seemed like the Romulans had joined up with the Vulcans, perhaps after the Confederation had destroyed the Romulan Empire,
since when we saw the Confederation Presidents computer, it said that the Vulcan War was happening on Vulcan/ Ni’Var.
Anyway, the information we get about the Chateau Picard is that it has basically been abandoned since the second world war.
It is still owned by the Picards, but during the Nazi occupation of France during WW2, it was used as a Nazi command base, while the Picards fled to England, further going in to why the Picards sound british.
It turns out there is a lot of the borg queen information subconsciously within Jurati, and her and Picard, in a Dixon Hill style detective work, uncover that the change in the timeline will occur in 3 days, on April the 15th 2024.
. So we finally get a date that they have returned to April the 12th 2024. This is interesting, but does mean we will not get any crossover with the DS9 episode “Past Tense” which many fans were theorising.
The Bell riots happened on the 1st of September, so we are very clear of them.
What about Rios, after being taken away by ICE officers last episode. Well as suspected Rios gets taken to a processing centre for immigrants, basically a cage.
Rios even tries to stand up for some of the other immigrants, but gets tased by a pretty racist officer,
who just refers to everyone as “Juan”.
Rios even mocks the officer by saying the whole truth in a great scene, very reminiscent of Chekov being interrogated in The Voyage Home, where he told the whole truth and it just pissed off his interrogators.
When Rios gets sarcastic and delivers the truth to the officer, it just makes me want to see even more of him as the Captain of the Stargazer, perhaps in a spin-off series. We’ll have to see how Season 2 and Three go in regards to that.
Seven and Raffi are hot on the heels of Rios trying to rescue him from ICE. We get this actually amazing scene where Seven and Raffi are on a bus,
which also has a poster for the Europa mission on it, and on the bus is a very familiar face.
Yes, the punk from The Voyage Home, played by KIRK RANDOLPH THATCHER has reprised his role as the same punk.
He still has a penchant for playing obnoxiously loud music on buses, but when seven asks him to turn it down, you can see him grasping for his neck, obviously remembering the time Spock nerve pinched him to stop the music.
He instantly turns the music off and even profusely apologises to Seven.
The effect of Spock is still felt… But I do somewhat feel bad for the guy since it seems that experience did deeply affect him, he just wants to listen to loud music on buses!
Anyway, Seven and Raffi try to find Rios, and even though they find Rios, they do so by stealing a cop car.
But how did Agnes get the transporter up and running, that is right, she is continuing to trick the Borg Queen.
She asked the Borg queen to help her fix the transporters, and we get this very interesting scene of not only the Borg queen analysing Jurati, but Jurati doing the same. Jurati even promises to connect with her again, and breaks that promise after restricting the queen's access again.
I have to say that Annie Wersching is continuing to give an amazing performance as the Borg Queen.
She has that seductive side to her, but also that very evil side. She is providing us with a very unique borg queen which stands up next to Alice Krige’s queen.
By playing an isolated cut off queen who needs to play a different kind of game to get what she wants.
I am sure we will get some more amazing scenes between Jurati and the Borg Queen, but so far they are really shining this season.
Now the thing which many people theorised, but probably not in the right way, was the return of Guinan.
But a very different Guinan.
Sure we got Whoopi Goldberg in the first episode of Picard, reprising her role as Guinan, but we now have a Guinan in 2024, played by Actress Ito Aghayere (Arr-Gay-Uhh) who absolutely knocks it out of the park.
She is the stand up performance of this episode, which is amazing since like I said, we get some great Annie Wersching as the Borg Queen, and Michelle Hurd as Raffi, who are doing amazing this season, but Ito brings a level of emotion I was not expecting, and was floored by.
Now yes, we did previously see Guinan on earth in TNGs “Times Arrow”. Well it seems like she stayed around on earth for a while longer,
opened the ten forward bar, but as of 2024 she seems to have had enough.
She is closing the bar, and is deeply upset about what is happening to humanity.
She saw potential in the 19th century, but now by 2024, she hates that humans are killing their own planet and hating each other.
She has had enough and just wants to leave.
I think the analysis Guinan gave on humanity was needed, from a story perspective, but also from a reality perspective.
As we are set in 2024, we know what this setting is like, because it is our setting, but having a character go into why 2024 is so bad, really helps the story.
However we still see good, and something worth fighting for and not giving up on Humanity.
Guinan donates some supplies to a charity, which seemingly is founded from the 21st Street Mission, the homeless shelter run by Edith Keeler in The Original Series Episode “City on the edge of Forever”.
Star Trek has always been fantastic with its quotes about time.
For example, this episode makes the quote of “Distance Offers No Protection From Time”, which is fantastic and on par with the Star Trek: Generations quote of “Time is the fire we burn in”.
There were many theories before this episode about who “The Watcher” might be, from Guinan, to Mestral from Enterprise’s “Carbon Creek”, to Data’s Head from “Time's Arrow”.
But it seems like we have to look further back into Trek's past to understand who the Watcher might be.
Guinan describes the Watcher as a Supervisor, agents from an organisation which are peppered throughout the galaxy to protect certain things from happening, or not happening.
And this is where we go to The Original Series episode “Assignment: Earth”.
It seems our Watcher is an agent from the same organisation as Gary Seven, the operative from Assignment Earth who was assigned to Earth to stop mankind from destroying itself with Nuclear weapons.
Gary Seven was Supervisor 194, a class 1 supervisor, so I wonder which supervisor this is.
Fascinatingly enough, it seems that the new trek has a knack for bringing these things back.
If you didn’t know, Assignment: Earth was meant to be a backdoor pilot of a show centred around Gary Seven.
A sort of American Doctor Who show. Unfortunately this was never picked up.
Now where have we heard that before, with The Cage being picked up as a pilot for the new series Strange New Worlds.
It seems this particular agent doesn't have a shapeshifting cat to assist them, but instead utilising some form of temporary possession of hosts.
And this supervisor turns out to be none other than Laris… or is it?
She has human ears instead of Romulan Ears, which I guess would be no big deal due to the number of alien prosthetics we have seen our starfleet crews don.
But I don’t think this is Laris per say, just someone who looks or is taking the form of Laris. Whatever the case is, it's a good way to tease us for the next episode.
What is even cooler, is that the transport effect this supervisor uses to teleport away with Picard, seems to be a modern version of the exact same style of transporter Gary Seven uses in that TOS episode.
Now if it wasn't enough to end the episode with an allude to one of the oldest loose threads in Star Trek, we get our final scene with Q.
He seems to be wearing a scientist coat for the Europa mission, reading a newspaper wondering if 2024 will be the year to redo Space Exploration.
owever Q tries to click his fingers, but it doesn't seem to work. If Q is without his powers, maybe he has to resort to other methods to do what he needs to do. And we are also left to wonder, why can Q no longer use his powers? It’ll be interesting to find out!
This episode may not have pushed the story much more forward in regards to the season story arc,
with the only thing moving being that Picard has found the Watcher, and everything else pretty much stays the same at the end as it began.
Rios is still under arrest, Jurati and the Queen are still playing their chess game, and Seven and Raffi are still being… Seven and Raffi.
But even if it didn’t move the story forward too much, it did give us some great character moments and some great trek moments in general.
We got the return of the Punk on the Bus, the seemingly return of the Gary Seven plot thread, some absolutely amazing Guinan scenes and some more Borg Queen goodness.
So what did you think of this week's Star Trek: Picard episode? Did The Watcher live up to your expectations, or did you think it was let down a little?
Let us know in the comments what you think of the latest episode, because if you’re talking about Star Trek, then we want to hear about it!
If you want to keep up to date on all the latest Star Trek news, lore and more, then make sure to hit that subscribe button to never miss a video from the team here at Trek Central!
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For now, I’ve been Captain Jack, thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time! Live Long and prosper my friends!