Episode six, Star Trek Picard, Review, Hi my name is Ric, let’s get going and beware,
spoilers ahead. A lot comes to a head in this episode, Picard
and Soji meet, Hugh gets involved, Narek is revealed and they escape the Artefact. Narek
actually was the most engaging in this episode that I’ve seen him and I was happily surprised
to see that he committed to killing Soji after learning what he needed. I was worried this
was going to become a redemption story but nicely subverted. He all but confesses that
he is falling in love with Soji, but his commitment to the Tal Shair’s Zhat Vash trumps all
and although pained, he goes through with his plans. This makes him a more complex villain,
but still a villain and I love it. I also liked Jurati’s naive speculation
that the Borg may have changed into a less aggressive culture and was completely with
Picard when he countered that they don’t change, they metastasize. Of course, he got
a little angrier than a younger Picard would have, but I’m putting this down to his potential
brain issue that’s been quietly brewing since the end of TNG.
I don’t usually make particular note of the camera work, instead focusing on the story,
lore and characters, but this episode, I noted two things that really stood out to me in
a positive way. The first was Picard’s research of the Borg leading him to the overlay of
Locutus, they’ve played with that shot before, but here it was way more meaningful. The second
shot was of Soji attempting to talk to her “mother” and how everything began to tilt
as she realised that her life was being upended. When Picard was about to board the Borg cube,
he states that the last time he was on one, was when he was Locutus, and I had to take
a minute to rethink this and, yeah… Yeah his only time on a Borg cube was during his
assimilation. But I’ll save that for the lore breakdown at the end. The notion of Picard
beaming into the cube alone to an unknown section of it added to the sense of unease
and I wouldn’t have put it past some vindictive Romulan to have recognized the name and deliberately
done that to screw with him. The atmosphere spliced with old footage of his Borg encounters
made it super clear that he would rather have been anywhere else, but I thought the near
panic attack was as little too much. Then again, there is no getting around it, Picard,
the character is 94 years old by now and evidently feeling his vulnerability. It is amazing however
how much lighting can overhaul a scene, the white lights that are throughout the cube
replacing the hazy greens and dull oranges of prior trek do subtract from their menace
somewhat and I was hoping that this episode would do more to reinstate the Borg as a more
terrifying presence, but it kind of does the opposite, at least as far as the XBs are concerned.
Hugh’s reintroduction was everything I’d hoped for, with him immediately identifying
Picard and offering a steadying, safe presence in a cosmic karma of some form, for everything
the Enterprise crew did for him. I wonder if he’s been in communication with Geordi
at all, being a Federation citizen, he admits his position on the Artefact is far more secured,
respected and stable than the other recovered drones.
I always thought the terms “the Artefact” and “XBs” were a little… un-Trek-ish?
But Hugh explains that their dedication to using such terms is to help the recovering
Borg identify themselves as separate from the Collective. Which is a nice touch and
I feel something that Hugh would definitely do now that I’m presented with that argument.
Although, this scene should have played out before Picard asserts that Soji is in danger
as it derails the pace they’d set up, slightly. With the other characters, let’s start with
Jurati. The minute that EMH reactivates, there should be hell to pay, then again, we never
got an explanation of the debris in Rios’ shoulder when we first met him so maybe this
will be another plot element lost to the cutting room floor. If only they’d all had runtimes
closer to this episodes. Secondly, when she comes on to Rios, well, I literally jotted
down my reactions. “Um what? Ah… ok. She’s a mess right now… Oh no. No bad decision.”
To be fair to Rios, he has no idea of what went down and exactly how close her and Maddox
were, but Agnes really is a mental mess it seems.
We then get to see Rios interactions with Raffi, who has returned to being her slumming
self in despair, which makes me sad, but it’s a quiet scene that paints the two as almost
friends, not just colleagues. Lore wise, we learn that Romulans have a public
and private name, which, fine, that doesn’t really change much and they have a meditative
ritual that they occasionally practice which we’ve never heard from before, but being
cousins to the Vulcans, there is a precedent. I also want to point out he Spatial Trajector
inside the Queen’s chamber on the cube. We also learn from Hugh that many memories
input into the Drones during assimilation remain something alluded to when Picard commanded
the fleet to destroy the cube in the battle of sector 001 in “First Contact”. So the
Trajector was a device created by the Sikarians, a race from the Delta Quadrant encountered
by Voyager in 2371. I have a video on the device which I’ll plop a link to here, but
the troubling implication is that the Borg have continued to “metastasize” post Voyager,
so Janeway’s virus did not cripple them permanently.
One more little nit-pick, it seems that Elnor had more than enough time to jump through
the Trajector, but in hindsight, Hugh does mention that the device needs to power down
over the next couple of minutes. And I suspect that the Romulans do not know of the advanced
device within the cube’s core so holding them off can be rationalised as a smart move
to protect Picard and Soji’s escape. However, Elnor did not know this when he volunteered
to stay behind, but Star Trek is hardly alone in taking time to say goodbye during a supposed
time limit. Also I hope he’s not dead. My inner 11 year old would hate to see the loss
of the Samurai-Space-Elf-Warrior-Monk. Overall, this episode did a good amount of
inter-relationship building with the crew of the La Sirena, I was happier to see Hugh’s
introduction and it paints a clear line between the XBs and the Drones of the Collective,
one which Picard needed to see. Also I did overhear one XB call out Locutus when he ran
past. I like the direction that the characters are headed in for the most part and Hugh was
a much needed respite from the grim tone of the prior episode. The irony that the inside
of Borg cube is actually more of a sanctuary than the outside galaxy at the moment.
So onto the lore now and I’m going to look through Picard’s interactions with the Borg.
Q did it. Kind of. Well to be honest, the Borg were beginning
to encroach on Federation (and Romulan) territory in the episode “Neutral Zone”, but we
never saw them, only the disappearance of several UFP and Romulan colony worlds. At
this stage, each side blamed the other, unware of the approaching danger and the Enterprise
entered a standoff against two D’Deridex warbirds.
To teach humanity a lesson, the powerful entity known as Q flung the USS Enterprise D across
the galaxy to land in Borg space in 2365. He did so to challenge Picard’s arrogant
assertion that humanity was ready for anything by introducing them to a power that could
not be reasoned with, bargained or dissuaded from their goal. After attempting the Starfleet
personable approach, they end up fleeing form the cube and Picard is forced to ask Q for
help in escaping which he complies with. The encounter served to motivate Starfleet
Tactical to begin its own anti-Borg project headed by Commander Shelby. However, they
were still woefully underprepared for the first conflict a year later. New Providence
colony vanished and investigation revealed the Borg to be behind it. Attemtping to track
down the roaming cube, the USS Enterprise evenrtually engages the target with Shelby’s
advice helping somewhat. However things did not go well and several drones beamed onto
the bridge capturing Captain Picard, taking him back to the cube and assimilating him
into the collective. He was to be an avatar of the Borg known as Locutus in an attempt
to convince and demoralize Starfleet into less resistance against the Borg. It is also
retconned in later that the Queen Borg herself was also curious about Picard and took this
experimental approach partly to create an equal.
This lead to the massacre of Wold 359 where 39 of the 40 Starships the Federation sent
to intercept the cube were destroyed including the Saratoga, Benjamin Sisko’s vessel. Eventually,
Acting-captain Riker led a rescue mission to retrieve Picard and once disconnected,
Picard was able to pass on the command for the Borg to enter regeneration mode. This
shut down the cube long enough for it to be destroyed but on being asked how much of the
experience Picard remembered, he replied that he was conscious for all of it.
For the first time in years, Picard returns home to the family Vineyard to meet with his
brother Robert and the two reconcile over issues while Picard breaks down over his experiences
in the collective in the arms of his brother. This goes a long way to healing the trauma
of being used to murder 11,000 of his fellow officers.
In 2368, a crashed Borg scout ship is recovered and a single drone rescued. Picard decides
that they can create a virus that would spread through the collective and damage or destroy
a good number of drones. However, the rescued Borg, now disconnected from the collective
is recovering its identity and even named itself Hugh. Picard had been avoiding meeting
with Hugh in order to quash any moral qualms, but realises that Hugh cannot be sacrificed
when he finally talks to the former drone. Hugh gives himself up to the collective anyway
to protect the Enterprise from the Borg retrieval ship; however his individuality remains intact
and even spreads into other drones on that vessel.
That vessel was severed from the collective and drifted until found by Lore, Data’s
brother and he recruited the confused and individualised drones as an army because Lore
is a dick. Eventually Data overthrows Lore and frees Hugh and the rest of the drones.
Hugh goes on to receive Federation citizenship at a later point, presumably returning to
Federation space and continuing his growth as an individual.
In 2369, Picard had to meet with Commander Benjamin Sisko and assign him to Deep Space
Nine. The meeting was laced with tension as both knew that Picard was not really to blame
for Wolf 359, but nonetheless, it was the face of Jean-Luc Picard plastered all over
the viewscreens of the ill-fated fleet. The last encounter Picard had with the Borg
was in 2373. Amid rumours of their sightings in the Alpha Quadrant, Picard began to have
nightmares of his assimilation and the newly commissioned Enterprise-E was asked not to
intervene in the coming conflict. Instead, he decided to join the defence of sector 001
and using his latent memories of the collective, he commands the fleet and successfully destroys
the Cube. However it launches a Sphere, capable of time travel at Earth and the Enterprise
follows it through to 2063, a few days before Humanity’s First Contact with the Vulcans.
During this mission, the Captain reencounters the Borg Queen and the Enterprise is partly
assimilated. During the struggle he comes to the realisation that he is being driven
by revenge and is troubled by this revelation. On the plus side, after the Romulan Supernova,
Hugh seems to have reached out to the Romulan Free State and attained permission to work
on the Borg Reclamation Project as its director on behalf of the Federation where we now see
him returning individuality to a severed cube in Romulan space.
So the Borg have always been a… weak point for Picard. In the time of TNG, we saw him
grieve, face repercussions from Starfleet in both Sisko and the reluctance to assign
him any Borg related mission and then his own issues of repressed anger. This is why
I find it completely in character that Picard would have some deliberation about returning
to any cube, considering the only time he ever boarded one in the past, was when he
was being violated by the Borg. Doing so as an elderly man took great resolve and despite
his momentary freak-out, I found the general reaction to be understandable.
Anyway, that about covers it for my breakdown and review of “The Impossible Box” episode
of Star Trek Picard and I hope you’ll check out this timeline video I made based on the
“Last Best Hope” novel that recently came out too. Until the next video, thanks again
for watching, I’ve been Ric and I’ll see you again later. Goodbyes.