The fourth episode of Star Trek: Picard, titled "Absolute Candor," finally sees the former
captain take to the stars, building up his ragtag crew as he searches for answers about
Data's twin daughters.
From notable historical figures to nods to previous Star Trek episodes, here are the
Easter eggs you missed.
Prior to the synthetic attack on Mars 14 years earlier, Picard was visiting an order of Romulan
assassin nuns called the Qowat Milat on the planet Vashti . The Qowat Milat are also caring
for a young boy named Elnor, a refugee Picard entrusted to the order until a more suitable
home can be found for him.
Despite Picard's notorious distaste for children, he has a soft spot for Elnor, and brings the
boy a copy of Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers.
Picard reads the book aloud to Elnor, and the two of them enthusiastically enact some
of its more energetic fencing scenes before Picard receives the tragic news about Mars.
While The Three Musketeers is a popular tale that has been referenced numerous times in
Star Trek history, the book plays a significant role in the Next Generation episode "Hollow
Pursuits," in a which a crewmember of the Enterprise creates a holodeck program in which
Picard, Data, and Geordi play the Musketeers, with Riker joining later on as a diminutive
D'Artagnan.
In "Hollow Pursuits," the Musketeer version of Picard challenges the real-life Riker to
a duel.
But when Riker refuses, saying he has no sword and doesn't want to fight, the virtual Picard
taunts him.
"Do I detect a streak of yellow along the good fellow's back?"
Later on in "Absolute Candor," Picard will be challenged to a duel, throw down his sword,
and refuse to fight.
Early on in "Absolute Candor," Dr. Agnes Jurati wanders onto the bridge, desperate for some
conversation to take her mind off of the boredom and monotony of space travel.
When Rios seems reluctant to talk, Jurati runs through a list of the things she's already
done to occupy her time, complaining that she was going to watch a holo, but all he
has on board is Klingon opera.
While we're definitely curious what the story is behind Rios' Klingon opera collection,
the unpleasantness of Klingon opera is a long-running joke in Star Trek.
Characters from multiple Star Trek iterations have repeatedly likened listening to Klingon
opera to a form of torture.
"Here you were, ready to have a nice night watching the karo-net match and you wind up
spending an agonizing evening listening to Klingon opera."
However, on both Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, Worf had a great love for Klingon
opera, and prided himself on his extensive Klingon opera collection.
"You're afraid that I might lose your precious operas?"
"Yes."
Worf was even known to occasionally break out in song himself if he thought no one was
listening.
Rios' Klingon opera holos might indicate that he and Worf share a similar taste in music,
or possibly that sometime before Rios' crew consisted entirely of holographic versions
of himself, the La Sirena may have been home to yet another Klingon music aficionado.
When Narek asks Soji how she speaks such excellent Romulan, she says that she learned it from
a friend of her father, who was a professor.
Narek observes that she must have learned it prior to May of 2396, when her records
say that she shipped out to the Beta Quadrant aboard the Ellison.
Most of the ships mentioned on Star Trek have some sort of deeper significance, and the
Ellison is no exception.
The ship is likely named for Harlan Ellison, an influential and prolific writer who passed
away in 2018.
One of Ellison's best known works was the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of
Forever," which is widely considered one of the original series' finest episodes, although
Ellison famously insisted that the episode that aired was drastically different than
the one he'd written, and that he did not approve of the changes.
"I felt that they had mucked it up badly, and it took I think six or seven years before
Gene Roddenberry and I even spoke to each other again."
In the episode, McCoy accidentally travels back in time to 1930s New York and inadvertently
alters history, and Kirk and Spock then follow him in order to restore the timeline.
Ellison won several awards for his writing on the episode, including a Hugo Award, and
"The City on the Edge of Forever" is still cited as one of the best Star Trek episodes
of all time.
When Picard beams down to the Romulan relocation settlement on the planet Vashti in "Absolute
Candor," he's unprepared for the frosty welcome he receives from its inhabitants.
One man confronts Picard, saying he recalled when Picard came to Romulus with "great big
Wallenberg-class transports" to help relocate the Romulan people to safety.
Wallenberg-class transports are a new type of ship in the Star Trek universe, and are
likely named for Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat credited with saving tens of thousands
of Jewish people in Nazi-occupied Hungary during World War II.
It's an apt name for transports designed to carry people to safety in the face of extinction,
although also a tragic one, given the Federation's abandoning of their rescue efforts shortly
thereafter.
Wallenberg's story was turned into the television film Wallenberg: A Hero's Story in 1985, which
was overseen by Rick Berman, who served as executive producer for numerous Star Trek
series and films, including The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise.
In "Absolute Candor," the specific Wallenberg-class ship that the former Romulan senator says
he boarded during the evacuation of Romulus was named the Nightingale.
Of course, this ship name is an obvious reference to Florence Nightingale, the 19th century
woman who is commonly credited as being the founder of modern nursing.
Nightingale was also the name of an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, in which Ensign Harry
Kim takes command of a Kraylor medical transport, which he renames the Nightingale.
"Nightingale.
The name of someone from my homeworld.
She was famous for treating wounded soldiers on the battlefield."
Kim believes he is helping the Kraylor transport vaccines to their homeworld, but eventually
finds out that their actual mission is to transport a group of Kraylor scientists and
their prototype of a cloaking device to their planet, in violation of the Prime Directive.
In "Absolute Candor," the Romulans are angry at Picard, believing that he willfully deceived
and took advantage of the Romulan people during a time when they were most vulnerable, while
in the "Nightingale" episode of Voyager, it is Kim, representing the Federation, who was
deceived.
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