At one point during this episode, Jurati tells the Borg Queen
that she longs for Discovery, and I’m sitting there watching like, “Same.”
This is a review of “Hide and Seek,” episode nine of season two of Star Trek:
Picard. If you haven’t seen the episode yet, take heed: spoilers may be ahead.
Good news! The next episode is the season finale! Which means, this is the final time-wasting,
nothing-happens episode before the writers finally get to the point, whatever that is, I honestly
have no idea. You might think that by the time you get to episode nine of a ten episode series, you’d
have some notion of what that series is about, what it’s trying to say, but . . . I got nothin’.
We do get some resolution in this episode — we learn what was behind that locked door in
Picard’s memory from a couple of episodes ago. Remember that one? The episode where
the narrative stalled in Picard’s subconscious for most of an hour? It was right before the one where
the narrative stalled by having Picard and Guinan sit in FBI custody for most of an hour. Anyway, in
this episode everyone is in Picard’s villa — where the narrative stalls for most of an hour — and in
between shooting at bad guys, getting shot at, and shuffling from room to room, Picard keeps
experiencing memories of when he was a kid, and just all of that stuff from that previous episode.
It turns out, Picard’s father locked his mother in her bedroom for her own protection after
that time when she took young Jean-Luc into the very dangerous catacombs beneath Picard Manor,
and Jean-Luc unlocked the door and let her out, and when she was out she want to the
observatory and hanged herself. So, that’s the big, dark memory that’s been haunting Picard:
his mother committed suicide, and he feels responsible because he unlocked the door.
Not exactly a shocking revelation, nor the most creative resolution to that particular thread,
but an important bit of characterization from Picard, nonetheless. Whether you think it’s a
good or a bad creative choice — personally, I’m pretty over the whole “character is completely
defined and explained by single past trauma” trope — it at least seems like a significant one,
one that should add something to Picard, deepen him, change our understanding of him in some way.
And it . . . doesn’t? It doesn’t really connect to who Picard is as a whole. It doesn’t add
anything meaningful to his character. It just lets us know that there’s this thing
that happened a long time ago that Picard’s been sad about lately. I’m not trying to minimize the
impact that the death of a loved one under these circumstances would have on a person — I’m saying,
the way it’s been presented in this show, it doesn’t really feel part of who Picard is.
And worse yet, it doesn’t feel connected to the story of this season at all. I’m sure in the next
episode there will be a scene where Q or somebody else explains how it all fits together, and the
alternate reality and the time travel adventure and Picard being sad about his mom are all
inextricably linked in a deeply meaningful way, but at this point I don’t see how that’s going
to come across as anything other than contrived as hell. But, we’ll see. Hopefully I’m wrong.
There’s also some resolution to the “Jurati and the Borg Queen are reluctant roommates
in Jurati’s head” storyline that’s been running for the past several episodes — Jurati
convinces the Borg Queen to do the Borg, but nice? I guess? Remake the Collective
into a community based on cooperation and diversity instead of forced assimilation?
Because it turns out, all this time, the Borg Queen has been motivated by loneliness. So, her
and Jurati merge into a new being that combines both of their personalities, or something,
and at the end of the episode they take La Sirena and head to the Delta Quadrant to get to work!
So. Wouldn’t radically altering the nature of the Borg Collective in the 21st century
likewise result in significant changes to the 24th century which Picard and the others experienced?
The reality they traveled back in time to restore in the first place? Doesn’t letting Borgati take
La Sirena undermine their entire mission? And shouldn’t Jurati, who was the first person to
warn the others about avoiding butterflies after they arrived in the 21st century, know that?
Again, I’m sure it’ll all be explained in the final episode, when Q regains his powers,
or uses his final burst of energy before he dies, or whatever happens,
and they all return to the bridge of the Stargazer from the first episode, and that
Borg Queen unmasks to reveal that it’s Jurati, and her clan of benevolent Borg — I bet they call
themselves the Cooperative, wait and see if I’m right — are petitioning to join the Federation.
But, don’t any of the other characters care? Shouldn’t Seven, or Raffi, or, I dunno, Picard,
at least express some concern about the impact allowing Borgati to leave with La Sirena in 2024
might have on the future they’re trying to restore? The episode ends with the remaining
heroes rushing off to stop Adam Soong from disrupting the Europa mission, but why bother with
that if the future they remember is off the table anyway because of the Borgati thing? Why should I
give a shit about any of this if the characters — or more to the point, the writers — don’t?
Speaking of the writers, does it feel to anyone else like they have no idea who these characters
are or what to do with them? And, I’m not just talking about the legacy characters brought in
from other Trek shows — Picard, Seven, Guinan, Q — I’m talking about their own characters, the ones
they created for this show. The only character who has actually done anything of note is Jurati,
who merges with the Borg Queen, in what feels like a story somebody just drew out of a hat.
“What are we gonna do with Jurati this year?”
“I dunno, maybe she becomes the Borg Queen?”
“Sure, let’s do that — moving on!”
Characters are given business to keep them occupied for the episode,
but nothing they do really matters. Seven and Raffi once again spend the episode running around
accomplishing nothing. This time instead of a pointless car chase, they have some pointless
fights in the mansion with Borgati and Soong’s Borg soldiers — by the way,
what’s the deal with them? Are they Borg? They don’t act like Borg. They don’t seem to have
Borg abilities. They don’t seem to do anything that normal human mercenaries wouldn’t do,
actually, so what was the point of suggesting that the Borg Queen was Borgifying them at the end of
the last episode? What was the point of anything that has happened in any of these episodes?
I digress . . .
Picard and Not-Laris wander through the mansion while Picard relives traumatic memories from
his childhood — again, only in the real world this time instead of his mind. And Rios . . .
Okay. Let’s look at what Rios has done over the last two episodes. He hangs out with Dr. Teresa
Ramirez and her son. He beams them aboard La Sirena . . . just because. Borgati and
Soong and their mercenaries attack, so they leave the ship. Rios gets grazed by a bullet. Not-Laris
uses her Gary Seven transporter to beam Rios, Teresa and the kid to safety at her place, then
locks them out of the transporter so Rios can’t beam back because Picard — who is fighting to save
the future from totalitarianism — is worried about the boo-boo on his arm. Rios spends most of the
rest of the episode trying to hot-wire Not-Laris’s transporter. He finally does, and beams back in
just in time to save Picard and Not-Laris from Soong’s mercenaries, and then . . . that’s it.
So, he beams Teresa and the kid onto the ship, so they can leave, so he can come back.
Nothing meaningful happens. It’s just a series of pointless activities to keep the characters busy.
And while Rios has suffered the most from this kind of thing this season — remember, he also
had a couple of episodes worth of pointless ICE detention that went absolutely nowhere — that has
been this entire show this year: meaningless action to keep the characters occupied.
Plot contrivances that accomplish nothing other than moving characters around and killing time.
Speaking of contrivances, and the writers having nothing for their own characters,
there are three characters this season who are identical twins of other characters,
because the producers wanted to include those actors but couldn’t think of anything for their
previously established characters to do. Isa Briones plays Soji. They couldn’t think of
a way to include Soji in the story they were telling, but they wanted to have Isa Briones
in the show beyond the first episode, so she plays Adam Soong’s daughter, who just so happens to look
exactly like Soji. Orla Brady plays Laris. Same deal, couldn’t think of a way to include Laris
in the story, so the producers said, oh, well, she plays Tallinn, a.k.a. Not-Laris,
who just so happens to look exactly like Laris. And of course, Brent Spiner, who is an old hand
at this particular trope, played Data and Alton Soong last season. Couldn’t think of a way to
include either of those characters in this story, but they still wanted to have Brent Spiner around,
so they just had him play another Soong, because they all look alike anyway.
Three times in the same season, we have actors playing new characters who are identical to
their previously established characters, for no reason that I can see other than
the writers wanted to use the actors but couldn’t come up with anything for their characters to do.
So, they found a way to justify using them — the exact same way, for all three of them.
Oh, and let’s not forget the Elnor hologram! They killed off Elnor in the third episode
because they had nothing for him, but they didn’t want to just completely forget
about Evan Evagora, the actor who plays Elnor, so they gave him a pointless
flashback in the last episode, and then in this episode they had an Elnor hologram.
Does that accomplish anything other than to get the actor some screen time? No? Didn’t think so.
Look, I can’t speak for the writers of this show. I don’t know how much effort they
actually put into this. I assume, because they are professionals and because they are working within
a professional system, that they worked very hard and they believe they put forth their best effort.
I can’t dispute that. All I can do is judge the show they made. And the show they made this season
plays as though they barely cared enough to write it. Perhaps the effort they put into it was not
lazy — I trust that it was not — but the result of that effort is by far the laziest, sloppiest,
most amateurish, most embarrassing writing I have ever seen on a Star Trek project,
and if you’ve watched as much Star Trek as I have, you know that covers a lot of territory.
We have one episode to go, and I’m really only still here for three reasons:
One, I started reviewing the season and I’m going to finish it, because to do otherwise
would be unprofessional and childish — I don’t think it’s a good show, but it’s not hurting me,
there’s no reason not to finish it; two, I am genuinely curious to see if it can still get worse
from this point; and three, I do kinda wanna see if I’m right about how it’s going to wind up, that
“Borg Cooperative wants to join the Federation” thing I pitched earlier. I guess we’ll find out!
Those are my thoughts on this episode. Please share your thoughts with me in the comments.
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and I’ll see you next week for a review of the season finale!