There’s always fun with totalitarian Trek.
What They Say:
Picard finds himself transported to an alternate timeline in the year 2400 where he must face one last trial orchestrated by his longtime nemesis Q.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
If there’s one thing Star Trek does enjoy doing in the modern sense is explore the dark side of things. The Next Generation did it some but over the years the use of the Mirror Universe and similar time-tripping events are the way to show just how bad things look in other timelines. This is pretty common across a lot of media so it’s not something that bothers me, but I’ll say it bothers me more with Trek. And I do say that as someone who really enjoyed Discovery’s trip through the Mirror Universe. What we keep finding is that it doesn’t take much for things to go bad – we all know this in reality – but when it seems like every alternate to the main Trek timeline is a bad totalitarian-style timeline, it just makes the main timeline more and more unique. Which you would think is a good thing, letting it stand out, but the truth is that I wish we saw more alternate timelines where there are even better results. If the “utopia” of the main Star Trek timeline is the one a million thing, that doesn’t bode well for mankind and the various races of the Federation.
This season wants to take us to a changed reality where, after the ending events of the opening episode, Picard has now found himself in a world where things have gone bad. It feels like the Terran Empire stuff from the Mirror Universe but what we get here in this Confederation is a galaxy where Picard is a master general and hunter of alien species with many of them wiped out entirely. Q’s visit at the start sets this off without answers but provides quizzical moments where you wonder if Q is quite himself, but mostly it’s left for Picard to grapple with what the him of this reality has been like – a real savage of a killer over the decades – and to try and figure out the how and why of it. Because of his position he’s able to get away with a lot as he falls very easily into proper command mode and uses all that’s at his command, and you can tell that the fact that it comes easy to him is worrying.
Q isn’t much of a player in this overall, though I enjoyed their bit at the beginning. What we get here is a series of waking-up moments in the first half that shows us where the cast is. Seven is actually the President and is married to the First Magistrate and is getting ready to oversee Eradication Day as the Borg Queen they have is about to be executed. Rios is at Vulcan on a mission in his ship killing off plenty of defenders there while Elnor finds himself as a rebel terrorist on Earth in Okinawa. It’s Raffi that ends up saving him as a head of Security dealing with the threat in the area, which brings all of them together just as they go to visit Jurati. She’s still a loner in this timeline – though with a cute digital assistant cat played by Patton Oswalt because – and she’s in charge of managing the Borg Queen. Suffice to say, bringing everyone together to suss out what’s going on is pretty standard while still trying to keep their cover.
As much as the totalitarian overuse frustrates me, it does work well here because, at least to my vague memory of TNG, it wasn’t done too often. Seeing just how far they’ve gone here is interesting and I do like that the Confederation isn’t played in the same way as the Terran Empire was, at least in terms of visuals. Some of the same trappings are there but this leans into more of the classic appearances and the veneer of respectability that allows for greater control. The frothing nature of those wanting to see the Borg Queen killed is a bit more complicated considering the history that exists for viewers with the Borg, even though that has been eased some thanks to past efforts and the previous season. But those dark feelings are still there through both Seven and Picard for what they’ve been through and lost, and the way it does haunt them in different ways.
Seeing them needing the Borg Queen in order to fix things isn’t a surprise either but it works out well. Because of the nature of the being, what with a kind of hive-mind that reaches across timelines, she’s able to suss out that things are wrong here in this reality in her own way and there are some intriguing clues in her seemingly nonsensical lines. She’s the one that’s able to give them the shortcut to knowing when things changed, back in 2024 in Los Angeles, which is what we already knew from trailers and all. So that sets us on a classic Save the Whales kind of mission of getting everyone offworld and skipping around the sun in order to go back in time. That’s not going to go easily, of course, but it shows off more of the darker elements of this reality while also eventually bringing the gang back together that will gets things moving forward in full.
In Summary:
I really enjoyed this episode overall though the true delight for many will be just having Patrick Stewart and John DeLancie trading lines again with such ease. Q’s able to make some amusing references, especially with Yesterday’s Enterprise, which may feel too on the nose but it delivers the right feeling for someone so self-aware of everything. His claims that this is the end of the road is certainly interesting and I can imagine that we might have some good overall things come to fruition with this season that goes back to that very first episode of The Next Generation. Part of me continues to hope that some of this season and the next will put a real bow on both Picard and Q’s overall arc and the teases of it here are delightful and bittersweet. And hell, just the mention of Sisko made the whole episode for me.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Paramount+
