In Star Trek: Picard season 2 episode 3, “Assimilation” director Lea Thompson has our intrepid crew travel back to the (near) future, crash their ship and get lost in LA, while the Borg Queen Hannibal lectures them about human weakness. Written by Kiley Rossetter & Christopher Monfette.
Mark Turetsky: Will! What year is it?!
Will Nevin: 2022, I think. These pandemic years kinda run together.
Mark: Then it’s not too late… There’s still… time.
Let’s Go Backwards To Destroy The Past
Will: So in “things that totally didn’t shock me,” the magistrate and his goons were unable to stop the bold crew of the La Sirena from beginning their mission to fix the timeline. But before we get to the key consequence of the firefight, here’s a question I had: The Confederation phasers were clearly set to disintegrate…and yet Elnor took one to the shoulder/chest? Was there something there I missed?
Mark: I noted that too. I re-checked, and The Magistrate shot Elnor, but the La Sirena crew stole phasers from the security officers who beamed aboard after The Magistrate. So, the security goons had their phasers set to disintegrate, and The Magistrate had his set to mortally wound for full dramatic effect. And while I was checking that, I noticed that the phasers they use in the Confederation are designed to look more like handguns than dustbusters. Just another example of the Confederation being a nightmare extrapolation of our current world. But that leads us to the most heartbreaking part of this episode: They killed off Elnor!
Will: So we’ve got two things to talk about there: 1) the decision to write ‘im off for a bit and 2) the reactions that take place following his death. Again, I can see the writers making choices here — “Hiding a Romulan in 2024 is going to be tricky…so why not bump him off?” Just like we disintegrated all of the goons so we don’t have to worry about them waking up and/or their bodies piling up in La Sirena’s morgue. (Which, as an escort/fighter, should it even have? Maybe a few things were better when this show was shot on a $3.50 budget.)
That gets me to point No. 2. The mission has to continue after Elnor’s death lest the nightmare world of the Confederation live, and the crew seems to accept that idea — all except Raffi. I thought her overreaction was comical here. As a Starfleet officer, she’s had to have lost close friends in the line of duty, and her relationship with Picard goes back years to when she was his first officer. But when Elnor dies (admittedly in her relative arms) she loses it, even going so far as to question the mission that will literally save the universe.
I think some people who don’t know Picard personally might ask whether he enables Q, just like they might think him responsible for Wolf 359. But not a friend.
Bad writing compounded by bad acting and bad direction. Failure all around!
Mark: I need to push back here in terms of the acting: Raffi is estranged from her own son, and Elnor has very much become her surrogate son. You see it in every scene they have together. Compare it to Kirk’s reaction to losing his own son in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock.
You Klingon Bastard’s you’ve killed my son
Set aside William Shatner’s performance for all its quirks, Raffi’s reaction has a similar level of emotional devastation. As for her blaming Picard for what Q does, I doubt that anyone who wasn’t part of the Enterprise’s bridge crew has a clear idea of what their relationship is. She says some dumb shit in a moment of grief.
Will: If you want me to believe she’s lost in grief over the death of a would-be son, you (as a writer, not *you,* Mark) have to sell me a whole lot harder on that idea — specifically on how close they were. What were her dreams for him when they served together? How exactly did she view him? This show is not one for subtext, and if it is going to start, they picked a funny moment with this relationship.
Since you brought up III, I’ll hit you with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and a scene from the much better director’s cut:
It has bad writing too (Kirk’s response to Scotty’s “Why?” is cringey), but James Doohan’s performance here is amazing. His character’s nephew is on the table before him, having died in the line of duty, and Scotty manages to choke out, “Thanks. I know you tried, doctor.” God, that line hits me every time. It’s a real, believable response to characters with an established relationship. To me, we missed that mark in episode 3 with Raffi and Elnor.
Mark: Funny you should bring that particular scene up, because the original cut of the film removed any mention that Peter Preston was Scotty’s nephew, making it confusing as to why he would be so broken up about a random engineer’s death.
I may have read too much into their emotional reunion in last week’s “Penance,” but she does call him “honey,” and I read their relationship in a different way than you did. At the very least, they’ve got the connection of having been through a lot together last season and he’s a new cadet aboard her starship.
I also wouldn’t be too sure about Elnor’s death being temporary. I don’t see how changing the past will change his fate (though with time travel stories, who knows). I’m seeing it more as a false source of hope, and a motivating factor for her.
Assignment: Earth
Will: Mark, I like what you did with the subhed there. Clever AF.
Once we get to the end of the next 14 episodes and the conclusion of this series, I wouldn’t be surprised if its critical epitaph might be, “It was a satisfying enough conclusion to Picard’s story, but the writing was surprisingly dumb for Star Trek.” I’ve already complained about the bad (to me) writing behind Raffi in this episode, but Rios directly getting a lecture about not leaving tech behind before doing that same very thing? As subtle as a Klingon’s penis.
Mark: Poor Rios gets transported to mid-air and takes a nasty fall. And that puts him in a bad situation: he’s got no money, no ID, needs medical attention and is Latinx. This portion of the episode really felt like it was pulling some plot elements from DS9’s “Past Tense.” Jurati also warns them to look out for butterflies, and images of butterflies are all over the episode.
Will: I read an explainer on that from someone somewhere (I’d link if I could remember!) and the writer cautioned that our heroes are in Los Angeles while “Past Tense” took place in San Francisco, but it’s a neat tie-in and much better than the previous episode’s super dumb meta references. And since you brought up the butterflies, are they really going for a “butterfly effect” theme here? Hasn’t that idea been done to death?
Mark: Yes, they’re in different cities, so I don’t expect Sisko, O’Brien or Dax to show up, but it’s very much set in the same America as “Past Tense” (which I highly recommend you watch). Armed thugs are still going around asking people for their UHC cards. In “Past Tense,” the two men of color immediately get stopped by the police and brought to a sanctuary district (like where Raffi first beams in), while their crewmate, a white woman, gets rescued by a good samaritan and brought into the high society of the era. Here on Picard, we’ve got Rios, almost immediately picked up by ICE while Raffi and Seven, passing themselves off as a well-to-do couple, go into restricted areas and are barely hassled by security. There are clear parallels here.
As for the butterfly imagery, yeah. It’s tired. I think as a culture and especially as a fandom are aware of the butterfly effect (the effect, not the movie). I’m also going to boldly put some chips on the young boy at the clinic being one of Rios’ ancestors.
Will: Like Fry, Rios is going to fuck around and become his own grandpa. If I’m going to pick on the writing, I should commend it as well — framing ICE and its vibe as the forebearers of the Confederation is all too plausible and only a few fascist steps away from what you describe in “Past Tense” and what we see in the TNG pilot, “Encounter at Farpoint.”
I Queen, You Queen, We All Are The Borg Queen
Mark: Back on the La Sirena, we get what can only be described as A Bad Plan. The Borg Queen is dying and the crew need her if they ever want to get back to their present. She won’t boot up, though, so Jurati has to join her consciousness to the Queen’s in order to do some repairs before she can be assimilated into a (two-person) Borg Collective. Admittedly, among the people present, Jurati seems like the best person for the job, what with her expertise in artificial intelligence.
Will: Maaaaaan, I knew Jurati was going to get assimilated, but I would not have pegged it as something 100 percent voluntary — maybe something like Data’s slow turn/torture in First Contact, ya know? But if Picard’s experience with the Borg has taught us anything, there are lingering effects from even a temporary assimilation, so this might have some consequences beyond this episode — especially with Jurati having made an enemy of the Queen. Or has she? Plenty of room here for this to be a nefarious “alien influenced” plot.
Mark: I’m hoping for an enemies-to-grudging-mutual-respect-to-besties arc for these two characters. Speaking of The Borg Queen, she’s coming along with this plan because they said she might have the opportunity to contact her collective in the Delta Quadrant. Do they mean in 2024? In 2401? If it’s 2024 they’re pretty much letting her win in a Star Trek: First Contact situation. If it’s 2401, well, that’s a complicated question, isn’t it? Anyway, I’m glad the Queen’s still being treated as a serious threat, despite her being injured. So what did you think of this episode overall, Will?
Will: My gripes aside, I think it was fully serviceable as an hour that moved the story along. The gang is in 2024, and the next episode will presumably be meeting the “watcher” and resolving any complications that have been created in this episode, such as Rios’ incarceration and the loss of his combadge. Speaking of, are we going fully Terminator/Terminator 2 here? Is the combadge the thing that ruins the timeline?
Mark: I think it’s more of a reason to keep the kid on the show, so he can be the plucky boy sidekick for our fearless time bandits.
Make It So On and So Forth
- How long was Picard a part of the collective? According to the DS9 pilot “Emissary,” it was six days. What a wild and crazy week! (Wherein “wild and crazy” is a hellish experience that haunts the captain for the rest of his life.)
- Or at least it haunts him when the plot calls for it to haunt him. So, like, two episodes, one movie, and one spin-off.
- Another thing ruined by a bad edit: Dr. Soran’s line “His heart wasn’t in it” in reference to Geordi in Star Trek: Generations. Soran tortured him using Borg nanoprobes that stopped his heart. Get the joke now?
- We could have used a little more explanation as to why Picard ditched in France. No one around? No radar? Because it was night? He knew the terrain? I guess we can assume some combination of all the above.
- As mentioned in the plot summary up top, this episode was directed by Lea Thompson. Yes, that one! The one from Zdarsky and Quinones’ Howard The Duck. She’ll also be directing the next episode, “The Watcher.”
Mark Turetsky
Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.
