In “Fly Me To The Moon,” Picard enlists the help of an unlikely ally, Seven and Raffi rescue Rios from ICE, Jurati commits another murder, and the Soong family returns. Written by Cindy Appel, directed by Jonathan Frakes.
Will Nevin: Hoooooboy we had some big Picard news this week with the First Contact Day announcement that the crew of NCC-1701-D — LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis and Brent Spiner — is returning for one last romp together in Season Three.
I’ve had any number of complaints and misgivings about this experiment, but the teaser trailer for next season sure did make me feel something. I hope these are all meaningful roles. I hope the motley crew of the La Sirena isn’t entirely pushed aside. I hope that this will be a sendoff worthy of the Next Generation’s legacy. I hope for good things, Mark, but I’m not entirely convinced I’m going to get them.
On the other hand, that trailer!
Also, we know that season three filming has already wrapped. Good on Paramount for being able to keep this a secret.
Mark Turetsky: I’m of (at least) two minds about this. From the start, Picard has rejected becoming TNG Part 2, for better or (largely) worse. I somehow doubt it will become that. After all, we just know that they’ll be “joining the cast” for season 3. On the other hand, season 2 is already a soft reboot of the series, so what’s wrong with having another one? And yet another part of me is just excited to see what this will be. I’m also wondering if the Enterprise-E (or even the D, somehow?) will make an appearance. And who will Brent Spiner be playing? Data pretty conclusively died TWICE.
But we’ve got more pressing stuff to discuss, don’t we?
Mind Your P(icard)s and Qs
Mark: Right off the bat, I’m ashamed of myself for not connecting the Watcher, Tallinn, with Gary Seven, especially since I mentioned “Assignment: Earth” in an earlier review. Still, it’s been years since I’ve watched that particular TOS episode.
Will: I remember that it was some kind of backdoor pilot, right? But that doesn’t seem helpful to us here.
Mark: Roddenberry was always trying to get other shows off the ground. Some have posited that his absence during much of season 2 of TOS was made better by his absence, with Gene L. Coon running the show. But that’s neither here nor there.
I’ve gotta say, this episode lost me as soon as we heard John de Lancie doing a goofy German accent as Renée Picard’s therapist. It was obvious that it was de Lancie doing the voice, which made for an awkward reveal when Picard makes the same realization the viewer and proclaims, “That’s not a therapist! That’s Q!” It’s a terrible line delivered with such conviction by Stewart that it makes for a stunningly bizarre moment of TV.
Will: Nothing in re: accents will hurt me as bad as Stewart and “Stardust City Rag” from last season…which Frakes also directed. Is Number One crummy at his job? It’s enough to make a fella wonder. I know we’ll get to Q’s machinations in a bit, but let’s get to the Watcher first. Was it ever explained why she looks like Laris? Is that just some weird ass coincidence across space and time?
Mark: I have a feeling it’s not just to keep Orla Brady employed. There has to be a reason for it. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. As for Frakes, he’s a good director, generally. He did Star Trek: First Contact, he did part two of “Past Tense” for DS9 (which, again, I’m begging you to view for some needed context for this season). On the other hand, he directed Star Trek: Insurrection, and the TNG episode “Sub Rosa” (the one with the haunted ghost candle). But speaking of being crummy at one’s job, I’m not sure what Tallinn’s job really is. If she’s there to safeguard the timeline, then why is she just… well, watching? We know that if Picard & co don’t fix things, she’ll have failed her mission. But what was her plan before they showed up?
Will: Hang out and chill? And I guess she’s only there to stop people who were meddling in the timeline rather than fix naturally occurring hiccups? If I followed everything correctly, in the “true” history, Renee goes on the mission and finds microbial life, which would be an important milestone in finding our place in the galaxy. But then — even in the good timeline — the relative apocalypse still happens. These folks are really trying to thread a needle through a funky patch of Trek lore.
OK, so let’s talk about Q here. This is not the same omnipotent being we’re used to, right? Seems like in the past he would have just snapped his fingers and convinced Renee not to go on the flight (saying that out loud makes last week a bunch clearer). What do you think has happened to him? And has he truly made the switch from sort of a benevolent trickster god to something more vicious and evil?
Mark: It’s true. I find myself comparing Q as he appears here to how he acts in “Tapestry.” It’s a similar sort of situation: changing one thing in the past and seeing how Picard’s life turns out with that one little change. In “Tapestry” he has Picard make the change, and it’s done to teach him a lesson. And, honestly, I really think that’s what’s happening here. I still think this is about Picard choosing to destroy the Stargazer instead of helping out the Borg in need. I tie it back to Q introducing the Borg to the Federation way back in “Q Who.” Maybe Picard gave him faith in humanity, made him believe that they would be able to turn an enemy into an ally. It’s what we saw with the Klingons from TOS to TNG. It’s what we see with the Romulans from TOS to Discovery.
As for Q’s loss of powers, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s tied in with a revelation we recently learned on Discovery. We found out that the Federation’s last contact with the Q Continuum was in the late 26th Century. Picard is set in the early 25th, so maybe we’re seeing the start of the slow death of the Q. Who knows?
Sing a Soong of Sixpence
Will: Two things first: 1) Brent Spiner is a far better actor than a career of Star Trek, Independence Day and Master of Disguise would suggest, and 2) any Soong in any timeline is apparently a dirtbag.
Mark: Isa Briones makes her return to the opening credits, this time as another new character, Kore Soong. She’s got a horrible genetic disorder, which makes it impossible to be outside, and so she lives in what seems like a finished basement. Just last week, I compared Immortal X-Men to The Tempest in my review of that comic, so it was definitely on my mind when we met this controlling, megalomaniacal father raising his daughter in complete seclusion.
But anyway, we’re now halfway through this season, and with such a tightly serialized story, it struck me as kinda weird how late it is to be introduced to these two characters, who seem like they’re pretty key to the plot.
Will: If Adam Soong is as disposable as last season’s Soong, maybe we don’t need five more episodes to explore him. As down as I am on this chapter and maybe where the series is going, I really did like the edge we saw here. Spiner is so good at the slow, subtle menace we saw last in Lore; I hope this character is more of that but with a tragic backstory.
Kore, though? Seems like a sad pile of nothing aside from a good contrast from her last character — going from an unstoppable android to one of the most fragile humans we’ve seen in Trek.
Mark: The biggest thing I took away from this plotline is a bit of speculation: they tell us in this episode that records from this era are sketchy at best. Now, hear me out: We’ve got a guy named Soong who’s got a specialty in genetics. The speech we see him giving borders on advocating eugenics (okay, I’d say it doesn’t just border on it, but crosses that line). We know in the future Noonien is a Soong family name. We know that in the Star Trek timeline, we’ve got World War III coming before First Contact. Will, are you putting together the pieces that I’m throwing out?
Will: Aight, that would be *wild,* which seems like what this season is going for. I, however, took that sketchy records bit to explain Picard’s surprise that Renee was on this historically important mission.
Mark: That’s the context where it comes up, but they could be seeding it for an “anything goes” revision to Trek history. It would explain the weird coincidence between Noonien Soong and Khan Noonien Singh, it clears up the problem of the Eugenics wars not happening in the 90s. And you know, there’s a Noonien-Singh-named crewmember coming next month to Strange New Worlds. Maybe this is setting up who she is in relation to Khan.
Will: As long as Benedict Cumberbatch isn’t involved, consider me intrigued.
Jurati and the Queen: Party-Crashers
Mark: I’ve gotta hand it to you. You called Jurati becoming the new Borg Queen, and I think this episode provided a huge leap in support of that prediction. Also, Jurati just can’t stop with the murdering, can she? Bruce Maddox last season, and now the Borg Queen.
Will: In Agnes’ defense, at least this time was justifiable homicide in an attempt to save the poor French cop. Maddox…well, that’s a different case, and I’m still not buying her “alien influence” excuse. But, yeah, back to her being the Queen — it just made too much sense, ya know? We’ve always wondered how the Borg came to be, and we had a single, incredibly powerful Borg member transported to a time in which we weren’t sure whether there were Borg. I’m not fully convinced, though — is Agnes really going to maintain some measure of her humanity as she engages in centuries of death and conquest? Or maybe she builds a new collective based on…free will? We’ve got some things to work out over the next few episodes for sure.
Mark: I wouldn’t go so far as to say that she’s the origin of the Borg. We know from Voyager that they originated in the Delta Quadrant, and were around during the 15th Century, so they’re definitely around in the Delta Quadrant of the early 21st. But yeah, there’s some ground that needs to get covered,. If she’s got that cross-timeline awareness that the other queen had, maybe that ties into her possibly being the one who beamed onto the Stargazer back in the season premiere. But maybe her presence, her consciousness within the collective can make a difference somehow? Which would be absolutely wild, considering the billions of beings the Borg have assimilated already.
Will: Before the queen got smoked with an antique shotgun (which was quite the leap in assumptions regarding firearms functionality), she did make the point that Jurati was special — I could totally buy some fragment of her surviving until the 25th century and then *hand waves at making the body we saw in the first episode.*
Mark: Borgs got smoked with a hologram tommy gun in First Contact! And the Queen was not at her full power here. Yeah, it could be that the whole Jurati getting into the Queen’s head while the Queen was trying to get into hers provided some kind of exception that the Borg haven’t experienced before. In the short term, Jurati’s now got a Harvey! A Scorpius (if you’re a Farscape fan)! I can’t wait to see what these two get up to on this crazy show that is rapidly spinning out of control.
Will: *shakes head in decades of corrosion and disrepair and at the thought of the Picard family keeping a loaded shotgun on a mantle*
What about a Peacemaker’s dad, Mark?
Mark: The Borg Queen is a lot of things, but she’s not a goddamn Nazi, Will.
Make It So On and So Forth
- So Rios’ combadge really didn’t matter? Seriously?
- Taking away Dr. Soong’s license and funding seems like a really good way to get him to stop his experimentation. Uh huh. It’s called “leverage,” Lea. Maybe you should look into it.
- Along with Isa Briones, Evan Evagora is back in the opening credits, but only appears as a grief hallucination by Raffi. What could it mean?
- The phone number on Q’s business card is a real answering machine that has Q berate you if you call! (323) 634-5667
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.
