In “Two of One,” the Picard gang goes running with the shadows of the night. Jurati surrenders all her dreams to the Borg Queen. Picard takes Renée’s hand and tells her it’ll be alright, then hides on the inside all the pain he’s ever felt. Kore Soong gets let down, uneasy, as she ain’t meant to last. Written by Cindy Appel & Jane Maggs, directed by Jonathan Frakes.
Mark Turetsky: Will, do you ever have a moment where you’re unsure if you’re dreaming or not? Where you have to reality-test, like pinching yourself or flipping the lights on and off?
Will Nevin: I don’t know about that, Mark, but I was hoping that someone would explain to me the super complicated, barely perceptible subtext in this week’s big musical number, and wouldn’t you know it, Screen Rant came along and made my crazy dream a reality. So maybe I can manifest things into being, Mark. Does that make me a witch?
A Show-Stopping Distraction
Mark: I love it when a plan comes together, but sometimes the plan is so inscrutable, so strange, that you just kinda have to go “huh! I guess that was the plan all along?” The plan in question is for Jurati to get taken in by security, for her to use knockout gas on them that will make them forget they ever saw her, then to upload ID data for the rest of her gang into the database so that they’ll be able to get into the gala. So far, so good, but then, when security starts moving in on Picard, Jurati’s inner Borg Queen creates a distraction by generating an EMP (with her Borg nanoprobes, I guess?) which knocks out the lights (but just the lights?) and Jurati joins the band, performing a show-stopping rendition of Pat Benatar’s “Shadows of the Night.”
Somehow.
I can think of at least three things wrong with this.
Will: I’ll play devil’s advocate because I’m an asshole. For the music, we had a live band…in which all of the members knew “Shadows of the Night” because it’s such a fuckin’ banger. The spotlight that had power was one of those emergency spotlights that *every* event center has ready to go. And, come on, Mark. The Borg Queen is clearly magic but is also limited by very tiny amounts of brain chemicals. Every Star Trek fan knows this.
Mark: Allison Pill is a great performer, and she did a great job with the song, but honestly, I thought we were seeing some kind of Borg-induced fantasy, because it was just so bizarre.
Will: It was dangerously close to “Stardust City Rag” in that everyone involved was going for some measure of seriousness only for it to come off so silly. While that scene did not bother me nearly as much as that wretched episode, I’m not going to try to talk anyone out of their opinion that it was awful, either.
Mark: I really can’t decide if it was awful or if it was just completely incongruous. But anyway, The song was a big distraction so that Picard (Jean-Luc) could sneak off and give Picard (Renée) a pep talk. It’s a really good Picard pep talk. He’s the standoffish dad. He won’t tell you that he loves or cares about you, he’ll tell you that he trusts you to do your job and he’s confident you can and will do it.
Will: I’m two episodes into a TNG rewatch, and Picard’s line, “I’m not a family man, Riker” from “Encounter at Farpoint” is such a nice contrast to what we see in this episode. You’re right that Picard (Admiral) doesn’t come right out and say that he loves and supports Picard (Astronaut) because that would be weird coming from a kindly old security guard, but you can see how the character has mellowed with the passage of time. That and the various writers have figured out who he is.
Mark: This series has always had to balance between Picard as he was on TNG and Picard as he intended to be at the end of “All Good Things…” (his “I should have done this a long time ago” when it came to socializing with his crew, after years of, evidently, reading Shakespeare alone in his ready room). We learned last season that he wasn’t completely successful at warming and opening up to his friends/crewmembers. He’s a man who’s predisposed to be aloof, but he’s trying.
The Finished Basement of Secrets
Mark: We’ve also got the side plot of Kore Soong googling her dad’s name, apparently for the first time, and finding out that he’s a mad eugenicist. She also discovers his personal video journal, and learns that she’s not her first daughter. She’s some kind of clone! And she’s the longest-lived and final one!
Will: They all seemed to have different genetic problems, too. Such fun. And I agree — the revelation that Soong’s a mad scientist was some clunky exposition that I think Lea Thompson’s character could have handled better.
Mark: We learn again that he’s violated the Shenzhen Convention. I’m wondering if that’s something that happened in response to the Eugenics Wars in the world of Trek, if it’s some nod to that universe. Also, it’s, uh, kinda weird that the Soong family, for all Kore’s genetic diseases, has a strong genetic disposition toward creating identical beings as offspring, huh?
Will: A quick googling didn’t reveal any non-Picard references to the Shenzhen Convention, so that might be a new piece of lore. Also, if this was a George Lucas operation, I’d guarantee that the actress who played Lal from season three’s “The Offspring” would be digitally replaced with Isa Briones.
Mark: Oof.
Will: Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
Mark: Maybe next week Kore will confront her dad and he’ll come clean and reveal all.
Will: Kore, to Adam: “Dad, I found all these articles…they say you’re a mad scientist.”
Adam, to Kore: “Fake news, sweetheart.”
Kore: “What about these videos?”
Adam: *gulps*
What Does Q Need With A Tesla?
Will: The way this show (that will continue for another season and a half) puts its lead (who is an android) in mortal danger is super weird, but I want to start off with this: What does (a) god need with a car (accident)? The Q that we have in this series is not the Q that we know, and I keep harping on that, yes, but I think it’s really interesting that we have an omnipotent being — who’s used his powers…exactly once? — reduced to scheming and plotting with a mad scientist clearly a few Pop Tarts short of a complete and balanced breakfast.
Mark: I pointed out in our review of episode 1 that the use of the flashback format is usually to create a sense of tension in an episode where none already exists. And… yeah, we can’t possibly expect that Picard is going to die. It does tease us with the resolution of Picard’s trauma with his mother that’s been teased all season. I’m wondering if next week will be like that silent issue of New X-Men, except that it’s Tallinn exploring Picard’s subconscious.
Will: Woof, I am not looking forward to this here next episode because if we’re tooling around in the admiral’s brain for 20 or 30 minutes, it’s only going to make this series’ decompression problem worse. I know we’ve got three eps to go after this upcoming one, but how many one-hour-ish episodes do you think you would have needed to tell this story? I think I could have done it in a tight six.
Mark: Decompressed storytelling came for your comics, and now it’s come for your Trek! What I’m interested in seeing, as we move into the third act of this season is, how do we get from Adam Soong being a disgraced scientist to the progenitor of the Confederation? And how can we see that if that future will be (we expect) fixed? What’s the mysterious life form that Renée finds on Io, and how does it become such a huge inflection point for humanity? Despite the off-the-rails nature of this episode, I’m still interested in how these mysteries shake out.
Will: And, of course, how we bridge to season three and accommodate both the crew we’ve come to know and the one we’ve loved for 35 years.
Mark: I think the Borg-joining-the-Federation plot might be saved for next year.
Will: I think you’re right, and I wonder if it might be a good ol’ fashioned cliffhanger in episode 10. Back to the car “accident” for a second — you joked in the Slack about paying for the product placement, but is there any better way to telegraph the fact that someone is an asshole than putting them in a Tesla?
Mark: Heck, on Discovery, the evil Mirror Universe Captain Lorca spoke in reverent terms about Elon Musk! Another lampshading, right there.
Make it So On and So Forth
- Tallinn’s tool is just blatantly a sonic screwdriver, right?
- With Rios just calling Picard “Admiral” after the car accident, I’m wondering if Renée will put things together.
- Speaking of Lucas-ifcation, don’t some of the effects changes in Star Trek: The Motion Picture: The Director’s Edition come off as a little much? Re-editing/adding footage/reordering footage is one thing, but changing mattes? Might as well slide some Dewbacks in there. (MT: I actually haven’t seen the film since renting the VHS many years ago at my family’s cabin. My younger cousin Matt made fart noises through all those long, tedious shots of the Enterprise, but maybe that was for the best?)
- Even Pat Benatar knew that “Shadows of the Night” was about keeping the fascists from winning. Just watch the video!
- Wild prediction: Tallinn will learn an important lesson about how it’s okay to interact with the subjects under her protection and go on to become Boothby. After all, it’s her job to look after the Picards! And it would further support my theory that Picard is Wesley’s father. Yeah, I said it. (WN: That is going to make Jack Crusher’s ghost *quite* unhappy.)
- I hope Evan Evagora is getting his full per-episode rate for his half-second appearances in the last few episodes. He’s still in the opening credits!
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.
