In Star Trek: Picard season 2, episode 8, “Mercy,” Raffi and Seven track down a fledgling Borg Queen, Kore self-liberates, and Picard and Guinan get interrogated in FBI custody. Written by Cindy Appel & Kirsten Beyer, directed by Joe Menendez.
Mark Turetsky: It was Shakespeare who once wrote, “the quality of mercy is not strained.” Are you up for discussing the quality of “Mercy?” Do you think it’s strained? As strained as this sweaty literary allusion?
Will Nevin: Not gonna lie — I thought this was the best episode of this season to date. Was it perfect? Absolutely not. But there are moments that speak to the best qualities of Jean-Luc Picard. So let’s chat this shit up.
The Trek’s Files
Mark: The A plot of this episode has Picard and Guinan in the custody of Wells, a rogue FBI agent, who knows that certain truths are out there. He believes that Picard and Guinan are aliens from outer space, but can’t prove it. It’s up to Picard to talk him into letting them go.
Will: I got real deep into the episode thinking your theory about Wells would eventually play out, but I’m not dissatisfied — in fact, I’d say the resolution of this subplot was my favorite moment over these largely so-so 18 episodes.
Picard finds himself confronted by a broken man, one (as so helpfully pointed out) stuck in the past. He doesn’t demean him; he doesn’t demoralize him. Instead, he helps him come to terms with a frightening moment from his childhood by simply explaining what happened with a degree of grace I didn’t think was possible from this show. Combine that with the expertly-timed music cue, and I cried like a big ol’ nerd baby.
Mark: You know, I’ve consistently enjoyed the music of this show, though I haven’t mentioned it here. The Borg theme from First Contact gets a bit overused (it’s the one that starts out like “Also sprach Zarathustra,” but adds another note), but overall it can be very powerful.
I spent a lot of time in my younger years among skeptics, and an attitude that I came across pretty consistently was a sense of sneering condescension toward true believers like Wells. Few and far between were the compassionate skeptics. Here, Picard treats Wells with some real empathy, guided by Guinan’s now-canonical empathy powers.
That’s another quirk to this plotline that I noticed: Wells largely ignores Guinan, the actual alien, in favor of Picard. Is it just his implicit bias showing through?
Will: You’re Wells: You’ve got two people in custody, one comes with video of materializing out of thin air and the other just hangs out with the first fella and has a bad attitude. Who are you leaning on hardest?
Mark: Yeah, Picard is referred to as a crusty old admiral who’s an android, so there’s that. But let’s talk about Guinan in this episode. We knew from TNG and Generations that Guinan is an El-Aurian, who have some undefined superhuman traits. They’re long-lived, they have some sense of when something has gone wrong with the timeline, and then there’s the scene in “Q Who” where she squares off against Q. We don’t see any special effects or anything, she just raises her hands with her fingers splayed like she’s a cat, and that’s it. Here, we get a much more direct, present display of her powers as she appears to Picard (and only to Picard) to give him a telepathic message. What did you think about this display? What does it mean for Guinan as a character?
Will: Whatever else El-Aurians might be, it seems like antagonism toward the Q Continuum is a defining characteristic. Why? Because they tinker with time and space? Or is it because the Continuum is stocked with assholes? Maybe it’s one of those “little of A ‘n’ a little of B” deals. But as far as Guinan specifically, I think it’s a little spice, a little extra for her character that gives her depth and retroactively gets the TNG producers a little off the hook for stunt casting a role that didn’t amount to much.
Mark: I was more referring to her overt display of telepathy here. It’s the sort of thing that would have been handled by a voice over in the past due to budgetary reasons.
Will: Ahhh, now I see, my friend. We’re talking about a show no longer “stuck in the past” with smaller budgets — no more bunking on the holodeck, no, sir! It was a neat visual, I suppose?
Mark: See, for me, it dispels some of the mystery about Guinan. In my mind, the special effect that always worked best was Whoopi Goldberg. Her star power on the show, and her charisma as a performer lent a certain mystique. This is not a slight against Ito Aghayere, who I think does a tremendous job with the role, but I could have done without the special effect. But we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves: there’s also the big reveal about Q that we’ve been speculating about since the second episode of this season.
Will: The immortal being is no longer quite so immortal, huh? This was my second-favorite bit in the episode; the writing and de Lancie’s performance came together so well. It reminded me a bit of when someone makes some brave, hypothetical declarative of what they’d do after a dementia diagnosis. We all imagine a death with our faculties intact, but it’s rarely that kind. We’re diminished one day, one indignity at a time before the end finally comes. And Q sees that gradual waining, and, well, he’s pissed the fuck off.
But the most fascinating thing about that scene? Q says that whatever he’s doing with Picard is an attempt to make up for untold ages of his bullshit. An immortal being getting his affairs in order and trying to do good. What a thing.
Mark: I keep going back to my theory about Q and the Borg from the aforementioned “Q Who.” In that episode, Guinan tells Picard that Q introduced the Federation to the Borg too early, that there might have been some kind of coexistence between them at some point in the future. And this season started with something akin to that situation. But I agree. De Lancie and Aghayere just hit it out of the park with this scene.
Will: Thought experiment: If this somehow unraveled Picard’s assimilation and what happened at Wolf 359, would you be OK with that?
Mark: Ooh, no. It’s not only a huge part of Picard as a character, it’s a huge part of Captain Sisko of Deep Space Nine. Have we learned nothing from “Tapestry?”
Will: You’re right, of course. But I think we’ve got a long way to go before we logically get to Benovolent Borg Queen Agnes Jurati. Maybe she leads a splinter group and they only win in the 25th century?
Eating Batteries
Mark: The rest of the episode centers around Jurati/The Borg Queen, which is handled in an interesting way. She’s the uniting factor in Seven and Raffi’s story, Rios and Maria’s story, and Soong and Kore’s story, and yet she’s never really our point of view character. Partly, I think it’s to keep us guessing as to how far along the Borg Queen is in her assimilation of Jurati’s body and mind, and also it presents her as a creepy, alien presence. When Seven and Raffi find her, she’s more or less eating car batteries (do not attempt at home).
Will: I’m not a real doctor, but I’d agree, that seems like something you don’t want to do. But also, wouldn’t that make Jurati’s body crap out? We’ve been educated that the Borg can’t survive without their organic parts…which presumably includes internal organs sensitive to car battery goop. Again, we’re getting dangerously close to midichlorian over explanation territory here.
Mark: It’s not as bad as the use of Borg nanoprobes on Voyager, which this is clearly inspired by. The explanation is that lithium helps bodies tolerate said nanoprobes, but car batteries don’t contain a lot of lithium, unless they’re electric cars, which these cars didn’t appear to be. Anyway, that’s nitpicky. The real revelation of this plotline is Raffi’s scene with Elnor. We learn that Raffi, in her customary way, emotionally manipulated Elnor into staying at the Academy, which ultimately got him killed in the nightmare reality of the Confederation timeline.
Will: I’ll hit my central complaint again with this subplot in that none of the groundwork is established for Raffi’s reaction to his death. Why not have a line as they’re ready to board the Excelsior, “Thanks for convincing me to stay in Starfleet”? Then this scene and everything else would have carried a bit more emotional weight and logic.
Mark: Yeah, I haven’t had this problem with this plotline. I thought it was pretty clear that Raffi and Elnor were close, and as for this extra information, well, Raffi was seeing Elnor everywhere she looked. There was clearly something more that they were holding back from us. But enough relitigating the Raffi/Elnor plotline, I thought there were some pretty striking visuals in this sequence, like Jurati in her red dress running across the trunks of the cars. It’s kinda fun to have such a colorful outfit for the Borg Queen, and makes her really pop onscreen.
Will: You certainly know more about the depiction of the Queen in Voyager, but they haven’t been afraid to expand upon the character/concept here, and I’ll give ‘em credit for that. I’ll also say this generally: By this point last season, I was ready for the show to just be over. But now? Barring some ridiculous flop of a plot twist, I think this season is going to end strongly.
Movin’ Out
Mark: Finally, we have Adam Soong’s transition into full-blown mad science Bond villain territory. Kore discovers a secret delivery from Q which cures her of her genetic disease, confronts Adam about her nature and leaves. Then Adam joins forces with the Borg Queen to recruit a band of paramilitary goons. Uhh… what was that?
Will: What’s Joker’s line from The Dark Knight? “It only takes a push” or something or other? Adam’s ties to humanity are tenuous, and his lack of ethics are a testament to that. But as soon as his daughter walks out, he’s a man with nothing to lose — aside from serving as the intellectual foundation of the Confederation. The queen has drones now and appears willing to use them to aid in scrubbing the Europa mission. What does she gain in bringing about the future that nearly resulted in her public execution? Curious, Mark.
Mark: I don’t think she’s bringing about that future so much as using it to tempt Adam to go along with her plan, which is to assimilate Earth and join up with her compatriots in the Delta Quadrant. She also seems aware of how Soong leads to the Confederation future, and teases us with it. She says that the Europa mission leads to an ecological breakthrough (I’m guessing it’s something that will magically solve climate change). But without that breakthrough, Soong comes up with his own solution. My guess is that the sun-blocking drones that he used to protect Kore get scaled up into the planet-covering shields that we saw in the Confederation future.
My biggest question with this episode is, why Picard? Why is Picard the one person who can stop them? My guess is that it’s because he’s the one person in the galaxy who Jurati looks up to enough to get her to reassert control over her body. If it’s just because he was Locutus, well, there’s also Seven, who would pose a possibly greater threat to the Queen.
Still, I’m excited to see what the Borg Queen can accomplish with a handful of janky drones with assault rifles. I’m guessing Picard and company will hide out in the catacombs beneath Château Picard, where he’ll confront the remaining ghosts of his past and mirror his ancestors hiding from the Nazis in the same place.
Will: That theory dovetails nicely with the screencaps I’ve seen of episode 9 (#spoileralert?). And, hey, if you’re going to solve climate change, I guess you should do it before the oncoming nuclear apocalypse. So does the conclusion of this season come down to choice/predetermination vs free will? Q wants Picard to reason his way out of this puzzle, while the Queen wants conquest and death?
Mark: I think things have gotten so far off of Q’s plan that he’s flailing at this point. Remember, he wasn’t expecting Picard to travel back in time. Or at least, he was very clear that he wasn’t the one who sent the team back. But we’ve got only two episodes left in the season to tie things up. And I agree with you: we’re in a much better place this season than they were last.
Make It So On and So Forth
- THE COMBADGE RETURNS.
- Rios: still on track to be his own grandpa. Also, weird thought: What if the kid *is* Rios?
- That’s… no? That’s hundreds of years too early! (MT)
- Not if the kid goes Back to the Future! (WN)
- We learn that Kore and all of her sisters/co-clones are named for Persephone, daughter of Zeus, but Kore is just “girl” in ancient Greek.
- I’m shocked that Wells didn’t have CCTV footage of Rios calling Picard “Admiral” after he was hit by Soong’s car.
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.
