With the crew of the disabled USS Titan falling into the gravity well of the nebula, our characters each react in their own way to a “No Win Scenario” in Picard Season 3 episode 4 written by Terry Matalas & Sean Tretta, directed by Jonathan Tiberius Frakes.
Mark Turetsky: Well, Will. We’ve made it to the end. The Titan is disabled, the crew have no hope. Everyone is making their preparations for the end. It was a short season of Picard, but thankfully it’s over before it really went off the rails. A bit bleak, but I guess that’s expected. Any last words before the end?
Will Nevin: I was really surprised that the series finale would be so dreary and that they would cut six episodes from the season order. But what do I know about television? Next Generation ended with “The Best of Both Worlds,” right?
The Deconstruction of Falling Stars
Mark: Things are looking bleak on the USS Titan. In order to buy a few more hours, Acting Captain Riker has diverted all power to the life support systems of the dying ship as it falls into the gravity well of the nebula. Having had a moment to cool down, Captain Riker seeks out Admiral Picard to apologize and the two friends reconcile. I know this particular plot thread rubbed you the wrong way last week. How do you feel about its resolution? Picard
Will: A better director/editor/showrunner would have cut the final line and opened in the observation lounge (or was that their quarters?), but I’ll take whatever course correction I can get. In general, this episode was much better in tone and hewing closer to what made Next Gen work, namely how all of these characters operated together within the confines of what was then Gene Roddenberry’s still largely conflict-free future.
Sure, it made stretches unwatchable (namely seasons 1 and 2), but it wasn’t unrelenting grimdark torture of characters we either loved or grew such feelings for.
Mark: Here’s my thing, which we didn’t really talk about last week. In episode 3, we had a big reversal of roles between Picard and Riker, not just the captain and first officer roles, but also in terms of temperament. Picard was encouraging the more risky course of action, whereas Riker was being overly cautious. Tying it back to Riker and Deanna’s appearance in season 1 of this series, it’s clear that the loss of their son made Riker too doubtful, too risk-averse to continue being an active Starfleet captain, hence his going on indefinite leave and settling down to putter over pizza ovens and gardening.
Anyway, as I predicted, the two friends quickly made up. It was just a heat-of-the-moment argument (well, one that seems to have “killed us all”). Riker tells Picard to make the most of the scant hours they have left to spend time with his son, Jack. So Picard invites Jack to join him for a drink in the holodeck.
They’re using Voyager logic here. While on Voyager it was transparently obvious that the holodecks were running on a different power system so that they could do fun holodeck episodes, here, Admiral Picard explains that it’s set up that way on purpose: It’s so that in times of crisis, the crew could find solace in a virtual escape from their problems. It seems wild to me that they can’t tap power from the holodeck, especially in situations like one later in the episode, where they need to find one last tiny bit of power for the thrusters and cut the last bit of life support, but what are you gonna do?
Will: What’s one more bit of contrivance for this series, Mark? It was a goofy note, but it was less goofy than the contrivance it led to, which I’m sure will hit on here in a bit.
Mark: It’s also a bit of a shame that he doesn’t use a holoprogram of the Ten Forward lounge from the Enterprise-D, but since so many flashbacks from this season happen at 10 Forward Avenue (not to mention this season was shot directly after season 2, where 10 Forward Ave. was a prominent location), it makes sense from a budget standpoint.
The father-son heart-to-heart gets interrupted by other crewmembers showing up for this impromptu we’re-all-gonna-die hang, and it’s interesting to see how this scene contrasts with the “5 Years Ago” flashbacks strewn throughout the episode. In the flashbacks, Picard is holding court to a group of fresh-faced eager cadets eager to get out into space. In the present day, everyone is at the end of their ropes, just waiting in a comforting place to see if they’ll all get killed or if they’ll somehow survive. And then the ultimate bummer arrives, in the form of Captain Shaw, who delivers what had to have been the character’s audition piece.
Will: Ahhhhh, but you see, we had to have the Ten Forward lounge and the flashback because it turns out that Jack Crusher was watching as his paw disowned his family in favor of Starfleet! Too cute by three-quarters impulse and reminded me of the worst moments of the first season, like when our favorite space rogue Rios just haaaaaappened to have a traumatic moment in his Starfleet career in re: synthetic life and Riker and Troi’s son just haaaaaappened to die because maybe the ban on research into such lifeforms prevented a cure. Why this show had to be so dumb, I will never know.
Mark: My personal theory is that Picard did this all the time, and they’re just showing us the one time Jack showed up to have his heart broken.
As I speculated earlier, Shaw is a survivor of Wolf-359, and since he doesn’t watch Star Trek and wasn’t a member of the Enterprise crew, he remembers Picard mostly as Locutus, the man who led the Borg to kill 11,000 people. He’s somewhat akin to Captain Sisko, who had a similarly hostile view of Picard when he was introduced in Deep Space Nine’s pilot, “Emissary.”
Will: So I got curious and did the math on this, and lemme tell you, it works out a bit better than post-Nemesis baby Jack. The Battle of Wolf-359 took place in 2367, whereas the third season of Picard unfolds in 2401, giving us 34 intervening years. If Shaw truly was a “grease monkey,” we can safely assume he was younger than 25, maybe even putting him in his late teens. Actor Todd Stashwick is 54 so, again, this tracks better than Jack *for sure*.
Mark: Back in the early days of Discovery, I was disappointed in the development of two notable characters: Captain Lorca and Ash Tyler, both of whom were presented as survivors of Klingon prison camps who were both dealing with horrible trauma. But in both cases, it turned out that they were separately both impostors, one a Klingon surgically altered to look human, the other a Starfleet officer from the evil mirror universe. Here, it seems like we’re getting the more compassionate version of that story, where Starfleet can have emotionally damaged people without it turning out to be because they’re secret villains. “At some point, asshole became a substitute for charm” would be such a funny line if it weren’t so sad.
Will: It is well and truly a moment of growth for a dipshit from Chicago, isn’t it?
The Adversary Part 2
Mark: Deep Space Nine had a few episodes about finding a changeling who had infiltrated the crew, but this plot felt most reminiscent of the season 3 finale, “The Adversary.” I’ve gotta say, I’m not quite sure I follow the reasons for Seven, Riker and Shaw keeping their search for the changeling on the down low, but on the other hand, widespread changeling searches have historically not worked. As far as blood testing, a wise man once said, “If I was a smart shape-shifter, a really good one, the first thing I would do would be to grab some poor soul off the street, absorb every ounce of his blood, and let it out on cue whenever someone like you tried to test me. Don’t you see? There isn’t a test that’s been created a smart man can’t find his way around.”
Will: If we wanted to slow this show down even more, we could have devoted a whole episode to the investigation — Seven reaching into the light/whatever fixture to retrieve the goo pot reminded me of a similar saboteur investigation plotline from Undiscovered Country. While I would not have wanted yet another week to go by where nothing happened, this is one story we could have spent a bit more time with.
Mark: I do appreciate the unlikely team-up dynamics between Seven and Shaw…
Will: I smell a spinoff! (Only half joking. I think.)
Mark: … especially his litany of compliments for Seven, explaining that these are uncharacteristic things for someone to say that might tip Seven off that she’s talking to a changeling. He’s also clearly been through years of Dominion War training about dealing with changeling infiltrators. There’s a weird bit of continuity here, though: he suggests that she steal the changeling’s bucket (though he refers to it as a “pot”). Now, on DS9, Odo needed to rest in a liquid state about as long as other sentient species sleep, but that was only because he was a relatively young changeling. The older ones, the ones who had infiltrated Starfleet, didn’t need to regenerate in the same way. Now, it could very well be that the faction of changelings who’ve gone rogue is made up of younger ones, or it could just be a hand-wavey retcon. Time will tell on that score.
What we do know now from the limited appearance of Captain Vadic in this episode is that she is at least part changeling. We see her do something that we’ve never seen another changeling do, and that’s communicate over a long distance by cutting off her gooey hand and having it re-form into her superior’s face to receive orders. It might be a singular changeling that’s giving her orders, but more likely it’s a changeling collective, akin to the Great Link. Because after all, all changelings are equal within the Link.
It also gives us a few breadcrumbs about who she is. She’s meek and subservient when dealing with her controller, but big and bombastic immediately afterwards when she deals with her crew, implying that her scenery chewing is for show, at least to a certain extent. It’s like she’s been training by watching videos of the most grandiose Star Trek villains on SpaceTube (including her grandpa, General Chang).
Will: It was good to see her lose, to get the sense that the Titan at least had some hope against the Shrike. And I too picked up on the dichotomy between her private submission and public bravado — it’s an interesting vibe that makes her at least somewhat unique. (Although Nemesis’ Clone Picard was quite physically frail as whatever clone problem he had advanced. I hate me for remembering plot points of that movie.)
Encounter At Farpoint Part 3
Mark: The day ultimately gets saved by the power of science and medicine, in the form of Beverly Crusher’s ability to recognize a familiar pattern: the pulses from the center of the gravity well resemble the progression of delivery contractions. It’s Beverly’s big hero moment, probably for the season.
The wildest thing about this segment, at least for me, is that it seems to be the result of their actions way back in the TNG pilot, “Encounter at Farpoint,” where they rescued a giant space jellyfish that was being held captive by the inhabitants of Farpoint, and once it was freed, its mate came along (they were conveniently color coded blue and pink, just so sensitive 80s audiences would know for sure there was nothing gay going on there) and they flew off together.
The little space jellyfish that flew out of the gravity well here seem to be of the same race. The show doesn’t exactly spell out that these are the offspring of the two jellyfish from “Farpoint,” but Beverly even mentions the incident in this episode as an example of spacefaring life forms, so it’s more or less confirmed as far as I’m concerned.
Will: Admiral, there be space jellyfish here! I think you’re right on this point — while it might not ever be confirmed, these two space critters are close enough for me to consider them the same. This new one certainly doesn’t look like the space Hot Pocket we got in “Galaxy’s Child.”
Mark: Just look at the bisexual lighting they give off!
Will: In my heart, Will Riker is bisexual, so this is where he belongs. And this might be something you wanna fight me over, but I’m glad we didn’t have a Raffi/Worf detour in this episode.
I know it’s an important plot, and Worf is a great character, but the writing in that storyline has been a weak spot from the beginning, and it wasn’t getting any better even as it was getting Worf-ier. Raffi’s investigation was constantly pulling focus from the story on the Titan, so I was more than OK with it totally going dark this week.
Mark: It was my favorite part of last week’s episode, but I agree that cutting away to them would have detracted from the tense, claustrophobic feel of this episode. But hey, they’re now out of the nebula, they’ve warped away, and now they can meet up with the rest of their friends, right?
Will: Oh yeah. I’m sure it’s easy peasy from here, and no one will ask any questions about what happened. They’ll probably all have a drink with Geordi and tour the fleet museum.
Mark: Maybe they’ll hang out on the bridge of the Enterprise-A!
Will:
Mark: But Kirk blew that ship up, Will!
Will: And my license plate is I70IE, Mark. Don’t ruin a good meme with facts.
Make It So On and So Forth
- The changelings in their liquid form look so much more biological than they did on DS9, like a goo of liquified muscles and blood vessels, instead of 90s tv cgi morphing liquid; we can credit more advanced CGI for that development, right?
- “Will, did you just throw an asteroid?” “Goddamn right I did.”
- A thought: The Borg reduce individuals to numbers (Third of Five, Seven of Nine) and Shaw became Tenth of Ten.
- “Ten fucking grueling hours.” It took 28 years to get “shit” into Star Trek (Generations), and another 29 to get us to “fuck.”
- Jesus, Generations was almost 30 years ago. *Will turns into dust.*
- I did that calculation and had an existential crisis. [MT]
- [Ed. Note: God, I am old].
Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.
