With all of Starfleet hot on their trail, the renegade crew of The USS Titan attempt to break into Daystrom while they seek help from Commodore Geordi La Forge. But is “The Bounty” on their head so big that their old friend won’t help them out in Picard season 3 episode 6 written by Christopher Monfette, directed by Dan Liu.
Mark Turetsky: Family reunions can be emotionally trying, can’t they, Will? Especially when half of your family is on the Most Wanted List and they show up unannounced.
Will Nevin: I was gonna say when half of your family can’t act. But that would be mean. So I won’t say it.
Mark: Damn, Will. Right for the throat, every time. Maybe learn a thing or two from the newly-enlightened Mr. Worf.
Will: Absolute candor is always the way to go, Mark.
La Forge, La Forge and La Forge
Mark: The A-plot of this episode focuses on the Titan crew trying to hide from seemingly all of Starfleet, along with Vadic and her sinister Shrike. They end up taking it to a mechanic they know who does work off the books and can change a car’s VIN Commodore Geordi La Forge, who’s been placed in charge of the fleet museum, so that they can get a new transponder code.
Will: Our…second (?) on-screen commodore? Absolutely love it for Geordi.
Mark: The Original Series was overflowing with commodores, but they’ve been pretty much absent since then, save Tamlyn Tomita’s Commodore Oh in the first season of Picard [Ed. Note: Don’t forget Enterprise‘s Commodore Forrest or Star Trek Beyond‘s Commodore Paris!]
Will: Then I’ll say that Geordi is the second commodore of note after Commodore Matt Decker in TOS’ “The Doomsday Machine.” This episode really focuses on him and his answer to the same question that has faced both Picard and Riker: Who do you choose — your family of friends or your family of genetics? With Geordi, I think he comes to learn that the choice is not that easy when you have a daughter committed to staying on the Titan.
Mark: He’s got the classic two kid setup: the hot-rodding rebel, Sidney, who just wants to break away from family tradition, and the good kid, Alandra (played by Burton’s real-life daughter Mica), who stays with her parents, going into the family business of obsessively collecting old starships. And we see a ton of those old-school ships in this episode, The Enterprise-A, the Defiant, Voyager… the New Jersey.
Will: Bunch of Easter eggs and lore (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?!) all over this episode, and I know we’re going to get into a lot of it. But as you asked in our offline chat, that bit up there *was* a dig at Mica Burton. Seems like she got stuck in a real “untested athlete hosting SNL” situation — the writers didn’t trust her ability to act, so she wasn’t given much material and it thus seems like she can’t act. In general, the character felt like an appendage without any of the warmth that Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut brings to her role as Sidney. Really an unfair spot for Mica to be in, but I don’t think the episode suffered that much for it. Also, I think the New Jersey is there simply because they wanted a TOS-style Constitution Class ship in the museum.
Mark: Back in “Relics,” Picard told Scotty that he saw one in the fleet museum, so there it is! And it’s a hitherto-unheard-of ship because TOS had a real knack for destroying every other Constitution-class ship the Enterprise encountered.
Will: Like Decker’s Constellation!
Mark: Precisely. As for Mica Burton, I can’t judge her acting ability, because, as you say, very little was asked of her. But Alandra comes across as a conciliator figure in their family. Close to her dad and to her sister, and so is put in the unenviable position of being between them when they’re not on speaking terms with each other.
Speaking of the La Forge family, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been dreading the possibility that they establish that La Forge ended up with Leah Brahms. It was the case in the alternate future from “All Good Things,” but I hope that in the intervening decades the producers of Picard would reevaluate that decision. I’m glad that they got away with an offhand reference to Sidney and Alandra’s unseen, unnamed mother, and hope they leave it at that.
Will: You get the sense — especially from Robert Beltran’s decision not to reprise Chakotay last season — that these actors truly care about these roles, and they’re not coming back to do whatever is asked of them. Burton has been very vocal about what he considers to be the racist treatment of La Forge’s love life. Certainly bringing Brahms back (even offscreen) would only highlight that past, so I’m thinking Burton would have vetoed that.
Mark: And yet both Beltran and Susan Gibney have reprised their roles in animation: Beltran as an ongoing recurring character on Prodigy and Gibney in Lower Decks’ “Mining The Mind’s Mines”, where she appeared as an illusion to a similarly geeky engineer Rutherford, who treated her with admiration and respect without any skeezy undertones, seemingly as a corrective measure to the character’s mistreatment on TNG.
Let’s face it, TNG was great, but it did some things really badly.
Will: Some things have not aged well at all! La Forge/Brahms and the decision to lean away from a stronger LGBTQ casting decision in “The Outcast” look particularly bad in 2023. And “Code of Honor” was fucking racist even in 1987.
Mark: Yes. That one was always bad. But let’s talk about the Geordi we have now. I like that, in his first coming aboard, he vacillates between a handshake and an awkward hug. It’s a bit on the nose, but I think it gets at a certain growth on his part, and his acceptance that he often has difficulties socializing.
Will: And he has to process a lot of emotions here: He’s scared for his family, confused (probably) at what’s going on and more than a little angry that Picard has brought this trouble to his quiet little space tourist trap. That was a good scene…and I’m so glad it didn’t play out in 10 Forward Ave. Why couldn’t they have given the Titan a goddamn lounge, Mark? I want to burn down that set.
Mark: You just know that when Riker was in charge, the lounge was 100% jazz themed and everyone but him hated it. And then Shaw boarded it up with a “reopening soon under new management” sign and it never happened.
Will: Speakin’ of our cranky ol’ Captain Shaw, isn’t it adorable how he’s actually nervous in front of La Forge? He clearly does not give a shit about Picard or Riker, but he’s absolutely starstruck by one of the galaxy’s most famous engineers. If only James Doohan was still with us, Mark.
Mark: A great moment to see something of a different side to Shaw. As much as I love him when he’s cranky (and Stashwick has found a lot of room to play within that space) it was fun to see him lose his cool in such a relatable and, well, goofy way.
Before we move on to Riker, Worf and Raffi’s heist, let’s touch on the revelation about Jack: he’s got Irumodic syndrome, the space disease that Admiral Picard suffered from. Except that in his case it turns him into a supersoldier rather than an Alzheimer’s allegory. That and this is clearly not the whole story with what’s going on with him.
Will: It’s awfully convenient for Beverly to forget Picard’s Irumodic syndrome — if I remember correctly, he comes back from his vision of the future in “All Good Things” and she tests him for it — but I think you’re right that this is not the end of Jack’s story. He’s still clearly got some connection to the Changelings that we don’t know about that might tie into the big reveal about the supposedly dangerous thing that was taken from Daystrom.
And one more note about Jack before we move on: We were in agreement they were going to steal the whole damned museum, but it turns out they just needed the Bounty’s cloaking device. That was pretty clever.
Mark: Only until you realize that they could have just taken the cloaking device out of the Defiant, and probably have had fewer compatibility problems getting it installed. But still, the nod to the thing with the whales was pretty fun. This season of Picard has tried to pay homage to the whole history of Trek, and I think certainly has done it in a more fun and less terribly executed way than, say, The Rise of Skywalker tried.
Will: One thing in this episode seemed a bit on the forced side. Which I think is a pretty good transition to our next point, eh?
Project: Space Heist
Mark: Yeah, it turns out Daystrom station is a top secret, off the books museum of everything Star Trek. The way Trek since DS9 has treated Section 31 has been pretty inconsistent. In DS9, it was completely unknown to just about everyone in Starfleet. They had no records, no ships of their own. Their agents were completely off the books. And yet here they have their own space station, and everyone knows that it’s theirs. They’ve come a long way, it seems.
Will: One thing that bothered me in this episode (in addition to thing I already vaguely mentioned) is that to this point in canon, we’ve only had mention of the Daystrom Institute, the place where all the fancy Federation research gets done and where we saw Picard visit in season 1. The naming here confused me, but aside from that, this was another fun homage to various bits of Trek history, including the actual, final resting place for James Kirk, a Genesis torpedo and a weaponized tribble, which seems like a *super* bad idea.
Mark: I was somewhat confused on that point as well. Why not come up with another name for it, except that we already associate Daystrom with Star Trek? I do like the idea that they’re doing off-the-books research on Kirk’s body. What possible use could it be? If I’m being charitable, maybe because it spent so much time in the Nexus, it’s suffused with super energies that can be harnessed somehow. What really popped for me in this portion of the episode is Dorn and Frakes’ banter. Riker getting more and more annoyed with Worf’s new, enlightened outlook (which is much closer to Dorn’s own personality) and Worf playing stoical Zen opposite him.
Will: And it’s really rankling Riker, isn’t it? It’s too bad there’s not enough time to explore all of the various relationships and how they’ve changed over the years since we’ve last seen these characters. The biggest failure of this side plot, however, was the inclusion of Professor Moriarty. It’s probably a case of the showrunners losing the expectations game, but to tease the character only for him to come back as a rather unimportant and milquetoast version of the original, it was really unfortunate.
Mark: Had they not included him in the trailer for the season, this would have been fantastic, and a genuine surprise. But yeah, knowing that he was going to show up, and then for it to just be, well, this, it certainly didn’t live up to my expectations.
Will: But cutting in parts of “Encounter at Farpoint” and how Riker talked about Data? That. Was. Awesome.
Mark: See, personally, that had the opposite effect on me. It’s as if they needed to remind us that that’s how Riker and Data first met. But, not everyone remembers that far. Some, thankfully, have been warned off, whether it be by family or dear friends, from watching the first season of TNG altogether. Still, it was fun seeing Riker and Data meeting for the first time intercut with what may possibly be them meeting for the final time.
Will: You’re right in that it was some exposition for the folks who didn’t remember, but I guess I liked the art of it. So much more care and attention than an aside to Raffi like, “It was a tune I whistled to Lt. Cmdr. Data one time on the holodeck.”
We’re about to have a lot more to say about Data, but skipping ahead to the closing moments, the next episode or two better have a lot for Marina Sirtis to do or otherwise, this will have been a real waste of Troi.
Mark: Agreed. If her only role in this season is to be a hostage, it would be a shame, but not altogether inconsistent with the sexist storytelling she got back in TNG. And that’s not the kind of throwback storytelling we’re looking for here. But again, it’s putting Riker into the whole family versus crewmates dilemma that’s been a real theme here. We also get confirmation, if there was any doubt, that Vadic is, in fact, a Changeling.
Into The Spiner-verse
Mark: Last week I predicted that the rogue Changelings had stolen Moriarty, Lore and a bunch of other evil AIs. Well, mea culpa, I was wrong on that one. Instead, it seems like Section 31 has wired a new Soong-type android/golem into the Daystrom security system. This new android, designated Daystrom Android M-5-10, has the combined intellects and personalities of Data, Lore, Lal, B-4 and even Altan Soong (remember that guy?!). They’ve kept this android in a quasi-comatose state, where his positronic brain is running the security system.
Remember back on TNG when there were all kinds of questions about Data’s rights as a person, and whether or not creating a whole army of Datas would constitute slavery? Well, it turns out that the Bruce Maddoxes of the world have finally prevailed. And there’s no ambiguity here: M-5-10’s body is just as human as Picard’s (it’s both fully human and fully android, sorta like how Jesus is said to be fully man and fully God, but let’s not get into that here). Hopefully there’ll be some space to explore how M-5-10 feels about his imprisonment and it won’t just be waved away.
Will: As to whether I remembered Altan Soong, no, I did not. Spiner playing Soong family members had certainly run its course, and this is certainly a novel way for him to play some form of Data. But here’s my question — and something that’s probably going to plague these people here in an episode or two — why would you not only preserve but enable a dangerous personality like Lore? Seems like he was included in this Maddox bot for the express purpose of being an antagonist.
Mark: As for the return of Data, yet again, I have mixed feelings. As Picard says in this episode, “I’ve watched Data die twice now.” As, well, bad as Picard season one is, I really loved how it dealt with Data. It was the one highlight of the season. It was such a better sendoff to Data than we got with Nemesis and a moving scene between the two actors, to boot. And, well, with that sendoff, I was satisfied with how they ended the character’s story. Now, as I said above, this isn’t quite Data, so there’s some room to explore this new character.
Will: I’ll grant that this is an interesting idea, but I’m worried because since both the writing has never been particularly sharp here and Spiner himself tends to ham these sorts of things up, this is going to play out like some sci-fi derivative of Split (which itself was hokey and offensive). Put me down as guarded but optimistic.
Mark: What I did appreciate about this development is that a) Brent Spiner isn’t (just) playing another human relative of Soong again and b) he gets to interact with the rest of the TNG gang, especially Geordi. It was pretty touching that his first word upon gaining consciousness is “Geordi.”
The other revelation is that M-5-10 tells them that the Changelings have stolen the body of Jean Luc Picard. It’s been staring us in the face the whole time, Will! What did they steal? Well, it’s only the title of the show!
What could they possibly want with Picard’s body? What makes it unique? Maybe it’s because he’s the former Locutus, and they hope to use something within it to fight off the Borg? But then, why would they not care about Seven? Maybe it’s because he had Irumodic syndrome, which he shares with Jack, which would explain why they’d want Jack as well. But why care if Jack were alive? And what does this have to do with Frontier Day, which promises to have every single starship in some kind of parade? I tell ya, it’s a real puzzler.
Will: You know, it sort of makes sense that both Kirk and Picard’s bodies would be held in a Federation black site — those guys had enemies across the galaxy definitely motivated enough to steal their bodies out of spite.
Regardless of any generalized corpse shenanigans, mark this down as another win for the end credits — that DNA strand has been there since the first episode, and now we know (or do we?) what it represents. It could be the Irumodic syndrome; it could be something necessary to fully integrate Jack into the Great Link. Since this season has weirdly made the first one relevant, maybe we’re circling back to the Borg too. Who knows, Mark? We’ve got four episodes left of this strangely paced but undeniably enjoyable show, and I’d bet that there are more than a few surprises left.
Make It So On and So Forth
- With all the different Soong-type androids being subsumed into Data’s new body, why not Juliana Tainer, Data’s mother and the first Soong mind-transfer droid?
- Worf’s “I have gone into battle with lovers countless times” exchange with Seven and Raffi was a hoot. But he did go into battle with Jadzia plenty of times, and with Ezri a few times (one notable time in particular) and yeah, better not to.
- It bears repeating: A weaponized tribble is a super bad thing. All they do is eat, fuck and reproduce, and Section 31 decided to give them razor-sharp teeth? Holy hell.
- I’m looking forward to Vadic being able to act against actual people who aren’t faceless, featureless alien grunts.
- What was the key that allowed them to circumvent Data? I would have figured it would be something important from Data’s life, like the emotion chip, but I guess it wasn’t really important.
- M-5-10 may have a fully organic body, but his eyes are certainly android eyes, including built-in 3D holoprojectors.
Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.
