With time running out before Frontier Day, Picard and the gang hatch a plan to capture Captain Vadic. But with a rogue android aboard, will chaos hold “Dominion” over the ship in Picard season 3 episode 7, written by Jane Maggs, directed by Deborah Kampmeier.
Mark Turetsky: Hey Will, glad to have you back for another episode of Picard discussion. You know, it reminds me of all those times we played Frogger together in your home arcade. Remind me, who won our little mini-tournament?
Will Nevin: Considering that I’m much more of a Time Pilot guy, it had to be you. But those memories are sketchy at best.
Mark: Liar! We’ve never played Frogger! I’ve never even been to your house! What have you done with Will?
Evil Will: You’ll find out soon enough. And you’ll pay. You’ll all PAY.
Mark: [checks wallet] I’ve got, like… $30? Is that enough?
Evil Will: Actually, yeah, that’s perfect. Real Will is thinking about upgrading a machine or two and that will help. I’ll let you two get back to the Picard review.
The Picard Gambit
Mark: Our A-plot this week has to do with Picard giving up on trying to escape Captain Vadic and instead setting a trap for her. They make it seem like the Titan has been disabled in a battle with a Vulcan ship (how exactly they set that up is in question. Did they tow it from the Chin’toka system?) and wait for Vadic and her goons to come on board. We learn a lot about Vadic this week, but I’m still unclear about her goons. Why are they dressed up the way they are, with masks and everything? If they’re Changelings, why would they just appear as faceless cannon fodder? Was Will on to something last week when he asked how much of that “goo shit” they got injected with? Are they humanoids that have been gooified? What language are they speaking?
Will: As with so many things in this series, we’ve got more questions than answers. But as to your first point, here’s at least part of the official episode summary: “Crippled, cornered, and out of options, Picard stages a gambit to trap Vadic and reveal her true motive[.]” We see the Titan as “out of options” — that nifty cameo with a compromised and replaced Tuvok showed the crew is out of allies (guess they’re saving the Janeway cameo for episode 10) — but we don’t really see the ship as disabled. Geordi’s plan, like any good space rogue, seems to be hiding the ship in space junk, but as he explains, he’s running out of spots there.
Thus the big plan becomes luring Vadic to the Titan, which — as plans go — isn’t terrible. At least until things get all messy and complicated. But, yeah, Vadic is a Changeling bred from the suffering of a Section 31 lab. Yet, who is she beholden to? Again, always more questions with this show.
Mark: The episode opens with the Titan hiding in the Chin’toka system, a strategic location during the Federation’s war with Dominion-occupied Cardassia, but they set up a trap in “open space,” hence my theory that they towed the disabled Vulcan ship from that scrapyard.
The Section 31 lab origin story fits in very well with the Deep Space Nine Dominion war. We know that Section 31 created the Changeling virus, that they infected Odo during the course of the “Homefront/Paradise Lost” two parter, and that Odo spread it to The Great Link in “Broken Link.”
But we don’t really have much background on how Section 31 created the virus, which this lab of horrors seems to be the explanation for. It’s neat to think that Vadic is a kind of anti-Odo: while Odo was studied in a lab by a kind but sometimes stern Bajorn, Doctor Mora Pol, from whom Odo got his overall look (or at least his haircut), Vadic was born out of a lab run by unscrupulous humans who tortured and tried to weaponize her. So her aping the scientist’s appearance implies her twisted motivations for wanting to destroy the Federation.
She also credits Odo solely with returning to the Link with the cure for Section 31’s virus, and while that’s true, it was Doctor Bashir and Chief O’Brien who stole the cure from Section 31 in the first place (though they didn’t intend to give it to the Changelings).
There’s a lot of DS9 history in this episode is what I’m saying.
Will: 10-4, Ghost Rider. Again, it’s a shame that René Auberjonois is no longer with us since Odo would be such a natural character to bring into the story. I assume Trek producers would have the decency to avoid bringing him back, but you look over at what Lucasfilm is doing these days, and you see that truly anything is possible — unfortunately.
I keep returning to Vadic’s overwrought backstory. It seems like a strange decision to give her such a strong driving motivation only to make her subservient to some hidden hand. This whole season has been a strange blend of motifs from Wrath of Khan and the Next Generation — Khan wouldn’t have been nearly as impactful a villain if he was merely doing someone else’s bidding.
Mark: I think what we’re seeing when she communicates with her unseen master is that she’s checking in with her mini-Link (not The Great Link, maybe an Okay Link? A Lesser Link?). She may have been the one who helped her friends escape the lab and taught rogue Changelings her new tricks, but ultimately they’re a collective. It’s also noteworthy that she says that the new talents they gained for passing as solids leads to a shortened lifespan, which is bizarre since the Changelings we’ve seen have been functionally immortal. So are we talking decades? Centuries? Millennia?
Will: This might be painting the franchise into a corner, but what if the Changelings succeed here? What if the fleet is destroyed on Frontier Day, and Starfleet has to start from scratch? I don’t think that’s likely at all, but it would be an interesting place to leave the 25th century as Trek continues to explore both the future and the past.
Mark: And as much as Picard and Beverly seem to think they’ve figured out Vadic’s plan to attack Frontier Day, it just doesn’t sit right with me. I will summarize my problem with the plan thusly:
Vadic also strongly implies that they need Jack for some higher purpose than merely getting Picard DNA. The signs keep pointing to his being a Changeling of some kind, but how can that be?
Will: That’s the big damned tease at the end, right? That Vadic will finally explain what Jack is? I kinda doubt we’ll get it (I’m sure right before she explains everything, the Titan will be rescued), but it would be nice to have at least *one* answer.
Speaking of Picard and Beverly, I thought we hit another low point in the writing of this series when the two of them started monologuing about whether they were going to kill Vadic. They could have done so much more with glances, close ups on phasers set to kill, etc. Just incredibly poor writing.
Mark: I was 100% convinced they were doing it for her benefit, because surely they’re not stupid enough to have that conversation mere feet from her. But alas, I seem to have been wrong.
Jack of Which Trades?
Mark: Speaking of Jack, we get a much more expanded look at his power set in this episode. Not only does he have super fighting powers, he can now read minds and ultimately take physical control of other people? These are not remotely things that Changelings can do, and point to him being something else entirely. Maybe he’s got some kind of natural gifts, much like his (half-?)brother Wesley. Maybe there’s something in those Beverly Crusher genes that makes her the future of humanity.
Will: You mentioned this last time, and I think the evidence is getting stronger: What if some part of Locutus was passed on to Jack, and the Changelings have the hots for Borg hive mind technology? It wouldn’t be totally implausible for the Borg to have altered Picard’s DNA.
Mark: The Borg have been a through-line to this series prior to this season, and they’ve been conspicuously absent (especially given that they just established a kinder, gentler queen in Dr. Jurati). Maybe Jack subconsciously injected Sydney with some Borg nanoprobes when he touched her hand? Maybe he created a sort of mini-collective when he took control of her body. Regardless, it’s creepy and gross.
Will: That was certainly Sydney’s reaction. She barely knows this fucker, and now he’s inside her head? Red flags, man. But, yeah, Jack seems to be both inextricably tied to the Changelings and Vadic and separate from them entirely.
Mark: She seemed to be able to sense that he was alive and also seemingly where he was. If the lab escape happened during the Dominion War, it’s entirely possible they had something to do with Jack’s development. It’s all just big question marks.
Will: If nothing else, we have a good sense of his character — as a rogue-ish sort of fellow who ultimately wants to do the right thing. He knows he’s put the Titan in danger, and he’s willing to sacrifice himself for the rest of the crew. That’s the hero play.
Mark: Has Jack tried to turn himself over to Vadic at every opportunity? In episode 1, Beverly had to lock him in his quarters to keep him out. When he killed those Changelings posing as Starfleet security officers, he says didn’t know they were Changelings. I suppose he fought back in this episode, but he does seem to have an innate drive to try to turn himself over. We’ve been seeing it as a heroic, self-sacrificial bent to help others, but what if it’s something more primal?
Will: And speaking of heroes, they massacred our boy, Shaw! That poor man has been beat to hell the last few episodes.
Mark: He is the character I’m most worried that they’ll kill off. He has so much potential!
Never Hook An Evil Robot Up To Your Ship
Mark: Well, Picard’s plan goes all to shit because they’ve hooked up the Datalore android to the computer system, which seems… unwise? Lore quickly takes over and begins to deliver a kind of Hannibal lecture to Geordi, as Geordi begs Lore to let his friend Data go.
Will: I can only imagine the pickle in the writers room as they were breaking this season. We want to bring back the whole cast, right? What is Brent Spiner going to do? He’s played every single variation of Noonian Soong’s ancestors and descendants. Data’s body is no more. Data as a file was so poignantly laid to rest in season one. What are we gonna do? This tragic golem was probably the best option in that it was a different story to tell, and it allowed Spiner to slip comfortably back into both Data and Lore.
Lore’s attempted takeover of the ship — as someone who relishes in chaos, as Geordi explained, which really didn’t seem all that true to the character — was unfortunately a needless distraction to the story, and one we could all see coming. It did, however, provide Levar Burton an opportunity to give Geordi some of the richest on-screen moments he’s had in decades. So, once again, the performances and these characters are able to rise above truly mediocre writing to create some enjoyable television.
Mark: I dunno, Lore tried to take over the Enterprise numerous times, and teamed up with the Crystalline Entity and got his whole colony killed, so he’s capable of some truly horrific shit. Ultimately, he just wants to survive, which is definitely under threat. I didn’t appreciate that Lal, B-4 and even Soong are not really present as personalities (though didn’t Soong assert control briefly last week? I guess they didn’t want to go back to that shallow well). Yes, Data and Lore are the most interesting of those characters, but why even bring those others up to begin with?
It’s also enormously cliché that the battle between the two personalities is presented as two collections of dots, some red and some blue, in Data’s head. Still, as you say, it gives Spiner and Burton some great room to act off each other. I do love Alandra’s “Has Lore always been this arch?”
Will: I didn’t like the characterization of Lore here because, as you pointed out, he’s a survivor. A schemer. A plotter. He’s not the damned Joker who enjoys chaos for chaos’ sake. Enabling the Changelings to take over the Titan doesn’t seem to help him, unless he’s already working with them — which could certainly be the case. Ultimately, I’m not quite sure why — in those years when they were thinking up where Picard could go and what the series could do — they didn’t just go with Data’s personality overriding B-4’s programming. We could have gotten Data reckoning with what happened, struggling in an inferior body and maybe ultimately making the decision to allow B-4 to return. That seems better than everything aside from that final goodbye in season one.
Mark: I think what we’ll end up with is some form of integrated Datalore, with Lore’s guile and cleverness mated to Data’s compassion and, well, love. Either that or Data will once again give his life to save the ship. One or the other.
Make It So On and So Forth
- Dead Will Riker was CGI, right? Or did Frakes have to sit in a chair for x minutes to appear on screen for all of eight seconds?
- The last time we had Three Blind Mice in Trek, it was Barash, the alien kid who impersonated Riker’s son in a holographic future in “Future Imperfect”, playing it on the trombone. I was really hoping Barash would show up.
- Kinder, gentler Borg queen? “Weird shit.”
- Data implies that Picard never had Irumodic syndrome. Curioser and curioser.
- Along with Poker Face, this is the second time in about a month that a doppelganger of a Tim Russ character has been a plot point.
Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.
