LizstarTrek - Picard Season 2 episodes 1 - 5

Every Sunday my Twitch subs and I watch Star Trek in my Discord. Here are my reviews and thoughts on each of the episodes as I see it. If you’re curious about a nerd’s views on Star Trek episodes, please read on, I go quite in depth with some of these episodes! I’ve watched some Star Trek before but not all of it!

I do not want to watch this I do not want to watch this I do not want to watch this I do not want to watch this I do not want to watch this.

The Star Gazer - PIC 5.5/10

We get an in media res thing of Picard blowing up his own ship in front of the Borg Queen. Ohhhhh boyyy more BORG QUEEN STUFF, MY FAVORITE CHARACTER IN THIS SERIES! OHHH BOYYYYYYYYYY.

Anyways jump back 48 hours, Picard is hanging on his Chataeu with that one hot Romulan who wants to climb in his pants. Hey, remember how cool she is? How cool the idea of a reformed ex Tal Shiar being on our side is? And how they just put her on a bridge last time? I can’t wait for them to fix that problem this time. Picard ALMOST kisses her but stops for some reason. God dammit, Jean Luc.

Anyways we get some Picard childhood flashbacks of him as a… Dickensian whelp? And his mother who is like, tortured and killed in front of him or some shit. I dunno, it’s really hard to follow and it keeps jumping to Sir Patrick Stewart sitting there and staring forward, cause like, the dude was 82 when this was shot, we couldn’t let him do very much.

We then jump to Picard declaring time is the true final frontier in front of some graduating class or something? Look, this makes no sense and is jumping all over the place. The pacing is very bad. Picard for some reason calls out Elnor, the first Romulan in starfleet. Imagine you’re graduating and the dude giving the speech is like “shoutouts to my stepson in the audience!” I’d be annoyed.

Seven is flying around in a ship by herself and comes across the Burning Legion, I guess. Some kind of horrifying subspace tear. I’m sure that’s not important

Dr. Jurati (I could NEVER remember her name I swear I am trying) is with the android girl and they’re having some kind of fancy dinner. Jurati is… kinda unhappy to be here, it feels. The android is staying behind, not gonna be in the show anymore, bye bye. Okay, baiii. Jurati beams up to her ship, which is captain’d by… Rios! He’s back in Starfleet, and is a captain now. I guess he’s over all the trauma now, good for him. He still looks hot as hell.

Okay so uh, Remember Raffi? And how she held hands with Seven in that one scene? They’re dating now. But Raffi is kind of over it already, cause turns out Seven, having the unresistable urge to run off to the asscrack of space and beat up bad guys, is not a very good partner. Who could have known?? At least we KIND of get lesbianism

WE NEED OUR QUOTA OF GUEST STARS. Picard goes to Guinan for advice on his life and romance. JUST KISS HER, JEAN LUC, SHE’S VERY DOWN BAD. He also talks to her about his borg trauma. Okay, first, there’s no way he’s never talked to her about borg trauma, she was more his therapist than Troi was. Second, can we talk about OTHER things that happened to Picard? The only thing we ever hear is Locutus stuff. Can’t we have like… a season about Inner Light?

Anyways turns out the hole in space time has a message coming out of it. “Help us, Picard” and the entirety of article 15, the article about joining the Federation. So they send Picard to these guys to discuss joining the Federation. He teleports out without even saying goodbye to his Romulan Wife and it lingers on her sadly staring at where he just teleported out.

We get him going on Rios’ ship and saying hello into the wormhole. Okay, so, if we DIDN’T have the in media res, we’d be in suspense about this, but we already know it’s the Borg, and we already know it’s gonna go south. So when Picard is like “let’s talk to them :)” and Seven is like “It’s the fucking BORG? NO? BLOW THEM UP?” we already know Seven is right, so uh, why are we focusing on this

The Borg Queen is like, Doc Oc for some reason, and comes in and starts sucking energy reserves out of their ship. They try to shoot her and it doesn’t work at all. She gets command codes for all Starfleet ships for some reason, because Starfleet has fully Borg Upgraded all their ships. Picard blows the ship up to stop it, and the queen goes “look up” just as it blows up and everyone dies.

Picard wakes back up. Was that line about time being the last frontier really just a setup for a time loop or something? His home is… a little different.

HEY LOOK WHO IT IS! John Delancie shows up and is de-aged through tech stuff, and since he’s just standing still it actually looks good, then he snaps his fingers to make himself over to “make it fair” or whatever, which is a very Q thing to do. The trial never ends. He welcomes Picard to the “end of the road not taken”.

Over all, it was kinda hard to follow, but there’s some interesting setups.

Penance - PIC 6/10

Q is… not well. He’s sick. But he does his bullshit he always does, mocking Picard, who is not having it. But then Q SLAPS him. God damn.

Q shows Picard around this alternate universe, “of his own making”. He shows Picard his trophy room, which has Sarek, Martok, and Gul Dukat’s skulls on display. This is NOT the mirror universe. This is… like, ANOTHER mirror universe? Another evil fascist Federation alternate timeline? Weird. In this one, it’s The Confederation.

I find it strange how in this timeline, Earth has basically been alone by itself and has managed to fight against every single person in the Federation AND outside of it, like Romulans, Klingons, and the fucking Borg, and STILL managed to win. We struggled against the Borg as a federation, how did we do this??? I think this is, again, as usual, just pretending fascism is an actual effective government system, which it is not.

Even wakes up as herself. She’s the president of the Confederacy. She immediately sets off messaging the rest of the crew here to find out what the fuck is going on, liek Rios, who is under attack and is like “what the fuck is going on”. Elnor is ALSO here, waking up as he’s being fired at by the Confederation. He immediately runs into Raffi, lucky him. I do find it interesting how in this world, which seems to be born of a single time travel change, every person we know is still born.

Seven visits Dr. Jurati with her husband who is a good little fascist and is like “why are we not celebrating eradication day by killing aliens >:(“ and she’s like “shut up honey” and he’s a good pussy whipped boy and goes “yes dear” and then they go and find that Jurati has the Borg Queen in a jar and she’s like “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON”, so okay cool she’s in on it too.

Everyone meets up. They find out, through the Borg Queen’s Calculation Magic, that this is their universe, not an alternate one, just one that Q changed with time travel back in the past, in 2024. Man, what a year that was, huh? Wait shit. Is this the future that comes from Trump’s America?? Anyways they need her to calculate how to go back into the past, but not before the Borg Queen is carted off for ERADICATION DAY CELEBRATIONS, yaaaay

They have to pretend to be doing the execution of the Borg Queen while actually trying to sneak her onto Rios’ ship. While they’re doing their thing, Rios and Jurati have a falling out and break up. Is this the best time for that?

Okay so I hate the Borg Queen, but she’s the best she’s ever been here, because she’s silent and has no agency.

They are almost out but then nope, Seven’s shitty fascist husbando shows up ready to kill them, shoots Elnor, and then cliff hanger.

Assimilation - PIC 7/10

So, the episode ended with Elnor bleeding out and them at gun point, so it’ll be bad, right? Actually it’ll be super easy. Barely an inconvenience. They just… steal the fascist’s guns and kill them with them. Okay, why were their phasers on Dust when THEY get shot with them, but they shot Elnor with the Bleed Out feature?

The Queen assimilates the ship and easily blows up the people shooting at them. So uh… how did the fascists defeat the Borg again?

They go back in time, crash land in France. The Queen is knocked out, they want to kill her, but Picard refuses cause she’s the best connection to figure out whats going on. I mean, she told you to go see The Watcher in LA, we know who that is. Elnor dies. He COULD be brought back if they fix the timeline, but he’s dead for now.

Raffi is devestated, because he was like a child to her. Uh… he was? I dunno if they said two words to each other in season 1. So uh, this is a problem with this show. It basically pretends season 1 does not exist and did not happen. This is fine for some parts, but then they also are like “oh these characters have this connection” which was never seen. All of these connections are… good. They are good ideas. It would have been good if they had been built up. But they were not, and they are not. So it’s weird. Apparently fans thought Raffi x Seven was cute and the actors agreed so they put it in here. But it was never built up and it feels strange to just hit you at the end of that relationship. Elnor and Raffi son mother stuff is a great idea, but you can’t just act like thats always been a thing.

The plan is thus: They are gonna warp people to try and find The Watcher, while Jurati gets assimilated by the Queen, but “only half assimilated so it’s fine”. What does that mean?? There’s no WAY this will back fire.

Ohhh this is a butchered rendition of hte Mamas and the Papas.

We’ve got the group split up. Picard is trying to stop Agnes from being assimilated and failing badly. Rios got injured and is flirting with a really cute doctor. Raffi and Seven are trying to explore around and pretend to be a lesbian couple to get into places for free. That is funny. Also, wow? Seven and Raffi are getting scenes together??? So like, I knew they were gay in this season, but I expected that they’d in fact, not be in scenes together so they could SAY they were gay but not have to actually be gay. But no, they are uh, they’re gay. Like, they’re basically exes who are catty at each other, but that’s STILL YURI TO ME, BAYBEE.

THERE IS YURI EVERYWHERE FOR THOSE WITH EYES TO SEE. IF I COULD IMAGINE SEVEN AND JANEWAY AS GAY, I CAN GET WITH THIS.

Jurati: “Computer, open the folder titled ‘shit I stole from the Borg Queen”

VERY funny line

Rios is arrested by ICE who are EXACTLY how you’d expect ICE to be. Holy shit is IS 2024.

Watcher - PIC 6/10

Picard and Jurati hide in a delapitated version of Chateau Picard, which is in ruins but will be repaired in the future.

We get a cute reference! An older punk is playing music loudly on the bus, Seven tells him to turn that noise off, he looks angry then goes “Okay, sorry, sorry. My apologies, I just like that song.” See? Thats how you do a reference! It’s also the same actor. Thats cute.

ICE continues to be ICE. This is literally the best representation of ICE I’ve seen. Aggressive, hateful, bullying just for fun. Fascist as hell.

Picard goes to a bar called Ten Forward and talks to the barkeep, Guinan. Wait a minute… yep. It’s Guinan again. Played by another actress. Why? Well, we already said in a previous episode she can change her appearance at will, so like, sure. Neat.

Seven and Raffi need a teleport out but its not working. If Agnes works with the Borg Queen, she can get it up faster. The Borg Queen does that stupid smug smile she does that I fucking hate about this.

Guinan shows her disgust for the state of humanity by pointing at a street with a donation center. I think she was focusing on the homeless peoples, but uh… thats not where my eyes went to in that frame

The worst part of this is the Borg Queen trying to seduce Agnes into being part of the Borg. I didn’t need ANOTHER Star Trek First Contact.

Picard has to follow some being being mind controlled by The Watcher. It turns out to be… Laris! The hot Romulan? Weird. She also hates Guinan for some reason. Meanwhile Q is trying to do a thing to someone but can’t, he has no powers. Things are happening?

Fly Me To The Moon - PIC 4.5/10

The person who looks like Laris is not actually Laris. Laris being the hot Romulan btw. Her name is Tallinn, she’s a “Supervisor”, and her job is to protect a single person so the timelines don’t get fucked. Well she apparently does a bad job. Also that one person is Renee Picard, Jean Luc’s ancestor.

Meanwhile, the Borg Queen manages to call the police and get them to come to the Picard Vinyard.

THEY MENTION HIM BY NAME. GARY SEVEN. THEY FUCKING MENTION GARY SEVEN BY NAME. HOLY SHIT. I knew he was coming back in some way but I thought they wouldn’t even mention him. A bit ago I was developing a scale for “shit in Star Trek that will never ever be mentioned again” and it was GOING to be the Gary Seven scale, but then I found out they re-intigrated him into the timeline by making him a “supervisor”. But holy shit they named him.

They rescue the people detained by ICE. This is never mentioned again.

Renee is depressed and feels like she can’t do the space flight she needs to do for the future. Her therapist is trying to talk her out of it, and that therapist is…. Q. That mother fucker.

For some reason we are suddenly jumped to Brent Spiner. Brent Spiner is playing yet another Soong doctor. Is this the… third one? Fourth??? He’s a geneticist doing human cloning. He’s fired and disbarred from doing science for unethical nonsense, but then is contacted by someone who sends him a weird “Q” in his 3D printer. I wonder who that was. Q is here to make a deal. He gives Soong some thing to fix his clone daughter, in exchange for… something.

The Queen kidnaps the police officer who came here to help her. She’s doing morew of that stupid bullshit every Borg Queen does that I fucking hate. Agnes shoots her. Holy shit. Good on her.

They need to sneak everyone into a party Renee is in so they can convince her to do the mission in a couple days. They do this by doing a heist movie setup, the kind they usually do. This is WAY better than the one they did in season 1 where they made Picard a pirate. He looked so fucking stupid. This time it’s Agnes in a fancy dress, much better.

…Also before the Borg Queen died, she put herself into Agnes’ mind so now she’s an abusive alter stuck in her brain.

This one wasn’t quite as good. It felt mostly like filler.