PICARD S1E3 "The End is the Beginning" Review By AnswerMan

Horrible:Meh:Adequate:Good:Fantastic

This show is...complex, I guess. There's more going on in this episode than I can even try to explain. There seems to be a lot of bad guys, but I can't quite figure out if they're all on the same team or not. Picard is attacked in his home by seemingly the same crew that killed Dahj, which seems to be the same crew that is working on the Borg cube with Soji, but why would they kill one and work with the other? Is it because she came to some sort of awakening? If so, it was them that started it when they came to her apartment and killed her boyfriend. Also, Maddox is apparently on planet Soundcloud or something, making awful rap music. I'm so confused, and I don't like that. Let's face it, I'm watching this show no matter what, that's a given. But typically when I have trouble following a show I will just quit watching. I feel like that's where I would be on this one if it weren't Trek.



Further complicating things is Hugh, who seems to be high-ranking on the cube, but that we know will not be a bad guy. I spent the first few scenes with him trying to figure out where I knew him from, and then they finally said his name and I got excited. It's good to see Hugh again. I do not want Hugh to be bad. Yet everything happening on the cube seems to be bad. They are reclaiming the Borg drones, but not letting them free. They are kept on the cube, which seems to be a continuance of their slavish lot in life. I guess I can understand why they aren't just turned loose on society. Looking back at Seven of Nine's journey away from the collective, there were many bumps where she nearly assimilated the crew and contacted the Borg. The patience of Janeway was remarkable, but you can't expect every one of the thousands of drones on this cube to have their own personal Janeway. They are dangerous. But then the question is, why re-animate them at all?

Then there are "the disordered," who are a group of former drones who seem to be mentally-disabled. They also are the only known Romulans to ever have been assimilated. One of them, who spends her days reading Taro cards, seems to be important. Soji is allowed to speak to her, and both parties seem to know way more about just what the hell is going on than us, the mere viewers. Soji has knowledge beyond what she's learned, and she seems to get programming updates via facetime calls with her mother, who we can guess doesn't really exist based on the lies that she tells, like that Dahj is just fine and looking for a puppy. Oh also, Soji is "The Destroyer," so that's nice.

Meanwhile we learn that Raffi hates Picard (or "JL" as she calls him) because he made the decision to resign from Star Fleet in the midst of the Romulan evacuation, which led to her being fired and taking up vaping weed and swilling wine. While he retired back to his family's vineyard and wealth, she was stripped of everything she had and lives in poverty. Wait! This is Star Trek! How does anyone live in poverty? Where is the Utopia? Unfortunately, I think getting rid of Gene Roddenberry's vision of complete equity in the future is necessary because it starts to fall apart whenever any amount of scrutiny is applied. But anyway, yousonofabitch she's in, as is our new pilot, Rios. The Romulan couple at Picard's stay at the vineyard, and Dr. Jurati comes along as well. As does the various accented system of holographic crewman on Rios's ship. ENGAGE! (cue music)

This had better all start to make some kind of sense soon. For now, this episode only Adequate.

Published February 7, 2020