PICARD S1E5 "Stardust City Rag" Review By AnswerMan

Horrible:Meh:Adequate:Good:Fantastic

Ok look, I love Seven of Nine. Seeing her more mature, more human, more adapted, is very good. Seeing her with dual phaser rifles taking out the bad guys honestly just gets my heart pumping. And hearing shades of Voyager's theme music all the while, is just... more than I expected. Honestly, the Picard series seems to be as much a Voyager spinoff as a next gen spinoff, despite the opening credits stating "based on star trek the next generation."



Maddox is on Freecloud (strangely that it does not have a numerical name), which is a seedy planet where the pit bosses can smell your lies and the futuristic pianos are played by little people. This planet also sends you pop up ads in the form of holograms that you must physically destroy to click out of. I like all this. I enjoy the future, which is why I like sci-fi, Star Trek, and BTTF 2. The person that has Maddox for some reason is Vajayzal, who seeks out former Borg to harvest them for their parts. She was responsible for mutilating Icheb, and forcing Seven to kill him out of mercy. Which, also adds "mercy killing" as an apparent phaser setting.

Anyway, the plan is to pretend to exchange an imprisoned Seven for Maddox, in a very whimsical ruse with Rios as a pimp of some sort and Picard as a one-eyed extremely French man. But Seven was just using them all to get to Vajayjay and seek revenge for all her wrong-doings. The encounter goes south, and they feel lucky to get out of there with their lives, let alone Maddox. But soon, Seven beams back down and takes care of business anyway, killing Bedazzle and her henchmen.

Meanwhile Maddox is not doing well, and it's Agnes, his former lover, that actually does him in. She whispers something vague about him not knowing what she knows and her wishing she didn't. She kills him, apparently to keep him silent about the Federation's involvement in the attack on Mars.

Also, Raffi's son hates her and she has nowhere to go.

"Stardust City Rag" is Good Trek. Catching up with Seven of Nine has been more than fun. Sucks about Icheb's end though. Bringing someone from Voyager back just to kill them off in their only scene is harsh. Same with Maddox, really (and also too bad that they couldn't get the same actor for this episode). The scary aliens of the week are unique and interesting. The comedic moments and silly costumes were fun, and there was even a twist at the end that I didn't see coming. Overall, well done.

Published February 27, 2020