Mr. Alphabet's Timeline of Horrors

Story: Penance

Written By: Akiva Goldsman & Terry Matalas and Christopher Monfette
Series: Star Trek: Picard
Year: 2022

Crazy Angry Q explains to Picard that he is in some alternate universe where he is a bloodthirsty General Picard.  Seven has no Borg implants and is President Anika Hansen. Rios is a Colonel currently bombing Vulcan.  Raffi is the head of Security for the Confederation, Elnor is apparently a terrorist fighting against the Confederation...and Jurati is a high level scientist performing experiments on the Borg Queen.  

Of course all of them know who they actually are and wake up confused and puzzled, with the last thing they remember being the Star Gazer about to explode.  Luckily they are all able to reconnect fairly quickly despite being scattered around galaxy, and Picard theorizes that Q did this not by just sticking them into an alternate timeline, but by actually changing the past of their proper timeline, thus creating the alternate timeline.  I'm sorry...isn't that just an alternate timeline?  Why did they try and make some distinction? 

Anyhow, they devise a plan to escape their nazi future by going back to the point Q changed to get things back to normal. I know Q was acting more unhinged than he ever had before, but it doesn't seem like his usual modus operandi to go actually change the timeline, he usually just snapped his fingers and put them in his own weird playground. But whatever, they have to use the Borg Queen to go back in time, but somehow they must get around security protocols and escape Earth into Rios ship before the queen is eradicated as a show that humans have wiped them out completely.  

I am so sick of dystopian Star Trek.  It's been a trend for much of modern Trek, and I just miss my good ol' happy Star Trek.  The one that wasn't always dark and angry and miserable and occasionally slipping in some gore.  It often feels like modern Trek is being produced by people who are embarrassed by Star Trek.  It sucks to feel this way...because I know they can do some good stuff. I just watched a season of Discovery that made me think they could do more...and now this crap.  

NEXT TIME: Time Crash