Riding the Wave

Story: No Win Scenario

Written By: Terry Matalas & Sean Tretta
Series: Star Trek: Picard
Year: 2023

Trapped in the Nebula's vortex of doom, everyone is trying to come to terms with their own possible mortality, or find a means of escape. Picard tries to get to know Jack on a holodeck that is working despite all non-essential systems being shut down (throw in as many hand-waving lines as you like writers...this is dumb).  Riker tries to write a goodbye log to Troi, but can't come up with the words.  Meanwhile Crusher is trying to figure out the timing of the waves that periodically hit the ship, while Seven does her best to quietly track down the Changeling on board. 

Shaw tells Picard, Jack and a whole host of other crewmembers a story that explains why he is such a dick.  It turns out when he was a young engineer on a ship, he was one of a handful of survivors of the battle of Wolf 359.  This is why he has a instant dislike of Picard and is racist to Seven.  Also like all modern Trek characters: he is traumatized and his trauma is all that defines him!  He is full of so much depth he has almost a second dimension! I mention this as a negative because it is a trope of modern Trek to create characters that are ultra flawed and many of them are defined by traumas of their past. It feels like phony drama to me, and it also is one of the major problems I have with modern Trek, it just doesn't feel like the idealistic future I used to want to live in when I was a kid.  It is as dreary as modern times.  Oh well. Sisko had the same backstory as Shaw really, but they managed to let him grow beyond that trauma in the DS9 pilot, and grow into a real character. He didn't spend decades wallowing in misery because of it.  I don't see how someone who didn't move on could get to be a Captain. Doubt he'd pass psych evaluations. 

Still, this is the best episode of this season, because despite my complaints about Shaw, this ultimately was a story of people trying to find some peace at their possible end, before finding a very Star Trek escape from their plight...they used science to escape, the crazy waves that were hitting them turned out to be something far more interesting, and they even got to use a move the enemy had used on them in a previous episode to knock them down and fully escape.  I liked all of that.  Another positive is that the Worf and Raffi storyline is absent here.  I like Worf, but Raffi is awful to sit through any scene with, so a welcome break from her idiocy here. 

NEXT TIME: Arrest