Shadows of the Night

Story: Two of One

Written By: Cindy Appel & Jane Maggs
Series: Star Trek: Picard
Year: 2022

The gang infiltrate a party in the hopes of steering the insecure Renee Picard into fulfilling her mission.  Q has convinced Adam Soong, a donor for the mission, to make sure she is out of it so he can get Q's help in curing his daughter.  Picard gives Renee a stirring speech and she decides to carry on with the mission, so Soong tries to run her over with a car, Picard shoves her out of the way and takes the hit himself.  

Meanwhile, the Borg Queen is slowly trying to take over Agnes' body, and for a distraction to help the team escape the party, the Queen somehow takes control of the lights and band and gets Agnes to sing a tune...which gives the Queen enough power to overtake Agnes body completely.  This is, of course, utter nonsense.  But whatever.  Also Agnes drinks heavily and the Queen acts like it is new behavior but honestly Agnes is trying to get drunk in almost every other scene she is in up to this point.  she is just a lush. 

Soong's daughter is concerned when he comes home seemingly drunk and distraught after hitting Picard with his car.  Worried, she goes into his lab or whatever and googles her dad and finds he is a disgraced mas scientist working in eugenics.  She talks to herself endlessly as she further investigates his video diaries in which he describes his daughter experiments, and she comes to realize she is the latest in a long line of experimental eugenics babies.  

And then the Watcher lady Talin says she can maybe save Picard by going into his brain. Raffi is against it, but she has also been utterly erratic in what she seems to think the goal of the mission is. Probably because she is a former drug addict who is seeing visions of some dead ninja kid she sorta knew.  But it is decided that they ought to try.  

And this is one of those things I kind of hate about serialized Trek. It always feels like we get just an inch of a story each episode...and it never feels satisfying.  I love a good serialized show...I mean Breaking Bad is nothing if not serialized and that is a show that had satisfying individual episodes within it's ongoing stories.  Yes, there were often cliffhangers, but for the most part the show would have solid episodes that were part of a larger story.  Here it just feels like elongated segments of one story.  It is rarely satsifying because it feels like a scene break rather than a real ending.  I suppose they think hinting that Agnes is fully out of control is cliffhanger worthy, but I just don't think I care.  

NEXT TIME: Into Picard's Mind