The Wrath of Changelings

Story: Seventeen Seconds

Written By: Jane Maggs & Cindy Appel
Series: Star Trek: Picard
Year: 2023

We learn the origin of Jack Crusher, as it seems that Beverly and Picard were coming to the end of one of several romantic trysts when she learned she was pregnant.  Realizing she had already lost her parents, husband, and son to space, she didn't want the same to happen to yet another child.  She also felt that Picard's legacy and his constantly being under threat would put his child under a threat she couldn't handle. So she ran away from everyone and raised the child alone and hoped that concealing his father would somehow keep him safe. Of course now someone mysterious is after them.  Someone who seemingly can appear as various races that turn on her.  

It turns out, Worf and Raffi are chasing the same enemy...and it is the Changelings. They catch the Changeling they think is a human behind the recent terrorist attack, and while Raffi is ready to torture the shit out of him because she is an awful person, Worf is more intelligent and wise now and he holds her back. And soon what Raffi thinks is drug withdrawals finally reveals itself to Worf as signs of a Changeling needing to regenerate. He relates how after the Dominion War ended, he was alerted by Odo (not named but heavily implied) that a faction of Changelings left the Great Link because they could not accept their defeat.  They are out to destroy the Federation.

On the Titan, Jack realizes that the ship must be leaving behind some kind of trail of blood that keeps Vadic and the Shrike after them.  He and Seven investigate and find their must be a saboteur.  The saboteur is, of course, a Changeling.  He attacks Jack and nearly kills him.  And then he sets off a bomb which keeps the Titan without Warp. Angry violent Picard keeps trying to encourage Riker to fight while Riker is hellbent on saving the crew by getting them out of there.  Riker is right, because he isn't a crazy violent idiot like Die Hard Picard has been since First Contact.  When the Shrike appears, Picard convinces Riker to fire everything, but the Shrike's portal weapon (which had earlier kept the ship within the nebula when it tried to escape and is also the weapon used in the terrorist attack) sucks up all the torpedoes and shoots them back at the Titan.  The Titan is now getting sucked up into a vortex of death.  An angry Riker kicks Picard off the bridge. 

I think this episode was decent for the most part. I hate that Picard is no longer the intelligent and wise man he was throughout TNG, but instead an action hero idiot who is always ready for violence.  It makes no sense to me.  Still, I thought the scene with Beverly and Picard discussing Jack and her keeping him from him was effective. In the Wesley Joke Universe, it makes sense for her to keep Die Hard Picard away from her son.  I am also liking Michael Dorn's older and wiser Worf, and the idea that this year's arc is very much about the fallout of the Dominion War.  

NEXT TIME: Escaping the Nebula and the Shrike