Season 1, Episode 5: ‘Stardust City Rag’
Before we get to this week’s ”Star Trek: Picard,” I must address last week’s recap. I have received your emails! And your tweets! And the private messages. One person even sauntered over to my Instagram to tell me I got something wrong in last week’s post.
Trek fans: I love you for this dedication. And I’m here to ask forgiveness. First, I wrote that Rios had difficulty outmaneuvering a Klingon Bird of Prey. It was a Romulan one. I’m sorry — or as Klingons would say: “jIQoS!”
Second, I wondered how Rizzo could choke her brother in person as a hologram. (This is not a sentence often published in The Times.) Eagle-eyed viewers reminded me that Rizzo got there physically. Once again, jIQos! Thank you for keeping me accountable.
On to this week, where the story takes a giant step forward, while also a hard left turn.
We find out what Seven of Nine has been up to all this time. She’s a member of the Fenris Rangers, a vigilante group that operates in and around what used to be the Neutral Zone. She’s angry and cynical, and she now has the human capacity to express those emotions, unlike during her time on Voyager.
This episode, by design, was the first one of the season in which Picard was not the sole focus. The chapter was about Seven — and the actress Jeri Ryan’s new way of bringing her back to life.
I understand there may be some — ahem — resistance to Seven’s story, but I thought it was a resourceful way to imagine her path. Seven has always been an outsider with a strict sense of principles. To see her become a vengeful rebel (who drinks!) after so much time being a docile Borg drone made an odd sort of sense to me, especially given how much she had clashed with Janeway.
What bothered me was not hearing more from her about what became of the former Voyager crew. (We do know Captain Janeway became an admiral, according to “Star Trek: Nemesis.”) I am curious about the plight of Chakotay, her former lover, and to learn more specifics about how she ended up here. Ryan did a nice job in playing Seven again. And although it was a grim reintroduction, it was also excellent fan service to open the episode with Icheb (Casey King). He was an underrated part of “Star Trek: Voyager,” and given that the Borg story line continues in “Picard,” it was relevant to see what became of him.
The actual high jinks on Freecloud lost me a bit — although, did we all catch the reference to Quark after Rios beamed down dressed as if he was ready to bring back disco? Delightful. Picard And His Merry Band try to dupe a criminal mastermind — Bjayzl (Necar Zadegan), who harvests Borg parts — into trading Bruce Maddox (John Ales) for Seven. And they do so wearing ridiculous costumes at a bar on a planet that appears to be Las Vegas. (It’s Freecloud, but whatever.)
Picard is one of the most famous people in the galaxy, and yet his disguise isn’t easily seen through. And Rios uses his real name, so I was a bit confused as to why they went to all these lengths to disguise their true intentions by becoming “facers.” There is also a revelation that Seven and Bjayzl have a history — possibly a romantic one, although this isn’t 100 percent clear.
I liked watching Patrick Stewart get to goof around a bit, and so far, this episode was the one most like any “Next Generation” episode in its brush with the weird. Bjayzl’s letting herself get so easily fooled and outmaneuvered was a bit off for me, but the performances at Freecloud kept me entertained nonetheless. And seeing Seven give into her thirst for vengeance in killing Bjayzl — a change from the idealistic morality “Star Trek” has historically aimed for — was a welcome evolution for the franchise. (I have to imagine we’ll see Seven again. A one-episode arc doesn’t do her story justice. Please. Resistance is futile!)
The big twist in the episode: Picard goes all this way to find Maddox. In sick bay, Maddox tells Picard that he thinks there’s a giant conspiracy afoot involving the Romulans and even the Federation. (We know more than Picard does at the moment, and we know there is at least some evidence of this, given Commodore Oh’s role.) But: Dr. Jurati murders Maddox, who is revealed to be her former lover, at the end of the episode!
The nervous, high-strung Jurati doesn’t seem to want to do it — but she reveals as Maddox is dying that she knows things Maddox doesn’t, making his death a necessity. So who, exactly, is Jurati here? A double agent? Did Commodore Oh send her to find Picard? Is she a Romulan spy? At one point, she says, “I wish they hadn’t show me.” Who is “they”? (I’m glad Jurati is given something interesting because, frankly, I was wondering what she was planning on contributing to the team.)
Side Notes:
I don’t have much to say yet about Raffi’s finding her son on Freecloud, other than to note her interesting theory about what really happened on Mars. Raffi, like Picard and many other Trek characters, seems to have spent her life intensely focused on her work at the expense of family. But Michelle Hurd’s portrayal of someone who has additionally dealt with substance abuse is quite gripping. That’s relatively unexplored territory for the Trek franchise.
Elnor is clearly playing the “fish out of water” character that Trek shows typically have. (Previously, Data, Spock, Odo and even Seven have played this role.) I’m not quite sure whether it’s working yet because we see only flashes of Elnor not quite understanding what is going on around him. And we don’t know enough about Elnor himself.
No Borg cube this time, so no update on the romance between Narek and Soji or Narek and Rizzo.
Source: Television - nytimes.com
