Star Trek: Picard Episode 9

by Mike Lunsford, GGR’s Editor-In-Chief

The last 3 or 4 episodes of Star Trek: Picard have been incredibly exciting and are leading towards an explosive finish. We’re down to the last 2 episodes and with what we saw in the 9th episode, “Et in Arcadia Ego” the finale is going to have us all on the edge of our collective seats. Let’s jump into the recap/review.

The La Sirena is flying through the Borg transwarp conduit and drops out of warp near Soji’s home, Coppelius. We don’t get long to enjoy the homecoming as Narek shows up too, guns blazing. They fight, Narek, the slimy jerk he is, uses trickery and gets the upper hand and then A BORG CUBE COMES THROUGH THE TRANSWARP CONDUIT!

“Resistance is futile you Romulan creep.”

Narek is boned now! Seven has come to save the day!

Then, things get weird. As the La Sirena is trying to assess the situation of the Borg cube that now is powering up its weapons, 5 giant orchids appear above the planet. They envelop the La Sirena and Narek’s Romulan fighter, attaching themselves to the Borg cube. This immediately knocks out all power aboard the La Sirena. The ships all start falling through Coppelius’ atmosphere. This was a bit odd, but I mean…in the original series the Enterprise fought a space amoeba, the Enterprise D under Picard’s command ran into a giant space-faring crystal: space has some weird stuff in it.

Still not as weird as the giant turd-looking probe from Star Trek IV.

As they’re plummeting towards the planet’s surface, Picard blacks out, muttering something to himself. He awakens in sick bay where Agnes is watching over him. She’s scanned him with a tricorder and states the readings must be off. Picard reassures her they are indeed correct and tells the crew of his brain ailment. He also states that if anyone treats him like he’s dying it will only “piss him off.” The crew takes the news hard, as you can see that both Agnes and Raffi are crushed. They set off for the Borg cube to check on any survivors, especially Elnor.

When they arrive, they find Elnor and also are surprised to see Seven. Raffi and Rios get to work with the surviving X-Bs on restoring power and pulling up long range sensors so they can detect the Romulan fleet’s approach. Raffi is horrified to see 219 Romulan ships en route. When we come back to Elnor, Picard and Seven are sharing a tender moment. Elnor is broken up by the news of Picard’s condition. He vows to stay and defend the X-Bs and Picard tells Elnor how proud he is of him . Seven wishes Picard luck on “saving the galaxy” and they take off for the city of synths (great EDM album title by the way).

Our crew arrive at the city to find a hippy-like commune full of Soong-type androids of various stages. AND DATA IS HERE! Wait…no…just Brent Spiner playing Doctor Soong’s son Dr. Alton Inigo Soong. It is still good to see him again. However, this raises some serious questions as it was stated on TNG that Doctor Soong had no natural children. Star Trek has a long history of never-before-seen family members on us. Heck, Spock had two siblings that never got mentioned, Sybok from Final Frontier and Michael Burnham from Discovery. So it’s entirely possible that Dr. Noonien Soong, the cyberneticist genius who created Data and his evil brother Lore, could have a real kid, too. But…there’s one more thing about all that. Read this quote

“he had me but he created Data… a fact he never let me forget.”

Dr. Soong and one of her creations, Saga (another story related android name lol)

This sounds very similar to the sentiment of another Soong android: Lore. Maybe Dr. Soong Jr. is Lore! Maybe not. Maybe he’s just the child of a man obsessed with his work and bitter because of it. Wouldn’t be the first time something like that has happened.

There’s also a synth that looks exactly like Soji only with more Data-like yellow eyes and a weird spray tan thing going on (Sutra is her name). Apparently, she taught herself how to Vulcan mind meld…I…well…I thought it wasn’t just a pressure point thing, you had to actually have telepathic powers like Vulcans but whatever, I’ll go with it. She sees Agnes’ vision of the Admonition, but apparently it was meant for synthetic life, not for organics as she’s able to see the whole message, not just flashes. It’s a message from a more advanced race of androids stating that they will help the synths if needed. Ooooh, that could be interesting or frightening.

Picard tries to contact Starfleet, trying to mobilize some help before the 218 piece Romulan fleet shows up and lays waste to the planet. The synths of Coppelius have those bad ass orchids but they only number in the 20s, the La Sirena is no match for an armada of Romulan Birds of Prey, and the Borg cube is currently not spaceworthy. Things look bleak and frantic for our friends. We do have a tender moment with Raffi and Picard where she tells him that she loves him and at first…it seems he blows her off, but as he’s walking away says that he loves her too.

We’ll do some quick hitters here as there is a ton to break down:

• Narek’s slimy ass shows up, captured by synths. He states that he loves Soji, who obviously doesn’t believe him but he also warns her that the Romulans will annihilate the planet and all the synthetic life on it.

• Agnes is not let off the hook at all for killing Bruce Maddox as Soong chastises her for her actions but says she can pay her penance by helping him. He’s trying to transfer his mind to a synthetic body and needs her assistance.

• Sutra comes to Narek and says she needs his help, then all of a sudden this nice synth girl Saga gets stabbed in the eye and killed as Narek escapes. Sutra uses the panic to convince the rest of the planet they need to heed the message of the Admonition and summon the higher android life to help them wipe out the Romulans.

• Picard is like “come the f**k on, that’s a horrible idea,” (paraphrased) and lets them know that they can get the help of the Federation and he will work on their behalf, reassuring them that this time the Federation will listen! But everyone, including Soji and Agnes are against his idea, as Dr. Jurati commits to helping the synths. Dr. Soong practically mocks Picard for his attempt to talk them out of violence, stating that Picard was ignored the last time, the same thing will happen this time. He’s detained as they prepare to contact the higher “lifeforms.”

• We also see Commodore Oh, no longer in disguise as a Starfleet officer commanding a fleet of Romulan ships, flying at top speed to attack the synth planet of Coppelius.

DRAMATIC CLIFFHANGER MUSIC!!!!

Takeaways

• Now, the first little bit of dialog from Dr. Soong makes you wonder, “that kind of sounds like Lore.” But his second speech? The one where he talks about Picard failing last time to convince the Federation to help an endangered species sounds EXACTLY like Data’s evil brother.

• They took a lot of liberties with established abilities of species. I was always under the impression that the Vulcan Mind Meld ™ was not something anyone else could initiate. We saw Data do a Vulcan nerve pinch in TNG but that seemed like a pressure point thing. The Mind Meld is a psychic link. How can an android create a psychic link? This was not fleshed out enough (haha, get it? Fleshed? Cuz they’re androids?)

• I was a little disappointed we haven’t gotten to see the Borg Cube really wreak some havoc. That sounds super weird, again rooting for the enemy like Russ said in his review but here we are. Resistance is futile I suppose.

What an awesome finish this season is going to have! We got a fleet of pissed off, religious zealot Romulans flying 200+ ships to wipe out a planet of androids and their creator but they have a secret big brother they can call for support. Then there’s Starfleet that is sending a fleet as well and there’s also a Borg Cube just chilling on the planet. I’m sure they could regenerate and take out a few Romulan ships, not to mention the space orchids (another great band name). This is shaping up to be one heck of a ride.

Y’all stay safe, stay in doors, wash your damn hands and live long and prosper. We’ll see ya next week for the finale! Don’t be a juicebag.