The more I kept watching this one, the more I loved it, and ultimately I'm giving it a ten for the beautiful revisit of Picard's relationship to the Rikers and the portrayal of Soji rebuilding herself with Kestra's help. Kestra's innocent curiosity at Soji reminded me of how Bashir was interested in Data's human qualities without any prejudice... she's a Star Trek kid, through and through. And I saw much of both Will and Deanna in her. Not to mention her wonderful bit of child logic with
"And because you're three years old, so I get to be the boss of you."
I'll have to admit, I felt Deanna was the stronger of the two; Will was at his friendliest and his most relaxed, but Deanna was finally utilized in the best way I could've imagined, allowed to be the counselor Picard had always needed. She started strong, with how she casually scanned Picard and Soji, and immediately pieced together why they had come here, without even being a full telepath. But then again, Will was no slouch either, even if his deduction scene reminded me a bit of
Beyond Belief... I almost expected him to ask Picard if he'd ever written his initials in wet cement or if he remembered the tallest man he'd ever seen

. But his snide remark that Picard being stuck with a headstrong teenager was basically penance for his sheer fucking hubrisTM was absolutely spot-on.
But to return to Deanna, she gave a beautiful assessment of why Picard is the way he is, and I absolutely loved her reasoning that Picard needed to let other people help him. Without his crew, Picard grew rigid, inflexible and arrogant, certain that he alone could solve things, and if there are no people around him to temper his arrogance, he's dangerously error-prone, be it a constant stream of social faux-pas (like thinking a playful jab at Soji would help when she broke down), or unthinking mistakes like showing all his cards to Clancy or blindly trusting Jurati, which Raffi had even pointed out. I know that Myers-Briggs Type Indicators are pseudoscientific, but after thinking about it with keeping the reality check given to him by the Rikers in mind, I think this series is the most INTJ we have ever seen Picard. TNG was a healthy manifestation of that personality type, and PIC is the textbook unhealthy one, best seen in how he stopped thinking things through and just acted on what he felt to be true or false at first sight. I know the feeling exactly, because I'm an INTJ and I'm making all the same mistakes whenever I go complacent. And like many other INTJs, Picard needed a reality check from the right place, because not everyone could get through to him on an emotional level.
So, pseudoscience aside, Picard needed to meet the Rikers, and even he realized this, as he admitted to Will at the lake. At the end, he seemed as if the weight of his failures had finally been lifted from his shoulders. As for the La Sirena plot, Jurati falling apart at the seams was quite hard to watch, and the truth finally sort-of came out, even though it was disturbed by a few contrived coincidences like Narek always showing up whenever the others would start suspecting her. Even though, I liked her decision to just go along with whatever false conclusions Rios and Raffi had come at.
Regarding the Artifact, I was sad to see Hugh go, but I was pleased that he had a poignant send-off offering the xB-s as a lost cause for Elnor. I keep loving to hate Narissa with her smug taunts, and how effortlessly she distracted Elnor so that she could kill Hugh and even beamed out a split second before her own blade got her. That seals it, I'm calling her Space Azula from now on.
Random stream-of-consciousness observations because I love those:
- Where do Oh's visions come from? Maybe they've been passed among members of the Zhat Vash for generations?
- Kestra and Thad, with their twelve invented languages and imaginary world, remind me of a young J.R.R. Tolkien a lot. Ardani even sounds much like Arda and Viveen reminded me of Sindarin.
- I love the bunnicorns, oh my god. Not to mention that gormagander reference.
- The "close channel" sound of the La Sirena commbadges is still a mix of the Bajoran commbadge chirp and the Enterprise-D "close channel" sound, if anyone's interested.