Reactions in roughly chronological order:
- I am extremely dubious that Jack's visions are because he inherited Picard's syndrome thingie. Thinking that's either a well-cloaked surprise for the third act, or that's not Beverly Crusher giving the diagnosis.
- They broke Seven and Raffi up off-screen? Again? FFS...
- Yesss Beverly hugs.
- Worf remains the highlight of this season. Michael Dorn's delivery is just -chef's kiss!-
- I feel like I missed something wrt to the fleet all "speaking" to each other now. I get why Picard would be in the dark about why the ship was so easy to track, but not Shaw and Titan's crew.
- Oh, Daniel Davis, you still chew the scenery magnificently!

- Thanks, Alton. Still glad you're dead. May you be the last of the Soongs.
- Not digging the dialogue between Geordi and Sydney. I wish they'd drop the pilot vs engineer bits; Geordi was flying the ship before he was an engineer, after all.
- The family theme is just so heavy-handed; again, this is an area where I just can't seem to find any emotional purchase.
- I am so here for the kids causing mischief. These three have ridiculously good chemistry together.
- DAMMIT, RIKER, DON'T YOU DARE TURN THAT THING ON!
- "Jack." "Sydney." Fucking. Perfect.
- Back to not really caring about Jack Picard. I get what they were going for in this scene, but I wish they'd phrased Jack's growing admiration for his dad in a way that didn't make it sound like an insult to Bev.
- I'm very interested in why the Changelings wanted Picard's fleshy castoffs. If nothing else, it feels like they're going to try and do something substantial with the fact that he's a synth now.
Overall, feeling like it's a step or two down from last week. The reunions were nice and I liked the kids conspiring to tick off the veteran crew in good cause, but the heist portion of the episode wasn't as strong as I was hoping for, the Jack and Jean-Luc bits generally don't do a lot for me, and the name drops were so thick on the ground that it was distracting. On Lower Decks, to contrast, the show is paced so quickly most of their callbacks are blink-and-you'll-miss-it jokes; here, it felt like they lingered too long on most them.
So I guess it's radical marriage counseling for Will and Deanna next week?
