Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 2x05 - "Fly Me to the Moon"

I thought this was a big step up after a shaky (and sometimes bad) episode last week. There were a lot of subplots - a lot of balls being kept in the air - but most of them worked well, and a few of them actually offered some compelling character drama. Most importantly, after an episode of wheel spinning, there's actual forward movement in the plot, which is finally beginning to take shape (though I expect twists to come).

Picard's stuff with Not Laris (Tallinn) was...okay. She honestly doesn't feel like a real character yet so much as a plot device, and she had to give the clunkiest exposition of the episode. However, the scenes involving Renee Picard was great, giving us an emotional connection to her struggles in a short period of time. I was also amused that right when I was wondering why the psychologist had such an awful fake European accent we pan back (so to speak) and find out it was Q. Well played.

The buddy cop crap with Seven and Raffi is still hokey/interminably dull, but they get the rescue of Rios finished in less than 3 minutes, so I can't complain. And some of that run time is spent with Rios, whose scenes are better in every possible way. Good riddance to a clunky plot line.

The stuff with Adam Soong, Q, and his daughter (Kore) is just wonderful. It's a very manipulative and cliche scenario - the father with a child with a terminal disease willing to do anything - but Spiner has the chops to pull it off and has amazing chemistry with DeLancie - something we never got to see on TNG because Data was such a dry character.

Unlike a lot of viewers, I've not been feeling the Jurati/Borg Queen stuff this season. But I think the scenes in this episode are very effective, and there's finally some clear forward movement here, with Jurati having a coherent character arc which will unfold over the remainder of the season.

And of course we end with everyone still alive in the La Sirena crew (plus Tallinn) getting together and planning the "heist" so to speak. Not sure where things are going yet, but I'm sure it's not as simple as it seems. I think the Renee Picard stuff may be a red herring to some degree, since we know it's Adam Soong who gets remembered by the Confederation. I'm wondering if it's actually something related to Jurati's assimilation (and whatever the 2024 reaction to the crisis is) that spurs humanity to become isolationist and xenophobic.

There are some interesting implications of the worldbuilding of this episode as well. After playing footsie with the idea in the last two episodes this may be "our" 2024, this episode seems to put to bed the idea that Trek takes place in anything other than an alternate timeline, what with a manned mission to Europa and that drone force field the Soongs had. It also seems to retcon at least a bit of old Trek continuity, because there's no way Adam Soong could be doing the work he was if the Eugenics Wars took place during the 1990s. Trek has tried to have it both ways when it comes to the Eugenics Wars - DS9 tried to be fuzzy regarding the dates, VOY ignored them, and Enterprise embraced the original idea under Manny Coto, so it will be interesting to see what is done here.

 

Tallinn’s Tablet was Romulan, the interface was Romulan. I’m almost certain I saw Romulan letters

I think Q was using the plural ‘you’ referring to Humanity collectively

 

Felt like traditional Star Trek message work within the serialized story to me - ICE/police brutality commentary on how these people are treated for the crime of their skin color or the language they speak. Plus comparison to these behaviors to the Confederation, what these characters are working to prevent being the attitude that drives humanity in the future.

 

It was also likely driven to some degree due to COVID restrictions requiring much of the cast to film separately.

Honestly the gang got back together much more quickly than I had expected.

 

That makes sense. Maybe Q was simply saying that the Confederation timeline is the result of humanity neglecting the planet and damaging the environment and ourselves. The show has made several references to that.

But that does not explain why Q is trying to stop Renee Picard from going on the Europa Mission if we assume her presence on the mission is what prevents the Confederation timeline from happening. That would mean Q is trying to create the Confederation timeline which does not seem to make sense. Why Would Q want a dystopian future? So the other possibility is that our assumption is wrong. Maybe Renee's presence on the mission is not what prevents the Confederation timeline?

 

It’s just part of Picard’s test

 

First thoughts:

- BQ/ Jurati remains the best part of this season. Well, just Jurati now, but a part of her remains...

- I never thought I'd say this, but I'm glad the Raffi/ Seven only scenes were mercifully short. Most viewers seem to view their painful, dysfunctional bickering as endearing: well, I don't.

- Unfortunately, that led to group scenes with their nobody-in-the-same-room vibes. I had no such issues with 5 holograms being "in the same room," but I think that was done better. This time, there were clearly timing problems (replies coming a fraction too soon/ too late) that made it awkward. Yes, I wish I didn't see it.

- I'm sure freeing those other detainees won't harm the timeline because it was The Right Thing To Do.

- Was there some truth to Q's throwaway remark about being in his spouse's bad graces? Is that supposed to be the explanation for his mission?

- The scene where Picard told NotLaris how awesome his crew was, only to see them dragging away a "corpse" was funny.

- So Renée was basically a Wesley Crusher... But would someone suffering from depression reall be allowed to a space program?

- I'm mystified about that scientific tribunal taking place in a hallway... Other than "we couldn't find another location for shooting"

Not sure how I'll rate this. I felt entertained, but it would feel more satisfying if we got more (part) resolutions instead of cliffhangers.

 

I think it has to somehow work in with Jurati's assimilation. Q knows that if Renee goes into space, people are going to die, so he's trying to stop it.

My wild-ass guess is Renee in space has first contact - with the Borg. Mankind's first contact with an alien race is hostile, and it is only Adam Soong's genetic augmentation which saves humanity. Humanity becomes isolationist and xenophobic as a result.

 

I thought the same thing. It was also clumsy when Seven said they can't just beam Rios out in front of all the detainees because it could alter the timeline. What?! Raffi and Seven just beamed out of the police car in front of all the cops! This show has definitely played fast and loose with "not messing with the timeline".

 

That's a good theory.

 

“Good talk.”

I really liked this one. The BQ/Jurati stuff continues to be excellent, LOVE the callback to Assignment: Earth and I’m a sucker for a good heist story. 8/10.

 

Also, the 100 years leading upto FC are chaotic, so hardly anyone knows about them? Seems a bit unlikely with so much digital info and everyone and everything being aired out on social media. How would all this info get lost, even with a nuclear war?

Anyway, this episode was much better than the previous one, so I gave it an 8.

 

Tallinn with the same spelling is a proper human name, and the capital of Estonia. Could suggest the region from which (The Aegis) recruited her ancestors if they used the same method as with Gary 7. Such a name reminds me of Louise Baltimore from John Varley’s ‘Millennium’. She could still be a disguised Romulan, but nothing yet confirmed in the story.

 

Like Seven asked, I wonder what Q is playing at? Gotta be more complicated than convincing one person not to go on a space mission.

Interesting the Supervisor doesn't know about Q. Or, seemingly, Gary Seven.

More interesting is how Q thinks time itself is conspiring against him. Cool business card.

I figured Jurati would be "possessed" somehow.

The episode had great pace. Frakes is an awesome director.

 

Seems more likely that Laris is a future version of Tallinn. She can't be looking after Jean Luc though, since she's in personal contact with him. Maybe she has "retired?"

 

They missed a chance: When Picard started mentioning Q, Tallinn should have gone all "whoa, you're one of those nutters!"

Just me? OK, I'll see myself out.

 

Pretty complex episode, not sure what to make of it.

Odd how they are using the regular cast to play past characters, but ok…

the technology of both the solar shielding and the party seems a but too advanced for 2024, also the disease seems a bit excessive.

We got to see the supervisor and she seems pretty inconsequential so far, mostly there to deliver exposition.

Our crew’s actions regarding the borg queen have been consistently idiotic qnd they now are paying for them…why didn’t they disconnect her before the reanimation attempt?

Q’s plan sure is complicated…Hope it adds up in the end.

Still liked the episode, giving a 7.

 

Digital media isn't exactly stable. There's forms if digital data from just 30 years ago we can't read today because of how much technology has changed. Scientists and historians have been saying for decades that we're living in something of a period if "unwritten" history because of much of what we're doing to record at us on unstable technology.

 

To be fair, only 1 cop saw the transporter effect (I think)... and even then, the car's interior was relatively dimmed, so its possible that female cop doesn't know what she saw.
An offhand 'special effect' in a dimmed police vehicle interior seen by 1 person (or even two) probably isn't going to change the timeline at all.
Most people would probably think they are nuts (people vanishing into thin air in a beam of light and all that)... so the cops might end up just opting to keep quiet about any light beams they may have seen (for fear they could be proclaimed as hallucinating or whatnot and losing their jobs).

This doesn't make too much sense to me.
Q never really cared about humans dying, and changing the past to create the Confederation resulted in even more deaths... on an interstellar scale no less.

My guess would be that the Borg story is more tied to Jurati and her becoming the Queen we saw in the first episode... but not necessarily having a bad FC with humans in 2024 - although I could be wrong.

Perhaps Humanity encountered something else on that Europa mission that resulted in a bad first contact as a result of Q's meddling... either that, or Renee is critical to the mission in a sense that if she's not there, humans might think whatever she originally discovered in UFP's history and thought was a lifeform was misconstrued if Renee wasn't there with them.

Having a bad first contact which manages to unite most humans, possibly resulting in avoided WWIII, and then wham... no socio-economic or social changes take place that happened in the prime timeline... humanity never 'grows up' out of its infancy and just ends up with similar people in positions of power who keep telling the general populace that aliens are bad.

'The only safe galaxy is a human galaxy' certainly points to a bad first contact scenario. I'm not convinced its because of the Borg though... but tied to someone or something on Europa.

If it does turn out to be Borg... well, maybe that could potentially explain the Queen's desire to simultaneously assimilate Humanity, but also, not?
Maybe her transtemporal awareness was what prevented her from sending a fleet of cubes to assimilate UFP once and for all (and even left VOY alone for the most part).
She saw something special in Juarti (as we know, she saw it in Picard as well)... but what's the point of assimilating them if that means destroying their individuality? They'd just be absorbed into the Collective. Unless Jurati is the first one that could potentially resist that and become an equal to the Queen (possibly because of everything that happens in 2024, slow assimilation - giving Jurati more 'leeway' to assert herself and retain that what is special?).

I don't know.. I'm just speculating out of my rear end here.

Q certainly alluded to Picard at the end of TNG about 'something greater'... maybe this is something the Queen saw in Picard (and now Jurati) and are trying to bring it out?

 

I can see that if something happens to his daughter, Soong will create the androids in her image.

NotLaris, otoh...