I enjoyed this one a fair bit. The problem is when you stop to actually analyse the plot, which is tropey and cliched as hell. It seems like Terry M’Talas (sorry, couldn’t resist!) is leaning into something of a “Trek’s Greatest Hits” (although not all of the elements are among Trek’s finest admittedly).
The Picard/son plot seems to be lifted from TWOK (and given the nod to “stealing a ship” and even the reference to Horner’s TSFS score i doubt that wasn’t intentional). It’s also been done before, rather poorly, in TNG’s own “Bloodlines”. Beverly sure as hell has a LOT of explaining to do next week. I’ve no idea what excuse she could have for ghosting Picard for twenty years and keeping all knowledge of his own son from him. That’s unconscionable in my view. Fair enough if Picard was some abusive monster she wanted to protect her son from, but…jeez. What was she thinking?
I have to call out the casting. Are we really meant to believe Jack is twenty years old? The actor looks like he’s pushing forty. We also need to know why he speaks with an English accent. Please tell me they don’t think accents are genetic? I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes, but I don’t have much confidence the answers will be satisfying. I’m still burned from last incoherent season where nothing made sense at all (so many things happened “just because!”).
Shaw had been toned down from last week and his position understandable and even logical, although his turnaround when he learns Jack is Picard’s son was too abrupt, as his earlier argument that 500 lives weren’t worth sacrificing for just a couple still stood I would have thought. Unless, perhaps Shaw had lost a son or something. The conflict was better done though. He’s more human and less hateful.
Amanda Plumber…no idea if I loved her or hated her performance. It could go either way for me. She’s almost like DS9’s MU Intendent without (thankfully, so far) the hypersexualisation. She could be fun, although this is maybe just too much campery for a villain. The creative team are still obsessed with creating another Khan, and this also strongly recalls and borrows from Nero and his ship (can’t remember its name right now) and Shinzon and the Schimitar. Subtlety is a fine art and there’s certainly no semblance of it here. But we’ll see how it goes.
The Raffi scenes dragged, frankly, and this plot seems to borrow from Into Darkness. It was just fantastic to see Worf again briefly even if his return felt so signposted it was hardly the surprise it aimed to be. I loved seeing a Ferengi again although the makeup left a lot to be desired. I’d increased my TV brightness settings so maybe that affected details like this, but the actor’s skin tone on his exposed lower face seemed notably different from the skin tone of the Ferengi head and ears. In other words, he totally looked like a dude with an appliance glued to his head. We need to bring Michael Westmore out of retirement.
Anyway, I enjoyed watching it more than it may sound. It’s just very cliched and pulpy thus far. My expectations are guarded, however, so I’ll just take it for what it is.
