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Full spoilers follow for this episode. Episode 2 of Star Trek: Picard, “Maps and Legends,” digs its shiny, Starfleet-issue heels into its central mystery as Patrick Stewart’s Jean-Luc continues to investigate the circumstances surrounding Isa Briones’s character Dahj, the android “daughter” of Data who was killed in the series premiere last week. Along the way, we also check in with Dahj’s twin, Dr. Soji Asha (also played by Briones), who’s hanging out on a decommissioned Borg cube and getting down with the bad boy Romulan Narek (Harry Treadaway). [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=star-trek-picard-photos&captions=true"] Indeed, mysteries abound, but fortunately for Picard he spent all those years on the holodeck re-enacting Dixon Hill detective stories, so he has a talent for this stuff. Unfortunately for us, though, in its second week Picard is starting to feel like it’s taking a long time getting anywhere. It’s like the warp core is down, and Geordi is nowhere to be found. Certainly the decision to keep Jean-Luc grounded in these early episodes -- earthbound and starship-less -- is essential to this version of the character, who walked away from that Starfleet life all those years ago. But as Picard works to figure out where Dahj and Soji came from, there’s a bit too much talk and not quite enough action, even by the standards of Stewart’s Next Generation, a series well known for its talk-it-out creed. Perhaps the problem is it sometimes feels as though the characters are talking
at us rather than to each other, back-filling plot so we can keep up. That said, we do open on an exciting if tragic scene, as we flash back 14 years to the day the synths attacked Mars. The main synth portrayed here is apparently more primitive than Data, and certainly treated with far less respect than our favorite Enterprise ops officer ever was by his shipmates. But that’s not why the synths attack their masters, it seems; no, it looks like they received some kind of download immediately prior to the bloody revolt. The question, of course, is who reprogrammed the androids to commit the heinous attack? [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/picard-take-a-closer-look-inside-the-borg-ship"] Another enigma looming over the series is what exactly is going on at that Borg cube, which is run by the Romulans and, we learn here, disconnected (fortunately) from the Collective. It’s referred to as “the Artifact,” and treated as a sort of museum/research facility, but also one where Soji is de-Borging the Borg. Certainly her intentions seem good and genuine, but the fact that Narek is pretty clearly a bad guy (confirmed by the end of the episode) leaves her in the position of being one step behind the viewer, and that’s not a great place for a character to be for too long. At least Narek’s true nature is one mystery we’ve got figured out, even if she hasn’t. Meanwhile, Picard’s doing his Dixon Hill thing (but without the fedora) with an assist from the show’s second best character, Laris (Orla Brady), Jean-Luc’s housekeeper who also happens to be an ex-Tal Shiar (which is to say Romulan secret police). She does some computer-sleuthing in Dahj’s apartment that is worthy of Data and Geordi in their heyday for its level of technobabble, but we can forgive her for that if only because of her line “cheeky f#@kers.” I’ve never been a fan of modern Star Trek’s preoccupation with dropping swear words, but somehow it just works here. Thanks to Laris, Picard learns that Dahj’s twin is off-world, and so he visits Starfleet headquarters to ask for a ship… only to be turned down and taken down several notches by the CNC. It’s a pretty great scene all told, starting with the strains of Jerry Goldsmith’s score as Jean-Luc beams in to San Francisco, but culminating in a very un-heroic outcome for our hero as he’s told to do what he’s good at -- go home. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=jean-luc-picard-the-first-duty-gallery-comic-con-2019&captions=true"] The Admiral also makes the case for Starfleet and the Federation’s side of the situation from 14 years earlier. Whereas last week’s episode painted Starfleet in a poor light, here things become a little more complicated. Would the Federation itself have fallen apart if they had diverted all their resources to the Romulan rescue? The needs of the many… We also get to meet Starfleet’s head of security, the Vulcan Commodore Oh (Tamlyn Tomita). The actress plays the part very well, breaking down the basic logic of the Picard situation with simple statements that are reminiscent of how Spock and T’Pol discussed their failed marriage attempt all the way back in “Amok Time” on The Original Series. And yet, not long after the Commodore is introduced to us, we learn that she is in fact being duped by her underling, Peyton List’s Lt. Rizzo (who’s secretly Narek’s sister!), which unfortunately cuts into Oh’s credibility, as well as our patience with her as a character -- as with Soji. And yet, we do learn that she was behind the plan to capture Dahj, even if killing the girl was a mistake on the part of Rizzo’s Romulan goons. But what’s the head of Starfleet security doing working with Romulans? Another mystery! [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/star-trek-the-history-of-the-borg-timeline"] Questions and Notes from the Q Continuum:
- Whoever reprogrammed the synths to attack Mars did so on First Contact Day -- the holiday that recognizes when humans first met alien life. Surely this is not a coincidence.
- “I never really cared for science fiction. I guess… I just didn’t get it.”
- How many Early Grey references is too many?
- It’s nice to see the use of holographic communications in this series, as it makes more sense than it did on Discovery, and in fact we learned in Deep Space Nine that Starfleet was beginning to utilize that tech more often.
- The Federation computers do not use Majel Barrett-Roddenberry’s voice anymore. Sad emoji.
- Riker, Worf, and LaForge all get namedropped!
- Not only does David Paymer show up as Jean-Luc’s old buddy from his first command, the Stargazer (where he was probably the ship’s doctor), but he also tells Picard that his medical scans indicate that the illness that he was warned of all the way back in the Next Gen season finale may finally have caught up with him.
- I love how the new Starfleet uniforms track with those seen in the alt-future of “All Good Things,” including the new combadge and the placement of the pips, but man do they seem to not be very well fitted.
- We got another appearance by the Enterprise-D… and also the original NCC-1701!
- Star Trek: Picard’s use of the word “galaxy” is a bit annoying, as technically the Federation should just be the Alpha and part of the Beta Quadrants at this point in Trek history, which is really like one-third of the galaxy. Unless, of course, something changed since we last saw Jean-Luc 20 years ago.
- We finally got to meet Picard’s former First Officer Raffi (Michelle Hurd), but more on her next week!
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