This entry was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, this television series wouldn’t exist. To learn more, visit the WGA strike hub and the SAG-AFTRA strike site.
“If my father taught me anything, there’s no law of physics that can’t be either weaponized, or broken, by another law of physics.”
Ooooooh, Picard’s been a bad bad boy, and he’s had himself a bad bad boy! Welcome, Jack Crusher (the Second) to the franchise. You’re Han Solo with a British accent, because of course you are; you learned British by listening to your Dad’s logs, because of course you did. There’s an “of course”-ness to this entire season of Star Trek: Picard, which is simultaneously thrilling and supremely ingratiating. It shows us, as a fandom, exactly what it’s like when we’re given everything we think we want, with no variation, surprise, or reversal of expectations. Fan fic, all the way down.
Ed Speers, playing Jack, is handsome as hell! And I swear to you, he does his absolute best to play what must be, minute for minute and word for word, the most thanklessly-written character in the history of Star Trek. I mean, this is an impossible character to play. Leave aside the not-immeasurable stakes of having to play Picard and Beverly’s son in the first place; he also has to be a rogueish rascal (with a heart of gold, natch); he also has to have whatever-the-fuck is going on in his head that makes him see red doors and hear the calls of the Borg Queen; he also has to have a maybe-romance with Geordi’s daughter while throwing fuck-me eyes at pretty much every other woman he encounters; he also has to be the MacGuffin of the entire season’s story; and he also has to eventually turn into Neo from the Matrix and remote-pilot people with his super brainwaves. Like, mother of fucking god…. (not you Beverly.) Playing this part was, and is, a suicide mission. Jack’s half-brother Wesley, who went from annoying prodigy brat to Traveller-to-be in less than four episodes, was well-thought-out compared to this.
Jack was hidden in the closet (no, not that closet) for most of last week’s episode, so, we get a quick flashback/present-day intro to him here, and (again, of course) he wants nothing to do with his Dad, who (of course) he isn’t acknowledging is his Dad yet; and, of course, Jean-Luc’s not acknowledging him, in spite of Riker’s sly winks on the subject. Vadic’s ship — the Shrike — is here, and it’s giving F. Murray Abraham’s flagship from Star Trek: Insurrection mixed with Eric Bana’s Borg/Romulan hybrid from Star Trek ’09. It speaks in Zimmer braaaaaaahmmmms. Vadic’s ship contains Vadic (Amanda Plummer), and Vadic rules. Plummer dives in with both hands in her first viewscreen showdown with Picard and the gang, bypassing 10 and going straight for 12 on the deliriously-crazy scale. (When Picard makes a break for it later in the episode, she bursts out laughing.) Plummer would go on to claim she hadn’t ever seen her Dad play General Chang in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, but I call bullshit: look at how she flicks her finger when ordering up a demonstration of the Shrike‘s superior firepower. That, plus the cigarillo, plus the big-ass chair in the vaguely Klingon-esque bridge set, screams General Chang to me.
Seven shames Shaw into saving Picard and Riker from the Shrike by basically calling him a cuck, but he goes for it, because I guess under all that rules-and-meter bluster, he’s afraid he might really be one. We probably met the key extras on the Titan‘s bridge crew last week, but they get foregrounded a bit more here in the confrontation scene; besides Sidney LaForge, there’s Lt. Mura (Joseph Lee), a Bajoran; Ensign Esmar (Jin Maley), an “Aquiel” type who uses they/them pronouns; and Lt. T’Veen, a Vulcan played by Stephanie Czajkowski, who whips ass over on Doom Patrol as one of Jane’s alters. They all work for Shaw, who’s somehow both an even bigger dick this week than last week, and also, even more right this week than last week. (Vadic also makes mention of his official Starfleet psychological profile and how it’s a wonder he’s up and about, foreshadowing some material from the next few episodes, which is something that sent me down a very dark hole with this season’s storytelling, when it aired.)
Vadic throws a ship at the Titan. Takes Beverly’s ship, with all of Beverly’s mementoes from Next Gen (sob!), and flings it at Shaw’s ship, where it shatters. And that’s not even her big gun. There’s a lot of fast-and-loose in the plotting of “Disengage,” but if this episode is here to do one thing — establish Vadic and her ship as a credible threat — it overachives so spectacularly that all the rest kind of feels less important.
Riker and Picard tag-team Jack with a verbal beat-down before Shaw turns up to arrest him and turn him over to Vadic, cuz it turns out that yeah, Jack really is a wanted international fugitive. (I forgot that in my list, above!) Riker then turns on Picard with some tough love about Picard’s sullen refusal to acknowledge the visual, mathematical, and behavioural likelihood that Jack is his son. (To the casting team’s credit: I could totally see Ed Speers getting into a bar fight with some Nausicaans.) It’s always been a bit weird for me to consider Jean-Luc and Will’s post-professional relationship, although I’m not sure why. Even Riker calling his former captain “Jean-Luc” creeps me out… I might have issues with relationships changing and deepening over time. But boy, that look Will gives Picard when Jean-Luc admonishes him not to “speculate” about Jack’s parentage! It speaks to some real, we’ve-been-through-too-much-shit kinship between these men that maybe goes beyond both their professional and personal relationships. It’s hard not to see the edges of meta text in this season, given the decades-long love-in that is the familial relationship between the Next Gen cast; and Stewart and Frakes are better together this season than they’ve been in thirty years. If the whole first half of the season had just been the two of them gumshoeing around the galaxy together, I’d have called myself a thoroughly happy man.
Something neat happens in Picard’s next scene, where he confronts Jack head-on about the accusations against him: Patrick Stewart plays Picard again, i.e., the Picard of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He’s terse, precise, and way the hell up on his moral high horse, and the scene crackles, both because of that, and because Jack (in turn) fires back a point that should have been made way earlier on this series: who doesn’t change profoundly over the course of twenty years? Jack claims that it was Beverly who taught him how to be a rogueish rascal, Robin Hood-ing his way across the galaxy from crisis zone to crisis zone; Picard says that’s how he knows Jack’s lying; but, Picard’s wrong and Jack knows it, and more importantly, we know it. Forget the intravening 20 years, this behaviour would have been in character for Beverly, even back on the Enterprise-D! Beverly was never the Outrageous Okona; but, more so than most of the Next Gen team (all of whom have been subsequently retrofitted as renegades, because people who follow orders are such squares, man), Beverly had a well–established penchant for stepping outside the lines. She went rogue plenty, and Jack’s read on her is right, even if his reasoning on why Picard’s reasoning is wrong, is wrong.
Down on Blade Runner Planet, Raffi connects with her ex-husband for a quick heart-to-heart about her ongoing addiction woes / OCD / failed relationship with her son (Raffi is a lot), but mostly to get an intro to a Ferengi who’s connected to the Rachel Garrett statue bombing from last week. Poor Michelle Hurd, out here on her own doing all this heavy lifting for what is essentially a backstory thread, for villain moves that will come into play later in the season. It gets better by the episode’s end, though, cuz Worf’s here, and he kills a bunch of people to save Raffi’s ass. He beheads the Ferengi. Which, as you’ll recall from Deep Space Nine, is likely something Worf’s been thinking about for a long, long time.
The episode concludes with Riker forcing Picard’s hand by getting Beverly out of her sick bed, and getting her to wordlessly tell Picard that — yeah — Jack is his kid. Once again (and even more so next week), Stewart’s never better than when playing against one of his old colleagues. And so, Picard commandeers the Titan, and our heroes run — and Vadic laughs, and laughs, and laughs.
Blogging the Next Generation: Picard runs Thursdays on tederick.com as I work my way through every episode of Star Trek: Picard. The original BTNG did the same for Star Trek: The Next Generation. While you’re here, why not sign this petition, asking CBS to release Picard’s final season on 4K UHD disc, which it deserves. Fuck streaming!