WHY WE LIKE IT: A nasty alternate history.
WHY WE DON'T: Seven's creepy husband. Bones in Ferengi ears is juts silly.
REVIEW: Part of Picard Season 2's problem is its length. We're not at the point where it feels like padding yet - quite the opposite, since Penance has its own identity - but I find that the villains often speak in a kind of vague, enigmatic manner and there are too many episodes between their pronouncements and their pay-off. Rewatching clarifies a few things, but I was frustrated by the pay-offs on the first run. If you want the audience to keep things in mind, you need to cater to them in every episode. Picard Season 2 plays like it should be binged, yet the episodes came out weekly. And they knew that going in.
Case in point Q's motivation and procedure. A lot of double-talk here, but it makes more sense in retrospect. Phrases like "You are more than just a piece. Why, you're the very board upon which this game is played" speak to this being very personal for Picard - though he doesn't see it yet - and given Q's apparently illness (not sure what Picard detects there, though note how his finger snaps feel more thundering, dangerous), for him too. The trial never ends, yes, that's a metaphor for life, but what is being tested exactly? Deciphering Q's language with our 20/20 hindsight exposes Picard's need for atonement and forgiveness NOT for Alt-Picard in the fascist timeline Picard Prime has been dropped into, but for something that happened to Picard Prime as a boy (not that the mommy flashbacks are catered to here). And speaking of catering, it's really too bad, looking ahead, that Q doesn't pester Jean-Luc all the way through because THAT'S the relationship fans enjoy. Q showing up to set things in motion then leaving things be just isn't his style, and though he remains active through the storyline, the lack of interaction is a real missed opportunity. In terms of procedure, reflection also helps explain WHY he changes something in the past (or will, or has, it's complicated), though it's also a recursive paradox. Picard and friends have just been killed, so changing history prevents the tragedy from happening (along with Federation history), and creates bodies in which the cast's souls can be deposited. Instant Quantum Leap moment.
So we get to explore this new reality and play catch-up, which is what we'd JUST been doing in the previous episode. How many stati quos do we need to absorb this season anyway?! Annnnd you could also say that the Mirror Universe gave us a fascist Starfleet, if not one from this era, so it the Confederation might be a little redundant. Be that as it may, the fact that the characters are also play catch-up makes this a suspenseful episode, avoiding the cliché of having any of the actors playing evil versions of their characters. At most, we hear about a General Sisko overseeing a Vulcan War, and the skulls of various named characters (Dukat, Martok, Sarek) in General Picard's study. The fascist Confederacy is also a good example of how SF dystopia functions - by using fictional distance to speak about what's happening in the here and now - in this case showing Earth with closed borders (a force field) and a deeply troubling xenophobic attitude that include public executions of aliens and an conqueror's ethos fueled by the notion that the only safe galaxy is a human galaxy (at one point heard in Brent Spiner's voice, a clue of what's to come, but also one of those nuggets that you've forgotten when it pays off). Already planning a trip to 2024 to right what once went wrong, the production is about to fatally forget this process and lose that necessary fictional distance (but let's not get ahead of ourselves).
The Federation's greatest heroes also happen to be this world's greatest monsters. Seven's turn as President Annika Hansen is probably the most entertaining alt-identity. Though the most powerful person on the planet, she's also in the most precarious position. She has a husband in this reality, a real creep played by Jon Jon Briones (Isa "Soji" Briones' real-world father), who acts as her chief of staff. There is absolutely no chemistry between the two, which is natural for Seven who's just overwritten the original, but he never attempts any physical closeness. Every time he calls her "dear", I want to tears my eardrums out. But he works as a paranoid foil, questioning how everyone is acting strangely and committed to the Confederation's genocidal agenda. Seven has the keys to the palace and brings everyone together, but she's also got a dangerous hanger-on who could blow their plans (and indeed, does, that's the cliffhanger). Picard's a monster in this timeline, but he's good at acting the part when needed, even if it horrifies him. The opposite is Jurati who, though she eventually thinks up quite a cover story, is so filterless, she almost gives away the game several time. In this reality, she has a holographic anime cat voiced by Patton Oswalt, which would have been a fun recurring feature, but is hardly even used here. Alas. A cat, and just the baggiest smock ever made - it looks like they're trying to hide a pregnancy (they're not). Rios, for his part, is a colonel in the Vulcan War and rather dubiously flying around an unpainted La Sirena, his forces all in other craft. How does that work exactly? Raffi is Earth's Chief of Security and finds Elnor among alien terrorists giving the Confederation a black eye on Eradication Day. And then there's the Borg Queen...
Or not. On first watch, it's easy to think that this is the same who was on Stargazer's bridge when everything blew up, quantum-leaped with the cast. It's not and they say so (though the dialog itself can be interpreted differently). She really is the Queen from this reality, looking like the traditional Borg Queen from First Contact, or rather the dry-skin version from Voyager. The Borg have been defeated (somehow) by alt-Picard and she's due to be executed on stage during the coming ceremonies. But we're told Borg Queens are aware of other timelines and this one realizes that we're not in a different universe, but rather in the same universe whose history has been changed (as per City on Edge of Forever, not Mirror, Mirror, if you like). She's also able to understand Agnes' character (her loneliness) just by looking at her, and if you think about it, the Borg would have assimilated empaths and telepaths aplenty, right? It's a surprise we haven't seen something like this before. Have they also assimilated prophets? Because her calculation of the point of divergence comes with an enigmatic comment about finding the Watcher that just comes out of nowhere. The crew realizes that to go back to the past and fix history, they'll need the Queen to calculate their slingshot around the sun, and so welcome to the cast, Annie Wersching.
It all leads to a cracker of a third act, as Earth's defenses go up, preventing Rios from beaming everyone aboard La Sirena, and Jurati has to furiously work on the problem while Raffi and Elnor (playing a Romulan prisoner) infect the palace with virus. Once that's done, Elnor kicks security guards' asses with his hands tied. A fun fight. Meanwhile, Picard and Seven are on stage vamping while the crowd (which evoke Judge Q's atomic horror people from TNG's bookends) chant for Picard to shoot the Queen in the head. They're about to turn on him when it finally all falls into place. Except Seven's nasty husband quickly follows and Elnor gets shot - oops!
For all the fascist nastiness, there's a lot of comedy in the script to balance it out. It's not just Spot 73 and Agnes' usual comedy stylings. There's a fun bit where Picard discovers his alternate self preferred "Colombian, black" to "Earl Gray, hot" and calls it a circle of hell, for example. And of course, Seven's whole predicament and other characters commenting on it. So it's not all one, dark color.
LESSON: Some collectors just take it too far.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium-High: An exciting alternate universe story despite that leans into some common tropes, but veers away from others. The high point of the season before things take a turn for the worse.
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