WHY WE LIKE IT: The Picards' chat.
WHY WE DON'T: Structural damage.
REVIEW: You can always count on Jonathan Frakes to provide extra flair to an episode when he directs it. (He also directed the previous one, which only cements the notion that they should have been a single installment.) And it's true here - the dutch angles on Agnes and the Queen, the memorable shot of Agnes walking down the street barefoot - but i the structural defects were in the script, he doesn't do enough to alleviate them. Chief among these is how the episode starts at the end, with Picard's medical emergency. It's an okay device, but episode 1 pulled the same trick. Was it AGAIN to cover up a slow, talky start? Picard can't keep doing this. Either front load some action, or else trust that the audience wants to follow these characters regardless. The "heist" element is quickly taken care of with a bit of hacking and on the face of it, it's just everyone enjoying a party while Picard and Tallinn worry about Renée's state of mind. But moments like Soong showing up as a last-minute donor who is able to sic security on Picard (except if he's loaded, what was all that angst about funding?), or Agnes' internal struggle with the Queen ramp up the tension effectively enough without continually breaking into the then foregone third act.
The character moments are where it's at anyway. Raffi asking for club soda reminds us that she has addiction problems. Seven gets little to do, but the others notice she's "traveling light" without her implants. So is Rios, seemingly in love with our noisy, smelly, tasty century (and maybe a certain doctor - no, not Jurati - for a second you might think, crap, is she his Edith Keeler?). The highlight is certainly Picard meeting Renée and, playing the role of a security guard - much too old, but the wisest of them all - pep talks his ancestor into going on the Europa Mission after all. It's a sweet scene, and Patrick Stewart is wonderful in it. He makes an important connection between Renée and his mother Yvette, both star gazers who struggled with mental health. And then Soong attempts to murder her with his car, JL saves her, but winds up in a coma in Teresa's clinic. Renée disappears from the episode and we're told she's gone into quarantine as planned. Anti-climax. Soong races home where he's a little traumatized by what he just did (even if he failed) and lets slip some information that has Kore snooping through his files and finding out she's artificial and the last of a long line of failed experiments. I could do without his hack flashback to the last episode (especially since that stuff is all in the recap), but Spiner does a good job with the scientist's more manic and reckless side.
The Agnes/Jurati combination is pretty entertaining, and what starts as comedy - the Queen pushing Agnes to be more confident, kissing Rios, etc. - turns sinister when we discover the Queen can intensify her control by feeding Agnes' brain the right endorphins, and finally hijacks Jurati completely. The inciting factor is a required distraction in which Agnes surprises the party with a song. Allison Pill has a great voice, but contemporary music and Star Trek have always been strange bedfellows. When anything from today survives to the 24th+ Century, we tend to ask if it makes sense. I like Pat Benatar as much as the next guy, but that Jurati would have a smooth jazz version ready to go? Has the Queen assimilated the whole pop music catalog? At this point, it's still Jurati in charge, so it's suggested it's her choice. The original plan was for Feeling Good which would have felt more timeless and been thematically more consistent, but also perhaps too obvious. Regardless, Pill didn't think it worked with her voice, so they went another way.
When we finally get to the clinic - where no one mentions Agnes' absence - Teresa can't do anything to wake Picard up after his cardiac event. There are a couple of funny lines (usually Raffi), like how many implants Picard has had ("All of them"), but while Trek has often done the bit where someone is trapped in their own head, there's usually been a science-fiction explanation. Not here, not really. He's just in a coma, and the only option is for Tallinn to use her Gary Seven magic pen to go into his mind. This is apparently the same tech that allowed her to hijack people in Watcher (wouldn't that have come in handy during the gala operation?!). Once again, things only work when the script needs them to. And speaking of the script, while everyone is adamant they need Picard to continue to protect Renée, which is why they can't just let his head sort itself out without interference, it just never makes a strong case for it. The only real reasons are 1) he's our main character and 2) this mysterious complication should be worth an extra episode.
LESSON: Fear is the mindkiller. (Yes, I know this is the fourth time I've used this as the Lesson.)
REWATCHABILITY - Medium: This whole middle part of the season could have been collapsed into far fewer episodes, but at least the characters and direction are interesting.
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