It’s an entirely new universe. History has been altered, and Picard finds himself in the year 2400 of a timeline he doesn’t recognize, facing one last trial orchestrated by his longtime nemesis, Q.
That’s Picard Season 2 Episode 2, Penance, and it’s a very, very interesting episode. I’m a big fan of Star Trek and I have a history with it. We’re used to seeing things like the mirror universe. We’re used to alternate timelines and alternate universes. You find out very quickly in this episode that’s not what this is. This is our universe. The big difference is Q has changed our timeline. Or has he?
The episode starts with a view of Earth, and what you see is sort of a shield. You find out from Q that over time, because we’re who we are, we never tried to repair the planet. Rather than fix the ozone layer, we in essence built a shield around it.
Quick prediction before we even get started in all this. I feel like this show is going to be a meta commentary on where we are as a culture today. You find out later on (little spoilers) that the discrepancy happens in 2024, which is only two years north of us. So I believe we’re going to end up seeing some sort of meta commentary about the state of affairs in the world, and how, if we’re not careful, it can lead to this. A totalitarian, whatever, all that dystopian type future stuff.
Q Without the Flash
Q and Picard walk out onto the lanai, and Picard’s doing his usual blustering. What have you done, Q, I can’t stand for this, I’m too old for this. And Q is really ramming it down his throat. What are you talking about, are you crazy? He’s just going off on him. And at one point Picard kind of realizes: you’re not well.
I really like what they’re doing here. Instead of the campy bright flash of Q stuff, every time he does his snap, Picard kind of turns his head and he’s somewhere new. It’s a great approach to an old effect. We know Q does things, and rather than trying to make them look all fantastic and big and shiny and bright, what you get is that reality just is. He does certain things and there you are.
So he moves them over to the vineyard side, and then he eventually brings them into the house, where Picard has Romulan slaves. That’s right, slaves. Picard’s freaking out, he can’t believe this world, and then Q brings him into the trophy room.
The Trophy Room
In the trophy room he gets to see the skulls. The skull of a Ferengi. The skull of a Borg. I kind of think that might actually be the skull of Hugh, just based on the eye socket setup. I’m hoping not, but it totally could be.
It’s a morbid scene, and it’s a scene that’s really just, wow, it’s rough for Star Trek. Then you get this wide shot that shows all the various ones, and he begins telling the stories. This is Gul Dukat, this is such and such, Martok I think, and then this is Sarek, knowing that General Picard executed Sarek.
Then he turns, and we finally see what happened to that portrait of the Enterprise that used to be above the mantle. It’s now the portrait of the Confederate starship. I believe it’s World Razer, and that’s razer as in razing, R-A-Z-E. It’s just this ship obliterating everything. It’s something else.
Then we cut to Picard watching this kind of holo of himself doing, essentially, a propaganda speech. A safe galaxy is a human galaxy. A lot of that xenophobic type stuff that we definitely don’t normally see in Star Trek. It hurts him, and to be honest, it’s rough to see.
We get Harvey coming back, and Harvey’s kind of walking him through stuff. Then Harvey tells him today’s Eradication Day, and you have an appointment with the president.
President Hansen and Colonel Rios
We cut to San Francisco, which clearly is still the capital of some sort, and again you can see the shield in the atmosphere. And we see Jeri Ryan for the first time. We see Seven, who’s not Seven anymore. She’s President Hansen, the president of the Confederacy, and she’s married to this guy. I don’t know who this yahoo is. It’s funny, even their photoshopped pictures don’t look that good. Well, whatever.
She walks to her office, she’s looking over the briefings from the Vulcan front, and she happens to come across one of the people who’s part of the war effort: Colonel Cristóbal Rios. So she insists. I want to talk to someone on the front line, I want real actionable intel, who is he? Oh, Colonel Rios. Let’s get him.
Then you get a really cool shot of the ship, and he just kind of shows up in the middle of it. What’s going on? He’s having to play it off. Everyone’s having to play it off. Q moved everyone Picard would need, because he says in the beginning, I’m not going to make you do this alone. So Rios has to figure out really quickly what’s going on. Eventually he gets the private communication from President Hansen, and it’s all right, I’m heading back on your authority.
Okinawa
We then cut to Okinawa, Japan, and suddenly there’s an explosion. You see Elnor wake up, and he’s with a Romulan girl who apparently is somewhat important. They call them insurgents, and it’s sort of a terrorist attack, but they’re really rebels and they’re fighting against the whole thing. There are different explosions, one for each of the various species they’ve conquered.
Then Starfleet security, I’m sorry, Confederate security comes rushing in from all sides. Elnor puts his hands up, and you see this hooded figure they all respond to as the chief, who opens fire on all the security officers and takes them all out.
It’s Raffi. Raffi and Elnor hug, and she’s taken to him very much in a protective way, like a son. Then other Confederate security show up, so she takes him prisoner. Hey, we’re going to go do a thing, you’ve got to come with me. And she pulls a gun to his head.
Alison Pill Is a Gift
We then cut to Agnes waking up. Alison Pill is a gift. She’s an absolute treasure in this episode. She’s absolutely awesome.
When she wakes up there’s an AI cat on a screen, and I’m pretty sure it’s Patton Oswalt playing the voice of that cat. She’s trying to figure out really quickly what’s going on and what’s been happening, and the cat is deadpan. I love it.
Then all of a sudden the president walks in, and Agnes has just got to bounce with it, and she calls her Seven. Her husband, who I guess is the secretary of state or whatever he is, says why’d you call her Seven? And she says it’s an old college drinking name, sorry. It’s brilliant.
The Borg Queen Knows Time Is Broken
Then they go to see the species that’s in stasis, getting ready for Eradication Day. Eradication Day is the day humans eradicate the last surviving member of a race or species that opposed them, that resisted them.
The thing opens up, and here it is. It’s Annie Wersching playing the Borg Queen, and it’s just her upper half. She’s missing her legs. In this universe the entire collective has been eradicated, and of course it was Picard who led the war effort that did it.
Seven and the Queen come face to face, and she uses Seven’s original name, tertiary adjunct of unimatrix blah blah blah, whoever, person, thing. She begins to act like something’s wrong. And then she says time has broken.
You understand for the very first time, before Jeri Ryan says it, before Seven says it, that the Borg Queen has a connection to space-time. She has the ability to tell. I guess she kind of feels along the edges of parallel universes, across space and time, because of the Borg’s knowledge of how to warp space and time. They have the ability to connect a little bit. It gives you a picture of the Borg collective and the Queen’s setup: the more powerful they become, powerful meaning the worlds they assimilate, the more they’re interconnected across universes.
If you’re into comic books, it reminds me a little of how in recent years Marvel has established, and I think they just did it in the Venom movie, that the symbiotes are part of an inter-dimensional, multi-universe connectivity set, so they know what each other knows. That’s sort of the setup here. All the Borg Queens across space and time and the multiverse, if you will, parallel universes and all that, are interconnected, or can connect at least rudimentarily.
Really fascinating stuff. I really hope we get some cool novels out of it. I’m excited about the possibility of getting back into Star Trek novels, because Trek novels used to be a big thing for me, and I think with this resurgence you’re going to start seeing more of those. I’m also going to be doing some comic book stories about those soon.
The Reunion, and Los Angeles Again
Picard has arrived, and he sees Raffi and Elnor reporting to security. Security’s giving them the business. Who do you think you are, why do you want this, who’s giving you the authority? And Picard says I have, and he walks out all big and bad and blustery and takes charge. Come with me. And they’re like, is that you? And he’s like, yeah.
It’s a really good reunion. Eventually they meet up with the president, and Seven says we have to figure this whole thing out, the Queen’s downstairs, and she’s ultimately what we’re going to need. Rios is there as well. He’s arrived at Earth and he’s in orbit.
They go down, and that’s where the Borg Queen talks to them and establishes that she knows exactly where the problem is. The problem takes place in 2024, in Los Angeles. Why? Because everything in Star Trek takes place in Los Angeles.
They confront one another, and Picard’s asking, well, are you going to help us or not? They decide that’s going to be the only opportunity. So they try to transport out, only to find there are inhibitors keeping them there.
That’s when Annika’s husband shows up. The first husband, I guess, I don’t know what you’re going to call him. What’s going on here, this and that. And then you get Alison Pill, who plays Agnes, doing the greatest rundown since Michael Peña in the Ant-Man movie. She puts all the disconnected pieces of the stories they’ve all been telling together, brilliantly, and with as much idiosyncratic nuance as you can. I could watch her rattle off that story a dozen times. It’s brilliant and I’m absolutely here for it.
Eradication Day
After that, the ceremony’s happening. It’s not far-fetched to believe we could see something like this, in terms of it being a spectacle. It almost reminds me of the trial that Q had. It’s very reminiscent of that, and if there are story beats in common, I feel like they must have borrowed them. It’s literally just people jeering at, what do you call it, when someone’s killed. I don’t want to say assassination, because it’s not an assassination. When someone is being executed.
Picard has to play the role. And golly, between the color schemes and everything else, production design is keying in on a very fascist dystopia type look.
Sure enough, Jeri Ryan as the president gives her speech, the one we saw her planning earlier in the episode. They bring up the Borg Queen, and Picard has to flourish. Basically they’re all stalling while Agnes gets the comm badges working.
Raffi shows up with Elnor down at security, and they have to figure things out. She brings the shield down, and then it’s on Elnor to take them out. So Elnor has to fight, and he takes them out pretty handily. Just as things are about to get really bad, they get the transporter working, and poof, everyone is transported up.
That’s when Agnes is plugging the Borg Queen into the ship and they’re about to leave. And then all of a sudden there’s a presidential countermand, because apparently the first man was also the vice president. Must have been, because now he’s the president. He shows up, and he’s asking what they’re going to say when I take your head, General Picard. Or Jean-Luc Picard, traitor, found helping the Borg.
It’s good. I see where they’re going. And of course, that’s the cliffhanger.
A Q Story, Fully Realized
We’re getting a Q story that’s going to be fully realized. I’ve read a bunch of the Peter David Q novels and some stuff like that in the past, and this really is a brilliant take and a wonderful look at Q. They’ve intimated several things, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how these plot threads come together.
As an episode, it has a lot of moving parts. I really enjoyed it. There are a few, I don’t want to say plot holes, but overall I liked the episode. I liked what it was doing, and I think it’s establishing some things. So here’s hoping those things are going to be paying off. We’ll see where that goes next episode.
The Verdict
Star Trek: Picard Season 2 Episode 2, Penance, is an 8.5 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index. That’s right, eight and a half out of ten.
I didn’t like it as much as the premiere episode, but I did like it a lot, and I really feel like they’re setting the stage for some things. I look forward to seeing some of the other players and the other characters. I know Brent Spiner’s supposed to be back as another Soong of some sort in the past. We’ll eventually get Isa Briones, who plays Soji. I’m very much liking the cast and the crew.
And I did just see on social media where Jeri Ryan said they wrapped on season three. So I’m like, oh my goodness, the finale of the entire thing, because it’s only going to be three seasons long. But God bless them, they’re doing wonderful work.
I’d love to know your take on Penance. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
