This episode feels so sincerely Star Trek, it’s kind of ridiculous.
It’s Thursday morning, and that means Commodore on deck. I’ve got the engineering gold on in honor of one of my favorite characters, who joined the show today, and I’m not going to wait on it. Picard and the skeleton crew of the USS Titan are on the run. They’ve got to break into Starfleet’s most top secret facility to expose a plot that could destroy the Federation, and Picard has to turn to the only soul in the galaxy who can help, an old friend. We’re talking about Commodore Geordi La Forge.
Jack’s Diagnosis, and Worf Back in the Fold
The episode starts with Vadic, and we already know Vadic’s a changeling. What we learn here is that Frontier Day is when this thing’s going to go down, and they have to find the ship. They have to find Jack. Jack is apparently very pivotal to whatever these offshoot changelings have planned for Frontier Day.
Then you cut to Beverly talking to Jean-Luc, and you find out Jack is suffering from Irumodic Syndrome. It isn’t that difficult a diagnosis to understand, because that’s what Picard had for years and years and years. They even say that. He learned to live with it, and how best to cope with it. So Picard tries to talk to Jack a little bit about that. Jack’s drinking in the holodeck, and he’s basically, here I thought I was just crazy, but it turns out you’re as good at imparting genetics as you are wisdom. And you’re like, bro, come on.
Then Raffi and Worf show up. You do find out briefly that Starfleet’s trying to track the transponder signal, so the Titan keeps dropping fake transponder buoys, and all it’s really doing is keeping them off your tail by maybe a heartbeat.
It’s a wonderfully emotional scene. Raffi’s sort of uncomfortable. She sees Seven. Worf is greeted by everybody there, and it’s just a great moment to have Worf back in the fold as an integral part of the story itself, right there in the middle of the whole thing. It’s very exciting, and it all feels very Star Trek.
Raffi and Worf give a very detailed report of everything they’ve gone through thus far. “We have to make sure that Commander Ro Laren’s sacrifice was not in vain.” And you’re like, right on, bro. Absolutely. You absolutely have to.
The Daystrom Heist
So they have to run. They have to get to Daystrom, and it became a heist episode. They have to go in there to steal the manifest, getting past whatever crazy AI exists there. They’ve got the device, Picard says okay, we’re doing this thing, and they drop the team off real fast. They beam them down, Starfleet shows up, and the Titan has got to go. So Picard makes the decision: we’ll be back. They have an hour, roughly, to get what they need to get.
As Worf and Riker are getting ready to beam down, you find out that Worf is very pacifist now, and Riker’s just like, I don’t understand this world anymore, I don’t know what’s going on. It’s very funny, because Riker’s like, “We’re all going to die.” It’s so great.
This whole Daystrom visit is essentially a giant member berry farm, and I say that because they’ve got it all, buddy. I’ve got a list here.
As they hack in, the AI is a female voice: “Greetings. Please identify yourself. Please identify yourself. Please identify yourself.” Then it gets mean. Identify yourself now, or else. And there’s this glitchiness that happens, and when it glitches, briefly, you can hear Brent Spiner’s voice as the computer voice. I’m not going to say Data, because in a minute you’ll know why. But you hear Brent Spiner’s voice, for sure. Immediately I was like, oh, well, they must be using Data as the AI.
Then Moriarty shows up. “Such pathetic old warriors.” He’s still pontificating, and it’s wonderful. You also see a raven fly through, because it’s all holo things. When the Brent Spiner Data person thing saw Riker and them, it created Moriarty. My thought is that this Moriarty was generated from Data’s memories, which would make him somebody other than the Moriarty we all knew.
As they’re going through the place, you see a Genesis device. Seriously? You’re telling me Daystrom’s got all this dangerous crap? And genetically modified tribbles are not a thing my nightmares ever needed to see.
Where Are the Security Holograms?
It dawned on me while I was watching this. Hologram security should have been a thing. They should have had literally emergency security holograms. ESH, I guess. They should have had ESHs forever.
That’s a smart move, man. A computer-generated hologram enemy, and just go. Give them a little thing, maybe put a little shield around it or whatever. It would be awesome to see hologram security people. I think it’s a brilliant idea, and I don’t know why it has never been a thing.
Brent Spiner, All of Them at Once
Later on you find out what’s actually running that place. Altan Soong, who built Picard’s synthetic body, wanted one more thing as his final act. Apparently there’s a set amount of time that’s passed between Picard season 1 and all this, and I have no idea how many years. It can’t be that many, because Picard would be like 100 years old, and they actually list him at his real-life age in the show several times.
What Altan Soong tried to finish was an android with literally several different personalities in it. The thing Altan could never do before he finally passed was reconcile all those personalities. So you’re stuck with Brent Spiner as essentially Jane from Doom Patrol. Somebody with multiple personalities, all popping through.
I’m going to keep calling him Data. Sorry. There’s no combined name yet, so we’re just going to say Data for now.
And the conclusion they come to is that this android is the manifest. He’s the manifest. Period.
Commodore La Forge and the Fleet Museum
Meanwhile the rest of the crew shows up at the Starfleet Museum, and this is literally member berry town. The Fleet Museum is the old space dock, with rings where the other ships used to be, and they’ve parked a ton of them.
Sure enough, they get hailed by the Fleet Museum, and it’s Geordi. Commodore Geordi, no less. In a brand new uniform, which I have coming. I’ve ordered it. It’s super fun to see him on screen. He’s very serious, and you can tell there’s a gravity and a weight to him. He beams over with his other daughter, so the helmsman aboard the Titan gets her sister and her father, and the La Forges are brought together in this wonderful combination of events. It’s pretty awesome.
Then we get this wonderful slideshow where Seven is clicking through and showing Jack the ships. You see the New Jersey, which is essentially a Constitution class. Then you see, of course, the Constitution class Enterprise-A, and it’s awesome to see where its last parking spot was, if you will. I’m glad they’ve kept it in reserve.
And they show, briefly, Voyager. You hear Seven talk about her time on Voyager, and Jack’s like, that’s what you’re looking for now, you’re looking for another family. You realize she really did connect in an amazing way with the people aboard Voyager, and once that voyage was over, what’s left? It’s a very interesting moment to see.
Stealing From the Bounty
Then they find the Bounty. Heck yeah, man. The HMS Bounty, the Klingon ship with a cloaking device, which Jack and Sidney take an opportunity to go borrow. Very cool. They install it on the Titan.
By this point Geordi’s already had his conversation with Picard in the ready room, and he’s essentially laid it out. Look, I was young and reckless just like all of us, and I absolutely would have done this back then. But I have a family now. I’ve got to take care of these girls. I’ve got to make sure they’re safe. I never feared dying, because I never had anything to lose, and now I have everything to lose.
And Picard has to respect that decision. Until Sidney helps Jack steal the cloaking device.
Man, I’ll tell you what. At first Geordi blames Jean-Luc, like he had something to do with it, and Picard’s like, I so didn’t. Then even Geordi’s like, “Sidney.” It’s really good. I enjoyed just seeing them all together again.
The cloaking device isn’t installed correctly. It’s about to melt down, and Geordi walks in and he’s like, I know how to fix it. He’s going to help his daughter fix it, and then he looks over at Jack and says, “Stay away from my daughter.” I was like, oh, dude. I love it.
Why the New Data Is a Smart Move
Riker sacrifices himself to help get the others out. They manage to transport out, and they’ve got the cloaking device, by the way. And they brought Data with them.
Seeing Geordi see him. When he’s all plugged in, Geordi looks so emotional. I got emotional.
And I loved Picard season 1, okay? I was happy with Brent Spiner saying goodbye to the role of Data, and that’s it, and you’re never going to see it again. This was a brilliant move, for them to make this new conglomeration, which will only allow for a lot of fun. I think that’s how you keep someone like Brent Spiner engaged. You keep him excited about playing multiple roles and being the character actor that he is at his core. You redesign the character, reinvent the character, to be synthetic and ultimately show age, with a body like Picard’s that’s going to eventually age.
That’s smart. Very smart. Now you’ve played into our weakness as humans, and we can still have this character be a thing if we want him to, assuming he doesn’t die and everything doesn’t end by the end of this series. I’m excited to see more of that whole thing.
What They Stole
And then you find out what they stole. They stole the remains of one Jean-Luc Picard. They stole his body.
There’s something more nefarious about that than I think even I understand. I don’t think that’s how you end up with Jack or anything like that, but it could very well be. There’s speculation running wild.
And it all ends with Riker definitely being taken prisoner. You know how they’re going to get his compliance, because he’s standing on 30 years of loyalty and they have Deanna. Or do they? I don’t know. With changelings around, it’s hard to trust anybody anymore. We’ll see.
The Verdict
Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Episode 6, “The Bounty,” is a 9 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
I enjoyed the heck out of it. I thought they did all kinds of really great things, and this episode was firing on all thrusters for me.
I called it a member berry farm, and it’s funny, because by the end it felt less like member berries and more like a victory lap. Everything was showing things off, like, here’s Star Trek’s history. They were all saying it on the spoiler stuff all over the place: don’t look at any spoilers, this is the most Star Trek episode you’ll ever see. And they’re right. It is.
I’m loving everything this series is doing. It’s giving me all the emotional cues that I never knew I wanted. I enjoyed Picard season 1. Picard season 2 was fun, you know? But I am genuinely loving and absolutely adoring Picard season 3, and I feel like season 3 is kind of the show I thought I was going to get with the first season. That’s probably why they didn’t do that. They wanted to be a little subversive, and I’m down.
What’d you think of the episode? What’d you think of Geordi? And tell me why hologram security has never been a thing. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
