I’ve been worried about where they were gonna take this show and how they were gonna land this particular bird. And it was rough. There were some rough parts. But they landed it well, and I’m actually very excited and satisfied with the direction it’s going in. I really can’t wait to see what comes next.
So here we are, friends, at the end of a journey that’s taken us through the entirety of season two of Star Trek: Picard. Season two, episode 10, “Farewell.” I’ve enjoyed the ride. There’ve been some bumpy patches, but at the end of the day the show has been better than not, and I’m here for a lot of what they did. I tout the successes.
Before we get into the episode, there’s something I think a lot of people misunderstand. I’m very excited for the next season. But I was happy with All Good Things. I love the story they told. I read someone online recently, I think it was Akiva Goldsman in fact, saying he was going to give them the send-off they deserve. And I’m like, All Good Things was the send-off they deserved. All Good Things is a perfect show in my opinion, and it’s the perfect ending to Star Trek. Again, I love what they’re doing. I’m here. I love the storytelling and I’m very engaged.
One Renée Lives, One Renée Dies
You go into this episode with an awful lot of strings left untied, and we start literally at the chateau. Everyone’s talking, trying to figure out their next steps, and they ask what Q meant when he said there have to be two Renées, one who lives and one who dies. Picard looks over at Tallinn a little sideways, like, what are you thinking, and Tallinn’s like, later, Picard. They clearly both know what’s going on.
Tallinn is going to the launch. They’re going to break quarantine the day of the launch and she’s going to make sure. Just as she activates her transporter, Picard steps into the transport cloud and goes with her. We cut to the launch area, and Picard’s like, no, you can’t do this, and she says, whoa, I can’t do this? She proceeds to school him on the fact that he needs to stop trying to save everyone’s life and stop putting the responsibility on himself. They all get to make the choices they have to make.
I like where she’s going with it. I appreciate the sentiment. And I think to myself, well, clearly it’s because he’s Picard, man. The guy’s been in charge of everyone’s life for a while now.
Then we cut to Soong’s place, where Raffi, Seven and Rios have transported in using the smoke transporter. They think they’re gonna catch him, but nope, Picard confirms Soong is at the Europa launch. While they’re investigating his lab they hear a voice giving a countdown to a drone launch. They think it’s fabricated. Then they open up a secret panel and there they are, some deadly looking drones. Actually, they’re kind of silly looking, but it’s Star Trek, and these kinds of things are very Star Trek: The Next Generation of them. Somehow Soong had the aesthetic to create orange emergency lighting, because why not, it looks dope. It’s like me. Why do I suddenly have blue lighting in the background, like that’s how I live my normal life in this room?
Anyway, the drones are very cool and they’re wired to go, so Raffi has to work really hard to help prevent it.
Meanwhile Tallinn has assumed the role of somebody on the Europa mission, put on the outfit, and she’s on her way. Soong has showed up too, and he’s just being brusque with his attendant, the lady who works for NASA, who’s very thankful for his help. He wants five minutes. He’s just a jerk, man, I tell you what.
Tallinn ends up going into where Renée’s at, and Renée realizes, hey, you’re not the person I thought you were gonna be. Tallinn tells her who she is. Remember this time in your life? Remember that time in your life? That was me. You’ve always said you had a guardian angel, but the truth is that was me, somebody who really loves and cares for you and wanted to make sure you made it. I want to see you make it into space.
Back at Soong’s place the drones start going off, and they’re designed to stagger. Raffi’s trying to give Rios at least limited control of one, if not all of them, and right at the very end of the countdown, of course, Rios gets control of one. Now it’s an all out run, jumping back and forth between these two scenes, to make sure nothing happens to the people at the other end.
We see Renée burst out, and she’s like, oh my goodness, I can’t believe it, this crazy woman says she’s my guardian angel, I don’t know what’s going on. And Soong’s like, oh, come this way, we’ll see what’s going on. He shakes hands with her, and then she starts to realize she’s been poisoned. He has a neurotoxin on his hand. He peels it away. So she’s going to die. Or is she?
Rios manages to take that one drone and just take out all the others. Then we cut to Picard, and Renée shows up where he’s at, and knows him, and he catches her and they sit down. This is when I started to suspect. It was a bit telegraphed. I should have known, I should have thought about it, but I forgot about it. You watch as Renée and Picard watch the shuttle go up, and then she does the thing, and it’s a hologram, and it’s Tallinn. Tallinn sacrificed herself for Renée.
One Renée must live. One Renée must die.
A File Folder in Soong’s Desk
Then we get a very upset Soong, and this sets up something that’s gonna be super controversial. He sees Renée on the TV, he throws his stuff, he’s just very mad. And then he catches someone in his computer. Sure enough, it’s Kore. I think she’s at a library, actually, using a virtual headset, and she’s hacked into his system and proceeds to delete all of his research. She says she did it for her sisters.
Soong is very unhappy. He reaches into his desk and pulls out a file folder, and the name on the file folder is Project Khan.
Dun dun dun.
I mean, okay. I’m fine. Sometimes I feel like with turns like this the writers are kind of making the Star Trek universe smaller than it needs to be. I don’t know that every single person has to be interconnected with every single event. But overall I’m like, okay, whatever, that’s fine.
I Knew He Was Going to Show Up
We then cut to Kore, and Kore gets a message. Curious what’s next? Watch and observe. A fun choice of phrases, by the way. And then an address.
Oh God. My wife and I had been talking, and I had been theory crafting. I need to start doing that stuff here on the channel, because then it becomes a sharing thing. When the know-it-alls sit around, guess what, we still know it all. And the conversation we’d had was about who should show up.
Wesley Crusher. That’s right. And he says he’s a Traveler.
Now, I’ll be fair about my theory crafting. My wife goes, how are they gonna get back? There’s no ship. And I was like, because sci-fi. Then I said, well, what if. Remember, I said last week I’m doing a watch through of The Next Generation, and she watched the Traveler episode with me. So I explained it, and we’re like, what if he shows up and he’s the one who takes them back to the future? It was corny, and that’s not what happens. But the fact that I had a feeling he was going to show up does make me very happy.
He invites Kore into the Travelers, who are apparently guardians now, and come to find out the Travelers are the ones who send out the Supervisors. How much you want to bet Wesley knew about Tallinn? I try to make this stuff make sense in my head, because as a writer I would be like, this is my explanation. Then they transport away, and the transport is very indicative of futuristic transporting.
Even Gods Have Favorites
Raffi and Seven have a moment, because everyone’s concerned they’re probably gonna have to stay here. And that’s when Picard is walking around the house and has his moment by the door. He finds the little loose brick and he has the skeleton key. He’s in the past, remember. If he was going to make a change to the timeline, this is where it would happen. Instead he pulls the brick out, puts the key in, puts the brick back, and makes sure it’s nice and perfect.
Then he hears a voice. The voice is telling him, hey, it’s all right, you made the choice, you know who you’re going to be. And he finds Q in the solarium.
I hit record on my camera while I watched this scene, and it’s in the video above. You ask me why it matters? It matters to me. Even gods have favorites.
I’m okay with this. People want to sit here and fight and act like they know everything about every character in the world. I’m really okay with this.
Q explains that all of this was so Picard wouldn’t die alone. He tells him, I’m dying alone, don’t do that. Picard’s like, what is this all about, and Q looks him in the eye and says, I care about you.
And it makes total sense. Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the Enterprise were the only mortals, the only lower creatures, to ever challenge him. To challenge his ruling of everything and his being able to do whatever he wanted, and also to challenge him on his thinking, challenge him on his games, call him out on the carpet, hold him to a moral standard. To genuinely say, anybody with this much power and magnitude, you have a responsibility. I think Picard made Q a better man, if you will. So who else would you go to at the end but your best friend? It’s so crazy to think about. Picard’s his friend.
So Q tells him, get everybody together, I’ll send you guys home. They meet, and Q asks if everybody’s ready to go, and Rios decides to stay. Rios says, hey, listen, I’m home, I’m good. Picard realizes it and tells him, you go ahead and do your thing.
Then Q says they’re ready to go, and that he’s going too, and Picard tells him, you’re not going alone. That’s what this has all been about. And then he hugs him.
I don’t care how corny it is. If you don’t feel something watching this, you’re a monster. I don’t care. Because this moment is about the history we enjoyed in The Next Generation, and everything these two have done and experienced together, a lot more than it’s about Star Trek: Picard season one or two. Q has seen the infinite, but he has never met anyone who was his match, anyone who challenged him the way Picard did. That is what he valued.
How are we doing? Are we challenging one another? I don’t know where you stand politically, and I don’t care. But in today’s culture we don’t challenge each other enough, and that’s what this is about. This is about big, giant, oligarchy-sized power being challenged, and realizing that the challenge makes us better. All of us. Challenge your thinking. That’s what this Star Trek is telling us. Every one tells its own story.
I loved this. This moment was so pivotal.
Know-It-All Points to the Comments
Q says, well, if Rios is staying, then hey, I’ve got a little more energy. I’ve got a little gift for you. He snaps his fingers, we cut to white, and we’re back. The ship is there, Picard is there, he immediately cancels the red alert, and then there’s Agnes.
Dude. All the Know-It-All points to whoever called it. There’s like a half dozen people in the comments over the last 10 episodes who literally voted and said it’s going to be Jurati, it’s going to be Jurati. Even when I waffled and thought it was going to be Seven for a minute. It was Jurati, bro. I loved it. That was so exciting for me.
He cancels the detonation, and she shows him this thing. Now this is where the storytelling gets choppy for me, because it felt very convenient. We had no setup for it. We had the original thing with the Borg and whatnot, but we had nothing that told us there was a galactic size event getting ready to happen. This feels manufactured. I didn’t like this piece. It doesn’t change anything, and I think what they’re doing in the episode is still really good, but this piece felt very contrived for what they’re doing.
Jurati explains that’s what she’s here to help with. She’s going to take over the fleet, and somebody asks who knows all of this best. The helmsman’s like, where’s Captain Rios? And Picard’s like, stand your ground, helm, that’s an order. Remember, he’s still got rank, man. At which point Picard turns to the only other person with the most experience with the Borg. He gives Seven a field commission to captain and gives her command of the Stargazer.
Bro, if I don’t see Seven in a Starfleet uniform next season, I hate all of you. Literally. After we found out that she should have been in Starfleet, and Janeway, remember, we talked about it last week. Setup and payoff. I’m down. I love it.
So Seven’s in charge of the fleet with Picard overseeing, and the fleet shows up at this event and they have to harmonize their shields. That’s really what Jurati was doing. The Excelsior is starting to kind of waffle, and Raffi’s telling them what they’ve got to do, and they come in, and Elnor is back. That was the gift. Q promised he was going to use his last bit of energy for it, and he brought Elnor back.
Sure enough, this thing shoots a blast at the shields and they have to hold their ground. You can see it across the galaxy. They show you planet after planet where the night sky has lit up from this, some bigger, some smaller. And then the singularity becomes a controlled transwarp conduit, and we don’t know to where.
So the new Borg, the Jurati Borg, have requested provisional entry into the Federation for the purposes of defending this point. They’re the guardians at the gate. I’m okay with this. None of it alters or changes anything, and in fact it’s exciting moving forward. New stuff. It’s wonderful.
Ten Forward, and a Second Chance
Then we cut to Ten Forward, the bar, the one that isn’t on the Enterprise. Guinan and Picard have a conversation, and she’s like, yeah, I couldn’t really tell you too much, but thank you for helping me originally. So older Guinan did remember that encounter. Fair enough.
She says she’s surprised, he’s not being super observant, and she points to a picture on the wall. It’s Rios and Teresa. She tells him the story of what happened, how he went out like a boss. Picard offers up a toast. It’s a good moment, man. It’s a good moment.
Then he says he has to go, and he goes home, and there are bags packed at the door. He walks into the solarium, which has been restored, and he says there are times you want to repeat, and he asks Laris, can you get a second chance?
For both of them, being the ages they are, God bless them. I’m invested. I love it. It really is beautiful. You see her looking very doe-eyed at him, like, yeah, absolutely, man, because that’s what you do when you’re in love. And you see them through the glass, and they pull back.
The Verdict
Star Trek: Picard Season 2, Episode 10, “Farewell,” is a 7 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
It wasn’t a great episode, but it was an excellent finale to the series. Those two things reconcile in the season number. The season total, overall, for me is an eight and a half out of ten. I thought it was a strong entry in the Star Trek universe. I’m down, man. Please, just give me more.
I know next season we’re gonna get the entire Next Generation crew. When I saw the trailer announcing it, and you hear the whole thing, and you hear Picard’s voice and all that, I fell in love with that season. It’s going to be everybody. I can’t even imagine what the story is going to be, but I am so intensely here for it.
Thank you. Thank you, guys, for giving me a continuation to my story. I’m okay if it ends somewhere in this area. I’m okay with that. But at the same time, this has been really exciting, living here.
No new Picard next week, but Trek Talk Tuesdays is where I want to do a full deep dive into what we saw this week, Strange New Worlds and the Picard finale and what’s coming up, so we can all be excited together for the build up. My review of the Strange New Worlds premiere is up, and I need to drop Discovery season reviews, season one through the current season four, and I’ll do that through Trek Talk Tuesdays as well.
Let me know what you thought of the episode. Haters gonna hate, but at least be polite and let the discussion happen. Every side gets a voice and I’m totally down for hearing it, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Star Trek, it’s that the future is about debate and discussion and coming together over ideas. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
