Wow. Picard season three, episode eight, Surrender. That’s it. This is everything I’ve wanted.
The episode starts with Vadic smoking on the bridge, because you know that’s what you do when you’ve captured a Federation ship. You take a minute, you light a stogie, and you sit there like, oh yeah, not too shabby, I did a good job.
The truth is she’s holding the bridge crew hostage until Jack comes up, and she puts a clock on it. Every ten minutes, she’s going to kill somebody.
Ten Minutes at a Time
Geordi immediately unplugs the Data and Lore golem, if you will, from the system, trying to make sure Lore can never take control again. The entire time, they’re rounding up crew all over the ship, and it sounds very much like the changeling soldiers are essentially killing everybody. It’s harsh. It’s a rough one, at least by what we’re seeing.
Jack is still seeing things, and now he can see through the eyes of other people. At one point you see him in the eyes of this one crew member, and you see what they’re doing, and then a changeling walks around the corner and shoots the person he’s in. That’s when he starts to let people know what’s going on, and he talks to Beverly and Picard. Meanwhile Vadic taunts the crew and summons Jack to the bridge.
Riker and Deanna, and Why They Parted
Then we cut to Deanna and Riker, and you find out a little more about what happened. After their son died, he was drowning in his despair, and Deanna used her Betazoid abilities to start numbing that pain. Once he noticed, and realized he was becoming a shell of himself, he got upset and offended. I see where he’s coming from. He says this was the last point of connection to his son. It’s rough, man, because she was trying to help and it just wasn’t quite working right.
It’s an interesting approach, because a lot of people are going to ask why they broke up, or why they didn’t. First off, they parted company for a bit so he could get his head right. And sure enough, they end up finding out they both hated living where they lived. Each one was living there because they thought the other one wanted to. It’s a good coming back together, and I’m down.
Deanna says the changelings came to her in the form of Riker, and he asks how convincing they were. “Good in bed. Bad with pizza.” And you’re just like, really? It’s you guys.
Seven and Shaw
On the bridge, Seven and Shaw have a quick heart to heart. Shaw basically tells her she should’ve blown the turbolift, and she says she’d make the same decision again. He tells her she’s a Starfleet officer, and he’s letting her know you have to make tough calls, and you’re not going to like all of them.
He calls her Commander Hansen, and she corrects him. My name is Seven of Nine. Get over it. Figure it out. I kind of feel like that was a good moment for both of them, to be honest. My love affair with Shaw is still intact.
The One Who Didn’t Make It
Jack finally tells Picard and his mother about his ability. Listen, I can see through people’s eyes. He goes into Lieutenant Mura on the bridge, and they try to input the master code, the one they use for the lockout, and of course Picard’s would be superior to everyone else’s. So this dude’s sitting there, unconsciously doing this thing with his hands and activating stuff, and Vadic catches it. She stops him. “Are you in there, Jack?”
She makes him and another officer kneel, and then she kills Lieutenant T’Veen, the Vulcan science officer. I was shocked by that. I knew somebody was going to go. I didn’t realize how much I liked T’Veen.
Worf Shows Up
Back with Deanna and Riker, they talk a little more about the consequence of losing their son. A changeling shows up, Riker’s talking trash, and all of a sudden, bam, Worf’s weapon stabs right through this guy.
So the implication is that this one is humanoid. I don’t know what all the rules are when it comes to this particular breed of changeling. My understanding is they’re all changelings on Vadic’s ship. I could be wrong, and if you understand it differently, let me know if I missed that.
Worf rescues them, obviously, and they all hug, and Worf’s miserable about it. You also get to see that they’re in a cloaked shuttle. Apparently they put the cloaking device on the shuttle, which answers the question from last week of why they didn’t cloak the ship. Hopefully my good Buffer Timers got that, because it was a point of question on the show last week. As soon as schedules line up again for me, I’ll absolutely be back on Buffer Time, so check out that podcast. I’m a huge fan of it, and I love each and every person on that panel.
Data Gives It All Away
Beverly and Jean-Luc have a plan, but the plan requires Data. So they send Jack up as the distraction while they go down, and Geordi has to plug Data back in. They need him because he can do trillions of calculations at a time, faster than anybody else. It’s the same reason you always need Data. He’s quick on his feet, you know what I’m saying?
Then we get this really interesting representation of what’s happening inside Data’s head. I like it. It gave Brent Spiner the ability to play off himself, which is great. Lore is vastly more powerful, and he begins to consume the Data code as soon as they put the partition down.
Data starts pulling things out of his memories. One is the little hologram of Tasha Yar he used to keep in that polygonal basin thing. There’s the Sherlock Holmes pipe, and some other stuff. Every time, Lore takes it and throws it in the air and it becomes part of him, little by little, more and more. Eventually it gets to Spot.
Data is slowly being consumed, and it looks like surrender. As soon as he hands Lore the last memory, which is Spot, Data disappears.
Or does he? I mean, come on.
Data gave him all those memories because each and every one of them makes up who he is. Lore is all red lights and aggression, and Data’s saying, here, you can have my memories, because once I pass them to you, they’re effectively going to make you me. And that’s what happens. They’re one. Lore is officially gone, because Data rolled himself into Lore. He didn’t try to pull Lore in. He let Lore take him.
That was interesting, and I liked it. I see where they’re going. It was a nice little reversal, and you sort of knew he was going to come out the other side. When he wakes up, sure enough, he’s there, and he starts talking through the ship as its positronic security system.
Vadic Is Now Ice Chips
On the bridge, Jack shows up and tells Vadic to send everybody else out. He’s holding this thing, and it’s funny, it looks like a thermal detonator from Star Wars. A little round ball with a light that glows, and he’s holding it out like it’s a bomb. He figures he’s valuable, so if he kills himself, her plans are for nothing. Vadic is kind of having fun with it, talking to him about what’s going on in his head.
They send everybody else into the conference room. Seven stays behind, and Shaw’s like, wait, what are you doing?
Then Jack activates the thing, and it turns out to be a shield. Data blows the emergency evacuation hatch, which is the front viewscreen, and out goes Vadic. We’ve got two episodes left, with the penultimate one next week, so I believe Vadic is now ice chips.
Seven opens the bridge back up and lets everyone come out. She says, “Captain Shaw, I give you your ship back.” Shaw tells her to do the honors, and sure enough, they fire on the Shrike and blow it up. It’s pretty great.
The Conference Table
Then you get a wonderful moment that was so needed. You see everybody around the conference table, and it’s the moment we’ve seen since the original promos. It brought a tear. My fan joy heart was melted and made very, very happy that day.
The Verdict
Star Trek: Picard season three, episode eight, Surrender, was excellent for me. It fired on a lot of different thrusters. I’m still waiting for some blow my socks off things, but this came close, man. Super close. I loved every minute of it.
This Is My Era
I like where they’re going, and the sooner we get a Star Trek Legacy thing, the better. I would’ve enjoyed an announcement yesterday, yesterday of course being First Contact Day. Happy belated First Contact Day.
I realize more and more that this is my era of Star Trek. This is the era where I feel the most at home. I love Discovery, and I’m glad they’re in the far future. I’m looking forward to Starfleet Academy, another show that’s been mentioned, which I think is going to be great, and it’s supposed to be live action. I’m looking forward to Strange New Worlds coming in June, and Lower Decks, and all the other shows coming back for more seasons.
But I really want to see Star Trek Legacy, or something along those lines. Terry Matalas said that if he had his druthers, that’s the show he’d want to pitch. I’m all about it.
I know some people have issues with some things. I’m in. I’m enjoying the storytelling. It’s got all the moving parts I need from Star Trek, and hopefully it does for you too.
Are you enjoying the series and what they’re doing with it? And if you read the changeling rules differently than I did, tell me what I missed. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
