Deron Generally
Deron GenerallyStar Trek Picard
CBS All Access
Season One Episode Eight
Broken Pieces
Everyone has to confront their feelings about Soji as Rios recalls his tragic past and Narissa faces a complication in her mission.
On a hidden planet, a group of Romulans including Commodore Oh and Narissa have gathered to receive a vision. A vision of destruction at the hands of synthetic life forms. This vision sets a new generation of Zhat Vash on their quest to destroy synthetic life and spearheading this latest mission is Narissa. In the first few minutes of the episode, we see the central conflict of the series as well as confirmation of who was behind the attack on Utopia Planitia.
Soji and Picard have beamed on board Rios’ ship and the Captain immediately has a reaction to seeing the young woman. A reaction that will send the Captain into exile and have his holographic proxies take over the ship’s functions. It will take Raffi integrating the memories of the holograms to find a way to connect with the Captain. This entire storyline had the weakest plot. Rios having a connection to Soji and how that connection is directly related to the loss of his Captain was too convenient to be believable and the unnecessary time it took dragging that story out of him was wasted.
The ‘B’ story (which should have been the main story) in this episode consists of Elnor trying to elude the Romulans in pursuit of him on the Borg cube and his rescue by Seven of Nine. What makes this part of the story so interesting is the fact that Seven must compromise everything that she has become in order to save the XB’s (Ex-Borg) on the cube from Narissa’s summary executions. There are some great character moments throughout and Seven’s presence cannot be denied.
Agnes Jurati’s confrontation with her own visions and the mind meld she received from Commodore Oh was handled well and Allison Pill acts the hell out of those moments in this episode. Her interactions with Soji are interesting and speak to the scientist the character is as she is conflicted with by the visions she’s seen. Those visions are one of the main thrusts of this episode and the crew, including Picard, are forced to deal with the reality of the Admonition and what it could mean for synthetic life going forward.
The episode is definitely designed to fill in the blanks before it gets to the bigger story and those parts work, but the episode started some intense storylines that deserved more screen time. Seven of Nine’s story deserved more and Raffi’s realization needed to be more dramatic considering everything her knowledge has cost the character up to this point.
Star Trek Picard S01XE08
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