Last week’s Star Trek: Picard season two premiere barreled alongside into a brand new tone, a brand new really feel, and a stage of confidence in what it needs from its titular hero in a means the primary season hardly ever didn’t muster. That confidence continues totally in its second episode, which simply asks essentially the most Star Trek of all questions: what if every part was a bit extra fascist?

Testing Star Trek heroes by thrusting them into totalitarian worlds is under no circumstances a brand new idea—in spite of everything, it’s what Q did all the best way again in “Encounter at Farpoint.” So it’s no shock that it occurs once more in “Penance,” with Q again torturing Jean-Luc like he all the time does. His continuation of the grand trial to check humanity’s price is to thrust Picard and all his pals into an alternate timeline: one the place the good Jean-Luc Picard is a brutal warlord common, and the grand Federation is now a totalitarian human supremacist society generally known as the Confederacy. But, for all of the familiarity of this alt-world premise that Picard mines for all it’s price, there’s one thing completely different right here that provides season two an instantaneous momentum that’s, to date, giving it a way more explosive vitality than it ever did in its debut season.

From the opening tit-for-tat between Q and Picard—each brimming with anger, lashing out much less as a sport between God and Man and extra as two embittered pals (frenemies?) making an attempt to poke at secrets and techniques simply beneath the floor—to our sluggish re-introduction to the remainder of group La Sirena via their supposed roles on this totalitarian world, there’s a disgust and rigidity all through “Penance” that makes the episode extremely compelling to look at unfold. As we re-meet Raffi (who is actually Starfleet chief of police on this actuality it appears, searching down Romulan dissidents just like the obvious Elnor), Seven (upgraded to President Annika Hansen of the Confederacy, and seemingly not Borg in any respect), Rios (a serious Commander within the Confederacy’s forces, laying waste to Vulcan), and Jurati (a prime scientist experimenting on a very intriguing sufferer of the Confederacy’s interstellar genocides that we’ll get to later), there’s this collective and fast revulsion to the circumstances all of them discover themselves in. It’s all very “Mirror, Mirror,” as every has to grapple with shouldering their misery at being a part of such a horrible world whereas additionally being convincing sufficient to not let slip that they’re probably not half of that world, giving “Penance” a straightforward thrust to lean on as every member of the group has to sneak round in broad daylight, looking for a solution to reunite and get out of this nightmare situation Q has created. It’s easy, traditional Star Trek, and Picard runs with that simplicity to only inform a enjoyable journey plot.

But there’s nonetheless metaphorical meat on the bones, even whether it is principally consigned to that opening sequence between Q and Picard. After season one largely tackled Jean-Luc being disillusioned together with his place within the galaxy, seeing him bristle with fury and indignance put up towards the return of Q is a second that Patrick Stewart clearly relishes—there isn’t a understanding eye roll right here, an “Oh, Q at it again,” breeziness. Stewart and de Lancie circle one another with venomous chew, as Q needles Picard with the horrors of a actuality that Q hasn’t whisked up together with his huge energy, however led to by a singular tweak in time that makes “General” Picard not some comically twisted mirror, however a chance that Jean-Luc needed to keep away from—and on this timeline, didn’t achieve this. This isn’t a lesson for Q to haughtily mock Picard with, however, because the episode is titled, a biting alternative for the latter to hunt forgiveness for, to face a worry that he is aware of is deep down inside him. What the worry precisely is stays a thriller for Picard to discover going ahead, however it’s clear within the man’s response to Q’s antics that it’s one thing that Picard is each livid and frightened to cope with.

That worry, as soon as Picard is reunited with the remainder of his pals on the very coronary heart of the Confederacy’s regime—getting ready for an “Eradication Day” celebration that marks the Confederacy’s rule by exterminating imprisoned aliens—pushes him to take one hell of a threat in an try to proper what Q has wronged. It’s revealed that Dr. Jurati’s “secret project” on this actuality has been getting ready none aside from the Borg Queen (performed by Annie Wersching with a horrifying glee) for a particular Eradication Day execution, the final surviving member of the collective. Picard chooses to not have interaction in an equally Star Trek concept of weighing the ethical steadiness of letting somebody as evil because the Queen be executed by this brutal regime or not—the problem right here is much less moral, and extra private. Picard, so thrown by Q’s actions, sidesteps all that fully to easily ask his group how the hell they rescue the Borg Queen, and use her to trace down the change in time and save the day.

The breeziness of that call speaks not simply to Picard’s newfound momentum, however the worry Jean-Luc feels about confronting this deep remorse Q has tried to power to the floor. The Borg Queen has petrified Picard ever since he was remodeled into Locutus, and even now, together with his upgraded physique severing any lingering hyperlink to her name, the considered having to work along with her as an alternative of recoil in her presence is sort of sufficient to present him pause. But determined instances name for determined measures—and as Picard and his allies outdated and new go on the run for a rush again to 2024 (a time that’s very necessary to Star Trek lore), it’s going to be fascinating to see simply how Picard maintains this momentum. After all, even the good Jean-Luc Picard has to cease working in some unspecified time in the future, if solely to confront simply what it’s Q needs out of him.

Wondering the place our RSS feed went? You can choose the brand new up one right here.