Star Trek: Picard Gets Lost in Its Hero’s Head

The previous few episodes of Star Trek: Picard have been a bit chaotic, however in a largely enjoyable approach—a bit sprint of the absurd to make the unusual concepts it was unexpectedly organising within the background go down easily, so you might have a little bit of a chuckle when that setup got here crashing down in equally absurd vogue. This week, nevertheless, bought right into a a lot messier type of chaos.

“Monsters” picks up, actually and proverbially, inside Jean-Luc’s head, after his dance with the vehicular satan within the pale moonlight final week noticed him go right into a Character Mandated Trauma Process Coma (tm, and many others.). As Tallinn prepares to take a deep dive into Picard’s mind—sadly not even in a enjoyable “Spock’s Brain” type of approach—it seems that Jean-Luc’s fairly good at doing that himself, conjuring up a pretend, weirdly aggressive Starfleet therapist (Battlestar Galactica’s James Callis!) to have a really disastrous session with.

It’s right here the place issues quickly get messy. There’s a metaphor inside a metaphor because the Starfleet remedy session dissolves right into a fantasized reminiscence world of Chateau Picard conjured by Picard on the behest of his therapist—with the kid Jean-Luc and his mom extrapolated right into a younger prince and queen, escaping a shadowy monster—that we preserve swapping between. On prime of that, Callis’ therapist turns into a quick window for Picard to revert again to the kind it tried in season one of many present: an interrogation of Picard’s picture as this idealized chief of males, this Starfleet legend.

Here’s the factor although. Picard season one had an total season of tv to try this, and it nonetheless half-assed it to the purpose of giving up by the tip, wholeheartedly embracing that idealized model of its title character. And not that there’s something improper with that, both—to this point season two has largely been stronger as a result of it simply went with that movement, and took its large rattling hero off on a large rattling journey. “Monsters” provides itself about half an hour to do a condensed model of all that critique, which largely boils right down to Callis’ therapist poking at Picard that he likes to push individuals away from him, that he’s an uncaring chief, or that he’s introduced into his personal hype, just for Picard to in flip yell “NUH UH!!!” again. And, very similar to season one, it doesn’t go anyplace as we meander between the 2 imaginative and prescient worlds inside Picard’s thoughts, a combined metaphor that solely will get extra combined when Tallinn will get concerned, tasking herself with guiding the youthful Picard by means of processing his trauma and hopefully waking up OK on the opposite aspect.

In the tip, that’s what he does, and that transient critique of his persona is essentially left behind alongside the way in which, buried below one factor we already know, alluded to earlier on within the season—Picard is upset on the remedy of his mom by his father—and one factor that we didn’t: that his father (who seems was certainly Callis’ character, the therapist a stand-in for Jean-Luc’s picture of his father as an interrogative, standoffish determine) was struggling to guard his son and his spouse from her traumatic psychological well being points. And… that’s it? There’s a tiny little second the place Tallinn tells younger Picard that sooner or later he’ll use this trauma to assist others, however that’s all you get. Picard wakes up the second this info is revealed, and promptly dusts himself off to get on with searching down Q, deciding he’s spent fairly sufficient time exploring his personal interiority—as soon as once more, about half-hour of TV—and now it’s the flip of probably the most mysterious man within the Continuum to take action.

It feels very wasted, even when if the arrange for a doubtlessly surprisingly emotional “offensive,” as Jean-Luc places it to Tallinn, is itself fascinating. Especially so, contemplating that the opposite quarter-hour of “Monsters” after this are largely devoted to as soon as once more splintering staff Picard up into disparate teams. With Renée seemingly wonderful in quarantine—however with the specter of Soong and Q at all times current—Picard goes off to try to draw the all-powerful being out of hiding by teaming again up with younger Guinan (the returning Ito Aghayere). Only, oh no, she’s being raided (?) by the FBI (??) as a result of they’ve footage of Picard beaming down outdoors her bar the opposite day (???) and in some way knew he’d be there (????)!

Only, oh no-er! Seven and Agnes return to La Sirena and discover footage of a Borg-Queen-possessed Jurati assimilating the ship’s safety techniques, after which spend a couple of minutes taking a look at separate safety footage outdoors a bar in LA of her smashing a window, which Seven surmises is the Queen releasing extra endorphins to get even extra management out of Jurati! Only, oh no-est! Rios is getting even flirtier with Dr. Teresa and, within the house of about 30 seconds to assist stabilize Picard throughout his coma, he decides to disclose that he’s not of her timeline, promptly ignoring all of the warnings about doing so by simply beaming Teresa and her child again to the ship!

Okay possibly “the Borg Queen is trying to start a new empire in 2024 LA” was increased on the oh no record than that one, nevertheless it was nonetheless very foolish, and it’s all of the setup we get for these bigger arcs that must be resolved within the subsequent three episodes, as a result of a lot of “Monsters” was wasted meandering round a half-hearted “deep” dive into Picard’s psyche to prepared us for his Q confrontation. If the previous few weeks of Picard have been the great type of chaos that saved you in your toes questioning what was going to occur subsequent, “Monsters” was the inverse—and with out the respiration room it beforehand had because the remaining episode rely dwindles, the present doesn’t have practically as a lot time because it must take care of all its myriad plot threads once more. Hopefully with this half-hearted self-reflection out of the way in which, it will probably regain a little bit of the main focus its first half had going ahead into the endgame… and a little bit of that chaotic enjoyable whereas it’s at it, too.

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