One of the very first things we see in this episode is what I like to call, “the hallway.” It's an interior corridor of a Starfleet ship, and it will be used over and over and over again in Season 3. It will be shot from different angles, sometimes it will have boxes or other props in it, other times it will be empty, but it will always be the same hallway, and now you won't be able to un-see it, either.

And oh look, Rios and Jurati have broken up. Well, that was short-lived. Still, Jurati gets to come along for the ride because nothing says “spatial anomaly expert” like “cyberneticist”? We get a brief scene to remind us that Soji still exists, but that will be the last we see of her this season. Don't worry, though, there will be a brand-new character later who looks suspiciously just like her!

There's a lot happening in this first episode. After establishing what our characters have been up to for the last year and a half, Picard gives a speech to Starfleet cadets in a large auditorium, he visits our old friend Guinan, he has some sort of flashback to his childhood with his mother, the Borg are here causing trouble, and of course there's Q. Wow! Knowing that Q was going to appear this season, I think a lot of people assumed that he would just snap his fingers to look older as a favor to Picard, and that's precisely what he did. Since Q is ageless, this was a quick and easy way to hang a lampshade as an explanation for why Q appears to have aged, since obviously the actor has aged in the almost 30 years since his last appearance as Q. There is only a moment where he appears as his original self, with heavy CGI manipulation to de-age him. To keep costs to a minimum, this lasts only a few seconds while Q remains in one position without a lot of movement, so we only see him from the one straight-on angle. A snap of the fingers later, and John de Lancie can continue to play the character without further need for de-aging techniques. I think the fans accepted it willingly.

Guinan's excuse for aging is a little shakier. Her species lives for many centuries, and we know that she looked pretty much the same at least from 1893 to 2371. Here we learn that her species can apparently control their own aging process, which is as good of an excuse as any to explain why Whoopi Goldberg has aged and why we get a new, younger actor to play the 2024 version of Guinan. This is where I remind everyone that Trek has a story to tell, and things like actors, sets, and props are the tools used to tell that story. Sometimes they aren't always 100% consistent and realistically, they can't always be that way. Remember to enjoy the story.

This episode feels a lot like the evil “Mirror Universe,” but it's actually just our universe that has been changed because of something that Q altered in the past. In this version of events, Picard has become a ruthless general in a xenophobic regime. This is the second time that Trek has floated the idea that “if things had just been a little different” Picard would grow up to be some sort of monster. The first time was Star Trek: Nemesis where a clone of Picard was subjected to cruel conditions growing up, and he turned out to be pretty evil. I'm all for exploring this idea of nature versus nurture, but I think at this point the writers are just suggesting that it's pure luck that in the Prime Timeline/Universe, Picard has grown to be a morally-centered, skilled diplomat who is part of a humanitarian, inclusive Starfleet.

Anyway, it's kind of fun to see everyone coping with this new reality and coming together to formulate a plan, but I think Jurati's “comedy relief” is over the top and pulls us out of the story. It might have been more realistic if someone had just said “shut up” during her long, rambling explanation. There's another few instances where it feels a little implausible that our heroes somehow managed to blend in so quickly without raising suspicion, but let's just say that Q quietly helped them along the way and move on.

There are a few episodes this season that, while still perfectly enjoyable, just sort of feel like “and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened,” and this is one of them. So let's see, we get out of a sticky situation and manage to travel back to 2024, check. By the way, there is something unintentionally hilarious about the Borg Queen just tipping over like that.

Next, they crash-land on Earth and deal with their casualties and repairs, check. The scene with Raffi and Elnor is, of course, tragic. I get that Raffi is emotional and upset, but her anger seems a bit misplaced. The gang split up, with some of them going to find the Watcher and others staying behind to try reviving the Borg Queen, check. Raffi taking out that mugger was actually pretty funny. And then Rios is injured. And then he's treated. And then he's arrested. Check, check, check. Borg Queen revived, check. The end!

Except for the last two minutes, I rather like this episode. I think the interaction between Picard and the younger Guinan (portrayed by the delightful Ito Aghayere) is wonderful, especially the emotional part where Guinan laments the shortcomings of 2024 Earth in a way that certainly hits close to home. I'm also a fan of the car chase. It's certainly not something we get to see in Trek... well, ever. The closest thing to it was the dune buggy chase in Star Trek: Nemesis, but that one felt out of place and gratuitous. I think any time Star Trek gets an opportunity to work in the “present” that they should absolutely take advantage of any opportunities to do things they couldn't normally do, and it was a lot of fun to watch Raffi and Seven in such unfamiliar surroundings.

Also hitting close to home are the scenes with the overzealous and racist ICE agents. With current events how they are as I write this in 2025, it seems like Trek was only one year off in their predictions about the agency. Picard's message to the disenchanted Guinan is all the more important for us today, “History's darkest moments can be a tipping point for change. There's still good here.”

Now, there is some debate about whether this young Guinan should have recognized Picard or not, and I've tried to explain it later in the “Nerdery” section, but let's not allow that to spoil our enjoyment of the episode... especially when the last two minutes of the show can do that for us! (Additional spoiler content redacted)First of all, Picard finally meets the Watcher: it appears to be Laris, but with rounded, human ears instead of her pointy, Romulan ears. She utters only two words before she disappears with Picard, leaving the audience confused and wondering why Laris is here, in 2024, and why she appears human. Then we get to the final scene, where Q sits casually at a table performing a soliloquy at some woman who we've never met. Now the audience is even more confused because the scene comes completely out of the blue and we have no idea who that woman is. I don't mind leaving an episode on a cliffhanger, with anticipation, thinking “What will happen next?”... but I don't like leaving an episode in confusion, thinking “What the hell just happened?”

Things start getting weird in this episode. First, we're introduced to Tallinn, who is played by the same actor as Laris, but it's not Laris... and the explanation is thrown away as, “I dunno, maybe Q did this as one of his little jokes.” Then we see Dr. Adam Soong, played by Brent Spiner who famously played Data in The Next Generation and Altan Soong in Season One of Picard. This will be the fourth member of the Soong lineage played by Spiner – I guess the family had very strong genes. And finally, we meet Soong's daughter, Kore. She is played by Isa Briones, who played the android twins Dahj and Soji in Season One. No in-universe explanation is given for Kore's resemblance to the androids... at this point, I think they just gave up. This is another one of those episodes where it seems to just plod along a bit in order to get out the important story points that need to be set up for the following episode. The introduction of Adam Soong and Kore further confuses things in an already-complicated story.

I love the idea for this episode – everyone in fancy clothes going to a swanky party sounds like a lot of fun, and it is! The interaction between Jurati and the Queen is enjoyable, and the juxtaposition of the forbidding Queen strolling around such an up-scale party is intriguingly disturbing. Poor Evan Evagora (Elnor), his character is dead but they keep calling him in just so that Raffi can keep hallucinating him. This time they made him put on an entire tuxedo for 1.5 seconds of footage and probably just sent him home after that.

Okay, here we go...

Since this is the lowest-rated episode of the series on IMDb, and I ended up giving it an above-average rating, I had to do some research into what people objected to, specifically, about the episode. I read a lot of the reviews and I found a number of trends. First, I had to sift through quite a few negative reviews that just said “this isn't Star Trek” without providing any specific explanation as to what they meant. This is a common line that people throw out about a lot of Trek since 2017, and often times it doesn't come with further explanation. There were also numerous reviews that cited “bad writing” without actually explaining what was “bad” about it.

A few reviews called out one of the actors in this episode previously having been on Battlestar Galactica, but I don't think they were necessarily objecting to it. Several reviews called the episode “filler,” which I patently disagree with. It's true that it didn't focus on the larger series arc, but it was very much an intentional story that the storytellers wanted to impart this season. It provides important backstory to an already well-established character; it's not just a random adventure-of-the-week. And quite a few reviews found young-Guinan's weird performative summoning act toward the end to be ridiculous... now, that one I agree with, but I don't think it ruins the entire episode.

The biggest trend I saw in the negative reviews was that viewers did not care about or did not understand Picard's childhood story, they objected to excessive “psychobabble,” and they disapproved of the show “going the way of Star Trek: Discovery” in terms of its focus on introspection and personal journeys. I think this perspective is a real shame. I get that this episode was not a trek through the stars, but if anything, the perfect complement to exploring the final frontier is the exploration of one's self, and that is exactly the kind of parallel this episode was trying to shine a spotlight on, via our hero, Picard.

Of the reviewers that rated the episode favorably, they seemed to better understand and appreciate the meaning behind the story and the impact it has on Picard's life. This episode might seem more than a little strange if this is your first time watching since you don't know the whole story yet. In fact, a lot of the elements are probably very confusing the first time through... but in the context of the entire season (particularly episode 9), this story makes a lot more sense. I'd recommend watching the rest of the series and then maybe coming back and watching this one again. This is certainly no “filler” story, it's a vital part of the man for whom this series is named: Jean-Luc Picard.

Finally, on an entirely separate note, one reviewer was so confused by the Laris/Tallinn thing that they incorrectly thought that the Romulans were in charge of the Watchers. This is completely understandable, especially considering Tallinn's line, “Usually, we're recruited to watch over our own, but on occasion, a similar species,” which does make it sound like the Watchers are a uniquely Romulan phenomenon at first blush. On further consideration, she didn't necessarily say that the Romulans were the ones doing the recruiting, nor did she say that Romulans were the only species being recruited. It is confusing, to be sure, but there is a story thread in season 2 of Star Trek: Prodigy that removes some of the mystery surrounding the Watchers.

Now, if you've read my rant about how the previous episode was not filler, and you want to talk about what is filler, look no further than the A-plot of this episode. At least the previous episode was a backstory about someone we cared about. In this case, we get a backstory on someone we've never met! And to make matters worse, Agent Wells is played by Jay Karnes, who also memorably played Lieutenant Ducane, a protector of the timeline from the 29th century, in VOY 5x24: Relativity. When fans saw Karnes at the end of the previous episode, many probably thought this was Ducane in disguise. You know, there is time travel afoot already, so it would have been an interesting crossover to see Ducane investigating what has happened to the timeline, but... nope. Different character. Also, they try to do this cute little “fate” thing, saying that Wells had to have that childhood experience so he'd grow up to be the man who lets them go today, but he was the one who incarcerated them in the first place, so...

Of course, there are other, more important plot lines in this episode. We have Queen Jurati kicking ass in a red dress and combat boots, Guinan meeting Q for the first time, a tender moment between Rios and Teresa, and, well the whole Soong and Kore thing. We also learn that Raffi feels a deep guilt because she's the reason that Elnor was at the academy, and now she feels responsible for his death. Gosh, that probably would have been more impactful for the audience to have learned way back in episode 3 – and this is a bit of a lesson in being cautious about what you cut from an episode. In episode 3, there were two deleted scenes, one under 30 seconds and another under 40 seconds, and those scenes together did a better job at telling the audience, “Raffi has a specific and personal reason for why she's so upset about Elnor, but we don't know what it is yet.” Without those scenes, Raffi just seems to misplace her anger and then we kind of forget about it until this episode.

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.” — John Lydgate

If you weren't interested in the young Picard's story line from two episodes ago, I'm afraid you might not be a fan of this episode, either. This time, they try to soften the blow of all that annoying introspection by interspersing it with action and guns from the small Borg army outside. I am being facetious, of course. Personally, I prefer the thoughtful story line to the mindless fighting, but to each their own!