There's something I immediately like about the atmosphere in this episode, from the opener on Beverly's ship, to Picard's study, to Guinan's bar, to Raffi's scenes on M'Talas Prime. I don't know if it's the lighting, the way it's shot, the music, or what... but it definitely works. However, when Picard and Riker first arrive on the Titan, we see, once again, “The Hallway” which we haven't seen since S2E01, but believe me, we'll see too much of it this season. In case you forgot when I mentioned it last time, this generic Starfleet ship corridor is used ad nauseam this season. It's shot from different angles and sometimes has various props strewn about it, but it's always the same damn corridor. Over and over and over. I get it, they were on a tight budget, but give us a break! Don't worry, I'll make sure to point out every time it's used.

Then I was actually a bit disappointed when the Titan bridge was just a slight redress of the Stargazer bridge from Season 2. In fact, I'm not even sure there was a redress... they look identical. Well, setting that aside, the drawn-out launch sequence with gratuitous views of the ship and the accompanying music is sort of a Star Trek signature, reminiscent of the original films. Even the most critical viewers of this series have to admit that this is “Star Trek”.

It's delightful to see Seven of Nine in a Starfleet uniform, and long overdue, I would say. Then we meet Captain Shaw, a foil for our heroes Picard and Riker. You know, I took umbrage with the reporter in S1E01 because she antagonized Picard, and while Shaw does the same here... there's something compelling about him. From the moment he greeted them at dinner with, "...your reputations proceeded you so far into the room that I started early," we knew he was going to be disagreeable. He is rude, to be sure, but his reasons for refusing to change course are sound, and actor Todd Stashwick does a wonderful job with the character in this and future episodes to come. When dinner ends abruptly, Riker, Picard, and Seven exit out through “The Hallway”.

Well let's see, we start off with a flashback of Jack doing some less-than-legal business on the Eleos, and then jump back to the present where he and the others could really use some assistance against the big scary ship that presently has them trapped. Shaw finally concedes and comes to the rescue – their maneuver to break the tractor beam was pretty cool. Raffi is upset by the terror attack on the recruitment center, and even more upset that she's been taken off the case. So far, everything is mostly just necessary story.

Next we have Raffi meeting up with her ex-husband, Jae, who must be one of the most selfish people in the galaxy. I get it, he thinks this “conspiracy” is all in Raffi's head, based on her past... but that's a pretty big assumption to make if you're going to make the ultimatum of “you can come back to your family OR you can go save the galaxy from certain doom”. What a jerk.

Finally, we get our introduction to this season's antagonist: Captain Vadic (played by Amanda Plummer) on board her big, bad ship, the Shrike. And let me say, her performance in this and future episodes is wonderful. She really feels like a Star Trek villain. Her poetic speeches and gleeful laughter are going to be a joy this season.

Raffi meets Sneed, who I found amusing, mostly because he was played by Aaron Stanford. “The Hallway” only makes one appearance in this episode, as security is dispatched after Jack Crusher's escape and Seven walks to the transporter room. And that's about all I have to say about this one! Besides the two big reveals toward the end of the episode and Plummer's enjoyable performance, the rest of the episode is just necessary story. I'm marking this as average but... a good average, if that makes sense.

It is time for Picard and Beverly to have “the talk” about Jack, and that talk understandably turns into a bit of an argument. And it's a good argument, because they both have strong, valid points. I particularly like Beverly's line, “As a mother, your whole being is about protecting your child. I... I thought I could protect mine. I didn't know if I could protect yours.” It is true that being Picard's son does potentially paint a target on your back from numerous former enemies across the galaxy. We also get the lame explanation for Jack's accent being that he went to school in London and “never shook it” which is, ugh, okay whatever.

The B-plot of this episode is Worf getting a formal introduction and teaming up with Raffi to dig deeper into the portal weapon that was stolen from Daystrom and used on the Starfleet recruitment center, and this duo is fantastic together. Who knew that Worf, of all people, would become a hilarious comedy relief in the form of deadpan one-liners. I love it! And it's such smarter humor than Jurati's clumsy incompetence.

“The Hallway” is seen several times this episode. Jack takes it in an attempt to get to the bridge during red alert. Security runs through it a few times in different action sequences. They try to shake things up now and then with that three-way corridor intersection set piece that was used for the brig in the previous episode... and to be fair, they used the same corridors over and over again in many other Trek shows, so I'm not sure why this one bothers me so much. There's just something about it...

The rest of this episode is mostly a game of cat-and-mouse between the Titan and the Shrike in the nebula, which is fun in its own way, except for this weird disagreement between Riker and Picard about what strategy to use. I mean, at its core, I just don't like seeing our heroes and old friends arguing. But beyond that, I am not really clear what each man's motivations are for their points of view, nor what storytelling necessity this argument effects. (And yes, that is an intentional use of the lesser-used definition of the verb “effects” so don't come at me.) Maybe the next episode will explain it. (It doesn't.)

This episode effectively serves as a mid-season mini-finale. I don't think it will really spoil anything to tell you that the ship and crew make it safely out of harm's way (at least for now) while we learn more about our characters, their pasts, and their present motivations. On top of that, the story is an homage to the first adventure of the USS Enterprise NCC‑1701‑D in the series premiere of The Next Generation. It's wonderfully done and it reminds you that there is beauty in the universe.

As I mentioned in the previous episode, I can't figure out Picard and Riker's separate motivations for their differing strategies. Riker opens this episode with some explanation about his feelings (or lack thereof) as he watched his son's coffin being lowered into the ground but... that could have been years ago, and it's unclear why it's affecting him so much now. I like that they're trying to give Riker some depth here, but it doesn't quite do it for me.

There is zero Raffi/Worf storyline in this episode, and despite my wanting to see more of them, I think their absence here is fine – the focus here really was on the Titan story. That story includes Shaw's traumatic memories of Wolf 359 and his survivor's guilt. Finally, we have an explanation for why Shaw has been such a jerk all this time, including why he insists that Seven go by her human name. Honestly, I think Todd Stashwick has done a wonderful job of portraying Shaw as a jerk, and yet somehow he manages to make the audience still kind of like him for some reason.

Seven encounters the Changeling on Deck 5, Corridor 8, also known as... “The Hallway”. These Changelings are considerably... “fleshier” than the ones we were used to from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. At first I thought this was just a style choice, the result of 24 years of advancements in CGI – but we do actually get an in-universe explanation later, in episode 7 of this season.

The episode opens with yet another reminder that something very strange is going on with Jack. This time, he hallucinates killing the bridge crew, and then his eyes turn red as a female voice says, “come home.” Still no real clues as to what's going on here. I was trying to think of other times when there were glowing red eyes in Star Trek, and all I could come up with were the Pah-wraiths from DS9. Could they be related to what's happening? (Spoiler alert: No, they aren't.)

Early in the episode, Picard meets Beverly and Jack in... THE HALLWAY. Later, Shaw, Picard, and Riker meet the security officer from the Intrepid in... THE HALLWAY. And the security officer from the Intrepid prepares to leave from... THE HALLWAY.

Raffi and Worf return this episode, much to my delight. Unfortunately, the business with the weirdo Vulcan is kind of just filler. Yeah, they needed a lead to get them back on the trail of what was taken from Daystrom, but did it really have to be this guy? He finally talks about the “highly sophisticated AI” which guards the place and, what luck, he just happens to have a program to bypass it!

It's finally time to infiltrate Daystrom Station, which is apparently where Section 31 keeps all of its goodies, but... there is something about a space station that doesn't scream “security” to me. It seems to me that the clandestine branch of Starfleet Intelligence would be more, I don't know, clandestine? It seems much more likely that they'd keep their things in various locations, undisclosed locations, obfuscated locations... not just a space station, the coordinates of which are apparently public knowledge. And also probably somewhere that has 24/7 security, not just “Yeah Starfleet checks on it every hour or so”. I guess they try to explain this by saying that all they really need is this “astonishingly lethal AI system” to protect it, but that seems to be an internal security system. What is keeping a fleet of ships from coming by and just blowing the station up?

Security deficiencies aside, we're finally going to find out what this AI security system is that they've been teasing. Now, it's important to know that Daniel Davis's return as James Moriarty was advertised before Season 3 even came out, so we knew he was coming, we just didn't know exactly how he would fit in to the story. And, I'm afraid, this role was a bit of a letdown. Sadly, this isn't the James Moriarty from two iconic episodes of The Next Generation, this is just a copy, a memory. It was a brief interaction that I'm still glad I got to see, but it would have been so much more satisfying if this were somehow the real deal. On the other hand, the musical notes, the distant echoing whistling, and the footage from the series premiere of The Next Generation... that was beautiful.

The other part of this episode is focused on Geordi and his daughters, which I did find interesting. It's good to see that La Forge settled down and had a family, what with all of his failed relationships in TNG. There was some conflict among them, which was a little off-putting, but it did feel real. Families are rarely perfect, even in the 25th century, and Geordi's concern for his daughters is genuine and very realistic. Both of the major plotlines in this episode provide an incredible amount of fan-service, which I am definitely not complaining about! At Daystrom Station, we have tons of little easter eggs for fans to geek-out over, and of course Geordi works at the fleet museum, which is a great excuse to just show us a bunch of old ships that the fans love and miss. That is why the “References” section below is going to be so long.

I love this episode; in fact, it might be my favorite of the entire series. I love Vadic's backstory and how it sheds a new, sinister light on the Dominion War. Amanda Plummer does a fantastic job and is so convincing as a tortured, bordering-on-mad villain. This is probably my favorite part, actually. Not just the story, but the way it's told, with the eerie whistling refrain of “Three Blind Mice” and the sheer calm of Plummer's delivery mixed with the occasional giddy laugh. I also enjoyed the Data/Lore bits, and I found Geordi's pleas with him to be highly evocative. And I especially loved the piano/cello piece that underscores the entire last act, how it seamlessly transitions from a poignant speech to hand-to-hand action and back.

Now, it seems this episode isn't as popular among IMDb users and others, but I really think the whole crew went above and beyond for this episode. The writing, the acting, the direction, the music – everything was on point. It really feels like a crucial part of the story, a turning point, and then, well, there's the ending, promising more to come.

There is a bit too much technobabble to explain Data and Lore's situation here, but it is at least necessary to the story. There's also an awful lot of THE HALLWAY mixed in with that three-way intersection set in this episode... but if those are my only objections, I'd say this is still one of the best episodes this series has to offer.

This episode is another mini-finale before the final two-episode grand finale. Despite my love of the previous episode and how it set things up for this one, this episode actually feels like it lost just a bit of the momentum that we got before it. It's still a great episode, but I couldn't rate this one quite as high as the previous one. Vadic has her henchmen torture and kill various crewmembers throughout the ship while she holds the bridge crew hostage until Jack surrenders himself. They try really hard to make Vadic as evil as possible in this episode, having her psychologically torture a few of the crew, making them think she's going to execute them just before she callously executes an entirely different crewmember. This is necessary, of course, to make her eventual defeat all the more satisfying. Still, it didn't feel like it was quite enough.

One of the elements to this episode that is both good and not-so-good is the Data/Lore fight. On the one hand, the idea is great – bringing back Lore and finally reconciling him and Data in one last conflict. The dialogue and music that accompanies this part is good, too. But on the other hand, it's not really the Data and Lore that we know, is it? It's sort of a construct, a concept of Data and Lore. Further, their feud takes place in what I'm going to call their “mind palace,” which is a formless blue-white void (that conveniently turns red to inform the audience when bad things happen). I wish there had been more time and money put into this space. What if these scenes took place on a recreation of their “birth” place, the lab on Omicron Theta from TNG 1x13: Datalore, or in Noonien Soong's lab from TNG 4x03: Brothers, or the Borg compound from TNG 6x26 & 7x01: Descent? These are places where Data and Lore interacted before, and any of them would be a far more interesting place than this empty void. If it were me, I would have taken some of the Riker/Troi story away, and probably greatly shortened the last scene, in order to give more time to the Data/Lore story that it needed and deserved.

Well, this is it, folks. We finally find out what Jack's deal is and what's behind the red door, after they've been teasing it since Episode 3. It will set up the story for this two-part finale, so with that, I'll put the rest of this section behind the spoiler shield except to say... that “sub-level maintenance corridor” is just THE HALLWAY again with a bunch of boxes strewn threw it. You aren't fooling anyone! Actually, I remember another reason this hallway bugs me so much: along with every appearance in these episodes, every single “bonus content” interview with any of the cast or crew always takes place here, in THE HALLWAY!

Please bear with me for two paragraphs while I make an analogy. Are you familiar with the 2004 movie Dodgeball? If not, I guess I'm going to spoil the ending for you here. The original ending to the movie, which never made it to theaters, was purposely made to be darkly comedic. After a movie-long rivalry between two competing gyms, everything was set up for the Average Joes (the good guys) to win the final tournament against GloboGym (the bad guys). At the very last minute, White Goodman (bad guy) succeeds in effecting a shocking reversal, securing the win for GloboGym. There is a minute or two of anguished looks from the Average Joes and a slo-mo celebration by GloboGym, and then it cuts directly to the credits. Well, test audiences hated this ending, of course. After all, nobody wants the bad guys to win, even if it is meant to be dark humor.

And so, the ending was changed so that the good guys would win – but that's not all. Slightly miffed that their original ending didn't test well, they wrote the new ending to be an over-the-top super-win for the Average Joes. Not only do they win the tournament and the $50,000 prize, but it turns out that Peter La Fleur (good guy) took a $100,000 bribe from GloboGym and bet on his own team winning. At 50-1 odds, he's earned another $5 million. Not only that, but his winnings are delivered in a literal treasure chest emblazoned with the words “Deus Ex Machina”. Not only that, but the $5 mil is enough for him to buy the controlling stake of GloboGym, effectively making him White Goodman's boss, and allowing him to retain ownership of Average Joe's gym, which he had sold to GloboGym earlier. And if all that wasn't enough, Peter's love interest not only finally shows interest in him, but she turns out to be bisexual, introducing him to another beautiful woman, implying future threesome action! There's even a post-credits scene decrying the desire for audiences to just be entertained and not have to think too much or appreciate complexity.

Now, why, you ask, did I bring that up now, on my review of the series finale of Star Trek: Picard? Can you guess? I hope it's obvious. This episode is the over-the-top super-finale that fans demanded since this series began. There was especially a lot of dislike for Season 2, which required some appreciation of complexity and depth. No, all the fans wanted was to see the crew from The Next Generation back together on the bridge of the Enterprise‑D, flying around with phasers firing and explosions and victory and maybe some bisexuals. Well, they finally got it.