IN REVIEW: STAR TREK: PICARD: SEASON ONE – ET IN ARCADIA EGO PART 2

Synopsis: A final confrontation on the synthetics’ homeworld, Coppelius, pits Picard and his team against the Romulans, as well as the synths who seek to safeguard their existence at all costs.

The Story

Soji and her people are making ready to take on the Romulan Fleet with the help from a far off world that they are trying to communicate with. Picard is locked away in Maddox’s quarters, but Jurati has seen sense and staged a rescue. Elsewhere Narek has pretty much said farewell to his sister and has taken a bunch of grenades from the Borg Cube in order to help Captain Rios, Raffi, and Elnor destroy the transmitter that Soji and the synths are planning to use.

While Rios leads the ground team. Picard and Jurati have taken Rios’s ship for a joy ride in order to buy some time for Soji and the Synths to see sense. Luckily Picard does not have to make himself a target for too long before help arrives from the Federation by means of a fleet of new ships led by none other than Captain William T. Riker.

The Acting

Pretty much every cast member got something to do in this episode, which made for a much better season one finale than I was hoping for and my expectations were on the middle ground given what had read about a certain script leak, which thankfully proved to be untrue.

It was absolutely wonderful to see Jonathan Frakes in a Starfleet uniform again and captaining the lead ship of the fleet no less. The dialogue between Riker and the treacherous Commandore Oh was brilliant and so on par with how we have seen Riker deal with opposition in the past. Jeri Ryan also got her moment to shine as Seven of Nine. There’s a wonderful little scene at the beginning where Elnor is discussing how the XB’s are the unwanted dregs of the galaxy at which Seven responds by saying, “I’m an XB. Should I put a gun to my head right now?” At which Elnor says, “But, I’d miss you!” Seven also gets a kick-ass fight with Nareks Sister Narissa who gets her just deserts for having murdered Hugh.

Topping things off though were the final scenes between Picard and Data for the sake of context Picard has to die in order to close the book on his old friend, but gets a second shot at life thanks to the Golem that Soong had created for himself. In this scene, Picard and Data are sat in a pocket universe, which survives in what has been preserved of Data’s consciousness, which was downloaded to B4 at the tail end of Nemesis. We see Picard sat in a study with Data as the two say their final goodbye. Both Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner did an absolutely brilliant job of selling this scene.

Overall

This was a much better season finale than I was expecting. Thanks in large part to the rumored script leak regarding Captain Rios being false. Unless that leak is from an early draft of a season two episode, which I hope it isn’t. Seeing Picard get to fly Rios’s ship was awesome, but seeing Riker in command of a Starship was even more so. It’s just too bad he wasn’t commanding The Titan, but we can’t have everything.

The story resolved nicely as Soji ultimately made the right call when it came to her people. With a little help from Picard and an Entire fleet of Federation ships backing him up. The final scene where we see Picard with his entire new crew was nicely done and has been well and truly earned.

Overall. If this is anything to go by. I can’t wait for season two in which I suspect we’ll see a much less cynical version of Starfleet as it begins to right itself. We can but hope.