guardian of the gate star trek

The Inventory

A Brief Guide to Star Trek: Discovery 's Big Timey-Wimey Twist This Week

Phillipa Georgiou gets a second chance from a familiar Trek icon.

An emotional powerhouse on Star Trek: Discovery this week laid the groundwork for some big future events in the franchise. It just happened to do so with the help of a classic piece of franchise iconography in the process

'The City on the Edge of Forever' is Remembered as One of Star Trek's Best

And today, the 52nd anniversary of its airing, is the perfect time to revisit this gem.

StarTrek.com

“ The City on the Edge of Forever ” — “City,” for short — is considered by many Star Trek fans to be the best episode of Star Trek: The Original Series and, quite possibly, the best episode of all of the Trek series (to date, anyway). That’s not surprising, since virtually every element of what makes Star Trek great can be found in “City.” It has a thought-provoking and tender story by writer Harlan Ellison , wonderful new sets by art directors Matt Jefferies and Rolland M. Brooks, terrific guest stars in Joan Collins (Edith Keeler) and John Harmon (Rodent), and outstanding acting by William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley. Simply put, Star Trek doesn’t get much better than “The City on the Edge of Forever.”

In light of today’s 52nd anniversary of the episode's first broadcast, it seemed the perfect moment to spend some time with this classic script. Much has been said about "City" over the years, and so rather than discuss the structure of the story, or how Ellison won a Writers Guild of America Award for penning it, we've decided to take a brief look at its inanimate guest star, the Guardian of Forever, and look at one of the episode's deleted scenes.

The Guardian of Forever

The Guardian of Forever features as the episode's main plot device. In Ellison’s original outline for the story, the Guardian was actually a group of robed aliens, nine-feet-tall, who referred to themselves as the Guardians of Forever. Eventually depicted on television via the TOS art and special effects departments, the Guardian became a large blue/gray translucent piece illuminated from within. It was circular in shape, reminiscent of a large analog clock face, and the TOS crew often referred to it as “the doughnut”. The Guardian’s time travel doorway — or time vortex as it’s referred to in the shooting script — was located within its center, and the script indicated that it should show, “A series of almost subliminal historical scenes… smoothed out or sometimes even obscured...”

Time Jumping

McCoy, Kirk, and Spock traveled to 1930 Earth and back again by jumping into the Guardian’s time vortex. The “hole” for the vortex was designed and fabricated large enough for a couple of humans (or a human and a Vulcan) to make the trip at the same time. Jumping through was simple, as long as they didn’t bump shoulders.

Broken Dishes – A Deleted Scene

Many scenes were filmed for “City” that, in the end, weren't used or found themselves heavily trimmed as the episode was being assembled. We’ve counted about seven of them, and that includes the wonderful scene on the Roddenberry Vault Blu-ray set that shows Kirk and Edith talking on the staircase following Edith’s accidental trip down the stairs.

One of the scenes that was removed from “City” that, as far as we know, no longer exists anywhere, showed Kirk having an accident at the 21st Street Mission as he and Edith cleaned up. This deleted scene was scripted and filmed for the middle of the third act, and it was to have occurred between the scenes of Rodent killing himself with McCoy’s phaser and Kirk and Edith talking at the top of the staircase about man reaching the moon (both of which made it to air). The photo below shows a lost scene obtained from a Lincoln Enterprises film clip, and we’ve paired it with its description from the shooting script (in italics). Please note that this scene didn’t contain dialogue.

SPOCK’S P.O.V.– KIRK AND EDITH Kirk is coming through the outside door carrying a high pile of glasses and dishes in a tub. Edith holds the door, directs him to a bench so he can put them down. She tries to reach up to take some of the load, but Kirk pulls away, not allowing her to help. However, in pulling away, he promptly manages to drop half the dishes and glasses to the floor. A nerve ripping CRASH. As he stands there, looking in disgust at the mess of broken crockery, Edith reaches up to touch his shoulder comfortingly. At her touch, Kirk’s face changes, softens… a man caught by a stir of feeling for a woman.

It’s unfortunate that this material wound up on the cutting-room floor, as it would have been fun to watch Shatner and Collins play it in the episode.

David Tilotta is a professor at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC and works in the areas of chemistry and sustainable materials technology. You can email David at [email protected]. Curt McAloney is an accomplished graphic artist with extensive experience in multimedia, Internet and print design. He resides in a suburb of the Twin Cities in Minnesota, and can be contacted at [email protected]. Together, Curt and David work on startrekhistory.com. Their Star Trek work has appeared in the Star Trek Magazine and Star Trek: The Original Series 365 by Paula M. Block with Terry J. Edrmann.

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The City on the Edge of Forever

Episode aired Apr 6, 1967

Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, James Doohan, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols, and David L. Ross in Star Trek (1966)

When a temporarily insane Dr. McCoy accidentally changes history and destroys his time, Kirk and Spock follow him to prevent the disaster, but the price to do so is high. When a temporarily insane Dr. McCoy accidentally changes history and destroys his time, Kirk and Spock follow him to prevent the disaster, but the price to do so is high. When a temporarily insane Dr. McCoy accidentally changes history and destroys his time, Kirk and Spock follow him to prevent the disaster, but the price to do so is high.

Joseph Pevney
Harlan Ellison
Gene Roddenberry
William Shatner
Leonard Nimoy
Joan Collins
73 User reviews
16 Critic reviews

William Shatner and Joan Collins in Star Trek (1966)

Captain James Tiberius 'Jim' Kirk

Mister Spock

Sister Edith Keeler

Transporter Chief

(as Bartell La Rue)
Onlooker on Street
(uncredited)
Lieutenant Hadley

Passerby on Sidewalk

All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Did you know

Trivia To emphasize on the extremely high age of the Guardian in the upper millions, or well into the billions, the starfield of its planet is surrounded by red dwarfs and red giants.
Goofs In establishing scenes, the completed Empire State Building can be seen as part of the NYC skyline. Construction on the building didn't begin until early 1930, and wasn't finished until mid-1931.

Dr. McCoy : You deliberately stopped me, Jim. I could have saved her. Do you know what you just did?

Spock : He knows, Doctor. He knows.

Crazy credits Script Supervisor George Rutter is written as "SCPIPT SUPERVISOR...GEORGE A. RUTTER" in the credits. This happened on numerous other episodes in season one.
Alternate versions Special Enhanced version Digitally Remastered with new exterior shots and remade opening theme song
Connections Edited from TrekCulture: 10 Greatest Final Lines In Star Trek Episodes (2022)
Soundtracks Theme From Star Trek Written by and credited to Alexander Courage

User reviews 73

Mar 22, 2006
April 6, 1967 (United States)
United States
Official Facebook
Desilu Studios - 9336 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, California, USA
Desilu Productions
Norway Corporation
See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

Runtime 50 minutes

More to explore

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Guardian of Forever

View history
1.1.1 Creation
1.1.2 Distant past
1.1.3 Discovery by the Federation
1.1.4 24th century
1.1.5 30th century and beyond
1.2 Personality
1.3 The Guardian in alternate timelines
2.1 Background
2.2 External links

History and specifics [ ]

The Guardian was constructed at least six billion years ago by an unknown race on a planet in the galaxy 's Beta Quadrant , within Federation space. It was operated by an advanced artificial intelligence .

The Andorians had their own name for it: the T'Sh'Iar , which meant "God's Window." ( DS9 - Strange New Worlds 9 short story : " Orphans ")

The Ferengi use of the Guardian of Forever led to chaos. ( DS9 novel : Legends of the Ferengi )

History of the Guardian [ ]

Creation [ ].

When built, the timeline of the Guardian's builders was left inaccessible through the portal. Whether that was an accidental omission or a deliberate choice, as a means to protect their own history, was unknown. ( TAS - Log One novelization : Yesteryear )

Distant past [ ]

Two million years ago, a young Q encountered the Guardian, which resulted in his meeting the malevolent extra-dimensional entity known as 0 . One million years ago, 0 used the Guardian to bring other entities like itself into the Universe. ( TNG novels : Q-Space , Q-Zone )

This was also the time when the "Guardian of Forever ruins" were created. ( Last Unicorn RPG module : All Our Yesterdays: The Time Travel Sourcebook )

Discovery by the Federation [ ]

The Federation 's first contact with the Guardian of Forever was made in 2267 by Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise . Doctor Leonard McCoy , suffering from cordrazine -induced madness, fled through the Guardian to 1930. Kirk and Spock followed him and succeeded in preventing him from altering history, but at the cost of the life of Edith Keeler , with whom Kirk had fallen in love. The incident made a profound emotional impact on Kirk. ( TOS episode : " The City on the Edge of Forever ")

Following its discovery, Federation researchers investigated the possibility of removing the Guardian from its planet to " The Yard ", a secret Starfleet facility. This, however, proved not to be a practical option, and all study was conducted on the Guardian's planet. It had become something of an unofficial "Eighth Wonder." ( TOS - Constellations short story : " Devices and Desires ")

The deposed dictator from Oorego IV named Trengur was attempting to flee from the Enterprise in 2267 . Trengur landed on the planet with the Guardian and traveled to Earth in the year 218 BC and was able to alter history by interfering with Hannibal 's campaign against Rome . Kirk, Spock and McCoy were sent by the Guardian to the same time-frame in order to repair the damage. ( TOS comic : " No Time Like the Past ")

In 2269 , Spock assisted a team of historians at Oyya , the original name for the ruins on planet Gateway. During that assignment, Spock found that history had been altered so that he had died as a child. He used the Guardian of Forever to travel to 2237 and save the life of his younger self. ( TAS episode & novelization : Yesteryear )

Later that year, Spock gained permission to use the Guardian of Forever to visit Sarpeidon 's past and bring his son Zar home with him. However, circumstances necessitated Zar returning to his own place in space and time. ( TOS novel : Yesterday's Son )

Shortly after this, when historian William Harrod "accidentally" fell into the Guardian of Forever, Uhura was sent to retrieve him. ( TOS short story : " If I Lose Thee... ")

Towards the end of the year, Kirk and the Enterprise crew used the Guardian of Forever to prevent the Clan Ru from altering Earth's history. ( TOS novel : First Frontier )

While unable to gleam much of the Guardian's inner workings, the Federation was able to extract enough that they applied it to their prototype cloaking device . ( TOS - Year Four: The Enterprise Experiment comics : " Part 1 ", " Part 2 ")

In 2285 , Kirk, Spock and McCoy were sent by Starfleet Command to repair the malfunctioning Guardian. ( TOS novel : Time for Yesterday )

It was shortly after this that the Federation set up the Ellison Research Outpost on Gateway to study the Guardian and the timeline.

In 2293 , Kirk visited the Ellison Research Outpost, where he questioned the Guardian. ( ST novel : Federation )

24th century [ ]

Roughly around 2364 , Dr. Elias Frobisher read his own obituary on a playback of the Guardian of Forever. ( TNG novel : Double or Nothing )

In 2368 , Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise -D consulted the Guardian of Forever regarding the Devil's Heart . ( TNG novel : The Devil's Heart )

In 2373 , Special Agents Dulmer and Gariff Lucsly of the Federation Department of Temporal Investigations used the Guardian of Forever to visit Earth in 2063 and 1996 to follow up on recent temporal incursions by the USS Enterprise -E and the USS Voyager . ( VOY short story : " Almost... But Not Quite ")

During the Dominion War , around 2374 , Roga Danar was recruited by Section 31 to prevent the Dominion from seizing the Guardian. After completing his mission, Roga asked the Guardian what it desired. When it said that it wanted freedom, Roga granted it permission to leave Gateway, which it did. ( DS9 - Strange New Worlds 9 short story : " Orphans ")

In 2375 , James T. Kirk encountered another Guardian inside a Preserver vessel in orbit of planet Halka in the mirror universe . ( TOS novel : Preserver )

In 2376 , the DTI took charge of the Guardian of Forever from Starfleet, with agents Dulmur and Lucsly being stationed on Gateway. ( ST - New Worlds, New Civilizations short story : " An Enigma Wrapped in a Puzzle ")

By the year 2409 , a mysterious unmentioned quarantine was lifted on the Gateway planet to allow a Starfleet crew to rescue Miral Paris from B'vat . B'vat used the Guardian to travel back to 2270 and the crew followed suit. After fixing B'vat's temporal incursion, the Guardian returns the crew to their own time. During this time, he also reveals that he knows of the Iconians and that they could not use him the same way as their Iconian gateways . ( STO mission : " City on the Edge of Never ", STO mission : " Past Imperfect ")

30th century and beyond [ ]

In the 30th century, during the Temporal Wars, many factions tried to use the Guardian of Forever to destroy their enemies. To prevent its power from being abused, the Guardian was forced to go into hiding.

In 3189 , the Guardian's location was pinpointed by the computer aboard USS Discovery , which directed Philippa Georgiou and Michael Burnham to Dannus V . Assuming the identity of "Carl", a humanoid male, and disguising its portal as a simple standalone doorway, the Guardian greeted Georgiou and Burnham arrived. It showed a headline that read "Emperor Georgiou Dies Horrible Painful Death" and inferred that the answer to Philippa's condition could be found through the doorway. ( DSC episode : " Terra Firma, Part 1 ")

Seeking to weigh Philippa to see if her time in the primary universe had changed her, the Guardian sent her back to the Mirror universe to when her Michael Burnham had betrayed her. Though Philippa inevitably had to kill her daughter again, the Guardian noted the good she did in saving a Kelpien slave named Saru and her attempt to change the Terran Empire towards peace. Deeming her worthy of being saved, the Guardian revealed its true identity and form, offering to use its power to take the Emperor to a time when the prime universe and mirror universe were still aligned, stabilizing her condition. After allowing Philippa and Michael a last goodbye, the Guardian sent the Emperor through its threshold, before it disappeared once again. ( DSC episode : " Terra Firma, Part 2 ")

Personality [ ]

Befitting an artificial intelligence, the Guardian, as encountered by Kirk and, later, Spock, spoke dispassionately and logically. It appeared to be ambivalent to changes in the timestream, neither being able to prevent individuals from going back in time using it, or interfering with those who attempted to use it to set the timeline right. It was, however, willing to assist when asked, such as agreeing to replay its images of Earth history in order to allow Spock to more precisely estimate when McCoy arrived in 1930's New York during the Great Depression. ( TOS episode : " The City on the Edge of Forever ")

Centuries into the future, by the 32nd century, the Guardian seemed to have shifted its neutral stance on interfering with beings manipulating time for selfish benefits. Having seen the violence of the Temporal Wars, the Guardian relegated itself into hiding. Since its exile from its original location, the Guardian took a more human personality, using its avatar "Carl". Through Carl, the Guardian displayed a sense of humor, with a love of speaking in riddles. ( DSC episode : " Terra Firma, Part 2 ")

The Guardian in alternate timelines [ ]

In one alternate timeline, in which Kirk and Spock fail in their mission to prevent McCoy from saving Keeler's life, Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott and Security Officer Michael Jameson travel to 1930 Earth from 2267. Instead, Kirk, distracted by Scott, is killed in the auto accident. This creates another alternate timeline in which Lt. Uhura and Security Officer Worsley travel back in time and join the other four officers to successfully restore history. ( TOS short story : " Triptych ")
In another timeline set in the 2260s , the Guardian was used to fix reality when it was discovered that renegades had traveled into the early periods of Klingon history where they prevented the assassination of a key figure. This resulted in the Klingon Confederation being a much more peaceful interstellar state that prized the sciences and worked with the Federation to destroy the Romulan Star Empire after the Romulans launched a sneak attack on them. The crew of the USS Enterprise traveled through the Guardian to return the timeline to its unaltered state. ( TOS comic : " Time Crime ")
In another, Kirk (circa 2269 ) was abducted by Kor , subjected to a Klingon mind sifter , and transported through the Guardian of Forever to 1950s Earth, where he was placed in a mental hospital. Spock was promoted to Captain and spent a year looking for Kirk. ( TOS short story : " Mind-Sifter ")
In another, in which Montgomery Scott traveled back in time to rescue James T. Kirk before he was absorbed into the Nexus , the Guinan of that universe consulted the Guardian to determine how to restore the timeline. The Guardian insisted that it was not possible to make all as it must be through him, and told Guinan to look within herself, showing her the Nexus and the multiple facets of herself, revealing the source of her frequent premonitions and helping her understand that Kirk had to be returned to the Nexus to restore history. ( Star Trek novel : Engines of Destiny )
In another, Admiral William T. Riker used the Guardian of Forever in 2408 to travel to 2368 and prevent the murder of Deanna Troi by a time-traveling Sindareen ; he was followed by the Data of his time, who believed that Riker's "evidence" that Troi was killed by a time traveler was just circumstantial, but the mission concluded with the Guardian revealing that history had been changed and it had never mentioned this to others because nobody had bothered to ask. Experts in the 25th century theorized its energy source came from the sun, via solar quantum filaments . ( TNG novel : Imzadi )
In another, the Horta become guardians to the Guardian of Forever in 2464. ( TOS short story : " Guardians ")
In another, the Guardian was believed destroyed in 2270 , along with the orbiting Einstein station , when Captain Korax plunged the IKS Gr'oth directly onto the Guardian's site, believing the temporal energies to be evidence of a Federation super-weapon development site. ( TOS novel : Provenance of Shadows ) In actuality, however, the Guardian had moved itself through time to the year 2293 , in part so it could transport Kirk to Veridian III in 2371 after Kirk avoided being pulled into the Nexus . ( TOS novel : The Star to Every Wandering )
In another, the Guardian was destroyed during the War of the Prophets when Starfleet conducted Operation Guardian with the purpose of altering the timeline to prevent the creation of the red wormhole and the Bajoran Ascendancy . Allied Borg and Federation forces fought the Grigari over the planet and Admiral Kathryn Janeway landed her forces in sight of the Guardian when the Grigari activated a singularity bomb which destroyed the planet and all the fighting forces. ( DS9 - Millennium novel : The War of the Prophets )
In one timeline, there was not a singular Guardian but multiple Guardians of Forever who lived within Oyya. These entities manifested as nine foot tall, crystalline "ghosts" who greeted travellers outside their city and conjured time portals out of "pure matter". By their own account, they had been left behind by "The Ancients" to monitor the flow of time. ( TOS comic : " Harlan Ellison's The City on the Edge of Forever, Issue 1 ")

Appendices [ ]

Background [ ].

The novel Preserver suggests that the Preservers may have created the Guardian of Forever as Kirk encounters a massive obelisk which has a Guardian inside.

In the Decipher RPG module : Worlds , its speculated that the Iconians might be the makers of the Guardian of Forever.

The TNG novel : The Devil's Heart suggests a spurious race known as "the Architects " as creators of the Guardian, other speculations on its origin include possible corporeal ancestors of the Q .

External links [ ]

Guardian of Forever article at Memory Alpha , the wiki for canon Star Trek .
Guardian of Forever article at the Star Trek Timelines Wiki .
1 The Chase
2 Preserver (race)
3 J.P. Hanson

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Recap/Review: ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Tries To Let Go Of The Past In “Farewell”

| May 5, 2022 | By: Anthony Pascale 258 comments so far

Star Trek: Picard Season 2, Episode 10 – Debuted Thursday, May 5, 2022 Written by: Christopher Monfette & Akiva Goldsman Directed by Michael Weaver

A fast-paced but disjointed season finale rushes to wrap things up.

WARNING: Spoilers below!

“Peoples lives aren’t yours to decide.”

With Queen Riddler’s last message about “two Renées” spooking Tallinn, the team plans out how to keep the Europa Mission countdown going. Seven, Rios, and Raffi are on Soong duty, with The Watcher headed to the launch complex. Jean-Luc invites himself along to stop the Supervisor from doing anything heroic like sacrificing herself, but Tallinn sets him straight with “my fate is not yours to decide.” Tallinn reminds him he isn’t responsible for every death, including his mom’s—so she’s tired of all those flashbacks too. As for Soong, he shows up at the launch, leaving Seven and the gang in his supervillain lair to dispatch his evil backup plan drones with relative ease.

Tallinn breaks protocol to speak directly to Renée to try to enlist her trust, explaining how she has been her sort of guardian angel. Soong swoops in to help Renée when she flees the “crazy woman,” and his hand of comfort is revealed to deliver a fatal poison as he smugly declares, “Looks like you are about to create the future after all.” What a d—k. The dying astronaut stumbles around the inexplicably empty launch complex until she finds Picard and collapses, watching the Europa mission launch, with the other Renée on board. The dying one is Tallinn in disguise, but you knew that. The Watcher is happy to have had a moment with her beloved Renée, and as she dies she tells Jean-Luc to absolve himself of guilt. She really should be charging him for these little therapy sessions.

“That path leads to everything..”

With Renée Picard safely on her destined journey to Europa, Adam Soong watches his hopes of a Confederation future full of his statues fade away. He also notices all of his digital files are fading away: Kore has been busy, now remotely erasing his legacy on behalf of all her dead sisters. But as Brent Spiner’s latest Soong fades away, he has one last surprise, pulling out an old document about “Project Khan.” So that happened.

After hacking her dad/creator, Kore doesn’t have long to wait to figure out what to do next, getting a cryptic message about “Watch and Observe.” Kore meets the mysterious sender, revealing the former Wesley Crusher, now Time Lord Traveler . Turns out the Travelers are the people behind the Watcher/Supervisors, and it is their job to “protect everything,” so no pressure. And with Tallinn gone, there’s an opening. Wil Wheaton gives his recruitment speech and the pair beams off into the sunset. So that happened too.

“It’s time for me to go.”

Back at the chateau, the team regroups, preparing to spend their lives in the 21 st century, and Raffi has decided their hard work fixed the timeline, so it was all worth it. The next step is to figure out what to do for the rest of their lives. Seven has found some peace and is “better than okay” with being re-Borged, and she shuts a rambling Raffi up with a big kiss to show just how chill she is. Rios too seems cool with the situation as Teresa and son are a ready-made family to keep him busy. As for Jean-Luc, the Tallinn sessions seem to have sunk in as he puts that fateful key right back where he did/will find it, accepting it leads to mom’s death. “Bravo.” Wait, that voice sounds familiar. It’s Q, sitting solemnly in the atrium, judging Picard’s season-long trial, assessing that the admiral successfully accepted his fate and forgave himself.

Looking like he is no longer carrying a burden, Picard still has questions, most importantly why did Q bother? Turns out the god-being is getting maudlin as he approaches his lonely twilight and doesn’t want the same fate for his favorite mortal. All the time travel, mayhem, death, and destruction… it was all so Jean-Luc could free himself for some lovin’. And with the game over, it’s time for parting gifts in the form trips home for everyone. Rios passes, but you knew that was coming. With “farewell mon capitan” and hugs all around–even for Q–it’s just a snap to the future.

“Better to look forward.”

And we’re back! Stargazer. Queen… Mom. But Picard stops the auto-destruct countdown to hear out the Borg. The Queen’s choice of Picard’s childhood calming song was the clue, removing her plot device mask revealing it was Agnes all along. But you knew that too. Borgati means no harm, she just needs Starfleet’s ships to stop a space thing from wiping out the quadrant. You could have just asked nicely, Agnes. Anyway, the admiral puts Seven in charge and the former Borg hands command to the Queen to do her harmonizing shield grid thing and prevent the bad thing we just learned about ten seconds ago. It works, of course, because Jurati is that new kind of nice Borg and she even volunteers to join the Federation and act as the “guardian at the gates” to keep an eye on the transwarp conduit—the big space thing just opened up.

After all that, everyone needs a drink at 10 Forward and Whoopi Guinan is happy to oblige. Of course, she knew all this would happen back in episode one but had to keep quiet, knowing they “would circle around eventually.” She fills Jean-Luc in on how life went for Rios, Teresa, Ricardo, and Renée in the 21st century, who saved lives and even the whole planet with those alien microbes brought back from Europa. Oh, and Elnor is there too; he’s Q’s bonus resurrection prize since Rios stayed behind. Jean-Luc buys his “family” one last round before heading home to face Laris, who is packed and ready to head off on adventures of her own. She can see he is a new man… a new man asking a woman for a second chance—and not even her Tal Shiar training prepared her to resist those eyes. Fade up to space and that’s a wrap on season two, folks.

Was it worth it?

There was a lot going on in this season finale. It tried to do too many things at once, with mixed results on the various plot and character arcs being tied up. Better than some of the more meandering mid-season episodes, there were a few moments of delight with some of the character beats, but ultimately “Farewell” was weighed down by uneven pacing, lapses in logic, and clumsy fan service.

As usual, the actors’ performances were the highlight, especially star Patrick Stewart, who continues to be able to convey beyond what is on the page. John de Lancie, in what is likely his Star Trek farewell, was captivating as the dying Q. The pair had fantastic chemistry, even if this sudden turn to Q and Picard as family feels more like the actors and less their characters. Orla Brady is also to be commended for her double duty, especially the emotional weight she brought to Tallinn’s final scenes. Together, all of these scenes did a good job bringing closure to Picard’s arc, but how this lesson in letting in acceptance was connected to the time travel story was convoluted, and already handled better (and certainly faster) in TNG’s “Tapestry.” Yes Jean-Luc also had some regrets over not having a family, but this journey into the darkness of his childhood still feels unnecessary.

Perhaps if these scenes had been given more time and explanation, they could have held together; instead, the episode was serving so many purposes it couldn’t give each story the time required, which is ironic after wasting so much time in so many previous episodes. With the big TNG reunion coming in season three, “Farewell” is doing double duty as a season finale for some characters and (likely) a series finale for others. For example, to give Isa Briones a nice goodbye, they brought in a big TNG cameo to send her off in style. While it was nice to see Wil Wheaton in Star Trek, the character didn’t feel like either Wesley Crusher or a cool Time Lord Traveler, but more like Wheaton playing himself. And Rios staying behind for love and apparently ignoring the duty to his ship (it’s easy to forget, but he is the captain of the Stargazer) serves the changes in the cast more than honoring the character.

So with all these threads to tie up, the main story of getting Renée to her destined space flight seems like an afterthought with Brent Spiner reduced to a one-dimensional bad guy. This, along with the future space-based action, was just all too quick and predictable.

As for how this finale tied up the season’s time travel, it is almost impossible to decipher. After some meticulous crafting early in the season, the temporal mechanics just fell apart. It’s not even worth trying to figure out as it seems there was little interest to even bother to explain, leaving viewers who care about such things with frustrating questions.

The thing that will likely cause the most debate is the nature of Queen Agnes herself and what she was up to for the last 400 years. Some may come away thinking that she was (and therefore has been) the Borg Queen, which would change everything. More likely she is intended to be a Borg Queen, with her own little quiet (and totally unnoticed) collective, only to return at this exact moment when she needed some help. But without any actual explaining, answers to these profound questions are left to headcanon, post-finale interviews, and Twitter posts from the creatives.

All this doesn’t mean the Picard season finale didn’t indulge in elements of canon, but this was mostly via fan service from randomly introducing a new Khan Noonien Singh origin to dubiously connecting the lore of the Travelers of TNG to the Supervisors of TOS’ “Assignment: Earth.”

Final thoughts

With all its faults, “Farewell” was still a better season finale than season one’s “‘Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2.” And overall, season two is still an improvement. This finale had some memorable beats like Picard and Q’s farewell, Seven and Raffi finally kissing, and Jurati revealing her whole new thing. Captain Seven was awesome, and it was nice to see Whoopi Goldberg and Wil Wheaton back too. But otherwise, the finale was a bit of a jumble without a unifying theme, which also possibly describes the latter half of the season. After starting with such promise, season two ends with frustration. There simply wasn’t story enough to fill in ten episodes and when it mattered, things got rushed at the end. Binge-watching the season should mitigate some of the issues, but not all of them.

The good news is that season three looks to be a whole new thing, under the management of one showrunner (Terry Matalas), who has a singular vision to give Jean-Luc Picard a proper send-off, with all his Next Generation friends along for the ride.

Random bits

This is the third Picard writing credit for Christopher Monfette, who joined in season two as a supervising producer.
This is the sixth Picard writing credit for executive producer and co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman, who also directed and wrote the teleplay for the series premiere of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , which debuts the same day.
The two-episode block (209 and 210) were the first Star Trek credits for director Michael Weaver, who has worked as a television director regularly for the last decade after transitioning from over ten years as a cinematographer.
Picard inserting himself into Tallinn’s transporter was reminiscent of Dr. Gillian Taylor doing the same with James T. Kirk in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
Renée was still reading The Pallid Son , the Dixon Hill novel she was enjoying in her first appearance in episode four.
How did Soong get back from France so soon without a transporter? Or did he invent one of those too?
Renée’s flight suit has a patch for “Earthshine Aerospace,” presumably the maker of the Shango X-1 ship .
“Project Khan” was dated June 7, 1996. That is the same year TOS established the Eugenics Wars came to an end and Khan Noonien Singh was sent into exile; however, Picard and Strange New Worlds are establishing the Eugenics Wars actually took place after 2024.
Q’s alone, so where are his Q wife and Q son ?
The address Wesley gave Kore was 460 Lowry Avenue, which is not a real address in Los Angeles.
The map around the “galactic event” included Gideon, Vega , Maxia , Inferna Prime , Fellebia , Pyrithia , 61 Cygni , Altair , Arcturus , Benzar , Teneebia , Draylax , Babel , Alpha Centauri , Sol , Veda , Yadalla , Starbase 1 , and Wolf 359 . Three of those systems (Maxia, Sol, and Wolf 359) were home to major battles in Picard’s history.
The galactic event could be seen simultaneously in multiple systems, from light-years away, apparently defying the laws of physics.

More to come

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This must’ve been hands down the dumbest episode if Star Trek ever created. It’s very hard to put into words how stupid almost every Moment of this episode was. And my expectations were already pretty low after the rest of the season.

There’s plenty of things in here, that would have made for an interesting season, hat they been explored. But essentially setting up The Undiscovered Country 2 with the TNG Crew for the TOS Crew and the Borg for the Klingons really wasn’t one of them …

“ the dumbest episode if Star Trek ever created ”

There are many that are far dumber.

This lands in the top 5. This season was a mess,

You’d think so. But I’ve rewatched Thresold many times. Or some of the not so great Ferengi episodes of DS9. But I’m never ever ever touching this one again.

It has been fortold the Ferengi episodes must never be mentioned again…but this was up there…

I really don’t think you and I (and the reviewer) watched the same episode. This was a glorious hour of television and it was emotionally affecting. I’m aware that the group think on here has decided that all modern live action Trek is trash- and it breaks my heart. Nobody seems willing to give it a chance.

I’ve watched two seasons of it. How’s that not giving it a chance? Especially since I knew that all this was going nowhere after the fourth or fifth episode.

I’ve written plenty ob long posts under some of the other episodes. I simply don’t feel like going through this one too, just to show that it makes absolutely no sense.

The only scene with some emotional impact ist the one between Picard and Q. But story wise it comes out of nowhere and actually works better without the context. It’s a scene that could never work with different actors because it solely banks on nostalgia with no actual plot to back it up. And what makes this really frustrating is, that this concept could have worked great as a story.

Apart from that what is there? Nothing really happens in the episode.

Totally agree with you M1701. But I’ll leave it at that as I just don’t feel like arguing with people who keep trashing this season and just don’t get it – and probably never will

Oh, I get it. It’s not like it’s some highly intelligent or complex writing of display here. It’s just bad. And don’t gaslight other people by saying, their opinions aren’t valid, because, they’re “not getting it”. that’s a terrible habit.

You really need to defend that position vbeyond the childish, don’t worry, they don’t understand.

There’s nothing to get.

No one is saying you can’t enjoy the thing. But “glorious hour of television??” That’s… It looks pretty, ok?. It has Patrick Stewart. It has John DeLancie. But good storytelling and internal logic count for something. There was slightly more of that here than in season 1, especially early on, but this show spent that capital quickly and – very much like Discovery – replaced it with unearned emotional beats and frenetic action. Empty TV calories, really.

That’s not group-think. That’s what happened. And I watched every frame of it, trying not to care because…Picard. That almost carried the day for me.

And modern, live-action Trek looks like it may have hit on something with SNW. Here’s hoping Goldsman and Kurtzman mostly stay out of the writers’ pitch sessions. Also, Lower Decks is great, so y’know…

Who is this for? Children or people who grew up with TNG? People who have no critical ability that they have to be spoon-fed the plot development in the previous episode so they don’t get surprised and have to run to their safe room? Wheaton appears as fan service? What happened in this episode that you weren’t told was going to happen in the previous three episodes?

Seriously, what was the reason the Borg appeared in the first episode? such a cataclysmic universal problem that is resolved in the last 3 minutes or an excuser to take you to the next scene? What exactly was Q trying to do? I still don’t know. How did Picard do anything to influence the outcome? Why was Q hellbent on impeding Rene from travelling into space and what did Picard do to stop it when he said that he didn’t want them to travel in the past? A chat in a hall for 2 minutes in ep 5?

Because this show is written in a committee there are some scenes that work well but the overall arc, so the showruners’ fault, makes no sense. Each scene is only there to give you the information you need to get to the next. It is the same problem with Discovery.

Picard has been an enormous disappointment. It has destroyed the afterimage we had of this captain, now burdened with problems a man of his age couldn’t care less about; love, unresolved trauma, friendship…these are problems for lieutenant Picard, not Admira Picard, retired.

And don’t get me started on how women have been portrayed in the show.

It is fortunate we have SNW for the future.

The big galactic event explosion of energy was why the Borg appeared, I guess, so they could use Starfleet to amplify their shields. This otherwise would have wiped out half the sector, or something like that?

But shields can stop it.

Riiiiiiiiiight.

The characters have no depth and Picard is just…………there? (Picard was never meant to be “average”, which is what the show wants him to be) The plot holes are so enormous and childish that I question if the writer’s room is run by teenagers. The only good episode of the whole series was season 2, episode 1.

I didn’t think it was the dumbest but yes pretty stupid overall. So much of it just made no sense. I can’t believe how hopelessly bad this season was. I don’t think I felt any season of Star Trek being so ridiculously awful. I’ve given Discovery grief in pretty much every season but NOTHING in those seasons comes close to how badly this show has been and I’m including the crying Kelpian kid who destroyed warp travel throughout the galaxy for over a century.

I just can’t believe with so much fanfare and hype this show brought that this was the end result? I know we still have one more season but these two seasons was some of the worse writing ever made in Star Trek and sadly why Picard is STILL my worst Star Trek show.

If you think this was bad you should try being a Doctor Who fan…

Being a Doctor Who fan, Star Trek fan and Star Wars fan has been pretty trying the last few years.

I made my peace that DW went out with a bang with Steven Moffat and Peter Capaldi, but it was disheartening to see the new era bland out so spectacularly. Glimmers of hope with the combo of RTD and Gatwa.

I found things in the first two seasons of Discovery to enjoy but kept being reminded this wasn’t really my show. Picard also turned into a depressing mess of a TNG coda. I appreciate the animated efforts but can’t hang my hat on them. SNW hooked me again but I’ve learned to be very wary.

And then of course Star Wars would be a total lost cause after Rise of Skywalker if it weren’t for Mando.

Time to grow up. There was lots of trash in TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, some in ENT, Filmation one is hard to watch, Discovery very uneven and whiny. Picard mostly a nostalgia trip.SNW retreaded old story but actually did work out for me. Theres so much, that doesnt make sense, like overusing the Borg (in ENT made sense as followup to FC), overusing the Q (sisko box match, Q family in VOY), making it all allegories for humanity, which in the end it just is. Vger,? a child! sure spock, very misguided destroying child, with lots of victims. Anybody remeber the warp 5 speed limit? or the seeding humanoids in TNG? Q now dying? come on. At least Ds9 could sort of convey the idea of beings that do not even understand our concept of time. Now the Q are just dying? doesnt fit the concept. Time to realize Star Trek is not real, never will be. Nor should it be. Its Entertainment. It can inspire, might do some good, but in the end its just water under the bridge. So this season, lots of wasted opportunities, many mistakes. I dont personally agree with the writers execution and guess that the tng writers room was a bit more militant, constrained with their use of the source material. Was i entertained? somehow, somewhat on an emotional level. Will i continue to watch? probably, why not, if there is time, but as a grown man (also trained physicist) Star Trek is not what i as a child thought it was. Its just TV, not mediocre Procedurals, but just TV, Fiction. So get rid of any expectations, avoid any disappointment. I actually can stomach rewatching ENT, that was well executed, but space nazis? And the notion of a temporal cold war, bad concept, not as badly executed, but sometimes worse. remeber archers return in S2E1 and he was splicing copper for daniels for some time tech stuff? sure thing. remeber what phlox said about watching TV.

That’s fine but Picard season 2 was still the worst season by light years for me. Just an awful season. I’m still disappointed beyond belief.

Your sad boomer is showing. You may want to tone it down a little.

Language unbecoming of a Trekkie.

A wonderful season finale.

If “sad boomer” is how 20 yr olds say, “People who understand how stories work and expect the same of the highly paid writers on TV shows,” then sure.

For what its worth, this was the most special episode of Star Trek for me in many years.

I love the juxtaposition between the first two comments here. For me, it was… fine. I enjoyed the season more than most have, but this finale felt like it suffered the same fate as the last season. For a story that has been stretched out (which I didn’t mind) it all rushed to a harried conclusion a bit too quickly.

But the story itself I had no problem with. Just the way it was executed. I still enjoyed it, but it had some problems. Overall, a better season than the first, and i’m curious how a third season with the TNG cast, and Matalas as sole showrunner, will go. (Matalas says he had less involvement in the second half)

Now I know how Beavis and Butthead felt when they watched those dumb videos. One of the stupidest hours of television I’ve ever endured. Khan Project. Give me a break.

I mean.. that seemed like a reference to his grandson Arik. Not a big deal.

Exactly my thought.

I mean, it’s really no different than Arik’s final line in The Augments about cybernetics. “Might take a few generations…”

Now, you can not like it, that’s fine, but you can’t say it’s not exactly the kind of thing Trek has been doing for decades. I just took it as a nod to Arik, and his own final scene. I mean, really, that’s NOT my problem with this episode!

Specifically referencing “Khan” was what made my eyes roll. It seemed so absurd for Soong to name the whole project after him when he was just one of many augments who ended up fighting among themselves. The reference was just another example of the out of control fan service on this show.

Originally I thought it was 25 years too late but then I think it was setting up more the augment stuff that culminated in the 3 part Enterprise story with Spiner as another Soong later on.

“Originally I thought it was 25 years too late…”

That’s the whole point. I understand the “Project Khan” file as a way to finally remove the Eugenic Wars from the 90s, moving them into Mid 21st century… Now that his shield project won’t give him fame and glory, he moves on to creating Khan… FOR THE FIRST TIME! This project is not named after the historic Khan from the 90s, it is about creating the historic Khan in Adam’s future…

Agreed. I think it would’ve been better to just name it Augmentation project or something, but these writers have to hit you over the bluntly with everything these days. And they just love KHAAAAAAAANNNN!

But yes it was actually a nice tie in to Arik Soong. I didn’t think about that until much later.

Let it say, “Human Genome Augmentation Project” or “Project: Augment.”

Almost anything is acceptable over that title so on-the-nose it’s a punch in the face.

If you’re condemning an entire episode, season, or series over the title of a book being “Project Khan” rather than “Project Augment,” may I suggest you’re straddling Kirk’s safe combination territory: nitpicking in the extreme.

Plenty of viewers wouldn’t have gotten “Project Augment” but would recognize “Project Khan.” And Khan was the leader of the augments.

Since when was Khan “Leader of the Augments?” Is this in the ENT arc and I forgot, or what?

And, that one of the thousaand paper cut issues with this episode and this series as a whole. The Travellers, this species that doesn’t find humans remotely interesting until the 24th century, have ACTUALLY been SOOOOOOO interested in humans that they have plucked humans from the past and have trained them for generations to do the supervisor thing?

That doesn’t make a lick of sense. and “But Traveller and multi-dimensional time-y-whime-y” doesn’t cut it.

How about TPTB make up a different race? Or maybe use an existing race in lore where such a thing might make sense? “The Preservers,” maybe? From what little we know about them, multi-generational world defenders seems like their sweet, delicious, strawberry jam.

TPTB think they’re creating this grand tapestry by linking these elements of lore that people know with no thought as to whether or not it makes any sense.

And Renee Picard wouldn’t have to worry about going up in space because anyone with that level of crippling self-doubt would have washed out overnight.

When you figure out why the pre-launch quarantine party had 100x the security of the ACTUAL launch, please share.

Soong seems to have no reaction at all to seeing the woman he just murdered on her ship?

I could go on, but, “1000 cuts of stupid” is enough.

This show started spectacularly, then spent the next months meandering about, before hurrying up to tie everything off in the last episode and a half.

If Khan was as significant of a person as he claimed to be and history noted in TOS, why would someone interested in genetics not name their project after him since Khan was supposed to be in power around the 90s, it makes sense.

“It seemed so absurd for Soong to name the whole project after him…”

What? He didn’t name the project after Khan, this project is supposed to CREATE Khan in the first place! The Eugenic Wars did NOT happen in the 90s but will happen in Mid 21st century! That’s the whole point of that reveal…

Think how often we get historical events wrong or mix them up. From the perspective of people over 200 years later, especially in the aftermath of WWIII, it’s not impossible they got their dates wrong. Or maybe when Khan was in power he backdated his regime to make it seem like he’d been around longer.

Spock simply mixed up the “birth” / creation of Khan with his actual rule. The file said FUNDED in June 1996… So if there is no growth acceleration in place, he’d be in his early 30s now… SNW has established the Eugenic Wars in Mid 21nd century… So it all adds up…

It also explains why all the Soong’s look alike. They’re artificial. He had no Soong sons.

“ I mean.. that seemed like a reference to his grandson Arik. Not a big deal.”

How could it be a reference to his grandson Arik, who likely doesn’t exist yet? It’s not my intent to be a “grammar Nazi,” but is it possible you meant an allusion rather than a reference?

This episode wasn’t perfect but it was far and away not the worst episode of trek ever.

When did this website suddenly become a haven for angry, overly dramatic, acid lipped hysterics?

People are more motivated by dislike than like to participate in outward reaction, which in and of itself says some interesting things about humanity. I loved the episode, as well as the season in general.

Because Trek fans want (demand) things be a certain way, that usually pertains to them and them alone. And any variation be damned, because “that’s not muh Trek”. Star Wars suffers from a far worse syndrome, and Trek is quickly catching up. Its ok to not like something, but to completely shut out the possibility of seeing it in a different perspective and act like your opinion is absolute fact and speaks for the entire fanbase is ludicrous.

Maybe there are people out there capable of not being spoon fed glossy looking yet shallow senseless tripe, and knowing the difference betwixt good writing and poor writing. Heaven forbid anybody should be allowed not to notice faults and to mention them on a discussion forum. IDIC…. IDK…….. You’ll notice virtually everyone was unanimous in their praise for the first couple episodes, and – so far – Strange New Worlds. Kind of busts apart the whole tired “haters” comments doesn’t it… Your opinion is not fact either. Extend those disatisfied with this franchise product the same curtesy you are gifted to mention enjoying it.

It’s so like a Trekkie to come up a quip like that. hahaha

“When did this website suddenly become a haven for angry, overly dramatic, acid lipped hysterics?”

I want to say around the time Star Trek Into Darkness premiered? But it was probably even when ST09 came out, but not as many as then. ;)

But I can’t think of a time Star Trek fans weren’t angry about something on this site lol.

Thanks for the review, Anthony. The episode sounds just atrocious, and I’m wondering if I’m even going to bother with it. I didn’t watch last week’s either, and don’t feel like I missed out on anything. I’m trying to remember a time when I’ve just blown off the last two episodes of a season of any show I’ve ever watched, and can’t. Wow…just wow. What a tumble from the first two episodes, which were very strong.

Why does Khan need to be mentioned/involved in these shows all the time? The character died in 1982, ffs. What’s the matter with these writers?? Discouraging.

I was just happy, they didn’s show a CGI-Ricardo Montalban :-D

As a fan of the new shows, I thought this was bad.

But the augments related to Khan appeared in Enterprise, when Soong tried to revive them. After this didn’t work, he came with the idea of Data. Here he comes with the idea of Khan. Maybe this is related to SNW?!?

Khan didn’t need to be mentioned at all and sadly they found a way to shoehorn him in once again. But it’s the same brain trust that now has one of his descendants working on the Enterprise so yeah.

I do NOT understand their obsession with this character?? When the classic spin-off shows were on, Khan’s name was referenced about 3 times that I can remember between TNG, DS9,VOY and ENT. Three times out of 500+ episodes. And two of those times because the stories dealt with Augments obviously. But Khan was treated as this mystical figure at this point. It’s something everyone knows is iconic but you don’t really ever go there again. He was part of TOS and just leave it there.

Now, he’s a thing again. After the disaster known as STID, you would think they would just leave it alone again and treat him as a mystical figure like past Star Trek but we’re still talking about in the most eye rolling ways possible. I wish they can just move on but SNW has now made that clear it’s not happening.

And you made the right call not to watch this season. It was just so bad. I am speechless to how awful this season truly was. I can’t put into words just how bad I thought the whole affair was. And now that it’s over, I regret even watching it. The only times I felt that was probably watching Nemesis and stuff like Code of Honor or Threshold. But NONE of that was an entire season of worthless bad plotting and story developments either. These writers should be ashamed of themselves for how careless this season was made.

“I do NOT understand their obsession with this character??”

I do. He’s supposed to be Star Trek’s Joker, THE number-one villain and should reappear time and again in any possible way ;)

But the whole point of this file was to official remove the Eugenics Wars from the 90s and move them to Adam’s future and that’s what I’m VERY happy about.

Dude he only appeared twice, the second time 15 years later and was killed off in 1982 lol. How is that being the Joker?

He was not some reoccurring villain. Gul Dulat is a better example if you want to go there.

Not being the Joker, SUPPOSED to be the Joker. I want them to turn Khan into a / THE recurring villain… I want them to introduce dozens of clones if they have to. :-)

If you want him as a recurring character, you would have to reboot the entire show because in canon his story has been told. They irony is that’s what they wanted to do with him in STID (and why they just didn’t kill him off like they did Nero and Krall) but we saw how well that went over with the fanbase. People hated both this version of Khan and questioned why did they even need to bring him back.

Khan died in 1982. If you need a ‘Joker’ villain in Star Trek (and they really really don’t IMO) just create a new character then. And someone whose entire presence won’t break canon while doing it.

Why does Khan need to be mentioned/involved in these shows all the time

I agree Khan has been overused, but in fairness, if you’re going to blame anyone here, it should be Enterprise, which established a connection between the Soong family and Khan. (Or for that matter, blame TNG itself for the similarity between “Noonian Singh” and “Noonien Soong.”)

Now, I do question why they had to bring back yet another Soong descendant at all this season; that’s a very fair criticism. It seems to me they felt they *had* to give Spiner a role; just why, God knows. It just made everything far too confusing.

Nonetheless, this fault does not make the episode or season “atrocious”; seriously, they’re been reams of far, far worse Trek scripts. This wasn’t the best Trek season finale, but it wrapped things up decently.

Seems like there were a lot changes in editing. The scene with Rios, Seven and Raffi seemed like it has a lot of dialogue replaced in using ADR. Other scenes had bits of this too.

In one of the trailers, there was an additional gala shot with Rios and Picard covering their eyes while not-Laris held up her transporter thing. What happened to that shot?

I really hope the Rios/Soong ending isn’t supposed to be a set up for a Khan spin off. Rios was only interesting on his ship with his holograms. They stripped that away, paired him with a woman who only seems to like him for his tech, and wrote a terrible death already, removing all suspense. He was the one new character that people seemed to universally like and they completely ruined him. Plus Spiner doesn’t need his own show.

That Khan reference was obviously an easter egg related to Soong in ENT. After his project “reviving augments” aka “Khan” failed, he came up with the idea of Data. Here he comes up with Khan after his previous project failed. This closes the circle.

I noticed that too. The editing / ADR really seemed “off” in a few places.

Now I understand why they debuted SNW on the same day, this was astonishingly bad, even worse than I could imagine. I’m honestly crushed. I mean there is SO much garbage in this finale that it’s not even worth talking about, it’s all completely contrived nonsense. I just sat slack jawed at the end and quickly rushed to SNW to rescue the day. I mean they even threw in yet another Galaxy threatening anomaly with a sky beam to complete the insult. I will say that John DeLancie did a tremendous amount of heavy lifting at the end in a fairly poignant moment that was largely ruined by the absurdity around it. Tragically this season was just as bad as the first, possibly even worse.

I feel completely crushed too. I knew it was going to be bad but I didn’t expect it to be this terrible. It’s honestly killed all interest in new Trek for me.

This season did a tremendous amount of damage for me, which followed a weak season of Discovery. It’s just too much disappointment that it’s burning me out on anymore, especially following the incredible start for Picard S2. Fortunately SNW is bringing some hope back.

I didn’t like SNW much either so I’m not going to be watching it.

I am not sure what you expect, but I think SNW is about as good as it is going to get Trekwise.

If you are looking to Orville, check out the news that the actors and crew have been released from their contracts.

The start wasn’t “incredible”. Perceptible viewers saw right away that this season would degenerated into something weak, and rightly recognized the flaws in those early episodes. It was just a handful of gimmicks which conned people into thinking those early episodes were good (the shock of the Borg appearing, the dystopian future etc).

The Q and Picard Scenes kinda worked, if you watch them out of context with the season. It really makes you wonder, why they didn’t just make the season about that.

DeLancie’s delivery was, as always, impeccable and his scenes were the only redeeming parts of this episode for me.

That said, take away all the fan service and ancillary stuff that never amounted to anything and his whole plan here was basically a retread of Tapestry which covered a lot of the same ground in less than an hour.

That was my fear heading into the season as well. We didn’t need another Tapestry. Fortunately it didn’t really become that.

Yeah but Tapestry was actually good. I love Q but he was wasted in this season on so many levels. And now that we know his ‘reason’ for being part of the story I’m still having a hard time figuring out why he did a lot of the things he did like pretend to be Renee Picard’s doctor. What was even the point of that??? Like so much of this season, very little of it made sense.

Don’t get me wrong… Tapestry is the one Q episode that was actually GOOD. Which is why I didn’t see any point in rehashing it.

I think most were hoping if not the same but at least something as good on that level and we didn’t get even close with this turkey.

“ And now that we know [Q’s] ‘reason’ for being part of the story I’m still having a hard time figuring out why he did a lot of the things he did like pretend to be Renee Picard’s doctor. What was even the point of that?”

Good question, but first I still want to know WTF the point was of turning Picard into an android/robot/golem or whatever in the last episode of season 1. They didn’t even acknowledge it in season 2 except for one remark by Jurati when she told Picard, “You’re looking positively positronic.” And the follow-up question is: How could Picard bleed after he got hit by a car if he’s an android/robot/golem?

To be fair the event they dealt with at the end was mainly just an excuse to get the Borg to show up and send Picard off on his journey and really wasn’t all that important. Picard’s journey was the important part here.

So you are making it worse. Why the initial episode? Why have the borg queen in the show? Why travel to the past…?

The initial episode had Borg/Jururti ask for Picard. The Borg queen was Jurruti after the merge. The merge happened in the past where Q sent them. I hate that I am defending this but here we are.

You say that there was a lot of garbage but you are not specific. I agree with you but please explain your view.

I felt it was a reasonably entertaining hour of TV that I enjoyed watching but I still think both Q and Wesley’s stories would have been best left where they were at the end of TNG. Good though that Wil Wheaton got that recognition of being included – I think he is better at other things than acting though so I’m kind of glad they aren’t using him too much.

In particular I thought making the Q-Picard entwinement so personal was a letdown after the ‘trial of humanity’ arc.

But I can just have the stories end where I want them in my head so it’s all good.

Next time on Time Loop Trek : The Technobabble Generation……. the Borg have sought perfection for centuries, assimilating whole races in the process. Only one Federation has stood up against them thus far that they have decided to monitor it and farm it for technology. The collective unimind has always needed organic to add innovations in their quest for improvement.. until now! They capture Locutus and they won’t need organics ever again! But does that mean they will dominate or terminate all organic life in the galaxy? Regardless.. they must be stopped at all costs in their hunt.. But….

But uh… they have a Queen now because what’s a collective without a queen (?!?)… oh yeah, and she had some kind of psychiatry session with Locutus so now she’s cool and wants peace! She is so tired of being discriminated against just for killing millions, forcing billions into perpetual slavery. And she has found her soulmate in Locutus, who feels so bad for destroying 50 starships at Wolf 359, the guy ditched his friends to devote his life to pushing more AI.

It’s like Putin invading the Ukraine, all Biden needs to do is talk past victimhood and then they should be friends! It just wouldn’t be TNG without that horrid nonsensical political analogy.

Thank goodness for that reset button where Q can just jump in an save everyone because why not, ex deus machina is always a great way to end your story where it really didn’t even matter what your characters did because the day is saved! And Riker! And 100 CGI starships in the background (they need them for the warp core breach after 10 seconds of combat)! Maybe Worf will play a Merry Knight in the holodeck! Woohoo!

It’s special peaceful lullaby-time on Time Loop Trek : The Technobabble Generation!

So to start it was a fine season finale it didn’t go they way i was hoping though.

So the mission to save Renee Picard again begins i knew the look that Picard gave Talinn meant that she would have to sacrifice herself to make sure 1 Renee lives and 1 dies thing happens.

I liked the scene between Picard and Talinn she is right she doesn’t need saving it’s her life to do with and Picard shouldn’t interfere.

Soong is so like a bad James Bond villian. Him wanting to send drones to stop the Europa mission is right out of a James Bond film lol.

Loved the scenes between Renee and Talinn and that she finally got to ‘meet’ Renee and tell her she has been protecting her nearly her whole life and It was sad to see her die.

Good to see Kore and her destroying her fathers work was good to see he deserved losing everything after all he tried to do.

But that the heck was that file titled Project Khan? S3 story hint perhaps?

Wesley crusher is here! Not surprised to be honest with the Picard S2 soundtrack one of the tracks was called The Travelers which kinda hinted at that.

So the travelers are the bosses of Talinn and Gary 7 ok interesting and he is recruiting Kore too.

Love the scene with Raffi and 7 hope we get a wedding for them at some point.

Q is back and the whole thing for about Picard forgiving himself for what happened to his mother? You would think Q would find an easier way to teach Picard this lesson but then again that is not Q’s style is it.

Q is dying alone? What happened to his ‘wife’ and his son? The scene between him and Picard was sweet.

Rios is staying in the past? So no Stargazer show with him then but maybe a Stargazer show with 7 has captain and hopefully her wife Raffi as her first officer.

The hug between Picard and Q was so sweet i started crying when it happened.

Finally back in 2401 hope we never see 2024 for a long time. The mask retracting and reveling Jurati was a bit corny too be honest and the CGI could do with some more work.

So the Jurati Borg came to save the galaxy from destruction? Ok that was really out of the blue.

So Picard gave 7 a field commission good about time she got what she was owed.

Loved the shield bubble shot and Elnor is alive great i was afraid they wouldn’t bring him back.

Guinan is back great and she remembers meeting Picard in 2024? and nice to see Rios had a happy life though i found the idea of the Ricardo saving the oceans with the alien organism that Renee brought back a bit corny but interesting to hear nonetheless.

So is that the story for S3? A galactic threat is coming? We know they stop it because of Discovery now being in the 32nd century.

It’s nice to see Laris again and i hope this means her and Picard get together.

“ Soong is so like a bad James Bond villian. Him wanting to send drones to stop the Europa mission is right out of a James Bond film lol.”

Soong was really a dick to that nice lady who was showing him around the space center, but I guess that was just an act to separate himself from her so he could set his evil plans into motion.

Did 2401 Guinan remember meeting Picard in 2024? I didn’t see (or hear) anything to suggest she did.

Remember in “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” when Spock convinced Kirk that they had to return Captain Christopher to Earth because he had knowledge about the future and anybody else who found out what he knows could “manipulate stocks, [something else], and even nations”? Doesn’t that apply to Rios too?

It might have been cool if the Renée Picard character had been Captain Christopher’s son. And then Jean-Luc’s ancestor could have just walked away.

I don’t think NASA launches space rockets in southern California. Does it? Maybe the Europa Mission was a Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk thing and not NASA.

Yes, she said something like, “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you.”

Thank you, Thorny.

Surely then if the timeline returned to normal then Guinan STILL first met Picard in the 19th century.

Looks like the timeline is not rescued after all…..

Picard & Laris is the wedding I want to see although I dont object to a Seven & Raffi one the main couple for me should be Picard & Laris.

I just loved the scene of Picard and Q saying goodbye. I got all teary-eyed.

Same. That scene by far outdid what I’d imagined in my head prior to it. I loved this episode so much.

That was so disappointing. Good thing I saw SNW· after and not before, at least I got to have a bit of fun in the Star trek universe and not end with such a low. Within the first 5 minutes, I was already screaming at the TV. After that, I just gave up and held on to my faith in the ST Universe rather than appreciate what was happening.

I think they had enough material for 2 episodes, and if they had eliminated most of the chaff in the rest of the season, that might have worked. It was almost as if they had realised when they got to the last 10 minutes of the season….We’ll have to do something with the Borg thing from episode 1….? Nah, we’lll resolve it in the lat minute. Done.

The best thing about this episode was Wheaton’s scene. I love that it overwrote IDW’s Star Trek Year 5 which inexplicably made Gary Seven and the Supervisors evil.

TRUE THIS. Greatly enjoyed the closure of Wesley’s journey, this answered a lot of questions about his fate. And it was great to see WW back in Trek again. Hoping he will show up on Lower Decks! 👍

I enjoyed the finale. In fact, I enjoyed the entire season. I am sorry that I appear to be in the minority.

I’m with you, Gary 8.5.

Thank you, cast & crew of Picard Season II!

The finale suffered from having to do too much in one episode. The pacing of the entire second season was absolutely terrible. “ Farewell ” is very much like The Rise of Skywalker in that it had to fix the mess that was the installment(s) and did the best it could, being generally enjoyable but overall very rushed and disjointed.

[previous installments]

I actually thought this episode DID make them sound evil. For one thing, Wesley Crusher sounded like a (bad) car salesman who couldn’t stop smiling, and he said something about them basically controlling time to ensure they get the outcome they want. Supervisors, we’ve had it wrong this WHOLE TIME, they’re SuperVILLAINS! There was just some dust on the nameplate, like with V’GER. :D

Here we are, the finale to S2 of Picard. Like this season, this episode was both beautiful, poignant, and frustrating at the same time. I really do think at its core this season has an absolutely incredible story, but it’s always been just out of focus and distorted or disjointed. While I loved last episode as a glimpse of this show’s potential, the finale exemplified the struggles of this show. Let’s look at what happened in this episode: Agnes had said one Renee must live, and another must die. Tallinn and Picard race to the launch facility to save Renee and the Europa Mission, while the rest of the crew stays behind to stop Soong. Picard tries to stop Tallinn from sacrificing herself, but she reminds him that it’s not his life to save, that he cannot be responsible for every life. Tallinn gets a chance to talk to Renee, and disguises herself as her so that Soong ends up killing her, not Renee. I must admit that by this point I’ve grown tired of Soong as a villain. By this episode he’s a boring, over the top caricature of a Bond villain, and I just didn’t much care. Tallinn dies, just after telling Picard he needs to absolve himself. While Soong is off trying to create his evil future, Kore is living free, and takes her vengeance on him by deleting all of Soong’s research. In what I thought was a bit of an abrupt and odd choice, Wesley Crusher appears out of nowhere to recruit her. To be perfectly honest, this just did not work for me. I assume this is setup for S3, but it took me out of this story. After saving Renee and the Europa Mission, our focus returns to our crew. Seven and Raffi are finally back together, as both characters reach their own peace. Seven, after the events of last episode, is finally at peace with her Borg past, and is ready to embrace it. I’m excited to see where she goes next. Meanwhile, Raffi is finally in a place to focus on taking care of herself and her issues. Next comes (sadly) the inevitable: Rios chooses to stay in the past with Teresa. While I understand the reasons, I was disappointed because Rios was easily the best of the new characters in Picard, and I had hoped he’d get his own show on the Stargazer. Now we reach the core of this season, Picard and Q. There’s a very poignant moment when Picard puts the skeleton key in the place he found it as a boy, signaling his acceptance, at long last, of his past and coming to peace with what happened to his mother. He then sees Q, who reveals what this trial was about. As Q says, “even gods have favorites”, and he didn’t want to die without giving Picard one final lesson and gift. Picard has learned how to finally absolve himself of guilt and come to peace with his trauma. Finally, Picard is free to look forward. I want to commend Stewart’s acting here, as he really sells Picard becoming a new man, freed of the shackles of the past. Q returns our crew (minus Rios), back to the 25th century, and Picard changes course. Canceling the self-destruct, he takes a leap of faith and trusts the Agnes!Borg. Turns out the Borg (or really, Agnes’ splinter Collective), need Starfleet’s help in shielding the galaxy from a major astrophysical phenomena. After linking all the ships’ shields together and saving the sector, a giant new transwarp corridor forms, created by something unknown (hello S3!). The Agnes Collective asks provisional membership in the Federation so they can act as “guardians of the gate”, keeping the galaxy safe from whatever might come out of the wormhole. At last, we end up in Guinan’s bar, where she fills Picard in on what happened to Rios, Teresa, and Ricardo. Finally, Picard works up the courage to talk to Laris. As I said earlier, this season has a really beautiful message and what could have been a really great story. The issue, although less severe, is the same that has plagued Discovery: serializing a single story over 10+ episodes is just beyond the capability of these writers. This would have worked much better as a five or six (max) episode season, with tighter writing and a willingness to cull extraneous plot lines. The season also felt very disjointed and jumbled. I understand that a lot of folks are annoyed that this season was spent mostly on 2024 Earth and not in space, and I get that. But I disagree. Time travel has always been a core part of the franchise, and I thought this was not the problem. However, one thing I really liked about … Read more »

Upon further reflection, I’m changing my ratings.

Episode: 4/10 Season: 5/10

Episodes 2.1, 2.2, 2.6, and 2.9 were really enjoyable and added a lot. There should have been two more episodes, for a total of 6, not 6 more for 10 total. Once again, I firmly believe there’s a really great story in this season, but the writers just couldn’t pull it into focus. Instead, we’re left with four great episodes, the bones of a great story, but six episodes of wasted potential. This season was still miles better than season 1, and I do think this season added a lot to Picard. But still a bit of a jumbled mess that wasted potential.

I feel like an idiot for defending this season in the past. This was just such a mess and really brought down an already middling season. Some great performances from DeLancie but nothing really gelled. Wesley suddenly appearing in a scene that just came out of nowhere? Soong suddenly appearing in LA? What was the point of Soong in this season anyway? What was the point of his daughter and her figuring out she was an experiment? So Wesley could come and take her away…WHAT??

So alll this was so that Picard could forgive himself and have a relationship? I’m fine with that plot point ,but I’m not fine with it being the entire season. Q being Renee’s psychiatrist, texting Renee in the past, manipulating Soong and his daughter..that was the only way Picard could forgive himself? Just a mess. And then a galaxy wide event anomaly suddenly appearing with 10 minutes left to go…ummm OK. Guess the writers needed to quickly come up with an idea for why the borg needed help and that was the best they could do. This is easily the worst season of the modern era. I feel bad for everyone involved in this – especially getting overshadowed by SNW – but it was bad. Turned into a top 4 Trek show after season 1 to my least favorite Trek show.

I feel like this is the worst season of television I’ve watched in decades. I’ve lost all interest in Season 3.

Decent ep. Way too much to wrap up in one episode, as you mentioned, and they should have started it much sooner.

I enjoyed this episode more than the others of the season but there is one thing I can’t get my head around. Why do some of the actors here insist on playing themselves and not the characters? Will Wheaton, Whoopi Goldberg, Patrick Stewart and at the end even John De Lancie seemed to be playing themselves more than the characters. Is this like a recent phenomenon in acting? I mean in season one I thought Stewart was more in character as Picard but this season I couldn’t really see it.

I’m going to get flak for this but I don’t think Stewart’s acting was that great. He was ok for most of it playing himself but there was one reaction shot (I think because of something Q said) that stuck out as his acting seemed comical, in a bad way. He wasn’t Picard at all.

No, you shouldn’t get flack for this. Stewart’s acting has been awful for a while now. He lost every bit of charisma and gravitas he had a decade ago. Not a rip. It happens to us all.

Agreed with ML, no shame in telling it like it is. Stewart hasn’t acted like Picard throughout the entire run of the show, imo.

TNG’s Picard was very distanced and self-controlled and did not indulge in his emotionality. But that was just a shell, an armour… He started to see the “real” Picard in the movies and this development has gone further in old age. I truly believe that THIS is the real Picard, the TNG Picard was just an avatar he chose to appear ingenious and flawless to his crew. That’s why he didn’t want this shell to be challenged by the presence of children and Lwaxana’s mind probing He hid his true self under there and now he’s free… .

Sir Patrick said, before the Picard series started shooting, that JLP would not be the same man.

Have you considered that this is one of the main reasons why he has not been like the Jean-Luc of old and Patrick Stewart has done this on purpose?

It definitely happened to Shatner. And Marina Sirtis has been doing it for years (arguably, with the exception of her Troi last season).

On this show, I partially blame the writing and directing — but yeah, they all just seemed like they were playing themselves.

I always wonder if, for some of these actors, years of adoration at conventions take their toll on actual acting.

I took some flack here for worrying about Stewart having too much input into the character before the Season One premiere (it wasn’t just because if him giving Picard a Pit Bull because Stewart has one, although that worried me — Shatner got a Great Dane in Generations because Shatner had one).

I thought Shatner was a Doberman person.

Well, should have expected this from the makers of Batman and Robin and Transformers. Nu-Trek has never been written by competent writers, and never managed a great season, or a single great episode. But even by those horrendous standards, this episode and season were quite poor.

I thought Akiva did a great job on the SNW premiere!

I haven’t seen SNW yet but maybe Akiva Goldsman is better at self-contained episodes then writing serialized television or feature films. Some of the unevenness of the back of Season 2 seems attributable to him.

I cannot stand Nu-Trek. Discovery is the WORST. Picard a bit better. The writing is really terrible with it being basically a string of plot-holes. Season one was horrible and made little sense. Also they are called “Androids” not “Synths”, trying to sound cool and edgy… now that the word “android” is so well known and established in 202x. But overall… I didn’t hate this episode. It was pretty okay. The fan service made it acceptable to me. Which is probably why I can live with Lower Decks… as ridiculous as it is at times. The story still made no sense. If the bullet holes of the changed past is what Picard remembers his family fixed up in the 21st century when they came back to the Chateau, it means that it has always been that way. Because the “Borg” caused these holes. If that WERE true, however, the argument that Guinan didn’t remember meeting Picard in 18xx because this is a changed timeline, contradicts this. Yes, Guinan makes a remark to the fact that she couldn’t tell him. But that was about 24th/25th century Guinan… not about her 21st century version who didn’t hide that she knew him, but genuinely didn’t.

Discovery is the WORST. Picard a bit better…..They are called “Androids” not “Synths”…

…thereby living up to the worst stereotypes of Star Trek fans as immature or unhinged weirdoes. (This example is topped only by the poster who once got his undies in a bundle over the fact that “EVERYONE knows it’s called DSN, not DS9”).

What about the deep space network? https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html

Also they are called “Androids” not “Synths”

I thought androids were robotic/mechanical beings like Data, while the Synths seem to be artificial biological constructs.

With the exception of the premiere episode to season 2, it was a VERY disappointing season 2. I’ve lost all faith in Picard. But, I am looking forward to Strange New Worlds.

Cut scene from Star Trek First Contact–

Elderly vagrant near Cochrane’s landing site: Picard! It’s me, Cristobal Rios! Take me home to the future with you, I can’t take it any more! I’ve been regretting staying here for 40 years, Teresa and her son were not who I thought they were! And World War 3 was too much! Take me home!

Picard: Get away from me you crazy lunatic!

Ducane, who is now old enough to look like Agent Welles inexplicably appears “Come along Captain Braxton, don’t bother Picard like you did Janeway. We got a spot for you on Tantalus IV” “But my name is Rios!” “Sure, Braxton, that’s what they all say!” “Help me Picard…” he trails off as he disappears in a 29th century time transporter.

I enjoyed the finale a lot more than I was expecting to. Fewer characters exiting than anticipated, and Queen Agnes is available for post-S3 stories. Picard and Q’s farewell was, of course, the highlight, and Rios’ ridiculous jettisoning the low point. Thought the Talinn/ Laris plotlines fizzled out, but Brady did her best with the performance. Doesn’t redeem the spongy parts of the season, imo, but left me feeling better about S3 and I had fun with it overall.

Bravo to the cast and crew for conning Paramount out of all that money. And as hilarious as it will be to see the cast reunited in season three, they’re going to have a really tough time coming up with a funnier finale than the Care Bear Stare.

What money? Existing Season 1 sets for the La Sirena and Picard’s chateau. Standard contemporary LA sets that would be at home in any police procedural, and some cheap dark “underground corridor” sets. They paid Sir Patrick a bundle, but otherwise this must be the cheapest Star Trek production since TOS.

The above the line people got paid their rates to put on a cheap show. Akiva Goldsman wasn’t working for scale.

Focusing on what worked for me, I was truly touched by the final moments between Picard and Q. Also great work all session long from the cast. They made the most of what they were presented with. I did find everything that happened in the 25th century far more compelling than what happened the 21st and was happier once we got back there and into space. And hey look Elnor is back! Hello again Whoopi! I’m here for a Captain 7 (it has a nice ring to it), some people called it but I sure didn’t see it coming. And if she gets her own 25th century show, this whole session truly had purpose for me. This session was more hopeful, optimistic and lighter than the first. However, this session at the minimum should have been released all at once and should have been 8 episodes long and not ten.

“ randomly introducing a new Khan Noonien Singh origin ”

The Soongs have been tied to Khan’s origin since Star Trek: Enterprise, so this was neither random nor new.

I thought the connection was already hinted in TNG by naming Data’s creator Soong which sounds similar to Noonien Singh. I don’t think this was casual.

That looked like a pretty old file to me too, so it didn’t feel like it was implying he was about to create Khan, but that Khan and the original Augments were the original inspiration behind Soong’s work in genetics.

In the end I feel like the writers always knew exactly where they were going and I appreciate what they did. It was….weird, but wonderful. It was not without its faults and I’m looking forward to binging the season (the way I feel it was meant to be watched) in order to pass judgement on the full story. I feel that it holds a strong place in the canon of the Star Trek universe and that a lot of hearts will soften toward it over the years.

I am forced to admit that in spite of all the flaws the story had this was easily overall the best live action season of Trek Secret Hideout has made. It was merely mediocre but that is quite the accomplishment from this bunch.

I liked that Q finally owned up to his fondness of Picard verbally. We all knew it. Was nice to hear it.

Nice link of Wesley and the Travelers to the Gary 7 people. Generally they have failed when doing things like that but in this case, it seemed to work.

But… I still think explanations of Q not being able to do things while still being able to do others was needed. If it’s an energy thing then why would some things work and others not? It doesn’t make sense.

Sadly every plot point was telegraphed from miles away. There were zero surprises. And the things they chose to explain were the obvious things, not the murky things that needed explaining. Like how come everyone was still firing at the Borg when Picard came back? With new Borg everything involving them ought to have been different. No Locutus. No 7 of 9 Borg. Everything should change!

Wasn’t happy about Rios staying behind. Would have loved to see a Rios on the LaSerena show. And of course they had to make significant contributions to society. Would have loved if something like, the kid was hit by a bus on his way to a liquor store to drown his sorrows over his divorce or something…. But enough with the literal Earth shattering discoveries and deeds.

And how is Laris still in the future? Didn’t she die in 2024? She never time traveled. She wasn’t special. What’s the deal there?

Anyway… They made a decent effort. They missed more often than they hit but it was a better effort than any other live action show up to this point. I still like Prodigy better. But I’m hoping this is a decent sign.

I didn’t buy that for a moment. I like Wil Wheaton well enough, but he wasn’t acting much here. I half-expected him to tell Kore, “come on, let me introduce you to my friend Sheldon.”

To be fair in TNG apart from Stewart none of them were very good actors. I admit it was odd that Kore be selected for this and the scene wasn’t written very well at all. But I did like the connection they made. Unlike most things Secret Hideout tries to do with classic Trek stuff this time it made some kind of sense.

I guess I liked it OK, but honestly, Q is a dick.

Yeah, it’s hard to recover the series at the end, and there are some things I like about this episode, and some I don’t. Still.. it’s not that good. Rather than rehash a bunch of stuff many here have already covered, I’ll just talk about one thing. I kind of liked having Wesley Crusher tie in with the travelers tying in with the watchers / supervisors. If I were to go back and watch those episodes, maybe I’d change my mind, but just as something to tie in to, I like the idea, and by keeping it a short scene was appropriate.

Aaaaaand… They missed the landing. Again.

It would have been a miracle if they hadn’t. So much time wasted in Episodes 3-8, the finale was doomed to being mediocre at best.

When it comes to modern screenplays, I’m truly baffled at the lack of logical progression, focus, and coherence. Meandering plots, lackadaisical characterization, and shoehorned fan service that demands some sort of explanation, but little, if any, attempts are made to do so. I’ll give it a chance when I binge it but I’ll keep my expectations low.

But like, I am just glad its over. I am not wondering what is coming next, because we know its Season 3: The Reunion. Could they have used episodes in the center to expand out the last episode and have it make sense, have better pacing and be less frustrating for the viewer, and hopefully more satisfying – totally. But at least its over. The ten weeks of being frustrated every Thursday morning as the ending credits pop at the end of each episode is done. The irritation as I got into my Thursday morning meetings after being so severely disappointed/annoyed is over. The wait to see if something satisfying was going to be coming next week is over. It is done and at least I got that cover of California Dreaming out of it.

Wow, that makes me sound like I don’t love Star Trek and I sooooo do. Sigh.

So I’m lost… what does the Europa mission go on to discover that makes humanity’s future positive?

A microbe that helped fix climate change. Without that microbe earth turns to Soong for help which somehow leads to the confederation.

And why in the world they didn’t build this when they must have known this from the first episode?

What if Picard had tried to solve one of those problems but couldn’t, even with 24th century tech… and got “lost” from his mission not knowing the answer was there all the time?

Or something? Why is this a footnote?!

Which makes no logical sense but… Whatever.

So in thinking about the episode and the season a bit more I think I was a bit harsh in my initial reaction.

I’ll now talk about the things I liked and how they turned into things I didn’t. Basically I thought the story ideas were good, but the execution didn’t always work.

I think the overall story was good. I loved learning about Picard’s past and seeing that there was trauma there and how that impacted him being able to form relationships. The idea worked. It worked for me in 2.1, 2.9, and 2.10. I’ll give it a rewatch eventually, but the look inside his mind in 2.7 still doesn’t work for me. It also felt like this plot point was artificially padded (like in 2.7) when the other episodes would have covered it fine.

Q wanting to help Picard worked for me, but again the execution of the story and involving Soong and Soong’s daughter, and him being Rene’s psychiatrist, and Picard needing to meet the watcher was all sort of hit and miss, mostly miss for me. A lot of it felt like they were trying to add mystery and pad out the season. Again, I liked the idea and the scenes between Picard and Q were very strong, I just don’t like how we got there or that it took so long to get there.

Agnes and the Borg Queen – solid and strong throughout. I even liked the singing scene. Pill was outstanding this season.

Rios staying – a weak point for me. It was ok, but I felt like it needed more development beyond he met an attractive woman he had 2 or 3 interactions with and then 2 days later decides to stay in the past. Their relationship should have been better developed and we should have gotten more of a sense that he was unhappy on the Stargazer instead of “this place has cigars and good food”

Seven/Raffi – I feel like they didn’t really have a lot to do. I liked the relationship angle and they got a few good scenes but not much.

Quadrant anomaly at the end – felt rushed and tacked on. I didn’t like it.

Wesley cameo – I didn’t really like this either. Why did he choose Kore to go with him? Just felt like they needed to wrap up her story and had Wesley come take her away. Felt very out of place.

I think the season would have been stronger with half of it being in the past and half of it being in the future maybe dealing with the anomaly and borg stuff I don’t know. Maybe more info on the new Borg and what it means to have them join the federation. More on what the anomaly is. More info on the Q continuum and what is going on there. Maybe Picard could have faced his past earlier in the season and we could have seen him and Laris actually develop their relationship. I feel like at least the last 2-3 episodes could have taken place back in the future – just eliminate the pointless Soong stuff completely…that really dragged things down even more. They could have even had Soji help with negotiations with the Borg since she had been on her Synth welcoming tour and had been working with Agnes who was now the Borg Queen.

Such a shame it didn’t work for me, because like I said I liked the main ideas and themes of the season. And it’s still my least favorite season of all the new shows (including animated).

Have seen some positive reaction on social media, so I’m happy that others enjoyed it.

Somewhere in the middle of this episode I decided this must be a comedy, because I sure was laughing at the Khan reference and TV pitchman Wil Wheaton showing up and schmoozing like he wanted her to join some new age California space cult. Oh, and Queen Jurati looking like a Power Rangers character, that was fun.

It was all a mess but I was entertained.

Extremely on board with this being Akiva Goldsman’s The Producers

Ha! So is ‘Springtime for Khan’ their next project?

Will the dancing Khans please wait in the wings? We’re only auditioning singing Khans today

Ha! Good one!

This finale, like this season was such a mess that I’m shocked that I liked any of it at after how brutally bad last episode was. It was such a low point for me, I didn’t even care about the finale itself anymore. But I will go as far to say it didn’t completely suck. Sadly that’s about as high praise I can give it lol.

First the good:

Have to admit, seeing Wesley was such a big surprise and highlight. I kept saying I just wanted ONE TNG cameo in the finale. And knowing the TNG cast would be back I suspected we would get one but it never occurred to me it would be Wesley! So that was a GREAT moment! Man I smiled so wide. Now I want a Traveler’s show lol. Also nice twist that the Travelers control people like Gary Seven.

Did we just witness the birth of a Captain Seven??? If so I’m ALL in! And is she now the new Captain of the Stargazer? I guess promotion works in the Prime Universe like the Kelvin universe does now? Yeah I don’t know but now fans are screaming for a Stargazer Captain Seven show, so that all really matters end of the day.

Q and Picard final moment was nice. It did feel a bit like Picard and Data’s moment in the last season finale. It was nice to know Q admitted what we all knew for years that he cared about Picard and had an impact on his life. It was nice how they framed it, but so much of it felt messy. So this was all about Picard getting past his guilt over his mother and yet nothing Q did in this season had NOTHING to do with that. It was all about him manipulating the space mission, but whatever at this point. It was a nice scene so I’ll leave it there.

Now time for the bad….everything else!

As I said, the episode was OK, but so much of it kind of felt like nonsense; but welcome to this season ;). So really, the galaxy was saved because Taillin did a switcheroo with Renee Picard? That’s it?? That’s all it took lol. And what I don’t understand is since she obviously knew Soong was going to kill her, why was she not prepared? I guess Soong must have created transporter technology too because the guy went from being in the middle of the French country side to L.A. in what, 1-2 hours? And the whole subplot with Kore just felt so tacked on. She was there to erase his files? Not actually reveal to the world what he was doing? The guy literally got away with murder. It’s crazy how his character got no consequences to anything he did. But whatever.

Agnes being the new Borg Queen. Yeah that was obvious after last week. But how did the new Borg manage to go a new direction but apparently doesn’t change one iota of history in 400 years?? Can’t wait to hear how this wasn’t totally ridiculous. And then the sudden crazy anomaly popped up at the end. What the hell was that about???? Maybe it will tie into next season? It just felt so tacked on like they needed for some big moment in the finale.

And then they brought Elnor back to life….convenient. And Rios sticking behind for a girl he’s known less than a week but love can do that I guess.I was disappointed by that but it looks like this cast really had nothing to do so probably a good idea. Oh and Soj—ah who cares!?

Overall, this was a REALLY disappointing season in so many ways. It was sloppy, tedious as hell and just plain awful in so many places. It’s really mind boggling to me how bad this was! It was slightly better than last season since it didn’t leave a boatload of questions but only slightly. I’m kind of glad next season will be it. Hopefully the TNG cast will make it interesting a proper send off but I will be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous. It’s sad I’m HAPPY for a season to be over lol. Farewell indeed!

You think this was bad? How do you feel about T’Pring on SNW? They totally just rewrote her and Vulcan. Now Vulcan’s got criminals.

For a society that was known for having scholars and scientists and being above baser thoughts, Vulcan is starting to look more and more like Romulus all the time in modern Star Trek. If Vulcan has a criminal element to it, then what was even the point of sending the Romulans away in the first place? Oh, and don’t get me going about Sam Kirk being on the Enterprise? He’s supposed to be on Deneva!

Continuity is being rewritten right before our eyes. Don’t they think that if Captain Kirk’s brother served with Captain Pike that Kirk would’ve mentioned it in either The Menagerie or Operation: Annihilate ? These writers are really pushing the boundaries now, man!! Also, I agree with you, Tiger2, about Picard feeling bland this year.

I thought it was just me but some of those episodes were so slow, it made it hard to get through them. I loved the finale, though! I wrote a review and left my reasons why there so I won’t rehash them. But seeing Wesley again and Q’s goodbye were two highlights for me.

Soong looking at Khan’s file and setting up Arik’s story, I also thought that was a nice callback to Enterprise right there. I think Khan’s gonna show up on Strange New Worlds. They just keep rewriting everything so why not have him show up earlier than expected? I thought that the minute they unveiled the fact that there’s a descendant of Khan’s onboard the Enterprise.

I told you Alex Kurtzman is enamored with Khan. That’s why there’s Khan Easter eggs all over these new Star Trek shows. And it won’t end until he finally brings in his version of Khan in this timeline and he can call him Khan now too. I told you SNW was gonna be crazy and it’s just beginning.

Live long and prosper, Tiger2 🖖.

LOL I did think about you when they showed the Spock and T’Pring scene. I thought ‘Man, Johnathan is probably doing everything he can from not breaking his TV right now!” I’m actually surprised people aren’t as upset about it. Yeah some, but most seem to be over looking it. And I think others are just telling themselves it didn’t really violate canon. And of course others just don’t care.

I don’t know if you read my review on that episode but I did really like it, but yeah it does have a lot of canon issues. And there will be more obviously. And I don’t think they will bring Khan on this show, but when it comes to this brain trust, you literally can’t trust anything lol. I’m going to stay positive about it for now because I do think the good is outweighing the bad at the moment. Nothing really bothered me but definitely room for improvement. Right now, I’m not overthinking anything.

As for Picard, I can’t help BUT to overthink everything, mostly how bad it was lol. Yes the finale wasn’t that bad as I said, but expectations has been soooo low at this point, anything short of turning Q into an Android to save his life, it couldn’t be that much worse. I didn’t think about it at the time, but yeah I’m cool with this Soong and basically alluding to Arik Soong building on his work with Augments. But the character was SO ridiculous and over the top Spiner was basicaly keeping with Shatner over who can chew up the scenery more.

I wanted to like this season sooo much more. I just can’t figure out how it got this bad? But I’m glad you liked the finale more. I’m just happy the whole thing is over.

I did read your review for SNW, Tiger2. I liked what you said. You’re right, though, SNW is not gonna be for everybody because of how closely they’re tweaking the canon. I left a very glowing review for Strange New Worlds because I really liked it despite the canon tweaking.

I’ve watched it 3 times and every time I just enjoy it more. The Spock and T’Pring thing I’m coming to terms with. No, I won’t be breaking the TV over it 😉😄 that’s for sure. I liked T’Pring a lot.

The actress, Gia Sandhu, is just as beautiful as Arlene Martel was as T’Pring so I actually wound up enjoying seeing T’Pring return. The writers were even able to capture T’Pring’s inflections, the way T’Pring spoke in Amok Time, just right. So I really enjoyed seeing her. They showed in the trailer for what’s coming up this season on SNW that it looks as though we’re gonna be going back to Vulcan and revisiting T’Pring and Pon Farr and Koon-ut-kal-if-fee so ask me then, Tiger2, about how I feel about T’Pring being in this show to see if my answer has changed and if my attitude is back to being ticked off 🙂😄about it.

I agree about the Picard show. The season was bad, except for the finale. And what makes it even worse is the Picard show isn’t episodic television, it’s serialized. So you have to watch the whole season to get the whole story.

I don’t know what the deal with Brent Spiner was. I thought, with him playing a villain again, that he would be portraying him more like Lore. Man, was I ever wrong! When Picard first started, I was really hoping that Lore would return somehow on this show.

Now, I don’t want Lore to return at all. Leave Lore in the past, man, where we could still remember the good times we had enjoying that character wreak havoc on Captain Picard and crew. I’m beginning to feel like the Crystalline Entity should show up and just start taking people out, start first with Brent Spiner’s Soong character, any Soong character he plays anymore 😄🤣. That would be way more action packed then anything we got this season on Picard.

I don’t want to hear the Crystalline Entity is dead neither, Tiger2, because Lower Decks has got a Salt Vampire on it and she’s been dead for 150+ years! So the Crystalline Entity could be alive in this whacked out timeline 😄! And as for Rios being left in the past? I don’t know what Kurtzman and company have done to the DTI but that department had better be closed with all the anomalies and aberrations going on and they’re not even bothering to correct them.

And we know they’re not correcting them because Discovery wouldn’t still be in the 32nd century if the DTI were around and they definitely would not let Rios stay in the past. He has too much future knowledge to be able to stay in the past. It’s crazy!! I think all this time travel craziness is worse than Picard getting an android/golem body because then it messes with the original timeline and then stuff winds up getting changed, like all of a sudden Sam Kirk just shows up on the Enterprise. Sam Kirk, a man who was never in Starfleet to begin with but he’s in Starfleet now.

All this canon tweaking I guarantee you is from the time travel stuff and the more time travel stuff they do, the more Kurtzman and crew feel that they have a free ticket to keep canon tweaking. As for my prediction that Khan will show up, I’d say bank on it. He’ll show up one of three ways. The first one, of course, is Captain Pike discovers the Botany Bay earlier than anticipated.

The second way is a time travel episode involving La’an and she and an away party go back to the past and we see a Khan at the height of his power during the Eugenics Wars. And the third way for Khan to show up is to have La’an looking at a holographic image of him making a speech from the Eugenics Wars. I’m telling you, Tiger2, mark my words, they would not have a direct descendant of Khan’s on the Enterprise if they didn’t have plans for him to show up eventually. We’ll have to wait and see, right?

Live long and prosper, Tiger2 🖖

It sounds like you really enjoyed SNW at least, even with the canon issues. I’ve only seen it twice so far but I agree, I like the T’Pring actress as well and she is obviously going to be a recurring character so I’m curious to see how they will handle it all. Of course being a prequel, we already know their fate but it would be interesting to see Spock in a real relationship which we never seen before. So now that they decided to go this route, they might as well just go a full blast with it and have them together.

As for Picard, yeah, I’ve kind of given up on it in the way I’ve given up on Discovery. I still plan to watch both obviously, I’m just resign to the fact I’m not going to ever love these shows like I do the others, at least anytime soon. Picard is ending next season and it could be great obviously. But it’s not going to make up for the two worst seasons of Star Trek ever made on screen. I do hope it goes out with a bang at least. We’ll see.

As for Khan, I really hope you’re wrong lol. But yeah knowing these people, they are all about fan service. I love fan service too because I’m a fan but only if it’s done right of course. BUT I actually like your idea of using La’an to go back in time and meet Khan that way. Now THAT would be fun and we can see Khan in his prime and back on Earth. So if they did something like that, I would be all for it personally.

I actually always had a crazy story idea when Enterprise was still on and that Archer, T’Pol and Trip would actually travel back in time to the Eugenics wars BUT the twist is they wouldn’t be themselves, but inhabit someone else’s consciousness during that time. And Archer would somehow take the consciousness of his great grandfather who we know fought in the Eugenics War and he can understand more about his roots and how his ancestor lived in that time. Yes, it would basically be a nod to Quantum Leap and why the story would probably have no hope of getting made lol. It would be a two part episode and in one point in the story they would come across Khan in it! This is the kind of stuff I think would’ve been great if a season 5 happened. Just a fanboy idea, but you can dream. ;)

So I’m not against never seeing Khan again, but you should find more creative ways to do it other then seeing his life on Ceti Alpha Five or just entirely breaking canon to do it.

Annnnway, glad you enjoy both episodes!

Yes, your idea for the Enterprise Khan story sounds good 👍, Tiger2. But it’s not only Quantum Leap that it pays homage to but Deep Space Nine as well, right, because isn’t that what happened with Captain Sisko, Jadzia Dax, and Dr.Bashir when they traveled back in time to 2026 and Captain Sisko pretended to be Gabriel Bell? There just wasn’t any Khan in that story because he was long gone. Past Tense, it was called.

That was a great 2 part episode of DS9! I would’ve loved to have seen Captain Archer and crew travel back to Khan’s era, that would’ve been fun. They should’ve done that instead of the World War 2 one that they did because we’ve seen Captain Kirk dealing with fascism and Nazis and we saw Voyager’s crew on the holodeck battling against Nazis and the Hirogen. So they didn’t need to do a WW2 Enterprise episode in my eyes.

They could’ve sent Archer and crew back to the Eugenics Wars where they could’ve found out that Khan had a helping hand from Vosk in securing his rise to power and Silik was helping out Khan’s brother, Joachin, I think it was. And Joachin and Khan start warring against each other because they’ve got outside help from these aliens. Then Archer and his crew could’ve teamed up with Mestral, the Vulcan from Carbon Creek. He could’ve told them that he became a Supervisor for this alien race who doesn’t want to see Earth’s destiny altered by outside alien influences.

They could’ve even had Terri Garr make an appearance as an older Roberta Lincoln of course. She could’ve been walking down the street in NYC and Archer, Mestral, and T’Pol go running by her, shooting phasers at Khan’s men and they could’ve had her say something like ” This feels awfully familiar to me”😄? I think something like your idea would’ve worked better for Storm Front then what we got. One of the focuses of the Temporal Cold War should’ve definitely have been the Eugenics Wars, without a doubt.

Why it wasn’t, I don’t know. Thank you for saying you liked my idea for La’an. It’s easy to be creative with Star Trek because of how much I love it. I’m always mulling stuff around in my head.

Sometimes stuff just hits me right off the rip, like Khan popping up on SNW. It may not be this season of course but eventually the subject of Khan will come up. They want to do a Dr.Bashir type of story with La’an. She doesn’t tell anyone that she’s genetically enhanced until eventually someone discovers it.

The person who discovers her secret will probably be Spock or Captain Pike. But she’s lying to Pike already about knowing Una so I don’t think it will be Pike. If Spock were to discover it, then that would give the two outsiders something to bond over, right? One more thing about Khan, Tiger2.

I really don’t want to see his life on Ceti Alpha V play out in a series or a mini-series. I think it wouldn’t be good. I read the book To Reign In Hell: The Exile Of Khan Noonian Singh by Greg Cox and I didn’t like it. I got like 40 pages into it and didn’t even finish it.

There’s a comic book miniseries too called Khan – Ruling In Hell that came out in 2010. So, personally, I think there’s more than enough info out there about Khan’s time on Ceti Alpha V. I’m not a fan of Discovery either, Tiger2. I just support it for the same reason you do.

As for Picard season 3, it’s the same writers writing the show because Sir Patrick said that he was in the writers room everyday arguing with them about how Picard, the show, should end. So it’s the same writers. It’s not like Terry Matalas is writing it or anything. I think he’s (Terry Matalas) swinging for the fences with this next season of Picard because he really wants to do a DS9 revival.

He’s said he’s a huge fan of DS9 and that a lot of DS9 elements and some characters will be showing up in season 3 of Picard. Maybe Captain Sisko might finally return? I mean nobody had any idea that Wesley was gonna be in the season 2 finale so they have gotten better at keeping surprise appearances a secret. It’s always a possibility.

Keep hope for Captain Sisko’s return alive 🙂. Live long and prosper, Tiger2 🖖

Haha Tiger2, I felt the same way about last week’s show… it didnt suck. This episode I actually liked! Completely agree on the goods you mentioned including Wesley!

As for the bad, the one additional thing i didnt like was the whole drone scenario.

I too was wondering if the TNG cast was going to show up, but it was Q who ended up sending the team back to the future including Elnor. I guess we’ll have to wait for S3 to see the rest of the TNG team.

Ulimately, IMHO S2 started well and ended pretty good. Too bad the middle 6 episodes were so terrible.

Man I completely forgot about the silly drone scene! My GOD, HOW DID THIS SHOW TURN SO BAD????????

I don’t get it man, this season had SO much promise and it just dropped off to a ridiculous level. I said this before, this wasn’t just bad Star Trek, it was just bad TV all around. I can’t figure out how PROFESSIONAL writers could think this was something redeemable. So many bad decisions and sloppy sloppy writing. I can’t remember which episode it was, but ti was either episode 7 or 8 that was SO bad, I was depressed that week. I have never gotten depressed watching a TV show before. Yes, upset, frustrated and all of that but I was SAD man. Not like they killed a character I liked sad. It’s more like they killed a piece of me by watching this crap sad. That’s when I knew I had to stop watching so much TV lol.

Obviously I’m OK now but I just can’t figure out WHY this season went so badly? Most people seem to be in the same boat. And it really makes you appreciate the classic shows so much more. Yes they all had bad episodes and seasons but NOT like this. And they had to make 25 episodes a year with less money and yet every season you can find great solid episodes in all of them and its 25 episodes every year. Picard had just 10 episodes and it was off for two years! That was because of the pandemic but they had so much time to work on those ten episodes and this is what we got????? It felt so amateurish.

I want to have hope in season 3 but right now,I just can’t muster any motivation for it. Maybe I’ll feel differently in a few months and if SNW, LDS and PRO have good seasons this year.

Man I ranted so much I actually forgot about the point I wanted to make when you mentioned the drones!

This is just another RIDICULOUS example of how shoddy this writing is because how do you send drones to attack because A. they CAN be tracked and traced and B. they can just be shot down. I know it’s Star Trek and you have to assume everything is super advanced, but its still suppose to just be 2024. Unless these things have stealth mode (and they clearly didn’t) then they would’ve been found on radar in such a high security area. He had a better chance strapping himself to a bomb instead of thinking these drones would get within ten miles in the real world.

And then I still can’t figure out his second plan of poisoning Renee when this guy was in a high security area as if there wouldn’t be cameras and security guards everywhere. And even if he got the chance to be completely alone with her (which he got…sigh), did he really think he can poison her and they wouldn’t figure out who she was with five minutes later when he was the guy demanding to meet her???? This guy is a disgraced scientist already, how do you have so much access when your name is in the paper calling you Dr. Evil basically? Killing Renee wasn’t going to just solve everything, he then had to make his whacky experiments the lay of the land. But how do you do that when you are accused of murder?? How was he going to escape? The guy should’ve been arrested when he tried to hit her with his car 5 episodes ago. Of course no one reports it and not a single camera caught it in a, once again, restricted high security area.

Dude, this season was just so D-U-M-B!!!! Again, we probably can come up 50 items that just made no logical sense at all because they cut so many corners to a ridiculous level. I’ll say it again, I never thought Star Trek could be this bad, ever!

Man I ranted so much I actually forgot about the point I wanted to make when you mentioned the drones!

The whole episode was bad (great moments from John DeLancie excepted), but can we take a moment to discuss how lousy Wil Wheaton’s performance was? I dearly hope he has just delivered his final Trek scene, because if the third season — or, fates forfend, an entire series — is made that features him then I may sink into some kind of literal despair. He’s so terrible in this scene (which is ludicrous enough to make some fanfic look good) that I am a bit awestruck by its having been included in the episode.

I loved seeing Wesley again but yes the scene was shot like he was handed the script five minutes before they shot it. But I have to say he came off better than he does as the jolly super fan host of the Ready Room every week.

I still would like to see him next season but yeah it would have to be MUCH better than what we got here.

I was initially excited to see him, too. I always liked Wesley on TNG. I just don’t think Wheaton can do anything as an actor other than smile awkwardly and seem as if he’s shown up someplace he knows he isn’t actually welcome. Which is a harsh thing to say, but still.

It wasn’t good and it wasn’t one of Isa’s best performances on the show either. It felt like Wil just came from the Ready Room set and was putting on the same kind of performance as he does there.

I agree, it did seem like Wil Wheaton in the scene rather than Wesley Crusher. And I couldn’t watch more than about an episode and a half of the Ready Room thanks to the awkward energy he puts off, so it was … unwelcome here.

His delivery made me wince. He literally looked and sounded like he just stepped off the set of the Ready Room and was interviewing one of the guests.

It felt as if the writers had no idea what to do with Kore and came up with a last minute solution to throw one more piece of fan service as a way to tie up a loose end.

It does seem like they did it so they now can have two different reasons to tell Isa Briones, “No, no, we’ll absolutely get you back on one of the shows. Soon! We’ll do that, uh, soon, yeah, you bet.”

I’m sorry.. but this just didn’t land for me.

Were there a few nice moments? Yes. Still though.

Am I writing this just to complain? Well.. not exactly. Honestly, my hope is that the writing team looks through these occasionally, in which case I would say: Slow down. Take a breath. You’re doing some good things, but I get the impression of trying to fit the whole idea board in. Also.. not everything needs to be connected. Don’t be afraid to tell the story you want to tell without shoehorning in a reference, or using a Soong. We’re approaching ‘Vader built C-3PO’ territory here

Honestly, I wish the writers would listen to Q in that it doesn’t always have to be the fate of the whole galaxy. Except, at the end, it IS the fate of the whole galaxy due to a previously unknown Diabolus ex Machina.

There’s a lot of things that are just a matter of taste/perspective, but my major issues would be:

1. Renee Picard, a trained astronaut already suffering from anxiety and depression takes the word of a woman who – from her perspective – just confessed to stalking her for decades and assaulted one of her crew.

2. Rios has elected to stay in a past where he has no ID, etc, was wrongfully detained and nearly deported and observed corrupt and brutal treatment (but oh boy, cigars!). Not to mention the global war and mid-grade nuclear firestorm coming.

3. I think we’ve hit the time-travel and Khan buttons more than enough times. Honestly also the Soong button. (How did his carbon copy descendants replicate Kore? Say huh!?). Although – I didn’t take that as a new Khan origin, I took it as he had access to the research on Khan. For what it’s worth.

4. Even if he funded the whole project, Soong was just discredited very publicly like a week before. He’s not gonna be THAT welcome. Though he apparently has access to the fastest jet in the world.

5. Honestly I never felt much tension during the season as with the existence of Disco.. we KNOW they succeed. And with the teaser for S3, we KNOW Picard comes out of it perfectly fine and ready for another adventure.

Now that said – Wes showing up was a little weird and felt a bit forced but a nice touch, and full credit to Wil Wheaton for keeping it under his hat. That could NOT have been easy.

Trash. Just a mess. Great cast and convoluted, absurd, and nonsensical story. Just the worst season of Trek ever produced.

I think I’d say the first season was even worse, but otherwise, I totally agree.

I feel as though they were both dreadful seasons of television, easily some of the worst produced this century, but are bad in completely different ways. At least to me. Season one was a cynical, violent, stupid mess, and this was a cheaply produced while loving its own farts stupid mess. And this finale was a comedy. Goldsman daring audiences to quit Star Trek, knowing they won’t.

Yeah can’t disagree with much of that at all. I only put this season slightly ahead of last season because it at least they answered all the questions. Just very badly and nonsensical but everything was answered.

Umm… I still have a bunch of questions left over. Quite a bit was left unanswered.

As I said in my review some of the stuff they answered still didn’t make a lot of sense and confused on. So they ‘answered’ stuff, but not very well either. I just didn’t have to wonder about things like what happened to Narek or when and how did Seven and Raffi decide to be a couple and so on. But both seasons: hideously bad!

Even if we are in the prime timeline, this could have been changed various times. This 1996 is supposed to be the past of the TOS era when they meet Khan. However, we saw Kirk and Spock interfering with the past mildly in 1968 and 1987 which won’t have such a change. But we saw a changed 1996 in VOY Future’s end. What if Chronoworx prevented the eugenic wars accidentally and postponed them? Is the alternate 1996 still part of the prime timeline?

One of the writer’s from Prodigy just stated on twitter that the Picard finale ties directly into the events of his show.

Fans are speculating that the anomaly is related to the Diviner and Janeway’s search for Chakotay. Given all the time travel being talked about for Prodigy, who knows how it will wind up. That COULD be why they split up the first season, and put Picard in between, if they are that connected.

Wow that could interesting! Something good could come out of this season and a much better show could carry this story line in some way.

Regarding Khan and the Eugenics War(s) …

Let’s not forget that it’s called “Wars,” plural. Perhaps there was a Eugenics War in the ’90s (in which Khan was involved) and Soong, being who he is, has that leftover data and begins his work anew in the 2020s. So, as we saw in SNW, there can be a second Eugenics War (thus “Wars”) which eventually just becomes WWIII anyway.

If any season of Star Trek demanded a super cut that turns it into a movie… its probably this season?

Funny, most people seem to hate Picard S1. I only watched it a few weeks ago. I loved everything about it. The characters, the score, the effects, the callbacks to the past… Now people seem to hate S2 almost as much… I’m wondering if I should watch it anyway or follow the hoards of whining trekkies and skip it altogether…

I’m thinking it will be better appreciated now that it can be binged in short order.

I liked season 1 a lot. Season 2 is much more problematic (though I still liked it). I can’t for the life of me understand why the internet hivemind has decided that season 1 was terrible.

Can we just… pretend this season didn’t happen. Let’s just start fresh in season 3. If we think about it nothing would be affected by it. Season 2 just took place in a pocket universe. Then as a collector I can justify not buying the 2nd season when it comes out on Blu ray.

Ok another thought – why is there a recording in the Confederation future of Soong saying “A Safe Galaxy is a Human Galaxy.” This makes no sense with what the rest of the episodes presented. So without the launch an elderly discredited Soong helps solve climate change. How does that turn into him saying at some point in his remaining years “A Safe Galaxy is a Human Galaxy” and creating the confederation?

Presumably they just invented that audio and put it on the lips of their already famous savior of the 21st century. (Yes, I’m just making something up here.)

The whole season could have been a decent, but still sort of dumb, two-parter.

Also, Spiner was lovely as Data in TNG – but he’s overacted in nearly everything else I’ve seen him in (including the TNG movies)

Totally agree.

I’ve been indifferent this entire season, so my expectations for the finale was at an all time low. I was pleasantly surprised to find the episode pretty decent.

I guess I’m one of those fans who enjoys Star Trek even if it is generally perceived of as “bad” Star Trek. But I also liked both seasons of Picard considerably better than any season of Discovery. From my perspective the general plot of this season was great. It just seemed to fail in execution. There were too many pacing issues, glaring plot holes and irrational decisions made. This made me think about the rampant labor shortages affecting my industry as well as most others. In this era of “peak television” I wonder if the sub-par writing execution is due to a shortage of talent? Is Star Trek having a hard time attracting top notch writers? And I feel bad saying that. I know they are working hard and I certainly couldn’t do what they do, so I hate being critical. At the end of the day I still like what is being produced and am so glad to have Star Trek on television again. But I wonder if there is just too much great television being produced and maybe Star Trek needs to figure out how to attract better talent within this competitive environment?

Good point. The fact that Paramount insists on dishing out so much concurrent Star Trek content with 5 shows (so far) can only further dilute the talent.

Unfortunately, it’s less interesting than you think. There’s not a talent shortage, there’s a job shortage. Producers have megadeals and shows have shorter orders more than ever before, so, you’ve got megaproducers working on multiple shows bringing the same team from show to show, with every show getting varying degrees of the megaproducers’ attention, depending on how important the project is to them. For instance, there’s no way Goldsman was 100% focused on Picard when he was also working on launching SNW.

And then when you get into a situation where you have to fight to keep down costs (because it shoots in LA and has a lot of VFX and staggering insurance premiums to cover Patrick Stewart it is a very expensive show, even after the state tax credits), the 20+ producers who get a cut of every episode’s budget means you have to basically hire inexperienced staff writers (who won’t make much more than the Guild minimum) to help you get through your season. Add to that, running a TV show is not like producing a movie, and telling a serialized story is a lot more difficult than screenwriters want to admit, so trying to break a single 10-hour story when you don’t have the experience to do so can catch up with you. That’s why episodes 3-8 just felt like vamping. They knew the main story they wanted to tell — how to set it up, how to end it — but they didn’t know how to or want to take the time to build in more setups that have payoffs beyond just what the plot is.

In the case of SNW, Henry Alonso Myers and Akela Cooper are pretty damned good TV writers. And Terry Matalas is a steady hand who is supposed to be the captain of season three and left work on season two to prep it. I think the 2021-2022 is the first period of time during the streaming era of Trek that there has been any sort of management stability in the writing rooms. I expect these shows to get a little bit better over the next couple of years, though keeping in mind that each Star Trek show is essentially serving three masters: Paramount+, Secret Hideout, and the showrunner. That’s a tough situation for any IP to be in, but maybe this group has figured out a working formula. The buzz for SNW has been far more positive than the other shows after their launches.

How Carl Sagan inspired Star Trek: Discovery 's big Season 3 twist

How to make an apple pie from scratch.

georgiou and the guardian of forever, inspired by carl sagan

The spirit of Carl Sagan lives on in Star Trek.

Discovery Season 3 features a callback to the classic Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever," which propels the story of Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) into strange new territory. There are a lot of twists and turns in "Terra Firma, Part 2," and the ending of the episode has major ramifications for the history of Trek and the future of the franchise, too.

Ahead of the debut of "Terra Firma Part 2," Inverse spoke with the writers of the episode — Bo Yeon Kim, Erika Lippoldt, and Kalinda Vazquez — to discuss the nitty-gritty of Trek time travel, what's next for Georgiou, and why they brought back a very famous Star Trek plot device all the way from 1967.

Major spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery through Season 3, Episode 10.

After spending roughly two episodes back in the Mirror Universe, Philippa Georgiou returns to the surface of the planet Dannus V, only to be faced with yet another choice. She can't go back to the Mirror Universe, and she can't stay in the Prime Universe either. But, with the help of the mysterious Carl (Paul Guilfoyle), there's another path.

But who is Carl? Turns out, he's actually the personification of the Guardian of Forever, a time portal first seen in perhaps the most famous — and most beloved — classic Harlan Ellison-penned Star Trek episode, "The City on the Edge of Forever." Hiding on a distant planet — different from the one Spock and Kirk visited — the Guardian offers its services to help take Georgiou to a new time and place.

The Discovery writers tell Inverse they wanted the resolution to Georgiou's time-sickness to have a timey-wimey solution. This means they considered some other options, including The Next Generation 's enigmatic Q, or a "time weapon that was confiscated during the Temporal Cold War."

Ultimately, they decided the best option was the Guardian of Forever.

Kirk and Spock and the Guardian of Forever in "The City on the Edge of Forever."

"We’ve been itching to find a way to use the Guardian on Discovery, " Kim and Lippoldt tell Inverse . "The Guardian also provides flexibility in that it has only appeared in that episode, and The Animated Series episode "Yesteryear" — which somewhat amusingly broke the rules established in the TOS episode — so we felt there was room to do something new and different with it."

The writers also reveal they almost went a totally different direction with the episode. The original plan didn't involve the Mirror Universe at all.

"Burnham and Georgiou were going to beam down to the planet expecting to find the Guardian, and instead come across a lone house with a garden — not unlike the house in TNG’ s “The Survivors." Its sole occupant, a mysterious Gardener, would turn out to be the Guardian," the writers explain. "Georgiou was going to live out her final hours there choosing to have a perfect day with (Prime) Burnham -- it involved baking an apple pie!"

The team says we didn't see this pie-baking scenario because they "realized that a much larger, cathartic story" was needed to make the final journey of Georgiou pack a larger punch.

Speaking of apple pie, the late-great Carl Sagan once said: "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." In Discovery , the writers may not have gotten their apple pie inside of a pocket-universe, but they did name the new persona for the Guardian of Forever directly after the famous astrophysicist.

"When we discussed the personification of the Guardian of Forever, we wanted to create a being who seemed both omniscient, but also perpetually curious about all things in the universe," Vazquez explains. "Carl Sagan was brought up by our showrunners Michelle Paradise and Alex Kurtzman as a potential analog because of his tendency to philosophize about all the unknown the galaxy holds. Sagan was definitely an inspiration for Carl!"

Fans of Sagan's fiction might note that the functioning of the Trek portal is similar to time travel depicted in the movie version of Contact , based on a novel by Sagan. In both instances, people journey across time and space, but from the perspective of the real world, only minutes have passed. Like Dr. Arroway's hours of static videotape, Georgiou similarly has "three months worth of biodata" in her nifty little wrist monitor.

The departure of Michelle Yeoh's popular character at the end of this episode seems to set up the long-discussed spin-off series, tentatively called Section 31 . Producer Alex Kurtzman has said the setting of this show will be " surprising ," and now we have a clue as to why. We don't know exactly where in the timeline the Guardian is sending Georgiou, but he says that it will be at a time "when the Prime Universe and Mirror Universe were still aligned." So, does that mean Georgiou will end up in ancient Rome? The early 20th Century? How about a Star Trek spy show set in 2021?

"Georgiou is sent back to a point in time that she doesn’t expect… But it ends up being exactly where she needs to be," the Discovery writers tell Inverse . "A lot of care was put into developing Georgiou’s arc this season. As for what it sets Georgiou up for beyond that — only space-time will tell."

Star Trek: Discovery is streaming now on CBS All Access.

This article was originally published on Dec. 17, 2020

Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About The Guardian Of Forever

I'm, uh - I'm Carl - and I've got the best intro line in all of Star Trek.

Guardian of Forever Star Trek Discovery Original Series

The Guardian Of Forever is an oft-discussed, but little seen, force of nature in Star Trek . It was created by the writer Harlan Ellison for The Original Series , which is a story all in itself. The original script was heavily edited and rewritten - leading to a feud that would outlive many of the people involved.

The Guardian appeared once in The Original Series , once in The Animated Series , and to date, once, in Star Trek: Discovery. There have been many novels, stories, comics, and other media depicting it. This is primarily due to the fact that the stories that can be told through the eye of the Guardian are Legion, particularly when once involves the Q Continuum.

The voices of the Guardian - Bart La Rue, James Doohan, and Paul Guilfoyle - are all unique in their own way, with it's dominating tones filling the screen whenever it appears. While its 'coolest' appearance may be in Discovery , it's fair to say that every time the Guardian has been on-screen, it's offered something new, fascinating, and a little unsettling for the audience.

With that, let's explore one of the most powerful beings in the Star Trek Universe.

10. It Seems To Enjoy Testing Its Subjects

Much of Emperor Georgiou's experiences with Carl, as the Guardian calls themselves in Terra Firma , are in the form of a test. She is suffering the effects of being both out of time, and in (from her perspective) an alternate universe. Carl may well be the path to a cure that she needs, but he isn't about to just hand it over.

He sends her back to her own time and universe, testing her to see if she really does have the capacity to change. Once he ascertains that she does, he agrees to send her back to a time when her universe and the Prime universe were more aligned.

There are echoes of the Guardian's first appearance here, not simply in the newspaper and the donut. Kirk and Spock, having successfully rescued the future, and McCoy, are offered the chance to use the Guardian to explore history as they see fit. It is they who decided to decline, with the pain of Edith Keeler's death still too near.

Yet still, this version of the Guardian, much like its later appearance as Carl, seemed more intent on testing its subjects than on passing judgement from the off.

Writer. Reader. Host. I'm Seán, I live in Ireland and I'm the poster child for dangerous obsessions with Star Trek. Check me out on Twitter @seanferrick

Screen Rant

Picard season 3 has to answer season 2's borg cliffhanger.

Star Trek: Picard season 2 ended with a massive change to the Borg, but with Alison Pill not in season 3's cast, will the Borg storyline be forgotten?

The Borg were left in a massive cliffhanger in Star Trek: Picard season 2, and season 3 has to answer the question of what happens next. Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill) was assimilated and merged her consciousness with the Borg Queen (Annie Wersching) in Star Trek: Picard season 2. The newly heroic Borg Queen then joined forces with Admiral Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the USS Stargazer to stop a threat to the galaxy. The newly friendly Borg then requested provisional United Federation of Planets membership, and the Queen volunteered to be the "guardian at the gates" of the transwarp conduit.

However, Star Trek: Picard season 3 is apparently leaving the Borg as an open-ended question. Picard season 3 reunites the entire cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation , and the Starfleet legends are facing a triumvirate of villains including Lore (Brent Spiner), Professor James Moriarty (Daniel Davis), and a new Big Bad named Vadic (Amanda Plummer). There's no indication thus far that Picard season 3 will follow up season 2's Borg cliffhanger, even though becoming allies is a massive change for the Federation's relationship with the Borg. Yet it seems like whatever the intergalactic threat is that the Borg is protecting the Federation from will remain an unanswered question. The most likely scenario is that the Borg may end up being mentioned in connection to Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) becoming a Commander in Starfleet. But why would Star Trek: Picard introduce but not deal with the ramifications of such a game-changing Borg story?

Related: Geordi's Daughters Are Picard Season 3's Real Next Generation

What Happens To Picard Season 2's Borg And Borg Queen

Star Trek: Picard season 3 may be content with leaving the Borg as "the guardian at the gates" of the transwarp conduit. Alison Pill did not return for Star Trek: Picard season 3, along with castmembers Evan Evagora, Isa Briones, and Santiago Cabrera, so that season 3 is entirely focused on the TNG reunion, along with Jeri Ryan's Seven of Nine and Michelle Hurd's Raffi Musiker joining Picard's original crew. It's possible the Borg Queen could still appear with Annie Wersching playing her, but it's more likely the whole Borg storyline has been put aside in Star Trek: Picard season 3 .

Meanwhile, there are huge storylines about the Borg and the Borg Queen that Star Trek: Picard season 3 is seemingly leaving on the table. "Agnes Borgrati" is not actually the Borg Queen from the Prime timeline; she and her Borg are from the now-deleted Confederation reality. This means the 'real' Borg and Borg Queen are still out there in the universe and still a threat to the Federation. There are also the ramifications of the Borg and Federation alliance and the possible sharing of technology. Further, Picard has yet to reveal what the threat that attacked from the transwarp conduit even is, and no answers may be coming in Star Trek: Picard season 3.

Is Picard Saving The Borg Storyline For Another TNG Movie?

Given how the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast is publicly campaigning for another reunion after Star Trek: Picard season 3, it's possible that there's secretly movement behind the scenes for another TNG movie that Patrick Stewart has hinted at or a spinoff/continuation of Picard . This could be how Star Trek: Picard will resolve the open questions about the Borg season 2 left behind. It's also logical to guess that Alison Pill would return for a TNG movie. After all, the Borg-centric Star Trek: First Contact was the highest-grossing and most popular TNG movie, and it would make sense to make the next potential TNG movie also about the Borg that would answer the questions Star Trek: Picard season 2 left behind. But it does seem like there will be a long wait for the lingering Borg story to be settled because it probably won't happen in Star Trek: Picard season 3.

Next: Picard Season 3's Lore Could Resurrect Data

Star Trek: Picard Season 2 premieres February 16, 2023, on Paramount+.

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STAR TREK: PICARD Season Finale Review — “Farewell”

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In the end, Star Trek: Picard’s journey this season was really about not being alone; it was about opening yourself up to the vulnerabilities of love by accepting and seeking out the strength in others — while also acknowledging the personal trauma and pain that make us who we are.

“Farewell” was a touching and poignant conclusion that expertly wrapped up a half-dozen storylines, while also setting up the much anticipated third and final season of the series.

The major loose threads covered in this satisfying conclusion include Jean-Luc Picard’s essential healing, Renée Picard’s successful Europa Mission (thanks to the ultimate sacrifice from Tallinn), and the official introduction of the new 25th century Borg… as well as two major, deep-cut character reveals that only a cynic would label as fan service.

Beyond those major narrative themes, each character’s season-long arc is wrapped up neatly, from famed 21st century medical activist Cristóbal Rios (Santiago Cabrera) to the surprise return of Cadet Elnor (Evan Evagora) on the Excelsior – with all the Seven (Jeri Ryan) and Raffi (Michelle Hurd) love-sandwiched in between. Every character had a fitting swan song.

But, of course, the anchor to this season — and this episode — has been the return of Q (John de Lancie), who was up to his old tricks again in launching Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) into this this season-long journey of self-discovery, all while battling his own mysterious trauma. The scenes between Picard and Q in “Farewell” are among the best of the series, echoing back to their last finale in “All Good Things.”

The episode opens with Queen Agnes’ prophecy about two Renée’s — “One who lives, and another who dies” — at the top of the gang’s mind, as they plot their next steps in preventing Adam Soong (Brent Spiner) from stopping Renée Picard’s (Penelope Mitchell) spaceflight. Seven, Raffi and Rios head to Soong’s evil lair where they solve some high stakes technobabble to take down a few drones that Soong has programmed to target the Shango should he fail in stopping Renée’s launch on the ground.

Meanwhile, Picard is with Tallinn (Orla Brady), who he has realized is going to sacrifice her life by impersonating Renée to distract Soong. Her plan works to perfection, much to the chagrin of Picard, who Tallinn has helped directly understand that “other people’s lives aren’t up to you, and their deaths aren’t your fault. You can’t control who we lose, and we can’t spare ourselves the pain of it.”

Tallinn’s death — masquerading as Renée to divert Soong’s attack — is handled beautifully in not only the emotional way in which she connects with Renée for the first time and is able to share her respect, love, and admiration for the young explorer — but also in her dying breath in the shadow of the launch when she tells Picard to absolve himself, “or the only life left unsaved will be your own.”

Lesson learned for Picard, but not so much for Soong, who spends most of the episode twirling his black mustache while melodramatically peacocking around the launch site. But not to fear. However heavy-handed those scenes come across in the episode, the final shot of Soong trashing his lab before pulling out a top-secret file referencing Khan was a great payoff — another example of the fun that was injected into this engaging season of Trek .

As part of the destruction of Soong’s lab, his daughter-slash-experiment, Kore (Isa Briones), exacts the ultimate revenge by hacking into his system and deleting his research. The move catches the attention of someone very special, who apparently already has business on Earth seeing that supervisor Tallinn has just passed on.

In one of the biggest surprises in Star Trek history, a Traveler of all space and time — formerly known as Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) — drops in to pluck Kore from downtown Los Angeles, recruiting her to join the Traveler cadre. The reveal showing Wesley living his best life as a Traveler works on every level.

In-universe, it’s an out-of-the-blue callback that fits perfectly with Kore’s arc (a child who broke free from what she was ‘designed’ for, like how Wesley broke from his expected Starfleet destiny) — but like the other casting surprises which the Star Trek: Picard team has managed to keep under wraps until just the right moment (Seven, Hugh, and Riker/Troi last season), it’s a major accomplishment to have pulled off.

Throughout all of the around-the-edges production beats — the announced return of the Next Generation cast for Season 3, Wheaton’s three years hosting The Ready Room , and his own fan-fiction about what Wesley might be up to these days — it was all just perfect.

A surprise that no one saw coming, one that fits the narrative, and in the end makes you feel great about the way Star Trek’s never ending connective story threads continue to circle back on each other… all of which leads us to the backbone of this season: Q and Picard.

With the crew back together in the chateau, resigned to their fate living in the 21st century, Picard wanders his childhood home to replace the skeleton key hidden in the wall for him to find again as a child in the future. The key played a critical role in his mother’s suicide, and as he did in “Tapestry” 30 years prior, Picard knows that this particular thread is a part of who he is and can’t be unraveled.

As Q signals the end of his latest tribulation for Picard, the two sit down for a moving meditation on their relationship and bond through 35 years. The spectacular scenes open with a tired and pensive Q immediately letting his guard down, coming clean to Picard. Where he once facetiously said “in all the universe, you’re the closest thing I have to a friend” to the Enterprise captain in “Deja Q,” on the verge of his own mortality Q reveals to Picard that those words were truer than anyone ever realized.

He tells him, “I am moving on. I am dying alone,” and then lovingly emphasizes, “I don’t want that for you!” But, as we know, Picard has ultimately been alone his entire life, and now, having freshly fought through his trauma, to see it in a different light, he has finally chosen himself. As Q says, “You have absolved yourself,” and that decision now gives him a chance to be loved.

Not one to completely believe everything he is hearing from his longtime nemesis, Picard’s heartfelt questions — “Why?,” and then “Why me?,” and then finally, “Why does all this matter?” — hit an emotional crescendo when the omnipotent rapscallion answers with, “It matters to me. You matter to me. Even gods have favorites.” Cue the waterworks.

From there, Q decrees that he is sending the entire crew home as his final, dying act, but before he does — as many fans have been expecting — Cris Rios steps forward to say he is staying. He knows “he never fit” and “nothing stuck” for him in his life in the 24th century, so now it is his turn to get stuck in the past, where he will remain with Teresa (Sol Rodriguez) and her son.

For one last time, the quintessential Star Trek foil declares, “Farewell, mon capitaine . It’s time for me to go,” to which Picard steps forward to hug him and say, “But not alone. Isn’t that the point of all this?” With a smile and a snap heard around the quadrant, Q whispers a familiar refrain into Picard’s ear, “See you out there.”

It’s a beautiful scene; an expert companion to the emotional swansong that was “All Good Things,” and a fitting end for a character that has permeated the franchise for the better part of four decades. In context now with the whole season, the return of Q was a stroke of brilliance — the only character that could truly push Picard inward on his journey of self-discovery, one which gave us a deeper understanding of one of television’s most compelling characters.

The end of Q, though, is not the end of the episode, as the snap of his fingers sends Picard and Seven back to the bridge of the Stargazer , where Rios is no longer present — and another fan expectation comes true as the “different” Borg Queen seen in the season’s premiere drops her mask, revealing a fully-assimilated Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill) underneath.

That French melody which blasted confusingly across the Stargazer’s bridge ten episodes ago (Edith Piaf’s “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien”) now falls into context, as Picard now understands it to be message of friendship from the new Queen — immediately triggering him to cancel the self-destruct sequence to stop the explosion seen in “The Star Gazer.”

Jurati’s request for help is one Picard honors, seeing his friend still inside the new Queen even after 400 years out in space… and he gives Seven command of the Stargazer , the best expert on hand to begin negotiations with the Borg.

As for Agnes, she has brought her Borg cooperative through space and time to protect the quadrant from a massive galactic event because “she needed a friend” to let her harmonize the fleet’s shields with their own.

Picard allows Agnes to take control of the assembled Starfleet taskforce we saw so many episodes ago — and the ensuing sequence on screen is a visual effects extravaganza, with Jason Zimmerman and his VFX crew going full tilt in rendering a glorious smorgas-Borg of ships and shields and spatial anomalies.

It all ends with the formation of a mysterious transwarp conduit created by an unknown threat with unknown intentions (Season 3 set-up, anyone?). With the newly formed anomaly requiring close observation, Jurati and her Borg request provisional membership in the Federation — sorry, but how cool is that! — and they volunteer to stay in position as “guardian of the gate.”

With the action complete, there is time for one final outing as the remaining La Sirena crew head to Guinan’s (Whoopie Goldberg) in Los Angeles to tie up a few loose ends, including details on Rios and Teresa’s life together, and the revelation that Renée Picard’s space mission lead to planet Earth’s restored climate. With drinks in hand, the gang salutes their present and departed found family as the opening chords from Star Trek: First Contact’s theme swell as part of Jeff Russo’s moving score.

To close it all out, Picard returns to his home to find Laris (Orla Brady) preparing to leave on her own adventures. In putting his new-found perspective to use right away, Picard cuts straight to the chase — while standing in the refurbished solarium — and asks Laris for a second chance to connect.

“While time cannot give us second chance,” he says, “maybe people can,” and with a smile and a nod, the Romulan agrees to his offer.

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

Wil Wheaton. Good for him. This is Wesley’s first real appearance since his departure from mortal life in 1994’s “Journey’s End,” aside from his silent appearance at the edges of Star Trek: Nemesis — all that’s leftover from his deleted scene , a cut about which Wheaton wrote so eloquently back in 2002.
Wesley reveals that the Travelers oversee and assign the Supervisors to critical points throughout history, connecting once more the story of “Assignment: Earth” to the modern Star Trek era.
After a season of watching Seven and Raffi slowly rebuild their relationship, their kiss after resigning themselves to a life in the 21st century is a solid indicator that the work is paying off.

Elnor returns to life thanks to a last-minute change of plans; leftover from Rios’ decision to stay in the past, Q’s “surplus energy” allows the young Romulan to be resurrected aboard the Excelsior .
Rios and Teresa spend their years together helping the helpless through their “Mariposas” organization, revealing the entire season to be a predestination paradox and explaining why we saw Mariposa medical supplies aboard La Sirena in the season premiere.
It also turns out that Teresa’s son, Ricardo, eventually used the Io organism found by Renée Picard to clean the Earth’s oceans and air — so there was no need for Adam Soong’s atmospheric technology to come into widespread use.
Though Agnes Jurati and her Borg will be guarding that galactic gate, they’ll be doing it off-camera — as actor Alison Pill has confirmed that she was not part of Star Trek: Picard’s third season.

The final moments with Picard and Laris are the perfect beat and resolution to conclude the most unique (and perhaps divisive) season of Star Trek we have ever seen — the first to feature a single, heavily-contained adventure with the vast majority of the narrative (seven straight episodes!) taking place on a modern-day Earth.

The time-travel epic featured robust storylines for Q, Guinan and the Borg, and in the end was an incredible season of satisfying self-discovery for more than a dozen characters.

Bring on Season 3.

Jim Moorhouse is the creator of TrekRanks.com and the TrekRanks Podcast . He can be found living and breathing Trek every day on Twitter at @EnterpriseExtra.

Star Trek: Picard is currently in post-production on its third and final season — likely to air in 2023 — on Paramount+ the United States, and on CTV Sci Fi Channel and Crave in Canada. Outside of North America, the series is available on Amazon’s Prime Video service in most international locations

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Guardian of Forever

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The Guardian of Forever is a construct of an unknown, ancient alien race, that functions as a time portal. It used to be found on Gateway in the Gateway System . With all missions it was part of now removed from the game, neither the surface of Gateway nor the Guardian can be visited by players.

Missions formerly encountered

“City on the Edge of Never” : Ambassador B'vat forces Miral Paris to travel with him through the Guardian. When questioned by the player, the Guardian states that unless Paris is rescued, the timeline will be radically changed. During the Delta Recruitment Event , the Guardian provides Delta Recruits with information on the Iconians . It describes them as "the first of the Children," and tells the player that they are powerful, terrible, wise, selfish, wrathful, and proud. It goes on to state that the Iconians never used the Guardian to travel through time, as the manipulation of time is "beyond their capacities."
“Past Imperfect” : The player steps through the Guardian to travel to the past and rescue Miral Paris.

Tolian Soran on Veridian III, 2371

Earth's moon, 20th century

Class-F shuttlecraft, 2260s

Egypt, Earth, 20th c.

Starbase 375, 2370s

Delta Flyer , Voyager , 2375

D-Day, Normandy, Earth, 1944

Xindi Incident, Earth, 2153

Terra's moon, Mirror Universe

In Game Screenshot of the Gateway

External links

Guardian of Forever at Memory Alpha , the Star Trek Wiki.
Guardian of Forever at Memory Beta , the non-canon Star Trek Wiki.
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On Gold Key’s Guardian of Forever (in Star Trek Vol. 1 #56)

On Monday, we talked about Gold Key’s Star Trek #1 from 1967, which had the ship exploring the dead Galaxy Alpha, then systematically eradicating the one planet it found with life one it. Oh yeah, there was some implied tentacle rape and vore.

Not all the Gold Key Star Trek comics are that dumb, but they’re rarely all that smart. They focus more on entertainment, on the imaginative, over well-structured stories. They do hew closer to the original show, as time goes on — there’s no “Galaxy Alpha” nonsense in later issues.

Near the end of the series, a few issues even told stories that featured characters and elements from TV episodes. The most memorable is probably issue #56 (“No Time Like the Past,” Oct 1978), which features the Guardian of Forever — the time portal, built by an unknown ancient species, from the classic episode “The City on the Edge of Forever.” This wasn’t the Guardian of Forever’s second appearance, however; it had already been used in the animated “Yesteryear” (generally regarded as the finest animated episode). It had also appeared in a short story in the 1976 prose anthology, Star Trek: New Voyages . Nonetheless, the Guardian’s usage in the comic is fairly unique.

The story features a planetary dictator, named Trengur, who uses the Guardian to alter Earth history. Inexplicably, he’s also able to bounce around in time, altering period after period until he becomes Earth’s dictator.

This makes no sense, since he’d presumably have to return through the Guardian and then use it again each time he jumps to a new period of Earth’s history. Then again, the original Guardian makes no sense either — in the original episode, Kirk and Spock simply return through it, with no explanation of how they’d do so, since there’s no standing portal in the past. The comic at least improves this, suggesting there is such a portal, tied to a cave’s entrance — not exactly smart, nor applicable to every Guardian time-voyage, but at least an attempt to solve a logical problem inherent to the Guardian, even as the comic creates new ones.

The basic plot of “No Time Like the Past” is simple. After a failed attempt to stop Trengur on his first trip to Earth’s past, Kirk, Spock, and Bones discover that Trengur went on to make all those other time jumps, so they simply try again, this time capturing Trengur on his first trip — before he alters history.

There’s certainly a joy to seeing Trengur’s various visits into the past. The first, which gets the first (flash-forward) page and the most time in the story, involves helping Hannibal defeat Rome. Others involve helping the British win what we regard as the American Revolution — and helping the Nazis conquer North America. It’s not entirely clear why this should be necessary, in order to establish Trengur’s dictatorship, but it’s cool stuff nonetheless.

What’s cooler is that, between the two attempts to stop Trengur from helping Hannibal, our three protagonists return to an altered future, in which they learn about these other changes to Earth’s past. In “The City on the Edge of Forever,” when the past is altered, the crew finds that the Enterprise is no longer in orbit — the Federation no long exists. In “No Time Like the Past,” the Enterprise is there, but it now belongs to the evil Earthfleet, not Starfleet. There is a Starfleet, however, but Earth isn’t a member — Terra Minor, populated by refugees from Trengur’s dictatorial Earth, is a member instead.

It’s all highly reminiscent of the classic episode “Mirror, Mirror,” except that this evil Enterprise isn’t in an alternate universe but an alternate timeline, which has replaced the one we know and love. There’s even rivalry on board this evil Enterprise, with Scotty playing the role the bearded Spock played in “Mirror, Mirror” — and distrusting our displaced protagonists.

Not nearly enough is done with all of this, despite members of Earthfleet giving the Nazi salute and some drama over the Earthfleet Enterprise being present as part of a scheme to use the Guardian to plant bombs that will decimate Starfleet. There are only 22 pages to the story, and so much of it is filled with time-travel that this Earthfleet business is reduced to a few pages. The story ends, typical of Gold Key stories, with a laugh — here produced by the good Scotty objecting to the protagonists’ Earthfleet costumes.

Despite the story’s failings, it’s filled with promise, and it represents one of the best Gold Key Trek stories, in opposition to the first issue, published over a decade earlier.

After only five more issues, Gold Key would lose the Star Trek license to Marvel. (A script and some page breakdowns for the never-published issue #62 have circulated online.) The Star Trek franchise was headed into movie theaters, spurred (like so many sci-fi franchises at the time) by the success of Star Wars .

It wasn’t simply the end of one era and the beginning of a new one. Star Trek stories would be altered by the movies, which told more epic, high-stakes stories. The kind of episodic comics Gold Key produced for a dozen years would similarly begin to give way to the preference in comics for extended storylines. For all of the failings of Gold Key’s Star Trek , it’s beloved by many Star Trek fans — and its raw, episodic nature reflects the original series perhaps more than we may think today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In 1996, while still an undergraduate, Dr. Julian Darius founded what would become Sequart Organization . After graduating magna cum laude from Lawrence University (Appleton, Wisconsin), he obtained his M.A. in English, authoring a thesis on John Milton and utopianism. In 2002, he moved to Waikiki, teaching college while obtaining an M.A. in French (high honors) and a Ph.D. in English. In 2011, he founded Martian Lit , which publishes creative work, including his comic book Martian Comics . He currently lives in Illinois.

See more, including free online content, on Julian Darius's author page .

The End of Seduction: The Tragedy of Fredric Wertham (author)
Knight's Past: A Starman Companion (contributor)

I feel a little geeky for diving into minutia here, but your discussion about how Kirk and Spock go back through the portal sent me scurrying through my books for the published edition of Harlan Ellison’s original teleplay. Since much of Ellison’s original story was changed, I wondered if maybe he had dealt with the mechanics of going back.

Alas, the logistics of returning through the Guardian are mostly skimmed over, replaced with a poetic set of dissolves–images of Kirk’s face, a star, and the Enterprise, before Kirk, Spock, and Beckwith (the Doctor McCoy figure in the original story) re-emerge. Much of Ellison’s idea focuses on the fact that every era has a “key” and that people who travel back will be drawn to that key. So when Edith dies, the key is gone and time is restored. Presumably, they are then simply drawn back to their original time. (It’s so hard not to say “transported” back to their original time.)

The one notable difference is that when Kirk, Spock, and Beckwith re-emerge, Kirk and Spock are still in period dress, which perhaps makes a little more sense than the final, filmed version. Then again, if they are just magically being restored, why not restore their clothing as well? Anyway . . .

This article makes me curious about the Gold Key run. I’ve never read any of them. Given how many of them there are, I wish someone would publish a “Best of” sampler trade with 8-10 highlight stories.

That’s some awesome research there, Greg! I’ve always been annoyed by this little thing in the Guardian stories.

The Gold Key stuff has been collected, though not in a “Best of” to my knowledge. There were 61 issues (no annuals or specials), though a small number were reprints.

ON COMICS CHARACTERS

On sci-fi franchises, on grant morrison, on tv and movies, other books, documentary films, related products.

Agnes Jurati

View history

Doctor Agnes P. Jurati was a female Human cyberneticist who worked at the Daystrom Institute during the late 24th century . ( PIC : " Remembrance ")

After an encounter with the defeated Borg Queen of an alternate timeline , a trip into the past, and her own assimilation, Jurati returned four hundred years later, and reunited with her friends, now as the Queen of a small Borg Cooperative. ( PIC : " Farewell ")

1 Daystrom Institute career
2 Joining Picard
3 Joining the Stargazer crew
4 Queen of the Borg
5.1 Relationships
6 Key dates
7 Memorable quotes
8.1 Appearances
8.2 Background information
8.3 External link

Daystrom Institute career [ ]

Jurati was recruited out of Starfleet by Bruce Maddox to aid in his android research, and characterized their work as "coming close" to being able to create an advanced android similar to Data . However, after the banning of synthetic lifeforms following the Attack on Mars , as well as the disappearance of Maddox, much of her research was stalled and ground to a halt.

She was approached by retired Admiral Jean-Luc Picard at the Institute's Division of Advanced Synthetic Research in 2399 , and they discussed the possibilities of creating a new, flesh-and-blood android comparable with previous Soong-types via fractal neuronic cloning . ( PIC : " Remembrance ")

After Picard related his experiences with Dahj Asha to Jurati, she researched Dahj, who had recently been offered a fellowship at the Daystrom institute. Jurati told Picard that Dahj's identity, including records of education on Regulus , appeared to have been fabricated only three years prior . ( PIC : " Maps and Legends ")

Joining Picard [ ]

Shortly after her second meeting with Picard, Jurati received a visit from Commodore Oh , the head of Starfleet Security . Oh questioned Jurati about the latter's communications with the retired Admiral, and told her that Picard was likely to go looking for Bruce Maddox and Dahj's twin sister Soji . Via mind meld , Oh showed Jurati the Admonition , leading her to believe it was a record of a long-dead civilization that was destroyed after they built sentient synths. With this, Oh convinced Jurati that the creation of sentient synths would once again bring about the end of all organic life in the Galaxy, and Jurati needed to "atone" for her role in developing these synths. Oh ordered Jurati to join Picard on his mission, and to kill Maddox and Soji. Oh also placed a psychic block to prevent Jurati from revealing exactly what she saw. Finally, Oh gave Jurati a viridium tracker . ( PIC : " Nepenthe ", " Broken Pieces ")

Jurati subsequently appeared at Château Picard in the midst of an attack by Romulan assassins . Jurati shot one of the assassins, then insisted on joining Picard on La Sirena for his mission. She found the first part of the journey "boring", and kept herself entertained with academic journals and flirting with Cristobal Rios , the captain of La Sirena . ( PIC : " The End is the Beginning ", " Absolute Candor ")

At Freecloud , Jurati manned the transporter while the others rescued Maddox from Bjayzl . However, after Maddox was in La Sirena 's sickbay , she turned off the hematic microrepair unit keeping him alive. When the ship's EMH , Emil , tried to intervene, Jurati deactivated him. ( PIC : " Stardust City Rag ")

Jurati kissing Rios

Jurati was able to convince the others that Maddox died of the injuries Bjayzl and her cronies had inflicted, but she grew increasingly distressed. Needing a distraction and some company en route to The Artifact , Jurati had an intimate encounter with Captain Cristóbal Rios . ( PIC : " The Impossible Box ")

After La Sirena departed the Artifact, Rios discovered that they were being followed by Narek in a Romulan Snakehead . Jurati began to realize that Commodore Oh must have been working with the Romulans and the scout ship was following them because of her. Rios told her he suspected Raffi was the one being tracked, and Jurati could not bring herself to tell him about her situation before he was called away. Left alone in sickbay, Jurati injected herself with noranium hydride hoping it would neutralize the viridium tracker in her bloodstream , though this also sent her into a coma . ( PIC : " Nepenthe ")

Emil saved Jurati's life, and he and Raffi informed Picard about their suspicion that Jurati had killed Maddox. Upon waking up, Jurati was confronted by Picard, who declared she should turn herself in for the murder of Maddox once they reached Deep Space 12 . Jurati agreed and when prompted, told Picard about Oh forcing the Admonition on her and giving her the tracker and a directive to kill Maddox and Soji to prevent a repetition of the apocalypse Oh had seen in her vision. However, Jurati's resolve to go through with that mission had already been weakening, and once she met Soji in person, she decided that she would no longer carry out Oh's orders. Afterwards, Jurati gathered with the others to pool their knowledge of the situation and uncover the mystery surrounding Oh, the Zhat Vash , and the Attack on Mars . ( PIC : " Broken Pieces ")

Jurati traveled to Coppelius with the rest of the crew on La Sirena , though she thought they were still headed for DS12. When she arrived on the bridge with her bag packed, ready to turn herself in, she was delighted to find they were about to meet Soji's people instead. After the ship was drained of power by one of the orchids making up the planet's orbital defense and crash-landed on the surface, Jurati took care of Picard, who had fallen unconscious. Scanning him, she found the abnormality in his brain that meant he only had a short time left to live, prompting Picard to admit as much to the others.

Jurati joined the rest of the crew as they traveled first to the crashed Artifact, which Seven of Nine had piloted to Coppelius, and then to Coppelius Station . There, she met Dr. Altan Soong , son of Noonien Soong , and the synths he had created together with Bruce Maddox. They warned the synths they were about to be attacked by Oh's Romulan fleet. Jurati shared the Admonition with Sutra , the leader of the synths, who realized it was a message only a synthetic mind could decipher. While Rios and Raffi Musiker headed back to La Sirena to repair the ship, Jurati stayed behind with Picard, saying she wanted to help Soong finish some of Maddox's work.

When Soong and Sutra told their people that they were going to contact the extra-galactic Alliance of synthetic life who had created the Admonition, which in effect would mean the end of all organic life in the galaxy, Jurati convinced them she was on their side. While Sutra ordered for Picard to be put under house arrest, she allowed Jurati to continue working, ostensibly to help Soong transfer his mind into an artificial body, a golem , thus allowing him to be spared from the impending genocide. ( PIC : " Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1 ")

Instead of helping Soong, however, Jurati found a way to occupy him and broke out Picard. Together, they headed back to La Sirena , looking for the others, but they found the ship deserted. Picard and Jurati discussed their next steps and decided they needed to stall the Romulan fleet until Starfleet coul catch up with them. Picard also wanted to set an example to the synths by protecting them, so they would reconsider their plan to exterminate all organic life in the galaxy. Picard managed to fly La Sirena into orbit, just as the Romulan fleet arrived, and Agnes used the fundamental field replicator to execute a version of the Picard Maneuver , projecting dozens of images of La Sirena into space as decoys. After Starfleet arrived and Picard managed to convince Soji to power down the beacon, proving she was not the threat the Romulans believed her to be, the standoff was resolved and the Romulan Fleet left, escorted by Starfleet.

Picard collapsed, and Soji beamed him and Jurati down to the surface, where Picard died of his neurological disease. Just before he passed away, however, Jurati, working with Soong and Soji, was able to transfer Picard's consciousness into the golem originally built for Soong himself. When Picard, Rios, and the crew they assembled along the way left Coppelius some time later aboard La Sirena , Jurati was with them, sharing a kiss with Rios on the bridge. ( PIC : " Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2 ")

Joining the Stargazer crew [ ]

By the year 2401 , two years after the Coppelius incident, Jurati had been acquitted of the murder of Dr. Maddox due to "alien-induced temporary insanity." Her romantic relationship with Rios had also ended, but the two remained friendly, despite some awkwardness.

While on Raritan IV with Soji, Jurati was summoned by Rios, now captain of the USS Stargazer , for assistance in deciphering an unknown signal coming from a spatial anomaly. After she decoded the signal, it was revealed that it was an urgent message requesting Picard's presence and an appeal to join the Federation . When Picard arrived, a Borg vessel emerged from the anomaly and a Borg Queen beamed onto the bridge of the Stargazer and began to assimilate the ship. In order to prevent the ship from falling into the hands of the Borg, Picard initiated a self-destruct sequence , which moments later destroyed the vessel and seemingly everyone onboard. ( PIC : " The Star Gazer ")

Miraculously, after the explosion, Jurati woke up in a laboratory on Earth being greeted by a talking virtual pet cat . Unbeknownst to her, Q had created an alternate timeline and replaced the alternate version of Jurati with the Jurati from the prime timeline as part of his ongoing trial of Humanity .

With the assistance of that timeline's Borg Queen, Jurati joined Picard and the others as the time traveled into the past aboard the CSS La Sirena .

Agnes is assimilated.

After arriving in the early 21st century , Jurati was assimilated by the Borg Queen, as she attempted to use Jurati to gain a 400 year advantage on the galaxy. ( PIC : " Fly Me to the Moon ", " Two of One ", " Monsters ")

Jurati and the Borg Queen would eventually agree to share Jurati's body and create a new Borg Collective that would not forcefully assimilate people and would embrace the distinctiveness and individuality of its members. Now together as one, she left Earth aboard the CSS La Sirena and traveled to the Delta Quadrant . ( PIC : " Hide and Seek ")

Queen of the Borg [ ]

In 2401 , the Borg contacted the Federation, claiming to want to join it. Unbeknownst at the time, the evolved Jurati/Borg Queen, who was clearly different than was previously encountered beamed aboard the USS Stargazer and began assimilating the ship and its fleet. In response, Jean-Luc Picard activated the Stargazer 's auto-destruct , stopping the assimilation and destroying the vessel. ( PIC : " The Star Gazer ")

In an alternate timeline where Picard self-destructed the USS Stargazer , Agnes, as the Borg Queen, was killed in the explosion. ( PIC : " The Star Gazer ") This timeline was averted when Q returned Picard's crew to moments before the explosion and Picard cancelled the self-destruct upon realizing that the Borg Queen was actually Agnes. ( PIC : " Farewell ")

Jurati returns as the Borg Queen.

Upon returning from 2024 moments before the explosion, Picard canceled the auto-destruct and allowed the Borg Queen to proceed after realizing that it was the same Queen from an alternate timeline who had merged with Dr. Jurati.

The Borg Queen revealed that a powerful energy wave was approaching and she needed the shields of the fleet combined with that of her own ship to block it. This Borg Queen had come to Picard both because he was someone in charge with whom she shared a mutual trust and because they needed the help of a friend. The Borg Queen's efforts were successful, saving countless lives, although she didn't know who was behind the creation of the massive transwarp conduit aside from it being a threat that required close observation. Picard agreed to grant the Borg provisional membership in the Federation so that they could remain there, "the Guardian at the Gates." ( PIC : " Farewell ")

Personal life [ ]

Dr. Jurati was a leading academic in her field. When she was bored during the early days of her journey on La Sirena , she read through two years of back-issues of the Journal of Theoretical Cybernetics , "including the Festschrift for Professor Kwok ", proving she was a voracious reader. She also remarked that her father had read many paper books when she was a child, and she had used to annoy him about it. ( PIC : " Absolute Candor ")

Like Picard, Jurati was fond of Earl Grey tea . She enjoyed Kasseelian opera , sushi , and red velvet cake . However, the concept of baking cookies from scratch was somewhat foreign to her. ( PIC : " Maps and Legends ", " The End is the Beginning ", " Stardust City Rag ", " Broken Pieces ")

Before joining Picard on his quest, Jurati told Commodore Oh that she had never been off-world, implying she left Starfleet Academy to join Maddox at the Daystrom Institute before she ever got substantial space flight training. When she did spend some time in space, she found it to be boring, later saying " it's cold and empty and wants to kill you. " ( PIC : " Nepenthe ", " Absolute Candor ", " The Impossible Box ")

After she saved his life in the Romulan attack on the Château, Jurati told Picard she was a "terrible liar". Towards the end of their adventure, however, after she manipulated Soong and managed to free Picard from his house arrest, she had changed her mind: " I honestly thought I was the worst secret agent ever, but I'm starting to believe I may have a gift. " ( PIC : " The End is the Beginning ", " Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2 ") Something else Jurati considered a gift (somewhat jokingly) was her ability to sense when she was about to make a mistake. She called it a "superpower", though she agreed with Rios it was not a particularly useful one. ( PIC : " The Impossible Box ")

Jurati could be very talkative and often made witty comments. By 2401 , this had turned into a habit to babble when she was nervous, which could get her into trouble. However, she was also quick-witted enough to talk herself out of trouble again. ( PIC : " Absolute Candor ", " Penance ")

Relationships [ ]

Jurati developed friendships with the people she met on her mission with Picard. Although she had been manipulated into joining them under false pretenses, especially Raffi Musiker and Cristóbal Rios continued to be kind to her after they discovered the truth. By 2401, Jurati had a close relationship and easy rapport with Soji, whom she had told not to let her drunkenly call her ex. She happily greeted Seven of Nine from the bridge of the Stargazer , and she gave Elnor a delighted hug when they reunited in the dystopian alternate reality. Jurati also developed a strong friendship with Picard, often affectionately calling him "Mister". ( PIC : " Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1 ", " The Star Gazer ", " Penance ", " Assimilation ")

Over the course of their time together on La Sirena , Jurati developed a romantic relationship with Cristóbal Rios . The two shared a lot of light-hearted banter, but also grew closer when Jurati was starting to feel the weight of her secret mission. After she killed Maddox, Jurati happened upon Rios practicing soccer late at night. After some conversation, the two started kissing and were about to go off to sleep together, but Jurati pulled back because she felt like she was about to make a mistake. When Rios continued to be kind and understanding, however, she opened up to him about feeling hollow and lonely, and they decided to sleep together after all, since it might at least help her for the night. ( PIC : " Absolute Candor ", " Stardust City Rag ", " The Impossible Box ")

When Sutra tried to mindmeld with Jurati on Coppelius to learn more about the Admonition, Rios tried to stop her, since he worried about the trauma the vision had caused Jurati. Later, when he told Jurati he was headed back to the ship with Raffi, he continued to be deeply concerned about her, and the two shared a tender moment. A while later, when they were getting ready to leave Coppelius, Jurati and Rios kissed on the bridge of La Sirena , while the rest of the crew was still occupied elsewhere. ( PIC : " Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1 ", " Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2 ")

The relationship with Rios ended after less than a year, just like all of Jurati's past intimate relationships had. Nevertheless, and despite their occasional bickering, the two remained friendly and Rios was deeply concerned for Jurati when she was behaving strangely after letting herself be assimilated by the Borg Queen. ( PIC : " The Star Gazer ", " Penance ", " Two of One ")

Key dates [ ]

Joins Starfleet
Is recruited into Daystrom by Bruce Maddox
Is sent by Oh to join Picard, and ordered to kill Maddox and Soji Asha
Joins Picard's quest
Kills Bruce Maddox
Helps Picard protect Coppelius
Is cleared for the murder of Maddox
Goes on a diplomatic goodwill tour with Soji
Is transported by Q to an alternate 2401 where the Confederation of Earth exists.
Time travels to the 21st century
Assimilated by the Borg Queen
Convinces the Borg Queen to create a new, better Collective and merges with her
Arrives on the USS Stargazer seeking the Federation's help against an unknown threat

Memorable quotes [ ]

" How can I help you? " " You can tell me if it is possible to make a sentient android out of flesh and blood. " (Jurati laughs) " No, really. How can I… Is that why you've come here? " " It is. " " Even before the ban, that was… Well… W-Well a flesh and blood android was in our sights, but a sentient one? Not for a thousand years. " " That makes it even more curious that recently, I had tea with one. "

" So... space turns out to be super boring. Go figure. " " What were you expecting? " " I don't know. It's so... empty. I mean, of course, right? It's right there in the name. 'Space.' It's not like it's called 'vast quantities of stuff.' Although, come to think of it, there are over three billion stars in our galaxy alone and ours is one of two trillion. There are a septillion known planets, so maybe it should be called 'vast quantities of stuff.' Like, why focus on the negative? "

Appendices [ ]

Appearances [ ].

" Remembrance " ( Season 1 )
" Maps and Legends "
" The End is the Beginning "
" Absolute Candor "
" Stardust City Rag "
" The Impossible Box "
" Nepenthe "
" Broken Pieces "
" Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1 "
" Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2 "
" The Star Gazer " ( Season 2 )
" Penance "
" Assimilation "
" Watcher "
" Fly Me to the Moon "
" Two of One "
" Monsters "
" Hide and Seek "
" Farewell "

Background information [ ]

Jurati was played by Alison Pill .

She was the only character besides Jean-Luc Picard to appear in every episode of the first and second seasons of the series.

Early in the character's development, Dr. Jurati was named "Dr. Sarton," after a roboticist in the Isaac Asimov novel The Caves of Steel . [1]

External link [ ]

Agnes Jurati at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
3 Ancient humanoid