Broken Pieces

DVD, Star Trek: Picard S1 (Broken Pieces)

Each season of the current generation of Trek has given me one episode which I genuinely could have said I thought was a good one. One, and one only. In 'DSC' Season 1 it was the first episode, 'The Vulcan Hello,' in Season 2 it was 'The Sound of Thunder,' in 'Short Treks' it was 'Ask Not,' and now, in 'Picard' it's this one. The unhappy truth, however, is that upon second viewing I've almost always downgraded that one bright light, with only 'Ask Not' holding up for me as an example of good Trek. 'Broken Pieces' wasn't to break that trend. Part of the reason would be that on this viewing I knew how the story ended, whereas initially it seemed to promise quite a lot, succeeding in finally filling in so many of the questions regarding various parts of the plot that would have done just as well not to remain a mystery for most of the season. In fairness, it wasn't as bad as 'DSC' and that series' attempts to keep suspense hanging over us all the time, and there are some scenes in this episode that suggest there is still some small degree of humanity to be found in this grim vision of Trek's previously optimistic future world. But it wasn't quite enough to pull it up to the level of the earlier generations of Trek, and the fact is that I still watch those (going through 'DS9' Season 2 right now), and despite their lack of cinematic widescreen or the ballooning effects budget they still more than hold up and remind me what Trek is, and should be, and in comparison to their blazing warmth, Kurtzman Trek's flickering little candle can't, well, hold a candle.

That being said, there are a lot more reasons to like this episode than almost all the previous ones, and that's in spite of the ever more excessive use of immoral and offensive language, which is something Michael Chabon has defended, saying people will always talk like that. Yes, maybe, and warp drive is also an impossibility, as is pulling someone apart and reconstructing them in the Transporter: if realism is your goal then you're in the wrong game because Trek is about being inspirational and aspirational, showing a possible, fictional future. No one's saying this is going to happen, that's not the point, so defending questionable decisions of increased swearing and gore in what was once a family franchise by citing realism shows a lack of imagination, ambition and desire to portray a better world that was the hallmark of Trek. See? Even when I want to write good things about 'Picard' I find myself turning off on a tangent of woe. There really are things to like in this episode and Chabon himself even shows that if he chose to he could write the kind of compassionate, optimistic scenes that I miss from Trek: there are a couple that come to mind. The first is simply the moment when Seven of Nine arrives to rescue what she thinks is Hugh, but is actually Elnor (the recap where we see him activate the Fenris Rangers' pendant made me remember a plot hole from the previous episode - where did that come from, did Picard just leave it behind on the Borg Cube because I don't remember him giving it to Elnor, and we see the elf-boy find it dangling?).

I don't like the new portrayal of Seven, I made that clear in her first full-length appearance in 'Stardust City Rag,' this twisted, bitter, revenge-fuelled, gun-toting version that is like a stripped down action heroine with none of the fascination the original character exuded from her complex personality. But once we get past her storming in, guns (technically Phasers, but it's all pew-pew-pew and I hate them being used that way - for that matter why didn't the Romulans just shoot Elnor, knowing he's carrying a sword - because we always have to have martial arts fights nowadays, that's why!), a-blazing, we see a return of her maternal side, previously shown when she came to rescue Icheb. Elnor is quite childlike the way he runs into her arms and it was quite touching that she comforts him. Even if it doesn't make a lot of sense as he's supposed to be this warrior monk! But Seven was used a little better this time, she seems much more like the woman we knew in 'Voyager,' perhaps because she's not showing off or swaggering in front of villains or Picard, she only has Elnor as audience, and a job to do. It is dismaying that she failed to save all those Borg drones that are brutally sucked into space (though surely they could survive that as we've seen them operating out there before, and could be salvaged?). One reason this side of the story didn't impress as much as on my first viewing was that there still seemed to be potential inherent in Seven having a Cube to herself, the villains escaping, but all that happens is she crashes it on a planet in one of the final episodes. What happened to the Reclamation Project, or the treaty, or anything else to do with this, I want to know?

The Borg, or ex-Borg, seemed to display anger towards Narissa, grasping for her like the zombie Vulcans in 'Impulse,' and although it was an arresting scene, all these hands reaching out to pull the villainess down, it didn't make sense to me until I thought back to 'Descent,' which is the closest in tone thanks to a severed Borg ship containing a separate Collective, and of course Hugh being part of it - in that they had learned to feel emotion thanks to Lore's meddling, and though I never liked that development at least it did provide something to go back to thematically. It could also be that the ones we see are all XBs, in which case that would explain why all they can do is grab her instead of using their tubules for assimilation, and also explains the emotional reaction since they've been removed from the Collective. Narissa herself is at her best in this episode, which in the grand scheme of things isn't saying a lot since she's always been portrayed as a disgusting, immoral cartoon character, so I suppose we should be impressed that there can be any sympathetic moment for her at all! But there was, as we see her caring for Ramdha whom we discover is her Aunt, taking in both she and her brother, Narek, when their parents died, and also a member of the Zhat Vash, the super-secret faction within the Tal Shiar that never really made any sense, but never mind.

The other reason I felt there was some Trekkiness in the story was for Jean-Luc who, as if Patrick Stewart had remembered how to play the character after interacting with former crew-members Riker and Troi in the previous episode, comes across as his most Picard-like so far in the series. He has a couple of nice conversations with people that show his kindliness and compassion, his hope and optimism, the kind of things this modern Trek seemed largely to be sucked dry of. It's not one hundred percent happy and good, Raffi still acts the goat, going as far as to call him a fool for bringing Soji aboard, but then she's been shown to be a drunkard, a druggie, an addict, and a complete self-pitying mess, so anything she says has to be taken through that lens. No, fortunately she's not integral to the episode, and neither is Jurati, Rios, perhaps the only character you can feel real sympathy for on the crew, gets to open up a bit. It is to him that Picard pours out his healing wisdom and mental help, talking over what trauma happened in Rios' past that has so cut him up and turned him into a quiet, reserved outsider in the galaxy. I suppose this is all supposed to be the payoff for all that doom and gloom the rest of the time, and it doesn't work well enough for that, it's more like a little salve on a deep wound - the difference is that this would have been the kind of discussion and catharsis you'd get at the end of most Trek episodes, but we have to wait eight episodes for it now and it's too little to sustain that length of time.

I could also say that Picard's words can feel a little hollow when he has some good things to say, because they are quite out of place in this miserable version of the future, which is a tragic indictment of where Trek has been taken, irresponsibly in my view. But because there is this sense of positivity, however small in relation to the bigger picture, this does feel the most like a true Trek episode. Sorry, I shouldn't say 'true,' people would accuse me of 'gatekeeping,' not making allowances for new people with different ideas of what Trek is or can be. I should say 'bad Trek' (or at the very best, ambivalent Trek), because that's what it has been, and this is as close as the season would come to good Trek. The other scene that sticks out for its Trekness is when Picard and Soji talk about whether she's a real person and whether her history means anything, which leads us onto Data and such a lovely conversation about him and his qualities. I think this had even more power the first time, but when hopes were raised they might be bringing him back, and then cruelly dashed in the last couple of episodes it left a bad taste so that any pleasant talk of him doesn't have quite the same warmth. At this stage I wouldn't have imagined a return for Data, but it was also that there was still something of him floating around somehow. The important thing was how lovely it was to hear about him again, much as how the Riker-Troi's daughter, Kestra, spoke about him, only this time it's Picard himself which means even more.

Another part of the episode that I largely enjoyed was the bringing together of all five Emergency Holograms, every one the image of Captain Rios, but with a different accent and personality. I say largely because I did find it, much like the optimism on display, to feel somewhat out of place. It's played up like a comedy, as those characters have been in all their appearances, a lightness that was undoubtedly required to counteract so much of the negativity of other characters and the sense of hopelessness and misery inherent in this portrayal of Trek. But it strikes a false note, rather like Simon Pegg's version of Scotty in the recent film series: too cartoonish, only playing one side of reality. Jumping from Jurati murdering Maddox or whatever else was done to shock, to a funny hologram just didn't sit well, the tone was all wrong. At the same time it was fun to have the five together, even if we have to have Raffi being the one to corral them - even sober she seems like she's just about keeping sane, almost like this is a hallucination she's trying to control. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but I can't stand her casual manner of speaking and the way we're supposed to chuckle at her antics when she's such a sad shell of a person. In that regard I was less invested in the eking out of the mystery of Rios' past and even felt less sympathy when she comforts him.

It has to be said, there was another area of the episode that didn't sit right: the anachronistic possessions of Rios. Now I know this is truly nitpicking, and there are countless examples of previous Trek crews owning antique items such as books or glasses, but it really took me out of it to see Rios with a vinyl record player and collection, so clearly something put in by the writer, just as he made him a smoker, a personal agenda that doesn't chime with Trek's futuristic nature. And partly it felt like it was there because vinyl is, or has been, in vogue in recent years so Rios is like a character in a current contemporary drama that would have something like that at his age! It wasn't just the records, either, but his Starfleet chest contains a little card box, the kind that may have been a cigar box, filled with ephemera he's collected, from his old Starfleet badge and pips, to 2D photos and an illustration drawn on paper. Very far from the kind of futuristic way of life we see of people in past Trek, and somehow that annoyed a little, like people would really still keep a card box of bits! At the same time I was pleased to fill in the backstory of his Starfleet career, who his Captain was, his ship, USS Ibn Majid, how it ended, even seeing the uniform folded up neatly. I suppose I can accept he'd have kept the illustration drawn by the artificial life-form that came to Ibn Majid before the Captain murdered it, which is why he's shocked to see yet another in the form of Soji. Why did Maddox create multiples of the Ashas? I thought the point was to make a pair, as we'd find out next episode?

Inevitably, because this is what the series is built on, it always comes back to tragedy and trauma, in keeping with this putrid vision, we hear Rios' Captain Alonzo Vandermeer not only followed Starfleet orders to execute synthetics (a far cry from seeking out new life and civilisations), he then committed suicide with a Phaser to the mouth. What a bleak, unforgiving wasteland the 24th Century has become. Not only would someone of his caliber (a Starfleet Captain and a man Picard describes in glowing terms), have refused to carry out such an order, at the expense of his career and even his ship, but he wouldn't have taken the coward's way out and killed himself. This was wrong on so many levels and I think I wasn't quite as horrified by it the first time around because I was distracted by the fact of hearing about Rios' Captain and ship at all when so much is kept under wraps. There have always been evil Captains - I think of Ronald Tracey, for example, or Rudy Ransom who was quite happy to murder sentient life to get his crew home faster if he could. But that doesn't gel with Picard's thoughts on the man and again it's showing Starfleet to be an organisation that sanctions and commits evil acts, pulling down the struts beneath the utopian Federation future that is such a draw - where you knew these characters would do whatever it took to make sure what they did was right.

This erosion of morality is seen in small ways even in the characters on screen - Admiral Clancy beams in as a hologram into Picard's Holodeck study and has to violently swear in order to shut Picard up, all in order to tell him she agrees to send a squadron to help. Then there's Raffi again, making light of Maddox' death by saying it's exciting to have a conspiracy, or whatever. And then there's Jurati. Yes, she's shocked and horrified about what's gone on, but would she do it again? She claims she would never harm Soji now she's met her, but would you trust this woman who killed her mentor and boyfriend in cold blood? It sounded like she was in full control of her faculties, it was only the horror of seeing this potential future where something nasty this way comes (described in the same manner as when Zefram Cochrane made warp flight which in turn attracted the attention of the Vulcans, only an inverted version of that this time, a twisted, negative one), that made her do it. But she also says something about Oh putting poison in her mind so is she abrogating her guilt? You'd think they would lock her in the Brig if they had one, or at the least in her Quarters until they reach Deep Space 12, but she's allowed to be alone with Soji, eyes wet with tears of joy at meeting an android. And we're supposed to be on board with that? She's not to be trusted and she should be punished, but as usual they don't treat anything with the reality it deserves, despite the quest for 'realism' in language. That clearly doesn't extend to plot or behaviour!

It must be admitted that I was struggling to follow all the time issues in the episode: we see a flashback to when the Zhat Vash visited the 'Admonition' on a planet called Aia, melodramatically subtitled 'The Grief World,' as if this is 'Dr. Who' or some other cartoonish sci-fi like that. I was very much getting the impression of 'Babylon 5' with all this 'Conclave of Eight' talk and hooded women standing around in some secret organisation, not to mention 'The Lord of The Rings' with all this magical, mystical bent to proceedings. If I get this right, the Admonition, this railed energy ring thing, was left behind by a race as a warning not to create artificial life because… they were destroyed by it? I was thinking of The Old Ones from 'TOS,' but I'm not sure that stacks up other than they were from hundreds of thousands of years ago, which sounded right. What was at first confusing was seeing Ramdha pre-Borg, but they were saying something about when the Zhat Vash was set up and I thought they meant this was fourteen years ago, but we already knew it was supposed to be ancient. I think. Anyway, things got a bit clearer as the episode progressed and it was revealed Oh is a half-Romulan Vulcan and the Tal Shiar ship Ramdha was on was the ship that was assimilated and messed up the Borg Cube because… madness? Oh was sent to infiltrate Starfleet because of Dr. Noonien Soong's work with Data, but I'm not sure on the timings of that either since the Romulans were in isolation when Data was discovered, it wasn't until the end of 'TNG' Season 1 they came out to be active in the galaxy again.

Oh says something about their foremothers, but I didn't get the impression the Zhat Vash was an all-female group before? Perhaps it was. And they formed to prevent the 'second coming,' which I noted was a negative since it's the second coming of something nasty, when usually this is considered (at least in Western culture), to be a positive thing that will end the world as it is and set up a better one - a little undermining of Christianity there, or am I reading too much into it? And how did Raffi find out about the Conclave of Eight, which turns out to be an Octonary star system, designed to draw attention to itself? This ancient race was so powerful as to be able to do that even after presumably warring with the artificial species they developed, but they didn't survive? Hmmm… It's a bit like the fact that they believe they've shaken the tail (Narek), following La Sirena because Jurati managed to flush the Viridium isotope tracker ('Star Trek VI' reference), out of her system, but how would they know? In the end it turns out they didn't know because Narek follows them into the Borg Transwarp Hub or slipstream, whatever it was, which will make a shortcut to the homeworld of Soji's people. They fling a lot into the episode, perhaps a reason it's another longer one at over fifty-five minutes, but I'm not sure everything was really making sense: Soji doesn't give them reason to trust her as she takes over the ship and is about to force them to take her to her planet, it's only because Rios has a secret override that she's prevented, but then they go along with her anyway!

Along with the sometimes positive messages within the episode there were also some potentially interesting moral issues: how do you destroy even the possibility of synthetic life, as was the goal of Jurati and the Jhat Vash? Not only should you, but how would you? Data wasn't the first android by a long shot, are they saying it isn't until Soji does something to alert this other artificial life from beyond the galaxy, that they'll come, and if so why would they then take her where she wants to go? But even if they could wipe all record of synthetic life, how could they do that from all cultures and the minds of every scientist? It's ridiculously far-fetched. What I was interested in was the situation Seven was put in of becoming the Borg Queen for this one Cube, and yet even there I felt it was all too easy - she just has some 'Matrix' leads plugged into her spine and boom, she's able to control everything and yet can come out of it without any problem. There was simply no sense of the dangers of taking on Borg technology and I don't think I quite appreciated that the first time around because of all the potential for what was happening, but this time I could see the lack of suspense and tension there. They touch briefly upon her bitterness at the thought of re-enslaving these Borg even for a short while in order to achieve something, and that was a strong point that should have been explored - old Trek would have done so, that would have been the heart of the episode, and I'm sure was addressed, certainly on 'Voyager,' but ideas and morals aren't treated well in this era at all.

A fun, throwaway reference on the surface of it, was one of the holograms mentioned Medusan astrogation techniques. They were a race in one of the best episodes of 'TOS' ('Is There In Truth No Beauty?'), as that was exactly what that race was good at, and in keeping with the scenes at the beginning of the episode where we see the Zhat Vash members go mad after touching the Admonition and seeing the horrors that may await in future, it tied in since the very sight of a Medusan is supposed to induce madness. So that was a nice touch, as was a new bit of information on Picard's early career, he mentioned being a young Ensign on the Reliant, likely named for the ship in 'Star Trek II,' though it couldn't have been that actual vessel since it was destroyed long before he was born, though we've seen plenty of starships take the name of ships that have come before. When Rios talks about the special orders against synths being a 'black flag directive' from Starfleet I felt like they should have used an existing high priority Captain's-eyes-only code as was seen on occasion, such as Code 47 in 'Conspiracy,' which would have been a nice callback. We've certainly seen Captains-only orders before (like the Omega Directive in the 'Voyager' episode of the same name). And I didn't even catch that Marta Batanides, whom Picard mentions as, I think Vandermeer's XO, had been in 'Tapestry'! There's even a reference to Yridian tea, but I can't imagine them bringing back those naked-mouse-head creatures (last seen in an episode of 'Enterprise').

For all the good I was able to enjoy in the episode, it couldn't distract me from the fundamental problems I've mentioned. The music didn't help, either, being far too melodramatic, which is in keeping with the melodrama of modern Trek. And as I've said, 'Picard' isn't as annoying or frustrating as 'DSC,' but it still remains too close to that style. It relies too much on audio and visuals that don't fit with what made Trek work and even if this episode had been truly terrific it couldn't make up for another badly ended season that was coming round the corner. At the same time I will give this episode credit for those things it got right, but it's also irritating in that it shows glimpses of what it could be and yet won't. It's just not enough, and when you have seven hundred episodes of something that works and that you like just the way it is, seeing a downgraded, updated version full of the kind of things you detest or that don't deserve to be concentrated on merely adds to the depression of what was already a depressing take on the Trek universe. I'm looking forward to getting to the end of this season so I can finally give up writing reviews on things that for the most part I don't enjoy.

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