Seventeen Seconds

 DVD, Picard S3 (Seventeen Seconds)

Conflict, conflict, everywhere conflict... Picard versus Crusher, Jack versus Picard, Picard versus Riker... It's pretty much Picard as the common theme in all of it, and I know he still has his name on the marquee despite the number of 'TNG' costars creeping in week by week (up to five now!), but this is exactly what's been happening throughout the series, Picard being told to shut up, go away or leave us alone - it's not a good look and I really do wonder why Patrick Stewart was so intent on making his iconic character so weak, undoing all the good work he'd stored up as his legacy. At least with Season 3 he seems to have come alive more, bolstered by his old friends, mostly Riker's presence, but the disrespect shown to Picard is still on the agenda and that's very sad. There were a few things that didn't quite click for me in this episode, even though I'd say it was a click of the needle in the right direction overall, incrementally the best so far. The central conflict between Riker and Picard was the main one, I never quite understood it. Not to mention the protocols for such a situation where you have an injured Captain who's already confined his First Officer to Quarters (don't they have a Second Officer any more?), then flings command at Captain Riker - it makes sense he'd be the one to take control, after all he did command this very ship (I think...?), before Shaw and he's on active duty, while Picard, though an Admiral, is not. I loved the issue of Fathers and sons that has suddenly become a link between these two old friends and comrades, but not when it became a wedge between them.

Riker is amused, fascinated and so happy for Jean-Luc that he has the potential for something Riker lost - he has that old Riker mischievous grin when he looks at Jack who refuses to even acknowledge Picard as Dad, and there is that touching, haunting reminder that Riker lost his own son, a bit of Season 1 canon being used to good effect, and gives him much more urgency in his attitude to Picard getting to know Jack and having time with him. But then that also becomes a deep dark well of bitterness between them when Picard believes Riker's defensive strategy in trying to avoid the Shrike pursuing them is because of his loss. Is it? Or is Riker being pragmatic, the Titan not being a huge Galaxy-class ship like the Enterprise-D (or Sovereign like the E, though he didn't specify), with a crew that aren't his, he just wants to get them out of there with minimal damage and loss of life. I didn't comprehend why Picard was so gung-ho about facing off against the Shrike, other than the whole son thing again: he's been given a new lease of life with this sudden in-rush of possibilities thanks to Jack's appearance on the scene, is that it? So Riker lost a son and now plays it safe, while Picard's gained one and wants to go all out to do all he can to survive. It's not the typical Picard attitude and I can see that this news could affect how he reacts to events, but then it seemed to be just another way to paint Picard as this 'passed it' old crock that has nothing to offer any more, and I don't like that at all.

To me, when Riker orders him to remove himself from the Bridge, claiming he's 'killed them all,' it was a reminder of the hotheaded scene in 'First Contact' when a furious Picard orders Worf to 'get off my Bridge!' While that moment was uncomfortable and well outside of the personalities and style of the characters, it did have a place of reality in that Picard was dealing with so much, his own Borgified past rising to the fore and altering him (in parallel to what this season would become all about). Picard's failure to anticipate the effects of the portal weapon make him look very silly, but even then Riker had no business shouting at him in front of the crew, completely humiliating him, and then there's the effect it would have on the crew if your stand-in Captain shows he thinks they're all dead, a massive loss of morale! It shows that Riker himself hasn't entirely aged well, but it was a step too far and I didn't like it. I want to see them solving problems together as Trek did in the past, not creating drama from their disagreements and showing their increasing frailties. But as much as the season has shown more promise than the previous two, it still remains rooted in the style and setup of those - in fact we get a number of callbacks to canon created within them, and that's more often than not a bad thing: Jack saying Picard is positronic, Raffi being reminded of her drug-addled past, only Riker's personal history was a good addition, and even that would be subverted as we'll see him in conflict with his own family later.

The extended cast, the actual crew surrounding our main characters continue to be well handled - it's not that we're getting to know Esmar, T'Veen, Mura, and so on, but they are shown to be competent officers, and in Sidney La Forge's case we even go a little deeper. She's really being presented so well generally, and as we see here, when she's relieved of duty after a thirty-six hour shift to go and rest by Captain Shaw, she first takes the time to check in on Seven in her Quarters and tell her about how she shares a difficulty in forming friendships just as her Father did, and this little scene really helps to flesh her out as a person - I feel like we know her better than, yes, the 'DSC' extended cast already. I'm not sure I agree with her that Geordi found it tough to make friends, because he was always one of the most easygoing, pleasant people. He had his struggles with the opposite sex, true, but I never got the sense he couldn't make friends with people, but perhaps this is a daughter's added colour to the perspective. Either way it's nice to have a sense of Geordi on the ship while he still isn't here yet, in much the same way I imagine Demora Sulu would have brought her Father's spirit with her had the Enterprise-B been a series rather than a few scenes in a film. Geordi may not be here, but we get Marina Sirtis back as Deanna Troi (Riker-Troi, to be precise), though it's more of a tease than anything else as she's only in a holo-screen communication, and in flashback, but I was pleased to see her elevated to Special Guest Star alongside her other 'TNG' costars since she was shoved in the guest credits at the end of her first appearance on 'Picard' in Season 1, which seemed very disrespectful to the actress and character at the time.

This series remains a slow burn, even while there's more tension than the previous seasons' slow burns, but they're still in the same nebula they were near in the first episode, still being confronted by a vast enemy vessel, and still not getting anywhere very fast. But in this case there are things that have been left hanging that we're eager to see: chiefly, Picard's conversation with Beverly. They meet in Sickbay which is quickly cleared out and all the long ire of twenty years pours out between them. In one sense it's a very soapy scene, all about feelings and family matters, etc, but with the weight of a real twenty years behind it, to see Picard and Crusher together again is lovely (they mention it'd ended between them for the fifth time and that's not entirely hyperbole!). And both have good points about what happened and what should have happened - Beverly definitely comes across as someone who didn't think things through and acted on instinct, failing to understand either Jack's need for his Father or Picard's need for a son, and it's a refreshingly anti-feminist view: it wasn't selfishly her child to do with as she saw fit, he was their son. Rather than trust in Jean-Luc to do what was best for them all she never gave him the choice and what he went through in Season 2 might have been dealt with those decades ago. This was the only sour note for me as that storyline was terrible and I never bought that Picard's Father was some evil man (as it proved), but it's quite moving when Picard explains how things might have been, and it's clear Beverly was by far the one in the wrong, a reminder that broken families cause so much pain, and a child needs a Mother and a Father to thrive.

That it took three episodes to get us to the point of contact between Picard and Crusher was on the one hand a good way to hold attention, but on the other still smacks of the inability to write tight Trek stories these days (at least on these serialised series'), and as much good as we get it's still hard to see how that format suits these characters in that way. Perhaps things should have been streamlined to get things moving and bring the 'TNG' cast together quicker, but I will say the anticipation of the scene worked for this particular aspect. I did find myself looking at the directing and thinking it was a bit obvious (the old trick of having two characters who have been separated by time, now having a gulf of difference between them, is illustrated by showing them at either end of the frame and slowly they come a little more together as the scene progresses, for example), and there were occasions throughout I wasn't sure about the directing choices, but it wasn't until the end I realised Jonathan Frakes directed! Oops... I can't say I've been enamoured with his embrace of the modern style of TV, with camera flying all over the place, the kind of thing he's been doing in Trek since 'DSC' Season 1, but it is much more impressive to see he directed when he was so central to the story, too!

There are still things that irritate, even while this episode turns up a notch on canon and continuity detail - a large part of both of those things comes in the scenes between Worf and Raffaella (as he will insist on calling her - a formality I liked). His official introduction to her was superb, covering all his family history and some of his major life events in one short paragraph: the son of Mogh, of the house of Martok (hooray, at least he gets a shoutout!), son of Sergei of the house of Rozhenko (love it!), bane to the Duras family, slayer of Gowron - it's shiver down the spine time for all those glorious Trekferences: 'TNG' and 'DS9' are alive again in a modern production, how exciting! Eat that Mirror Georgiou and your fancy titles, this is stuff that actually matters and has a reality! It doesn't end there, either as Worf later talks about the Dominion War and gives us a summary of why there could be Changelings setting out to destroy 'solids' again. It was just great to hear such terms, but crowning it all was when he refers to a friend he knew in The Great Link, an honourable man, who told him about this rogue faction that split off. I would have liked Odo to have been mentioned by name, but it wouldn't have meant anything to Raffi, or would it? Thanks to 'Picard' we're often seeing news watched just like today, on 'TV,' as she has in the previous episodes and does in this one, so you'd think the Federation's only Changeling ally living at the forefront of the War would have been widely known - so maybe Raffi would have heard of Odo, but not hearing his name was almost a callback to another series: in 'Voyager' ('Non Sequitur'), they had an alternate universe Paris mention an unfavourable Changeling on 'DS9' without ever saying his name!

This all has more poignancy to it because it was made after René Auberjonois' death, so while I don't think we had any other Trekferences to other 'DS9' characters Worf served with across this season (other than the aforementioned Martok), it was only good and right that Odo should be talked about. Nog actor Aron Eisenberg was similarly honoured in 'DSC' with a ship named after him, so it's good to see these much-loved actors not forgotten. Of course if this series had only been made ten years before then we could have had them and any number of others involved, and that's the sad thing about all this: while Trek has generally been quite poor or average at best for the most part in the Kurtzman era, it has brought back many, many old characters (or 'legacy' as they're now known), but it was disappointing there couldn't have been more 'DS9' and 'Voyager' examples in this season, even though we had the occasional familiar face and you can't complain when it's supposed to be a swan-song specifically for 'TNG' and (almost), everyone returned for it. And there was also the potential, as they did with far too many characters, that they could be ruined, killed, or put in a bad position in life that makes you regret them being brought back at all, sadly.

Take Seven as the prime example (or Picard himself, for that matter!). At least she continues to seem more like the old Seven, the one who was part of a crew, because she's part of a crew now - as much as I liked Sidney for paying her a visit, it did come across a little bit too familiar since she is a subordinate and was being maybe too friendly, but Seven herself was most restrained. It's nice to see her Quarters, and rather than the vast size of those aboard Discovery, she, as First Officer, still has quite a small space (though even there she's got a little silver model of Voyager to remind her of better days!). Her work with Jack also garnered a thumbs up from me - I could almost imagine it being B'Elanna Torres she was working with in that Engineering cubbyhole! It all felt so very Trekky - that's what it often was: people doing things in rooms, while outside there might be some action between ships in space. There was much more of that submarine feel that has been lost with so many massive windows and a reliance on visual effects over internal scenes to seal the drama. Even the gas leak was a little like the ocean breaking in, though it was actually the reverse, gas leaking out into space, mostly, as a trail for the Shrike to follow. I was actually wondering why pudgy-faced traitor man (Ensign Foster?), wasn't doing something to signal to his fellow 'shifters, especially when he's posted at one of the aft portholes to be an observer when sensors are lost due to the effects of the nebula - even that sentence is very Trekky, it feels like Trek again, wonderfully so!

However, not everything is tickety-boo, and Raffi is once again a source of annoyance. At least pairing her up with the legend that is Worf, and his calm demeanour, makes her a little less horrible (in the same way as Picard does better with Riker), and it's great to see him put her in her place when so often she's done that to others on this series. Worf is patient, instructive and solid all through, though I wasn't quite sold on his philosophical bent. I wasn't sure if he was putting on an act for the Changeling, Titus Rikka (sounds a lot like the actor who played him, Thomas Dekker!), when he said there was no righteous cause, no good and no evil. Was he saying this is what the Changeling believed or that he did? And as for 'the fight is rarely worth dying for,' does that mean he no longer believes in a glorious death winning a Klingon entry to Sto-Vo-Kor? I know he'd been described as a pacifist in promotion for the season, but there's absolutely no evidence of that, he's quite happy to slice and dice, or do a terrific wrestling move to slam Rikka down through a table - if he actually was a pacifist he wouldn't be fighting at all! But I do love having his cool, certain presence, and while his voice is a bit raspier, not quite as rich as it used to be, and I find it very distracting to see his ears poking out like it's a wig malfunction, this is the Worf we knew and loved for so many years and it's just so terrific to have back!

Raffi I could have done without, she once again shows the murky, nasty modern view of the Trek future being as seedy and unpleasant as any other time (though it's not limited to her: the Titan crew give Jack nasty looks, very un-Starfleet of them, while Riker's riposte to Jack's claim 'the bigger the legend, the more disappointing they are,' is that we're all faulty, only human, which is true, but doesn't fit with the Trek ethos). Raffi threatens her captive with ripping out his fingernails (I loved how Worf says he may keep his fingernails - he sounds just like Worf should!), and tempts him with drugs since he appears to be a junkie and mainly, but not exclusively, she's responsible for the swear count going up. In all, she's a thoroughly unpleasant package and should have been jettisoned with the rest of the limp former 'Picard' cast. But she's not the only one who makes herself difficult to like. Jack's another one who does everything in his power to come across badly - perhaps the only times he doesn't act like that is when he's encouraging a patient in Sickbay (but maybe he just liked the look of her...), or when he goes to Seven to report his theory of a leak making Titan trackable. I did wonder why he didn't simply call the Bridge instead of trying to get there via Turbolift (is there a guard posted at every lift during Red Alert - seems like a waste of resources?), and I know he doesn't have a Combadge, but that should surely be of no account to a tech genius who could get himself out of a starship's Brig - surely a much easier matter to tap into the comm system! It also didn't make sense to me that Seven could open her own door, but then I realised she's only been confined, she's not a criminal or she'd be in the Brig. But Jack is quick to deck the Security Guard (who, let's be honest, did a bad job stopping him from going into Seven's room in the first place), which makes him look like a hothead.

It's worse when he acts like a teenager in Sickbay when Riker tactfully suggests they leave Picard and Beverly together, as well as it becoming clear it was ultimately his choice not to meet Picard when he was younger. I understand he's young and quick to judge, not reading the subtleties of a situation in which someone his Mother knew so well needs time with her. And then he gets so bitter about not having had a Father when Riker's seeing the similarity that it's really hard to warm to him as a person, not a good place to put a new character in, especially if you're setting him up, as they seemed to by end of season, as a potential series lead of the future. He's not the only one who comes across a bit insensitive - Dr. Crusher herself never seems to remember what it was like when some outsider came swanning into her Sickbay, and instead gets on Dr. Ohk's nerves by jumping right in. Then she has the cheek to explain how to save Captain Shaw, showing up this doctor in her own Sickbay. I know we're not supposed to have any affinity to this stranger and instead we're meant to cheer Beverly for being back in her rightful place in a starship's Sickbay, but she's already a little bit in the doghouse for how she cut Picard out of her life (and the fact she removed herself from all her Enterprise friends' lives suggests she knew it was wrong), and her son is annoying so she's not in the best position. Unconsciously, it could also be a moral message about intimacy without the tie of marriage, because otherwise they might have been a happy family, while instead Beverly showed a lack of trust.

Her reasoning is that Picard would never have left the call of space behind (well we know he did, going into some kind of depression), and it was fascinating to hear these snippets of events that happened with Romulans kidnapping him or Reman assassins putting a Phaser to his head - the kind of adventures we can imagine happening in that post-'Nemesis' world (or was it before that, I'm unclear?). We even go back to that time, or somewhere around it with the flashback scene. Hmm, not sure about what I assume was CGI de-ageing, it didn't look all that convincing, and obviously Picard even then has his quavering, raspy voice. But it's sensibly shot in semi-darkness (the same old bar set, which looks a little odd since we keep seeing it - was it on the Holodeck of the Titan, was it actually Guinan's bar, or was it supposed to be somewhere else?), and Riker doesn't look too bad. Maybe it was a mix of makeup and CGI, but however you shake it, it didn't look right. I did like the uniform, reminiscent of the 'First Contact' style, but with a twist. Was it another new uniform or the same style as we'd seen before for the earlier period? I couldn't quite work out what year it was supposed to be. The reuse of sets was starting to become apparent - they also revisit the bar or market on M'Talas Prime for hunting down Rikka. One thing: he's a Changeling, so why didn't he just shapeshift out of the cuffs and chair? Typically, they make the effect of shifting much more unpleasant: gloopy, scummy sludge that oozes and bubbles, though that could be because he's one of these we'll later learn were experimented upon.

It was good to see the old Changeling look again - not the smooth faces and unfinished ears prompted by Odo (no doubt they'd never want to recall a prominent member of those they broke away from in the Link, though ironically the only time we've seen a Changeling in the old style was in 'DSC' in the 32nd Century!), but the rippling brown ooze, which happens when Jack strikes Ensign Foster, and again when, as Worf points out, Rikka needs to regenerate, was suitably reminiscent. It really did generate a whole new sense of possibility that they brought in these old foes from 'DS9,' even though I knew beforehand they were connecting to the Dominion War. I was still hopeful for Vorta and Jem'Hadar to be involved, too, just to see that fantastic makeup again, but now, hearing the backstory of what happened, that there was a schism in the Changelings, and knowing how we later find out they were very different, there was no reason for it, and Worf even says they weren't after another war. I wonder if they used the word 'schism' deliberately, as that was the name of a 'TNG' episode with weird aliens from another dimension that spoke in creepy clicks, and now we have this Shrike crewed by masked creatures that speak in clicks. Are they supposed to be Changelings or merely foot-soldiers hired by Vadic? Was there ever a plan to connect them to the 'Schisms' aliens?

Shaw takes a backseat, or more specifically a back bed since he's injured flying across the Bridge in the traditional way characters were always flung about during an attack. Probably didn't help the Captain's Chair being built up so high with all those steps, as that's a long way to fall - it's almost Cardassian the way he's up so high! He has a lot less to do, but is also more sympathetic, but doesn't seem as seasoned as he did - does Riker really need to tell him about nebulas? I know it's really for the audience's benefit, but it seems the sort of thing he should have been explaining to one of his own subordinates as Captain. He all but throws up his hands, almost accusatory when he says 'there go the sensors,' and he's so quick to pass over command to Riker once he's been injured when so often a Captain has stubbornly held onto the reins of power even in agony and has to be talked out of it. But it's like he just wants all the judgement to be on Riker - if they don't get out of that situation there'll be no consequences for any of them so maybe he does feel some confidence in Riker's ability to do what's necessary? We're back in 'Insurrection' tactics again when Riker fires a torpedo, then fires on it to ignite the surrounding nebula and punch the Shrike away - I must say I didn't feel we got a good sense of its scale compared with the Titan, which did get plenty of nice shots and had weight to it. But more than anything else there was a definite attempt to evoke the battle in the nebula of 'Star Trek II,' even down to the music, though they didn't go too strong into that. The dimensional-folding interspatial singularity weapon (as it's called), was at least different, if not seemingly very practical as you'd always have to deploy it right in front of a moving target!

Music continues to play a strong part in the season, both for good and bad - on the negative side they always have to have their old rock music or whatever it is, starting yet another post-title scene with that when Riker and Picard are in a bar for the flashback. But generally the music lifts the episode and underlines the tension or weight of their situation most successfully, a far cry from what had been done the previous two seasons. I didn't quite see Seven listening to choral music in her Quarters, as much as I liked it! But Worf doing his exercises to what I assume was Klingon opera, was brilliant, they're really getting him down pat. Yet there are still bits and pieces that don't ring true: the Phaser still turns people into a shower of sparks (Worf shoots Rikka when he tries to shapeshift away), though we do at least get a proper Phaser beam, both from his hand Phaser and when the Titan shoots the torpedo (though can't they be remote detonated?), so that was gratifying. At the end when Riker says fire everything they've got, all they've got is four torpedoes? That seemed a bit unlikely, but on the other hand at least it wasn't the typical overkill we tend to get in modern Trek where there are hundreds of ships firing thousands of torpedoes (that comes later!). And while I said the Bridge crew aren't badly set up, there were also a couple of moments when they didn't ring true: I can't imagine a Bajoran speaking blasphemy, especially not the name of the human's God! Surely, if he was going to express himself in such terms he'd say Prophets? And T'Veen, though she generally works well as a Vulcan, and this time mentions logic, she appears a little too expressive at times.

I took it the observer who reports the Shrike's appearance was the same woman next to Ensign Foster earlier, but then I thought they were at the aft section, while here the Shrike comes in from the side and it seemed the same woman reported it. Either she switched position or there was a disconnect between the script and the visuals... And why isn't Worf in Starfleet? He calls himself a subcontractor whose concerns align with Starfleet, which seemed to be a longwinded way of saying he's not in Starfleet these days - was he cashiered for losing the E (as we later find out this season?), and if so, how is he working for Starfleet Intelligence? Don't think these questions were ever answered, not that it's that important, but I like to know all the facts. I must mention the fact that another old face reappeared this time: Thomas Dekker is possibly best known for playing John Connor in the late-2000s 'Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,' but he also had a couple of child roles in Trek - first as one of Picard's imaginary sons (!), in 'Generations,' then as a holo-character in two episodes of 'Voyager,' so it was great they brought him in for Rikka. I wonder if they even knew he'd been in Trek before? His character's boast that 'your worlds are on the verge of destruction' was very like the end of 'DS9' Season 3 in which Odo fights a fellow Changeling to the death aboard the Defiant and with whose dying breath he triumphantly tells him the Changelings are everywhere - they seemed to be going for something similar, surely be inspired by that.

What makes this particular episode work slightly better than before (though we're still talking incremental improvement), is that there's real emotion here. So often it's been all about people bursting into tears and we live in a time when emotion is the most important thing and everyone should let it out, etc, but one of the real strengths of Trek had always been seeing emotion behind the eyes of characters, knowing what they're going through but they don't express it, or don't fully express it, and I got that sense again here when Picard and Beverly grapple with this painful subject that has to be addressed. The possibility of what might have been was a powerful driver in that scene and Beverly is so upset about how she lost her own parents (do we know that story, I'm not sure we do?), her husband, and even her son Wesley, to the stars - that's the kind of strong drawing on canon that brings resonance and meaning. When Riker tells Jack he lost a son, and when Jack tells him about how his Mother would start telling stories about her friends when he was growing up, lighting up her eyes, then would become sad and stop, it said so much and gave such a good grasp of where everyone is and has been, that that emotional sensibility worked and gave depth to the scenes. The only thing like that which didn't work so well was the explanation for the episode's title: I didn't catch why Riker had been going down somewhere on the ship which took him seventeen seconds because I was too busy being taken out of the scene by the de-ageing. That, and other reasons I've mentioned are why I still can't quite see this as the first genuinely good episode of the season, but I do feel it keeps improving and I still look forward to seeing more of the characters coming together, and more especially, to writing about it.

**