The entire episode end-to-end was an amazing start to what could have easily been a movie twenty years ago, and in fact, borrows heavily from previous movies both in tone and shot-for-shot. The way we’re brought to the Titan-A was very much like the opening to Generations with the Enterprise-B. Familiar faces show up immediately, with William Riker and Beverely Crusher, as well as Seven of Nine and Raffi Muskar.

Given the trailers, we obviously have a big-bad, and several small-bads coming up in the next nine weeks, but how it all connects together remains to be foreseen. Picard’s last two seasons also began strong and fizzled out in the middle to end, so hopefully this one maintains momentum throughout.

We knew from the trailers that Picard was out to find Beverly Crusher, who was being attacked by presumably the season’s big-bad, Vadic. We also knew that the Titan-A and its captain, Liam Shaw and first officer, Seven of Nine (nee Anika Hansen) would somehow get involved. The way with which this unfolded though makes for some interesting plot as the season goes on. Picard and Riker having to sort of bribe their way onto the ship, get rebuffed rather harshly by Shaw, only to get to where they needed to go by Seven’s loyalty felt a little cheap, but perhaps authentic.

Shaw is being set up as the Starfleet Everyman who just shows up, gets the job done, and leaves. No extraordinary adventures, no gaseous anomalies, it’s very much a tongue-in-cheek jab at Trek itself as to how captains like Picard, Janeway, and Sisko are lauded by Starfleet for their achievements, but they often broke all the rules, got any number of people hurt or killed, or were plain “irresponsible” about it. Shaw wants none of that, and none of Riker’s stench on the retrofitted Titan, denying their short trip to where Beverly’s ship is. But his disdain for Seven was also on full display, insisting she use her birth name as opposed to her former Borg designation, and calling her “ex-Borg” obviously made her feel uncomfortable trying to reintegrate back into Starfleet, with encouragement from both Janeway and Picard. So naturally she pulls a fast one behind Shaw and gets them there.

Encountering Crusher on the other hand, with another man who says he is her son, that’s something I hope we’re unpacking next week because that’s been the speculation of the Trek community for weeks. He is played by Ed Speleers, but thankfully IMDB omits who he is playing so as to keep the mystery for next week. I really, really hope this is not Picard and Crusher’s son. I know there are a bunch of probably fifty-something fanfic shippers out there hoping Picard and Crusher locked warp cores on the 1701-E, but I kinda of do not want the writers to add “deadbeat father” to Picard’s post-Nemesis personality. So much of his character has kind of been beaten up now by dodgy writing over the last few years. It’s not that I want him to remain a stoic no-nonsense Captain from the TNG era, but even back then he had a sense of family and how important that was to him. If he and Crusher were to be a thing, I’d expect a whole different character for him. To now understand they haven’t spoken in twenty years and he has a kid, that’s just kinda shitty all around. Let the character sunset properly for once. Even Kirk got a better sunset with his fake Nexus family.

Meanwhile on some seedy planet, Raffi is trying to uncover a plot related to the theft of some weapons from the Daystrom Institute. At first I thought she really got booted out of Starfleet, and was ready to rip into how they’re once again making her this bumbling, ineffective character, but they pulled a fast one on us and revealed she is actually part of Starfleet Intelligence, though I am not sure if that’s Section 31 or not. It’s a fitting role for her, but I am still a little apprehensive about her involvement with this. I think it would have landed more decisively for me if we didn’t know anything about her past from the first two seasons. I feel that’s going to be a theme going through this season though, like “Would this season be better without the first two?”

Random Observations and Easter Eggs:

• Can we please, please, please, turn up the lights just a little bit? Am I old now? Is this the end? It would not hurt to have more lighted bridges in modern Trek, even if it’s just a little soft light overhead. So much of this episode was dark set on dark, and it makes it difficult to really make out a lot of what is going around besides faces. Hell, sometimes it makes the faces look worse.
• CRASH LAFORGE is too funny for LaForge kid number one, Sydney LaForge, played by Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut. This scene was very familiar to those who saw Generations, where Kirk met Sulu’s daughter at the helm of the Enterprise-B. Mica Burton, LeVar Burton’s daughter, will be playing Ensign Alandra La Forge, Geordi’s other daughter in upcoming episodes.
• The bit in the bar where they’re selling Enterprise-D models, and the bartender tells Riker no one wants “the fat ones” is a bit of a cheeky poke at how the wide saucer section seen on several Starfleet ships at the time sort of ended with the Galaxy and Nebula class ships in the transition to more sleeker frames.
• “Hellbird” being a codeword for a computer virus Riker and the crew had to deal with after the Borg assimilated Picard, that was an interesting bit, but also maybe a little weird to fans. Computer viruses aren’t really something the Borg would bother with, because they just assimilate. Now, if this was the virus they used to infect the Borg in “I, Borg” that would be something only the senior staff likely knew about and would base their encrypted comms off of in the future.
• The ending LCARS mashup scenes were neatly scored to the same sort of TNG movie mashup used twenty years ago. But even more curious was some of the floating NCC ship registries on the screen with the starbase. I could only make out two, NCC-80107 which is the Luna-class USS Ganymede, and NCC-52136 which is the Steamrunner-class USS Appalachia. The former has no previous canon references I could find other than being a Luna-class, which is what the Titan was prior to retrofit. The latter was involved in the Borg battle near Earth in the movie First Contact and also had some references to The Dominion War. They were featured in the video games Armada and Armada II, as well as Star Trek Online. Crusher’s ship looks a lot like a Steamrunner-class ship, maybe we’ll find out if that is true or not.
• The Rachel Garrett Statue: One thing we got in promo material was that this show would include “multiple Enterprises”. Well, Rachel Garrett was captain of the Enterprise-C, which was destroyed defending Klingons from a Romulan attack, and seen in the TNG episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise”. Most of that story is pretty wrapped up, but there is the case of alternate Tasha Yar’s daughter Sela, who was featured in a few episodes. It would be interesting if Vadic were somehow tied to her, as that would make for a more interesting Picard villain than most of the ones we’ve had thus far.