The first episode of a series always tries to hook the viewer in to what could be somewhat of a condensed preview of what to expect from the rest of the season. Picard Season Three did that, but chose to omit some details so as to get you anticipating the next week’s episode. Some people like to think these are twists, and indeed, this episode does throw a couple of twists your way if you’re brand-new to Trek. Everyone else who is very familiar with these characters came into this knowing precisely what was going to happen, and why.

The second episode opens to two weeks prior, in a bid to explain what Jack Crusher and the Eleos-XII were doing that seemingly got them tied up in their subsequent two weeks of running from bird men. It seems instead of getting her own medical ship command a la “All Good Things”, Bev and her son have been galloping around in a slightly-larger runabout delivering medical supplies, among other things. Why? Excellent question. Unfortunately we still do not know this week, though hopefully next week. However we are introduced to the big bad this season, Captain Vadic, played by Amanda Plummer, daughter of Christopher Plummer, who portrayed General Chang in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. While those two characters are not connected, you can definitely tell that she channels his energy into how she portrays Vadic as this sort of whimsical, maniacal villain who reveals in toying with her victims almost entirely for sport. Her starship, the Shrike, is seemingly equipped with almost any and every weapon type in the known universe, including isolytic weapons such as those used by the Son’a in Star Trek IX: Insurrection. It feels a little bit much to have an enemy that feels like it was the original antagonist for the third season of Discovery, but found to be too cerebral for that show’s audience and better suited against Patrick Stewart. Plummer portraying the role also feels like they’re putting that movie spin on it for greater effect. We knew they’d be pulling out all the stops for this season, and I am not mad at that, it just also annoys me, personally, because had they just did this from the start and not gone through those two disappointing seasons, I’d have a different opinion.

Everyone had a hunch that Jack Crusher would likely turn out to be Picard’s son. The writers tried to twist and turn with this all episode by suggesting that he was just a con man, maybe adopted, maybe a clone, who knows, and then settling it with just Beverly’s face-nod on the bridge in the final scenes. All the sudden, Admiral Geriatric goes from kind of bumbling through to actually going PICARD MODE and assuming command, something that knocked Captain Shaw slightly off-kilter for a moment. It was not awful turnabout, but as I somewhat expressed before, I really did not want Jack to be his son. I kinda wanted him to be maybe a clone of her dead husband or something involving her other son, Weasley. I guess I need to know what she has been doing off the grid for twenty years, why she’d have his kid and then skip town, and what her motives are. I know I should not expect these characters to be as they were 25 years ago, but I also don’t need a stable of nu-writers trying to radically diverge them either. I can see Enterprise-D Picard putting duty before family, but post-Generations Picard was all about trying to serve his family’s values again. I can’t believe he’d bone Bev, have a kid, and not be there for them. Hopefully we get a good explanation for it.

Raffi’s side quest took its predictable turn this week when she tries to dig a little too deep into the criminal underbelly surrounding last week’s events, and ends up needing to be rescued by her handler, which we all correctly guessed was Worf. I still really do not care for Raffi as a character. Michelle Hurd plays her so very, very well, but she has always just felt extremely out of place in every season of this show. I think if we actually got to know why she went from being Starfleet to conspiracy-theory nutbag steeped in drugs and 25th Century Infowars, at least we could understand what motivates her to try and redeem herself. Perhaps Worf can offer that guidance, and really, that’s one thing his character has always been good with is helping balance other characters who would otherwise go and do dumb shit, either because he does the dumb shit for them, or he scares them into not doing it by spouting absurdities.

Vadic, I don’t know how to feel about this one. As mentioned before, Plummer’s father’s role as General Chang was a tall order to rise up to, given how good that movie was. Of what we’ve seen here, I like her character, I think it works extremely well as a theatrical villain, perhaps even the best Picard has faced, considering his first three were mediocre to downright comical at best. I just hope the writers are carefully threading the needle here on just how powerful the ship really is, because it almost does feel like a much more competent version of the Pakled ships in Lower Decks in terms of “we jammed a bunch of shit together and made it go”. In fact, I am pretty sure they too used a tractor beam to jam a ship into another ship.

Random Observations and Easter Eggs:

• The Eleos-XII: The more I look at this ship, the more I am convinced this should have been the ship in the first season, and instead of Rios, we should have gotten Jack Crusher as one of his aliases. Not only would we have had a more true-to-form Starfleet ship, it would have been far more interesting character development.
• Captain Shaw redeems himself a bit this week with the rescue, but he continues to disparage Seven whenever he can with her former affiliations. I trust this will mean something soon, or else it’s just a sad reminder of how nu-writers think edgy works in Trek when Trek has always been above that.
• Sneed is an excellent Ferengi name, but what I noticed on his rap sheet was that one of his known associates was Brunt, the Ferengi known for trying to liquidate Quark and his bar on DS9 many times. Perhaps he got tired of working for the man and got into some shady business dealings.
• Among the things Sneed had in his retro collection, one was Slug-o-Cola, mentioned a few times in DS9, complete with a jingle that Rom sang.