Easter Eggs have been a ubiquitous term for surprises and callbacks to things from previous shows and canon in superhero, sci-fi, and fantasy shows over the last couple decades. The origin of the term actually goes back further to 1979 when Atari programmer Warren Robinett created Adventure and coded his name into the game itself, something that he later said Atari manager Steve Wright loved the idea of, comparing it to finding eggs on Easter morning. Its more modern usage was popularized by Marvel with much of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe to pay homage to its original comic creators and legends like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. For Trek, it has gotten a lot of use on both current and past shows in the form of character cameos, such as Doctor McCoy and Scotty on The Next Generation episodes, or Riker in Voyager and Enterprise. It’s also seen in the many little bits and bobs on desks and in installations. Lower Decks shamelessly shoved hoards of easter eggs into episodes, especially in “Kayshon, His Eyes Open” with the Collector’s Guild. It’s all shameless fanservice, of course, but it’s something fans love because it tickles their nostalgia, as well as helps them connect the then to now. Puritans certainly scoff, why wax fanservice when you can have better writing and screenplay. I don’t disagree, but the way Terry Matalas and his team have weaved it this season has been exceptionally masterful, albeit a few wiggles.

The Bounty opens up with a particularly good scene with Vadic’s Shrike and other compromised Starfleet ships searching for the Titan. Being a ship full of past and present talent, however, they’re one step ahead of her, employing various tricks to keep on the run. Frustrated villains being especially frustrated by technobabble tactics is a key aspect of the fun of Trek. Star Wars often explains these jukes in more simple terms, ion trails or hyperspace corridors. The Titan however has to run not only from non-Federation ships, but Federation ships as well, in a fleet that is explained in this episode to “be linked alltogether with one another”. So they simply can’t just dump their transponder and go off-the-grid. To me that sounds a little fishy, but it occurs to me that Starfleet essentially pulled a 25th Century Apple in doing that. The fucking hubris as one admiral said in the first season.

The conference room roundtable was also something I greatly missed from Trek. No one likes meetings that should be emails, and I imagine half of the reason that scene framing disappeared from Nu-Trek was because millennials hate meetings, but they are so much an aspect of Trek that needs to be shown. Because Trek at its core is about problem-solving as a team, usually in the same room. Even Shaw contributed to the overall puzzlement everyone had about what was in Daystrom that the Changelings needed to see out their plan for razing the Federation on their holiday. So the solution was to Ocean’s Three it, though not quite with the same glamour as Deep Space Nine did in the holosuite casino.

But the highlight of this week’s episode was no doubt the return of LeVar Burton’s Geordi LaForge, now a Commodore, and curator of the Fleet Museum, a starbase of Starfleet’s storied past and most famous starships. With him is both his real-life daughter, and in-character daughter, Mica Burton playing Alanna LaForge, an actual first for the franchise. We’ve had plenty of parent-child pairings in the show, such as the Crushers and the Siskos, but never played by parent-child actors. I have never watched The Ready Room at all during Nu-Trek, but I did watch this one with the two Burtons and Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut, who plays Sidney LaForge. All three are incredible as the LaForge family, and while Geordi is very apprehensive about getting caught up in Picard’s bullshit again, he begins to turn around after they retrieve another familiar face from Daystrom, and understanding more of the threat the Changeling infiltration has had on the fleet.

But probably what really did it for me, both fanservice and storywise, was the scene between Jack and Seven on the bridge as they scrolled through the catalog of ships in the Fleet Museum. The San Paulo Defiant, Voyager, Enterprise-A, New Jersey, and the HMS Bounty from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Not only was the music playing changing for each of their respective shows and movies, but when they got to Voyager, Seven gave a very emotional speech about how the ship was where she was reborn and was her family. Seven has been a great part to these three seasons of Picard, but so far none of her shipmates have shown up for a cameo or two, not even on comms. I really hope we at least get Admiral Janeway or maybe The Doctor even for a comms call by the end of this season, just to help her feel confident in staying in Starfleet.

There is so, so much in this episode to talk about it took me several days to write this up, around fixing said blog, of course. Raffi and Worf linking up with everyone and outlining the problem, and the need to return to Daystrom, of course set up this week’s most important puzzle piece of the plot, and that is Data. Recall in the first season, Altan Inigo Soong had used the golem he intended to transfer himself into to put Picard instead as he was dying of terminal illness. Although it worked, he apparently was not able to re-replicate the process on himself again, and prior to death, created a sort of golem-esque shell to house all of the Soong legacy. Data, Lore, B4, Lai, Noonian Soong, and perhaps others are represented. It’s this amalgamation that shows the crew the real theft of Daystrom Station, Picard’s human remains. Why they were remanded to Daystrom and not buried somewhere is worth knowing, but I suspect that answer may come next episode, hopefully. I am truthfully not sure how to feel about Data-ish being back. I can probably accept that pieces of Data, especially those he left in B4, combined with the other Soong androids is at least mostly plausible, but I think it would have been more satisfying for me had his second death in Picard S1 never existed. It would have been amazing to find out in Altan Inigo Soong’s final words that he was able to finally recreate Data’s memories from B4, but in the process had to use Lore and Soong’s other androids to achieve the end result, and that it would be incredibly unstable. I guess it still can feel that way, but knowing that Data wanted to essentially die previously, this feels like unethical necromancy.

Then we have Geordi LaForge. I honestly expected a little more warmer of a welcome from him, and was slightly taken back by his rougher demeanor, even offset by his hug with Beverly. I know age and job are considerations here, and he knows that Picard invites trouble wherever they go. We’re just so used to LaForge being the more benevolent soul of the ship, the Chief Engineer, the optimist, and the guy who gets it done. It makes sense that his engineering acumen would land him a job at the fleet museum, protecting Starfleet’s most treasured assets, and probably pulling at his penchant for working on older, more storied tech. But when he pushes back against not only his former captain, but Starfleet itself knowing full well the current danger it’s in, it felt a little incredulous. Wanting to protect your family from danger is one thing, but you have two adult daughters who are very much capable of their own feats and decisions. Having that parry between him and Sidney was great, and I love that she had such a bonding moment with Jack over the Klingon cloaking device Geordi had to pull a dad moment and say “Stay away from my daughter.” Many fans did note, however, that Geordi was once the helm of the Enterprise-D prior to taking over as Chief Engineer. So I am a bit puzzled he’d be upset Sidney went for piloting over engineering.

Finally, Daystrom’s toys and Moriarty. I didn’t know how Moriarty would be weaved into this story, given the last we knew of him, he was adventuring in his holocube unbeknown to him. I thought maybe they may have used him as the AI security, but as we find out they instead made DataloreB4 the keeper of the vault, he used Moriarty as a means to counter the trio, only there was a clever backdoor built in for Riker to exploit. I didn’t hate that idea, but it would have been more fun to actually know how ol’ Morty is doing these days, or maybe have him construct a more elaborate trap for Vadic and her goons. Daystrom’s other toys, which are part of this week’s easter eggs, include Genesis II, now with less Phil Collins, the remains of James T. Kirk since I guess they couldn’t just leave him on Viridian III, attack-tribbles, meaning I guess H. Jon Benjamin’s character in Short Treks who created the genetically-modified tribbles had a kid who continued the work, and other unnamed Section 31 goodies. I very much enjoy how Matalas and Co. added some of these bits in for flavor, but it does make me wonder why they kept bodies and other potentially-dangerous items for people to steal. Also, where is Peanut Hamper? The CBS AI? That would be a real funny call-forward to make to Lower Decks in a live-action series.

One last bit, Deana Troi at the end. Did they capture her? Is that a changeling? Has she always been a changeling? Hopefully that gets some answers this week.

Random Observations and Easter Eggs:

• In the overview shot of the Fleet Museum, you do see some additional ships not named during the episode, such as the original Stargazer, a Romulan bird-of-prey, the refit of the NX-01 Enterprise, a K’t’inga class Klingon battleship, and towards the top of the shot, a Nebula class starship, possibly the USS Phoenix or USS Sutherland. I want to say the one towards the right might be a Steamrunner class too. The NX-01 Enterprise is interesting because it was actually Doug Drexler’s design intended to be used for season 5 of Enterprise, but the show was cancelled after season 4. Even the spacedock itself was from the original movies.
• It’s difficult to see through the viewscreen, but Geordi’s desk also had a bunch of little items that reference his character and past Trek. If you watch this week’s The Ready Room there are some better shots of everything there, and Terry Matalas talking about the various props and easter eggs they’ve woven into the show.
• Irumodic Syndrome was referenced before in TNG’s “All Good Things…” as being the condition Picard suffered with in his old age, and implied what his mother suffered from in Picard S2. But neither really explained aggression or superhuman feats that allowed Jack to dispatch four changelings. So either they made a weak assessment here, or there is something more to the theft of Picard’s human remains.
• Seeing that Vadic can fully shapeshift puts out previous theories that she just had one for a hand, but now questions who she really is, and what they want with Picard. The changelings were mostly focused on DS9, so one has to wonder why they aren’t after Odo, Worf, Sisko, or others.
• A lot of people are trying to figure out this week’s episode, titled Dominion, as to if it has to do with The Dominion from DS9, or who might show up this week. With the passing of Rene Auberjonois, Odo would have been the character to really bring into this show, but instead, I would really like to see Weyoun or Garak. I am hoping this episode sheds more light on how the changelings fractured, and if there is any effort from The Great Link to reel them back in.