Star Trek: Picard returns with “Monsters,” an episode that tries valiantly to answer some lingering questions but doesn’t do much to advance the overall season plot. Renee Picard is safely in quarantine before her trip to Europa, but Jean-Luc remains catatonic after his injury. With some help from Tallinn’s Supervisor tech, she enters his mind to try and bring him back.
In his own head, Picard is undergoing a psychiatric evaluation by Dr Gaius Baltar… Er, I mean, a Starfleet psychiatrist played by James Callis. He uses a fantasy story about a queen and young prince escaping their castle as it’s attacked by a monster as part of this treatment.
Tallinn arrives in the dungeon beneath the castle, hearing echoes of Picard’s past. Soon she meets the young prince, Picard as a boy, who tells her his mother was taken by a monster into the dungeon and he was searching for her. The two continue deeper as Jean-Luc continues his session.
Meanwhile, the rest of the crew deals with other problems. Raffi and Seven realize the Queen took control of La Sirena before Jurati shot her, and likely now has control of Jurati herself.
They track down the Jurati-Queen thanks to accessing to local closed-circuit TV signals but determine that the Queen is getting stronger and it was only a matter of time before she was properly reborn in Jurati’s body, at which point she could assimilate Earth before humanity could defend itself.
Rios further bonds with Teresa and her son after revealing his true identity to them both in order for the doctor to stabilize Picard during his session with Tallinn. Eventually, he beams both to La Sirena to further prove he’d told the truth.
Inside Picard’s mind, he recalls a memory of his father Maurice locking his mother in a room, recalling that she’d been chased by a monster in her own head and that she’d been locked away for her own safety. As a boy, Jean-Luc was brought into the tunnels under the chateau by his mother but had gotten stuck on a broken plank. Maurice had saved him before an incoming rainstorm would flood the tunnels.
Picard’s therapist is in fact his father, forcing Jean-Luc to reevaluate his knowledge of his dad. But Tallinn sees the key in the young Picard’s hand and feels there was more to this story. And that’s when Picard wakes up!
After getting an update from his crew, including the fact that Q and Adam Soong are incommunicado, he heads over to 10 Forward Avenue to talk to Guinan, who has yet to leave Earth. Before then, though, he learns that Tallinn is in fact Romulan, her features hidden by advanced technology.
Guinan tells him that she has a way to summon a Q thanks to a truce between her people and the Continuum. She performs the ritual with an ancient bottle of hooch, but no Q comes calling.
Instead, a man enters the bar and starts talking about his fandom of spacey science fiction. Guinan and Picard try not to be pulled into the conversation, but the man then pulls out a phone and plays a video of Picard beaming at the entrance of the bar. He identifies himself as a federal agent and arrests the two!
Beyond some interesting revelations about Picard and the relationship between the Q and the El-Aurians, I wasn’t terribly impressed with the episode. Again, the cast performs at their absolute best, with James Callis a notable addition, but I feel the season is really slowing down now.
Picard airs on Paramount+ in the United States, and on CTV Sci-Fi Channel and Crave in Canada. Outside of North America, the series is available on Amazon Prime Video
