After the first few episodes take place mostly on Earth (save for the Soji subplot), Star Trek: Picard’s adventure sets a course for the stars with Absolute Candor. With the efficient as always direction of Jonathan Frakes who takes the director’s chair after Hanelle Culpepper, the fourth episode in the season sees Jean-Luc Picard making a detour after he managed to recruit captain Rios and Raffi, and after Jurati enthusiastically jumped along for the ride.
On their journey to Freecloud, where Bruce Maddox is supposed to be, Picard now takes a detour to Vashti, a beta quadrant planet site of a Romulan relocation site where he helped find a new if temporary home to half a million Romulans. He was forced to leave Vashti after the synth attack on Mars: now he returns there, where he finds the most unlikely of allies in Elnor, a young Romulan man he involuntarily abandoned.
Romulan survivors
The annihilation of Romulus was the starting point of the Kelvin timeline, but it took until Star Trek: Picard to explore its onscreen aftermath in the Prime Timeline, and it took until Absolute Candor to watch its consequences on individual characters and the Romulan population.
Vashti reminds of the grittier sides of Trek universe, previously shown on Bajoran -and Cardassian- focused episodes, in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine: but while the aforementioned classic Trek episodes had a sort of patinated and sweetened aura -with the exception of DS9, the classic Trek show most specialized in gritty imaginary- more suitable to a show for all family, Absolute Candor outlines a rougher, more realistic edge on it.
But the new attention on the Romulans doesn’t end with the depiction of life after the supernova: the biggest novelty of the episode -something that will be reprised by Star Trek Discovery too, from Season 3 onward- is the Qowat Milat, a sisterhood of Romulans nuns dedicated to lost causes, sincere in their intentions: the eponymous ‘absolute candor’ is the pure honesty they display for their cause, which is to serve lost causes. Absolute Candor which is the opposite of what the Tal Shiar (and, even more, the Zhat Vash) stand for.
They’re an interesting addition to the mythos, and they are justified by the unfolding of Romulan secrets which characterized the first season of Picard: while it may seem a lot of dumped exposition about Romulan society all in just four episodes, it makes perfect sense given the context they’re presented in: a society who’s recently been on the brink of collapse, traumatized by a catastrophic event.
Meanwhile, in his first outing with this ragtag group of outcasts, Jean-Luc Picard discovers they’re not quite like the Enterprise crew: Rios, Raffi and Jurati aren’t the most prepared for the galactic threat prospected, they question Picard’s motifs, they quarrel with each other and with him, especially Raffi. And the fact that Picard isn’t welcome on Vashti either, as he returns to the Qowat Milat, is a fine touch that sells out the very different place this character is in his life: not one of the most powerful and respected captains of Starfleet, but an outcast himself.
In the first few episodes, the show explored the impact of the supernova on its main character’s psyche: the focus thus far has mainly been on Picard’s morals and self-image, but Absolute Candor explores the themes of the consequences of these geopolitical events on individuals and entire populations. It’s clear Elnor’s initial resentment toward Picard reflects the resentment Romulans feel toward the Federation for abandoning their rescue plan; but
Elnor manages to overcome their personal feelings and trust his old mentor, for the greater good of the mission and eventually sets a possible future reconciliation between the two.
Journey to Freecloud
This is a middle episode that, while interesting in its depiction of the Romulan life and while visually stunning as usual, doesn’t add much to the season beyond some advancement of the plot. If the story isn’t particularly memorable -and the Soji subplot only plants the seeds for more interesting stuff-, what matters here are the core themes related to the main plot.
And while Elnor won’t be served well by subsequent episodes, and he’ll end up pretty much wasted by the final episode, he starts from an intriguing point and benefits from a good performance by Evan Evagora –Elnor’s the “alien” character among the main crew, in the tradition of Spock, Data and Odo-. A great addition to the cast and season, both thematically and story-wise: he represents what Picard forcibly left behind, the victim of a bigger geopolitical scheme that left him with loneliness and pretty much an outcast like the rest of the La Sirena crew, Picard included.
The first season of Picard is still setting up a lot of mysteries and questions with Absolute Candor, and is which ends with a bang – the return of Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine.
Star Trek: Picard season 2 premieres March 3 on Paramount+ followed on CTV SciFi Channel in Canada and then March 4 on Amazon Prime Video.
