Following from the excellent previous episodes, Star Trek: Picard Season 2 continues with “Assimilation,” a somewhat uneven outing that nonetheless propels this season’s overall story along briskly. The good admiral (or should I say General?) and his motley crew are headed to the 21st century, but first, they’ll need to deal with the Confederation Magistrate and his goons who shot Elnor at the end of “Penance.”
Luckily that threat is disposed of quickly via some pretty gnarly vaporizations, but another lurks in the back of La Sirena’s hold: the Borg Queen, whom Dr Jurati is trying to plug into the ship. The Confederation fleet catches up with the F17 Patrol Frigate, including a pair of Nova-class ships and a Steamrunner-class as well (interestingly, all were named for “badmirals” from Trek history: Layton, Daugherty, and Quinn). With help from Seven, one of the Novas is destroyed, and once the Queen is integrated, the other two ships are destroyed as well.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire, as the crew lost control of their ship and the Queen is in command, sending La Sirena into the sun’s corona for a time warp, very similar (though much prettier) to the one Kirk and company performed in Star Trek IV. They emerge to find themselves at Earth in the year 2024, but without much power, necessitating a “targeted crash” to a wooded area Picard called “home,” presumably somewhere in France.
The Queen had siphoned most of the ship’s power to save herself, and as a result, the biobed keeping Elnor alive fails and the young Romulan dies. His death scene is touching thanks to the performances of Michelle Hurd and Evan Evagora, with Raffi’s anguish palpable. I sincerely hope this death is not permanent as Elnor is a favourite character of mine, and Evan Evagora is delightful in the role.
The plan begins to come together. Rios, Raffi, and Seven will head to Los Angeles, thanks to a small amount of power restored to the transporter, to find an elusive “Watcher” the Queen had mentioned could help them, while Picard and Jurati work to revive the catatonic Queen. The reason that this “Watcher” likely uses some analogue of their own technology and thus could potentially be detected. The remainder of the episode follows these plotlines to varied results: I felt the sequences in Los Angeles, specifically with Raffi and Seven, were the most uneven parts of the episode, although a late scene is a great bit of fun with Hurd and Jeri Ryan. The scenes aboard La Sirena I felt were much more interesting and definitely kept my attention rapt.
In LA, the expeditionary trio materializes in different places, with Rios suffering a concussion as a result and heading to a local clinic. He’s treated by the clinic’s doctor, Teresa, and her precocious son Ricardo swipes his commbadge. The clinic scenes were well-performed and shot and they helped to effectively establish the setting as not all that different from contemporary times; the clinic itself certainly seems like an establishment one could find in LA right now. The sequence ends with an ICE raid resulting in Teresa and Rios, who tried to help his new friend deal with the authorities, getting arrested for obstruction of justice.
Meanwhile, Seven and Raffi meet up and head to the Markridge Industrial Tower, the tallest building in 2024 Los Angeles, hoping that its height would help boost their scan signal. On their way, they enter a Sanctuary District, recalling DS9’s excellent two-parter “Past Tense.” It was filmed near a real-world homeless campsite in Los Angeles, adding to the perception that the dark future of the Confederation may already be taking shape. On arrival at the tower, Raffi and Seven cleverly deal with a security guard while performing their scan in a hilarious scene. They briefly detected a signal in MacArthur Park, but quickly lost it, while finding Rios’ commbadge chirping in what might have been Morse code, but was actually just Ricardo playing with it.
Now for what, in my opinion, was the best part of the episode: Picard and Jurati dealing with the Borg Queen. To awaken her, Picard reluctantly allows Jurati to be “partially assimilated” by the Queen, with the cyberneticist repairing the tyrant from the inside. These scenes are impeccably performed by Sir Patrick, Allison Pill, and Annie Wersching; Wersching’s Queen exudes much more menace than earlier portrayals by Alice Krige and Susanna Thompson, which I think makes the Queen far more frightening.
Talking with Jurati’s subconscious mind residing in her body, Picard helps to keep her afloat as she navigates the seas of the Queen’s mind, nearly succumbing to her influence before he pulls the tubule. The Queen, now fully conscious and free of her confusion in 2401, makes a bargain: she’ll tell Picard where the Watcher is and when the temporal divergence will occur in exchange for the ship.
Unfortunately for the Queen, she no longer has that information. Jurati cleverly removed it from her mind during her excursion. She has the coordinates of the Watcher and is confident the divergence will come to her soon. What follows is probably the best bit of dialogue in the whole episode:
Borg Queen: “What you’ve done here is far more difficult, and vastly more dangerous, than you realize.”
Jurati: “And what is that?”
Borg Queen: “You’ve impressed me.”
Overall, “Assimilation,” while a bit uneven, was an enjoyable episode of Picard with some excellent character moments and throwbacks to classic Trek. And it was directed by Lea Thompson (I’m such a fan of hers!) in her first effort in the Star Trek franchise. She’ll be back for the next episode, “Watcher,” and so will I!
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
