Star Trekhas never shied away from making political statements or underscoring the problems with society as a whole.This episode ofStar Trek: Picardtitled, “Watcher” certainly doesn’t shy away from that either. In fact, it appears that the entire episode is geared towards trying to tell the audience why the world it lives in now is a very not nice place. While the overall message from this particular installment is actually done fairly well, there are some heavy-handed moments that are just a little too on the nose. That includes an immigration officer who revels just a bit too much in sending people he deems undesirable back across the border and a police officer that seems entirely uninterested in finding a missing person. To be sure, it’s a given those kinds of people exist in today’s world but these two felt like caricatures rather than a serious statement.
Episode 4 of this season’sStar Trek: Picardeffectively has two different plot points to follow. The first is the race to find The Watcher before Q can do whatever damage he does to the future by meddling with the past. The second is the rest of the Star Gazer crew trying to get Rios out of the detention facility before he’s sent across the border. Of course, it’s not entirely clear why there was such a race to get to Rios before he was “deported” as it would seem as if they could just go get him once he’s been sent over the border. Especially since they’ve already shown they have transporter capabilities. That appears to be another statement about the evils of the immigration fiasco that’s going on in the country rather than a coherentStar Trekplotline.
RELATED:The Captain Is Back In The Picard Season 2 Trailer
Guinan From The Before Times
After a brief trip to the Picard familial home, where Jean Luc reminisces about his childhood and “memories of things that have yet to occur” he head to where the coordinates thatthe Borg Queensupplied him with. When he arrives at the coordinates he finds that he’s been delivered to Forward street Guinan’s 10 Forward bar. However, this isn’t the Guinan that he knows yet. For those who may not be as intimately familiar withStar Trek: The Next Generation, Guinan is from a race of “listeners” known as El-Aurians it appears that this race are extremely long lived, if not near-immortal and that’s how Picard’s oldest confidant is situated in this bar some 400 years in the past.
It’s possible the El-Aurians also live outside a normal time stream, considering that merely mentioning things thatWhoopi Goldberg’s GuinanPicard makes the 2024 version get violently ill. The captain helpfully explains this is “time sickness” because for some reason, the fact that he knew everything about her race wasn’t enough to convince her to help him. Instead, he needed to use a code phrase that she hasn’t heard yet to remind her that she knows him. Sound confusing? It is. And quite convoluted. It’s understandable why the show wanted to do it this way, it just seemed like a guy walking into a bar, explaining how he knew she was an alien would have been enough. Time streams folding in on themselves was an added level that mostly came off as contrived.
Eventuallyconvinced to help Picard, 2024 Guinan takes him to see the person or entity known as The Watcher, which also seems to be a bit convoluted. The Watcher constantly hides their appearance by taking over the body of people that are just walking by. The entity explains to Picard that it is doing so to verify that he isn’t being followed. It’s not entirely clear what The Watcher thinks is following Picard or why someone who has been billed as a very powerful being would care.
There’s also a question as to why someone following Picard wouldn’t find it odd that a hot dog vendor is suddenly pointing in a direction and staring directly at him. Nor that random people keep walking up to him and leading him away. In short, someone following Picard would almost still be able to follow him quite easily. Eventually, the captain comes face to face with The Watcher who just happens to be someone from earlier episodesStar Trek: Picard. Here’s hoping the explanation as to why they are both in the past and the present isn’t as convoluted.
Rios
While Picard is busy trying to get Guinan to introduce him to The Watcher, Rios has found himself in an immigration detention center and he’s trying to find his way out before he gets sent back across the border. While the whole thing does come across as rather heavy-handed there are some good bits during these particular scenes, including the fact that Rios believes one of the guards has a “face like a Ferengi.” There’s also a rather interesting bit when he finds it rather odd that people are having to pledge allegiance to a flag. This moment is both heavy-handed and still somewhat quite interesting simply because of where the United States is as a country. The show also handles it fairly well because it’s not something that’s dwelled on but a throw-away line that still strikes home.
While Rios is explaining that he’s from the future to the guard, mainly because he knows he won’t be believed, Raffi andSeven of Nineare out looking for him. Raffi is still very angry that Elnor has died, and she’s taking that anger out to police car windows. Make no mistake that the pair play off each other well, but their fish out of water scenes are among the most annoying. It seems as if their parts in this particular episode were mostly supposed to be there for comedic value.
While most of this episode of Picard seems to largely standstill, it does seem to lay some interesting groundwork for Episode 5. That includesQ suddenly realizing that his powersaren’t working the way they usually do. This could be quite a conundrum as the season continues to move forward.
