Star Trek: Picard

“Seventeen Seconds”

Air date: 3/2/2023
Written by Jane Maggs & Cindy Appel
Directed by Jonathan Frakes

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan

Review Text

If nothing else, Star Trek: Picard has finally learned in its third season that the primary action of this series should be on the bridge of a starship. "Seventeen Seconds" is a tactical cat-and-mouse game between two starships where one has a massive advantage and the other must try (although they fail) to outthink the other to level the playing field. The series may even have learned the lesson too well, as we've now spent three episodes arriving at or being inside this nebula. Some variance to the settings of where all this happens and a faster advancement of the macro plot might take this from "passably good" to "substantially better."

The story also uses its characters' mindsets and wisely integrates this into the action. In this case, the burning questions (and answers) around Picard's and Crusher's son, as well as a flashback to when Riker's son was born — who would later be doomed by illness — inform questions of risk in the present when it comes to tactical maneuvers. The titular "seventeen seconds" are about the length of the turbolift ride Riker made while trying to reach sickbay while his son was possibly dying. Later, Picard makes a similar turbolift ride while Jack's life hangs in the balance. If there's a problem here — and, to be sure, there is — it's that the show pushes too hard in driving home its points, and sometimes uses a sledgehammer where a tap on the shoulder would've sufficed. A little more subtlety would be useful.

The answer for why Crusher kept Jack a secret from Picard for 20 years strains credibility, but hopefully this will be worth it in the long run. The episode does the best it can to sell a retconned concept by painting a picture of an admiral whose life in Starfleet was too far out on the edge, especially after the whole business with the Romulan emergency, for Crusher to feel she could let Picard near the boy without endangering him. Picard is rightfully upset about not getting a choice in the matter, and both actors give it their all, but the reasons are a little too contrived and clichéd for this to really land the way it's clearly supposed to. Still, a decent effort.

And fortunately, most of the episode works, even if the writers are dragging out this pursuit through the nebula. The execution is effective, and the ships have the necessary amount of heft as they move to make this feel compellingly nautical. Vadic unleashes the portal weapon in ways that make it impossible for the Titan to escape (with their own attack used against them), while also giving us the distinct feeling she's toying with her prey. We still don't know why she needs Jack alive, and while I enjoy the starship engagement, it would be nice to know why this is all happening. Such is the 10-hour movie.

In the course of the mayhem, Shaw is injured and transfers command to Riker, who has to oversee a precarious situation. Picard ends up in the first-officer's chair; I got a chuckle at his comment that maybe Riker should call him "Number One." Meanwhile, a little technical mystery is established (initially visually, with shots of a blood trail in sickbay) around the question of how the Shrike is able to track the Titan through the nebula. What's nice here is that it takes a little bit from everyone to put the pieces together. Shaw is the first to point out they are being tracked, and then Jack undertakes some investigation (with Seven's help, whom he busts out of her quarters) to learn how this is possible. They discover that a saboteur aboard the ship has vented gas that is serving as a breadcrumb trail. They then shut off the trail to make it appear the ship has stopped in its tracks while enabling a surprise maneuver.

It comes down to the key decisions made on the bridge as informed by different states of mind. Riker wants to get the ship out of the nebula and hightail it to safety, while Picard wants to engage the enemy in a fight to achieve the same goal. Both are valid approaches, but the differing views may (or may not) be unduly influenced by the mental circumstances: Riker having lost his son and not wanting to take unnecessary risk; Picard by having not been given the choice to raise his son because Crusher didn't take a risk.

The two old friends end up at odds over whether to flee or fight, but ultimately both approaches are allowed their chance to play out — first Riker's and then Picard's — and both fail in the face of the portal weapon. It ends with the Titan dead in the water, being pulled further into the nebula with what appears to be little hope. The one forced misstep here, I feel, is the show pushing too hard with Riker's rather overstated reply to Picard's failed attack: "Remove yourself from the bridge. You've just killed us all." It's way too harsh given the circumstances. It would've been enough to simply react in resignation that a valid plan had failed. Because Riker's plan had also failed.

Over in the parallel plot, Worf and Raffi capture and interrogate a criminal named Titus Rikka (Thomas Dekker) who may know who actually ordered the attack on the Starfleet recruitment center. Even though we're still stuck on M'Talas Prime (apparently to justify the expense of the set built for it and to have scenes not on a starship), this plot proves more entertaining than in the previous two episodes, with Worf getting a number of good lines ("Beheadings are on Wednesdays") and especially with him taking on the unexpected role of good cop to Raffi's more unhinged bad cop.

What's unclear is how much of this is performance and how much of it is character reality (at one point, Worf tells Rikka, "A fight is rarely worth dying for," and says that there's neither good nor evil, but merely everyone fighting for what they believe). I'm going to guess that this is at least partially, if not mostly, based on the idea that this is a New Worf who at one point also says, "I am working on myself." It would also follow Jack's line last week about people not being who they used to be. Nonetheless, New Worf is still mostly Old Worf, and Michael Dorn effortlessly slips right back into this character as if no time has passed.

Interestingly, Rikka's apparent symptoms of drug withdrawal actually turn out to be caused by the fact he's a Changeling who just really needs to revert to his liquid state. We find out that after the Dominion War, Worf learned from Odo that a faction of rogue Changelings broke off from the Great Link because they couldn't accept peace with the "solids." (There's also a Changeling on the Titan who was the saboteur.) Worf believes they are preparing another attack, and that the first attack was merely a diversion for stealing another weapon from the Daystrom Institute — although I'm not sure if that logic quite adds up. So now we get some DS9 lore mixed in here. Hopefully it will pay off beyond lip service, but for now it's a nice bit of intrigue I didn't see coming.

I'm liking but not loving this. There's still plenty of room for improvement. But Picard is three for three so far this season, so that's a continuation in the right direction.

Some other thoughts:

Jonathan Frakes directed this episode, and has been doing great work as an actor in all these episodes. He has the charm and puts it to good use, and here puts on the stern captain's hat.
Nice First Contact callback, with Worf listening to Berlioz. (Even though it was Picard listening to it in First Contact, I've always felt like it was Worf the very first time I saw it.)
While unconscious from the poison gas, Jack has a strange vision of Seven with branches about her. "Connect the branches," she says. This clearly Means Something.
The scene between Sidney La Forge and Seven was nice, with her nod to how they are both misfits who have difficulty making friends.
I'm noticing a lot of nods to Jerry Goldsmith in Stephen Barton's score.
Okay, so Jack is supposed to be about 20, with his birth happening after a failed relationship between Picard and Crusher following Nemesis. I guess they couldn't find a suitable actor who wasn't in his mid-30s?
"Present day," the info card informs us following the Riker flashback. Yeah, we figured that, with the whole Titan-in-the-nebula thing.
If Starfleet were to acknowledge the existence of Changeling terrorists, "we'd be reigniting the Dominion War." Um ... how exactly is that the case if both sides know what's what and the Great Link's schism is on the record?
No matter how many times I hear it, "Goddamn" will never sound like it belongs in the Trek universe.
Riker notes to Picard that this isn't the Enterprise and they don't have the means to fight such a better-armed enemy. But why is a ship named the Titan so minimally armed?

Previous episode: Disengage
Next episode: No Win Scneario

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193 comments on this post

voxymandias

Thu, Mar 2, 2023, 2:16am (UTC -5)

Wow, this might be the best episode of NuTrek, period.