Star Trek: Picard – Episode 10 Et Arcadia Ego Part 2

And so it ends, the final episode of Star Trek Picard has dropped and pretty much all of the plot is tied up. Taken section by section the last past of the story all works but somehow when added as a whole feels… lacking.

Several things were handled well, the series gave us the suitable last goodbye for Data something we never got in Star Trek Nemesis. The scene was beautiful and touching, a great two handed effort by Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner.

Less well worked was the La Sirena crews attempt to stop Soje and the somewhat forced fight between Nyrssa and Seven that seemed setup purely to have them fight. Seven entered the series strong and with purpose but ends it her as more of an extra. Part of this problem stems from having too many characters, Elnor could have been dropped entirely and Rios was under used. We never got to feel for these people in the way the old series with their 22 episode run used to do. In effect they serve to act opposite Picard rather than develop themselves.

It was great to see Riker in the command chair although I was sorry to see that the ships were all the same class although in universe this does make sense, given the losses at Mars it is more practical to focus on designing one multipurpose ship that could be churned out easily at the remaining shipyards, but visually and for the ship geeks it was disappointing.

What about the actual plot? The final denouement, well that seemed to work adequately, I like the fact that the ending was made without a big battle and was essentially peaceful, only a few orchids destroyed. It was good to see Soje’s redemption and that the synthetic threat was never really allowed to materialise.

I like that Alten wasn’t Lore although that would have been a great reveal, but it does allow Spiner to return as him in the future. The bad synthetic problem was cured a little too quickly and I think she should have been talked down more by Agnes, Alten and Rios.

Picards resurrection was fine but I liked his illness adding depth to him, giving him a ticking clock to work against. He still has his mortality but the gholam seems to much like a gimmick, even so we get him to die nobly and survive for a second season.

We end with the La Sirena heading off to new horizons but the last scenes jarred, Jurati still seems to be with Rios and seems to have escaped killing Maddox and there was an odd shot of Seven and Raffi holding hands, these two hardly interacted in the show and didn’t know each other before. We have been shown a closeness between the crew that wasn’t reflected in the episodes, character development needs some work in the future.

I think I can sum up this episode and the series as a whole in one phrase, its fun. It has some standout episodes, the first one being one of them and some weaker ones. First seasons are hard to do, look at Encounter at Farpoint and I hope that now the cast has been assembled they can be allowed to grow and develop. I look forward to season 2 when it comes and seeing what new adventures Picard has.