La Sirena is briefly taken over by a boarding party led by the First Magistrate, the husband of this timeline’s President. Seven tries to make a convincing show of pulling rank on him, but her lack of any knowledge about the man only intensifies his suspicion, and in the meantime, his men have already shot Elnor, who lies bleeding out on La Sirena’s deck. But Seven’s bluff is enough of a distraction for her and Raffi to deal with the boarding party. Agnes continues connecting the Borg Queen to La Sirena’s systems, but eventually the Queen proves capable of connecting herself, destroying the pursuing Confederation ships, and initiating the slingshot around the sun for time warp. La Sirena arrives in Earth’s 21st century, and just enough control is regained for Picard to bring the ship in for a rough landing near his family home in France, a place isolated enough to not draw immediate attention. Raffi is powerless to save Elnor’s life and begins expressing doubts in Picard’s leadership. The Borg Queen, having used her power to achieve time travel, is in a comatose state, is key to pinpointing the exact source of the divergence in history, and Agnes embarks on a very risky interface with the Queen’s mind to restore her and retrieve that information, something that draws an unhealthy amount of the Queen’s attention to her. The event involves a Watcher somewhere in the city of Los Angeles; just enough power can be routed to the transporters to beam Seven, Raffi, and Rios there, where they must search without drawing attention. While Raffi and Seven are able to fly under the radar, Rios is injured, and just receiving first aid without identification puts him in the crosshairs of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
written by Kiley Rossetter and Christopher Monfette
directed by Lea Thompson
music by Jeff Russo
additional music by Sam Lucas
Cast: Patrick Stewart (Jean-Luc Picard), Alison Pill (Dr. Agnes Jurati), Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine), Michelle Hurd (Commander Raffi Musiker), Evan Evagora (Cadet Elnor), Isa Briones (Dr. Soji Asha), Santiago Cabrera (Captain Cristobal Rios), John de Lancie (Q), Annie Wersching (Borg Queen), Chloe Wepper (Gabi), Jon Jon Briones (First Magistrate), Sol Rodriguez (Dr. Teresa Ramirez), Richard Chio (Driver), Gattlin Griffith (Mugger), Steve Gutierrez (Ricardo), Matt Kaminsky (Security Guard), Peter Lindstedt (ICE Officer #1), Maggie Pacleb (Little Girl), Marcelo Tubert (Mr. Alvarez)
Notes: If L.A. seems less populated than it should, there’s a real historical reason: season 2 of Picard was filmed as soon as COVID-19 restrictions were lifted just enough to allow film and TV production to continue. Like many other productions, with on-set COVID testing and protective measures required, the production had to keep crowd scenes to an absolute minimum, employing them only for maximum impact (i.e. the ICE raid). At one point, a positive COVID test among the production crew shut down filming yet again. Director Lea Thompson is indeed the actor who played Marty McFly’s mother in the Back To The Future trilogy, making her a good choice to direct a time-travel-heavy episode; she has an on-screen role later in the season. During the scenes of the Borg Queen’s emergence from her stasis chamber, Joel Goldsmith‘s four-note Borg theme from Star Trek: First Contact is heard prominently, though this was omitted from the later soundtrack release.
LogBook entry by Earl Green