Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Picard season 2, episode 8, “Mercy.”
The cliffhanger ending to Star Trek: Picard season 2, episode 8, “Mercy” suggests that the final two episodes of this second season will replay the events of Star Trek: First Contact. The Borg Queen (Annie Wersching) in the body of Agnes (Alison Pill) has formed an alliance with Dr. Adam Soong (Brent Spiner) to take the La Sirena. Using Soong’s government connections, they employ the services of military contractors, reminiscent of the Jonathan Frakes-directed Star Trek: The Next Generation action movie. In that film, Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the Enterprise crew attempt to defeat a Borg incursion on the ship while Riker and an away team try to keep history on course.
Star Trek: Picard season 2 has an incredibly similar plot, only emphasized by the flashbacks in “Mercy” to Agent Wells encountering Vulcan scientists out in the woods as a child. Like the Enterprise-E, the La Sirena has used Borg technology to travel back to 2024 to avert Star Trek: Picard‘s Confederate future. As with First Contact, the momentous historic event revolves around a rocket launch, the Europa mission, piloted by Picard’s ancestor Renée.
While Star Trek: Picard hasn’t been shy of lifting previous plotlines from Star Trek history, from Star Trek: The Voyage Home to the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Past Tense,” it’s been applying those storylines to the world of today. It’s realized the Sanctuary Districts of DS9 in a post-Trump world of over-zealous immigration controls while replacing humpback whales with global warming and pollution. The upcoming Borg/Soong siege of the La Sirena isn’t striving for the political relevance of the previous episodes, and also distracts from the more intriguing story developing between an aging Star Trek‘s aging Q and Picard.
As Q’s powers have diminished and Picard has been forced instead to confront his family history, he’s been at risk of becoming surplus to requirements. However, the previous Star Trek: Picard episode. “Monsters,” highlighted that Picard’s confrontation with his past was all part of Q’s plan, and for the majority of the runtime of “Mercy,” it felt as if these threads would bring Q and Picard back together and reach some form of reconciliation. It’s therefore hugely disappointing when Seven and Raffi track down Picard and warn him of the Borg Queen’s impending attack on La Sirena just as he’s on the cusp of understanding Q’s plan in the 2024 of Star Trek.
Picard season 2 began as a story of saving the future from the poor decisions and selfishness of the past. It was a storyline that felt timely and relevant, but it has been abruptly pushed to the side since Raffi and Seven freed Rios from immigration enforcement. There’s still an undercurrent of societal comment in the Adam Soong storyline, suggesting that humanity would rather seek a quick fix to their environmental crisis than implement fundamental changes. It’s Soong’s protective shield technology that’s key to the Borg Queen’s plan to tempt the scientist on side, but by also employing an army of assimilated mercenaries, it feels like Picard’s lost interest in exploring this theme any further.
The mercenaries themselves exemplify the creative drought at the core of this Star Trek: First Contact rehash. Earlier in the episode, Seven and Raffi find the Borg Queen using car batteries to hasten Agnes’ assimilation. If this was to be explored further, an attack on La Sirena by stitched together Borg drones made from 21st-century technology would at least have been visually interesting. In the end, it’s more likely that the next episode of Star Trek: Picard will be a drab starship siege conducted by machine gun-wielding actors with black contact lenses. It’s a hugely disappointing waste of the multiple plot threads and thematic concerns at the heart of this second season of the Next Generation spinoff.
Star Trek: Picard season 2 releases new episodes every Thursday on Paramount+.
