Let me play among the stars… In fact, after the details over the last few years, it is best not to. Directed by some vigorous young man looking to break into this Star Trek business, Jonathan Frakes helms the chair for these next two episodes. Ok, I’ll not do that thing again, but it is still fun to do from time to time. Written by a writer for one of the greatest shows ever created, Desperate Housewives (not a joke), Cindy Appel doesn’t have a vast list of credits. A bit of MacGyver, Young & Hungry, Heartbeat (not the British police procedural), and of course, Desperate Housewives.

Almost picking up where we left off last time in Picard, the pretty Blonde Australian we saw reading from that Hellboy – the one without Clay Murrow in it – is reporting an error message back to flight command. Meanwhile, it seems even being the mid-season mystery box only gets you a cheap studio apartment as Laris actor, Orla Brady, is the Watcher or supervisor that the great Jean-Luc Picard was searching for. Wow, that makes up for killing Laris’ partner so JL can want to snog her. Also, her American accent is, to put it politely, the worst thing to come out of Ireland since Jedward.

So the pretty Blonde that Q was hovering over, the one training to fly a rocket, the one in a spacesuit with a French flag on it, the one that seemed to be the center of attention. Yeah, maybe she’s the great Jean-Luc Picard’s great, great, great, great, great, great, great aunt, roughly. All the while the Queen is listening to the internet like she’s Bruce Almighty, and Raffi and Annika are hijacking an ICE detention bus heading to Mexico. Yeah, we’ll ignore that Castaic is north of Hollywood and give the two of them little time and very little equipment to pull off the heist.

I don’t hate “Fly Me to the Moon,” and the episode isn’t too bad either, but I’ll repeat my common point that it is a common CBS show with Star Trek dressing. It is also the beginning of Patrick’s contract obligations kicking in: He wanted to wear a tux and do a heist, possibly with a small action piece in there too. If that wasn’t one of his bucket list “I’ll do the show if you get me X” items, I’ll be surprised. We’re also getting glimpses here and next time of the young JL’s mother and his excuse for a father figure.

After two episodes of the gang listening to The Offspring a lot, they’ll come together after Jean-Luc convinces not-Laris to help him get the timeline back on track. The two eventually realize the person posing as Renée Picard’s therapist is only someone putting on a ridiculously over-the-top pervy German accent. Yes, Mr Q-Anon himself wants to bring about a future where the world is a confederate hellscape destroyed by racial tensions and climate catastrophe (shocker!). Meanwhile, Annika and Rafi are freeing detained people from an ICE transport bus, which is the start of Rafi having delusions over the death of Elnor.

If I’m honest, I still don’t understand the connection fully. I get that she’s “lost” a son due to her work and addiction problems, now this is an actual death, but at the same time, I just don’t have the connections the characters are supposed to have. Half the cast could have been shot out of an airlock in episode 1, the problem is that season 1 never built enough of a connection for me to care all that much. It is a problem I have with American TV shifting to this shorter, UK-centric season length. The big emotions are front and center but the smaller, personal moments are somewhat lost.

With these stories shifting, there is a new component, that’s not really doing anything other than dragging out the Star Trek iconography and playing with it for a little bit. I love Brent Spiner, maybe one day I’ll cover Threshold (not Voyager), but Adam Soong feels a bit like “Quick, we need another nostalgia act to remind the older fans why they have a Paramount+ subscription.” Am I down on the Adam Soong storyline? Yes, because it isn’t about a fully formed character that should be in modern Star Trek, it is about a grown man who has a beef with an egg-laying mammal in a fedora.

The initial thing about Adam Soong when he’s shown is that he’s a bioengineer and geneticist, he owns and runs a company with some contracts to do experiments and other scientific things. Why does he live in Malibu? Are these contracts multi-billion dollar things that the small California Medical Board, meeting in the lobby of a hotel or City Hall, can just wipe away without consulting people up the chain? There are so many questions to be had, but they are waved away by the rest of the writing telling you exactly what he is to the writers, a mad scientist.

I know it is sci-fi, but Star Trek tries to ground itself in some form of bureaucracy, vague science, and somewhat nuanced characters. Soong, the many great ancestors of the Data creator (all played by Spiner of course), is little more than a madman who knows science-y stuff and has a daughter played by Isa Briones. If you need that one spelled out to you, then school has failed you in terms of media literacy, Jean-Luc Picard help us all.

What I think is annoying me about this season so much is the disparity between what is supposed to be high drama, and the really serious and intense plot pushing us forward. Then you have this in the corner with an over-the-top voice actor shouting, “He’s a mad scientist with a sick daughter, he’s so complex!” He’s about as complex as the water in the sink after I’ve soaked the dinner plates and just want to go to bed after a heavy dinner. One side is the fate of humanity with Agnes and the Borg Queen bickering, and on the other side, you have Brent Spiner smiling and driving a Tesla.

Again I’m having to point out that Annie Wersching as the Borg Queen and Pill’s Agnes are the best thing of the whole season. If he didn’t get it out of his system last season, I’d bet money this is the episode Patrick would have had the eye patch and accent so French it painted itself blue, tinted its hair orange, and wore Christmas decorations like a sash. That’s the divergence I’m talking about in tone: You have two characters fighting for supremacy with words, and then you have Frank-N-Furter if he was straight and cis (read, boring), looking to create a daughter.

However, it is “Fly Me to the Moon” and “Two of One” that brings Pill and Wersching fantastically to the fore. As happened last time, Agnes is left alone as Picard tells his dear friend “Stick around for the bombs dropping, it will be like New Year’s but bigger.” All alone with a Borg Queen stuck in her head and a Borg Queen who is bored of being constrained and alone. Putting in a call to the local Gendarm with his little Glock – I don’t know which, I assume 17. Eventually taking him hostage and forcing Agnes to use one of the dusty old double-barreled 12 gauges above the fireplace.

This is one of the few times I’m not shouting about the death of Star Trek for the use of a gun in an attempt to kill. Seemingly about the FBI standard of 5 meters away, Agnes shoots at the Queen and the little French fella played by Italian actor Ivo Nandi, heavily harming him but killing the queen and possibly killing the team’s chances of getting home? Not really, “Fly Me to the Moon” ends on a better “cliffhanger” than that as Pill was captured during the attempted heist.

Ultimately, “Fly Me to the Moon” isn’t the very best of Star Trek, far from it, and I’d argue nowhere near “Threshold.” However, as I said, the Star Trek elements seem like they are set dressing rather than the central elements to focus on and give our attention to. Even knowing where this Borg Queen and Agnes story is going, or in some cases not going, I’m loving it. JL is tormented by his childhood, Rios got a first-hand account of racial policing and wants to stay because of a pretty doctor, and Raffi got ready to drink and do drugs like she’s having to put up with 2024 less so.

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Star Trek: Picard "Fly Me to the Moon"

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Two become one.
• More John de Lancie.

Cons

• Orla Brady's accent - don't do it again.
• He's a cartoon scientist, not a full character.