Warning: The following article contains mention of such topics as mental health and suicide. Reader’s discretion is advised.

I hear “maman” one more time, I’m going to walk to France and drop-kick a child in the face. Directed by Michael Weaver, Weaver is probably best known as a cinematographer for a small show I might have mentioned once or twice before, Pushing Daisies. That or his 50+ episodes with Malcolm in the Middle, and 41 episodes of Californication. Written by staff writer Christopher B Derrick, Derrick is joined by “executive story editor” and in my opinion one of the worst editors in TV, Matthew Okumura. Okumura being the story editor on a show that doesn’t know the world of Star Trek despite the name and characters.

With only 19 hours left, Data’s granddad is out here commanding “former special forces” turned proto-Borg, while Agnes and the Borg Queen inside Agnes’ body argue over who has more control. Soong sending legions of Stormtroopers who lied on their résumé (shhh, I won’t tell CBS and Disney if you don’t) to find the old man, while Picard and not-Laris go hiding in the cellar of Chateau Picard. Meanwhile, Rios, the sprog, and his new wife-to-be are Dark Souls boss smoked away to not-Laris’ place after Rios is winged by a bullet from the “special forces” lot.

There is a trick to writing: If I can give you 300 words of a summation, I can pull you into reading the rest of the article. I’m struggling to stretch my summations for Picard’s second season out that long. The only thing I haven’t directly said is that James Callis is back again to be evil, but after saying I’d drop-kick a kid I thought that was fairly obvious. Much like my clear apathy for “Hide and Seek,” I just can’t be bothered anymore because I know what’s coming up.

Not the end of season 2, I don’t care about it. In fact, I’m glad it is coming soon. It is more knowing I have to suffer whatever semi-salvaged pile of utter rubbish this is to get to “The Next Generation” and beyond. That’s my problem with “Hide and Seek,” with season 2 of Picard as a whole as well, we’re on the penultimate episode and I simply can’t care because the time travel doesn’t really make sense.

So early on, after the Borg Queen blips evil Data and her minions (I’d have laughed if they were painted yellow) to the ship and chateau Picard, Agnes and the Queen have a chat. A chat that I’ve had already as I went over “What’s the Borg Queen’s plan?” In that very chat we do go over the simple fact that by helping stop the Europa mission in which Renée Picard discovers a magical particle that solves climate change – Star Trek? I hardly knew her! – the Queen isn’t brought back here.

Evil scientists and magic particles aside, a lot is thrown at the wall with little of it being good. “Hide and Seek” is the big bombastic episode to heighten the tension going into the finale, but for that to be the case, I need some tension. I need and want there to be something to care about in the first place, and treading the ground of Jean-Luc’s childhood by telling us he helped his mother commit suicide isn’t a fun, space adventure about how we are better as humans when we work together no matter the boxes or boundaries. It’s depressing.

For all its might, Picard tries to make me care that Jean-Luc Picard escapes into the stars because his dad was abusive and his mother hung herself due to mental health issues. There are attempts to desperately tell you “he’s broken, like us” because his parents, who never factored into the more than 170 other stories thus far, are the reason he is a workaholic, adventurer, diplomat, and generally a person seeking a wealth of knowledge in a post-scarcity society. He isn’t broken (sarcasm intended) because he’s watched people under him die, get hurt mentally and physically, people be assimilated, get assimilated himself, and the horrors of war in space.

I believe I said it before, but not in too few words, the show of Picard understands the story of Jean-Luc Picard on a superficial level. It is no more evident here as he reminisces about running around the chateau, searching for his mother, unlocking her bedroom door, and as a result, she jumps off of a chair. I don’t want to bring the tone down from my anger and disappointment, but that’s the big reveal? Starfleet’s most beloved captain turned admiral, the pinnacle of what it is to be a captain in a lot of people’s eyes (Thanks mate, Sisko is crying), “killed his mother.” What?

I’ve said it countless times throughout this season and last, Star Trek is about our problems sure, but they are far-flung into this utopia of the 23rd, 24th, and 25th centuries. The Bajorans were oppressed peoples who depending on your reference point could be almost any group, the Dominion was more or less imperialism, the Cardassians were basically Nazis, and the Ferengi are how the world sees Jewish people. Then most prominently the Borg are an analogy of the two extremes of capitalism and socialism, all through the colonial mindset of insects: There is only one body, we all move as one, we serve the Queen.

Where is all of that far-flung analogous writing that says: Sure everything here looks and sounds different, but everything you see has a shred of humanity, despite the differences they work together or they fight. Everything about that sort of writing and those related but otherworldly concepts is about saying “We can do better right now, we could work towards this.” However, the writing for Picard puts all of that Star Trek-ness aside in favor ofthe typical CBS drama. It makes Picard feel unrelated to the franchise it is supposedly part of.

The problem I have with this is that it takes a sledgehammer to a script where a scalpel is required. We’re seeing it throughout, everything has to be the extremes. Picard died last season so Q, an immortal non-corporeal entity, must now be dying too. The lesbians can’t get their act together to be in a serious relationship, so Rios is thinking about staying with a woman despite her time being obscenely racist towards them both; and, since those were too subtle for you, Jean-Luc Picard isn’t a great captain because his world encourages it, it is his trauma that does that.

I’m not saying you should make suicide fun or a child being traumatized by actions they didn’t know would take place should be lighthearted. The point more so is that for all that the name and characters should suggest, this is not Star Trek, “Hide and Seek” is very clear about that with a monocle-wearing and mustache-twirling villain that isn’t fun to be around. It doesn’t even have that character of a Star Trek show. It wants to play in a sandbox of the toys, but never actually dig deep enough to understand the world.

Maybe someone is bad at relationships because they are a workaholic, and they are a workaholic because this is the thing they wanted to do as their society encouraged it. Of course not, “thematic cohesion” trumps all else, including the story told thus far. Honestly, thinking more and more about this “he’s a tortured soul” thing annoys me beyond belief; you have a character that’s shown compassion out the wazoo because he’s been in hundreds of space battles and political disagreements that turned violent, and the only thing that traumatized him was an as yet untold part of his story.

If this was the story of Jean-Luc Picard, it would have been told already and it would have been done without sledgehammers for fists. It could have been done, it could have been done well, and the whole thing could have worked to explore Picard as a character, but that ship sailed a long time ago. I hate to bring it up because it is horrible to say, but at this point, there were very few points to bring Patrick back and this was the story that had to be told? There are better and more poignant stories to tell with Picard.

At best, the season thus far is superficial and at worst incompetent. We’ll get to my issues with the “special forces” here in a second, but the whole episode is about a big climactic “bad things can happen.” At this point in the season, when was the last time you cared about the fate of humanity and the federation? When was the last time you thought about Doc Ock stabbing panels on that new iteration of the Star Gazer? Keep in mind, that’s the catalyst for all of this.

You know, the weird Borg-ish star thing that showed up asking for Picard’s help, then was demanding things of Starfleet which led to JL blowing up the Star Gazer? That’s a thing that’s happened and we haven’t spoken about it for several episodes because no one cares they were picoseconds from being blown up before Q stepped in and showed this crew The Confederacy. No one cares because the production staff don’t care, and most importantly they don’t care about setting up their own rules of time travel for this story. So, I need to talk about the so-called “ex-special forces” Borg that were recruited at the end of the last episode, because this is really annoying me. They are running the typical carbine we’d see with a couple extra bits and pieces; the barrel is shrouded with an M-lok guard for heat build-up, Picatinny rail across the top, standard laser sight but tinted green, and an EOTech holo sight. Put simply it is a mash-up of the AR-15 platform with the barrel more in line with the L403A1. For the non-gun people, it fires 5.56 NATO rounds in magazines that fire 30 rounds at most.

Anyone who’s fired guns and tried to do so accurately will tell you full-auto is a waste of your time, the special forces people will back me up on this. Yeah, you can get a lot of bullets down range, but you might as well fire into the sky for all that’s worth. Suppressive fire is best done when it is precise and on target, firing 30-40 rounds a minute on target isn’t your best option and it isn’t efficient either. Moreover, the way they are firing and using a holosight at 100-160 yards at night feels like a waste of bullets too.

If these were supposed to be special forces, with the actors notable on-screen not doing a great job at that, the writing isn’t helping the case. Quite frankly, it would have made sense to say they were the rejects from the French Foreign Legion, as they are as disorganized and useless as a force made up of that hive of scum and villainy. If you know who the Foreign Legion rejects, you’ll know why I’m so strong on that stance. The rifle and the additions to it all scream CQB, not long-range fire, yet a large portion of what we see especially early on is that longer-range firing.

I’d have thrown on an ACOG, Elcan, or something to get that magnification, close up the distance, and most importantly, some of them offer extra iron-sight things on top. Depending on the formation and size of the squad, I’d have thrown on a front grip too, at least for those standing back covering the chateau. Either what we’re seeing here is cut up by editing and other constraints, or nothing we’re seeing is understood from a foundational level. To put it simply, these bodies (sometimes given options to speak) feel like extras filling in a role they didn’t care about.

They don’t feel like the elites that have done their time in the regiment and such, they feel like people who’d fail on basic training never mind weeks or months of selection. To be quite damning, the only thing special about them is what’s on the paper, as these elites that the best of humanity can offer with all the Borg assimilation that Agnes can offer are the same as every other nameless goon in Star Trek. They are literal Stormtroopers, right down to the poor aim, but that might be because they don’t have the right equipment.

With that rant out of the way, “Hide and Seek” isn’t what you think of when you think of Star Trek. It is an episode about an old man feeling sad because his mother made a decision (whether “sane” or not) and a very action-heavy set piece of an episode to show the guy with Data’s face is just oh so evil. It does nothing entertaining, it does nothing to provide hope for the future, and quite frankly it made me want to kick start these Eugenics Wars everyone forgot about a bit earlier so we could be shot of this nonsense.

Probably the best Star Trek bit was Agnes and the Borg Queen having their little fights. Something that results in Annika getting her Seven Borg-bits back, let’s not forget we need to rush a timeline reset. Sure it doesn’t solve anything, and in fact, it pokes a massive hole I need to talk about next time in the plot, but we did get a final bit of Borg Queen-ness from Annie Wersching as she played that character down to a T. However, that’s all gone now and all we have is Agnes as the Borg Queen— So we’re getting rid of the cast before we do TNG season 8?

To quote a curly-haired blonde woman from another series I’ve reviewed, spoilers. Ultimately, “Hide and Seek” is a reminder that season 2 of Picard started strong and ran out of steam like an old man climbing too many stairs. This episode, bar none, felt like it was lifted directly from another CBS show – something I’ve been saying a lot this season but with its action focus and dramatic misunderstandings of the lead character, it makes “Hide and Seek” seem like a mistaken NCIS or SEAL Team script. If I were allowed to swear half as much as Picard does, I’d have saved us 2,400 words.

If you or someone you know is struggling with their mental health or suicidal ideation, please reach out for help. There are resources available, such as: The National Suicide Hotline reachable via dialing 988 in the US and 111 to reach the NHS hotline in the UK.

Phenixx Gaming is everywhere you are. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Also, if you’d like to join the Phenixx Gaming team, check out our recruitment article for details on working with us.

Phenixx Gaming is proud to be a Humble Partner! Purchases made through our affiliate links support our writers and charity!

Star Trek: Picard "Hide and Seek"

3

Score

3.0/10

Pros

• James Callis is good in his role as evil man.
• Agnes and the Borg Queen are brilliant.
• Annie Wersching.

Cons

• Please understand the character before you write their mental health issues!
• Oh fun, Jean-Luc isn't an adventurer because his world, he's just lacking mental health support.
• So much action you'll think it is another show.
• Hands up, who doesn't understand special forces operators?