Riker’s Titan doesn’t know whether it’s coming or going.

Picking up from last week’s episode, The Shrike launches a devastating attack on the Titan, injuring Shaw who transfers command to Riker with the pithy rejoinder that “he got us into it, now he has to get them out of it” and while Riker deals with the burden of command, Picard is wrestling with the assumption of a very different kind of responsibility: that of being an – inadvertent – deadbeat dad.

Beverly’s explanation that she did not tell Picard about Jack to keep their son safe from his enemies makes sense given how often Picard’s familial connections have been a source of vulnerability to him. After all, the Ferengi even thought it was a good plan to create a fake Picard son in an attempt to kill him, as did the Romulans – in a roundabout way.

Hiding from the Shrike in the nebula – a tactic foreshadowed by Picard’s log entry from Best Of Both Worlds playing in the background of the first episode – is a neat way to grant the episode some time to explore the ramifications of Disengage’s revelations, bolstered by a digitally de-aged flashback to Picard and Riker, buffed to near their prime, discussing the latter’s anxiety at imminently becoming a father. The de-aging is fair, if not flawless, but while I may not understand why the bridge sets are so dark I’m pretty sure I know why this scene is dimly lit. It’s nice to see Deanna again too, even if it is just on a viewscreen.

But Riker has little time for reminiscences as somehow the Shrike keeps locating the Titan within the cloudy depths of the nebula and when they attempt to make a run for it, Vadic deploys the portal weapon, turning the Titan back on itself and into the path of the Shrike’s weaponry. Jack and Seven eventually deduce that Vadic is tracking a gas leak on the Titan and discover it’s the result of sabotage – by a changeling!

Meanwhile, Raffi and Worf continue their investigations and capture a criminal that they believe is responsible for the attack on M’talas Prime only to discover that he too is a Changeling, part of a group that has been fighting the Federation since the end of the Dominion War, and start to suspect the attack was merely a distraction. It’s worth noting too, that when we find him practising his combat forms, Worf isn’t listening to Klingon Opera – he’s listening to Berlioz, the exact piece that Picard was listening to at the beginning of Star Trek First Contact.

Back on the Titan, finally convinced by Picard’s insistence that they fight back, Riker fires on the Shrike but their weapons are redirected back at them with a portal, the Titan is heavily damaged and starts to fall towards the gravitational anomaly at the centre of the nebula.

The fatherhood flashback is there just to give some additional texture to the revelation that Picard does have a son, as well as giving the episode its somewhat disconnected title. The Seventeen Seconds being directly mentioned by Riker as the longest seventeen seconds of his life during the turbolift ride from the bridge to sickbay when his son was born, a seventeen seconds that Picard himself relives when Jack is taken to sickbay after inhaling verterium gas after being attacked by the changeling saboteur.

Seventeen Seconds also sees the series’ first real stumble in terms of characterisation though as the conflict between Picard and Riker over whether to fight or flee doesn’t quite gel. It’s discordant with their relationship established across hundreds of hours of Star Trek and the sharpness of the disagreement and Riker blaming Picard and ordering him off the bridge smacks more of the need to add a sting to the cliffhanger more than anything else.

Then again, perhaps Riker’s just embarrassed to have fallen for the same portal trick not once, not twice, but three times, each time more grievously. Despite the unconvincing disagreement, it’s hard to go wrong with a submarine drama in Star Trek and Seventeen Seconds, even with the inadvertent slapstick comedy of the portal battles, is a good one, continuing the season’s riffing on Star Trek II The Wrath Of Khan.

The mention of the Dominion War and the implications that the conflict may not quite be over, though, is an exciting revelation, and one that ties Worf’s investigations and the events of the Titan even closer together.