Night at the [Fleet] Museum.

Star Trek Picard sets out to try a heist again, while the rest of the crew set a course for nostalgia porn central in The Bounty.

Worf and Raffi arrive on the Titan to combine their findings with Ro’s evidence, pointing directly towards something else having been stolen from the Daystrom Station. The only way to find out what is to visit the station and access the air-gapped station manifest, but when Riker, Worf and Raffi beam over, the Titan is forced to flee as several Starfleet vessels arrive to investigate the intruder alert.

While Riker and team deal with a curiously familiar security system, Picard seeks help from Geordi La Forge, who is now the commodore in charge of the Starfleet Museum. The away team on Daystrom discover that the station manifest is housed in a dormant synthetic being created by the late Altan Inigo Soong (Brent Spiner) that contains his memories along with those of former androids Data (Brent Spiner), B-4 (Brent Spiner), Lal (not Brent Spiner), and Lore (Brent Spiner, again).

Meanwhile, after a gratuitously browsing through the museum’s iconic exhibits with Seven, Jack, and La Forge’s daughters Sidney and Alandra get the idea to take the cloaking device from Commander Kruge’s Bird Of Prey – the one Scotty christened The Bounty and Kirk and crew used to travel back in time – and install it into the Titan so the ship can return to Daystrom but stay hidden from Starfleet while they rescue the away team.

The rescue mission is partially successful, recovering Worf, Raffi, and the synthetic Soong android body, but Riker is captured by Vadic and discovers she is already holding Troi. On board the Titan, Geordi reactivates the android and Data reveals that the other thing the Changelings stole from the Daystrom Station was Picard’s original body, which died in season one of Star Trek Picard as his mind was transferred into his own synthetic body.

Jack’s confession to his mother about his visions and fugue states feels refreshingly authentic in an era where tv shows all too often require characters to improbably keep secrets from their nearest and dearest just to keep the story going and it’s interesting that Beverly’s diagnosis goes immediately to Irumodic syndrome. In some ways, Star Trek Picard has always been about retconning the sci-fi senility All Good Things… saw fit to bestow on Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation series finale, a plot point which has become the Star Trek equivalent of Doctor Who’s The Brain of Morbius’ parade of previous Doctors in that successive showrunners have just not been able to shrug and let it go. That being said, I suspect the idea that Jack having inherited Irumodic Syndrome from Picard will turn out to not be the whole story and if I had to bet at this point, I would wager that they’re about to completely retcon the Irumodic syndrome once and for all, even if it is fixing the stable door after the horse has been given a new synthetic body.

At first, I was disappointed that the Daystrom heist brought back holographic Moriarty and didn’t have him meet Picard but then it’s not the actual Moriarty from Ship In A Bottle, it’s just a clue to the identity of the station’s AI controller.

Meanwhile, at the Fleet Museum, Seven and Jack take a nostalgic scroll through the ships on display and despite how gratuitous it is, I am 100% here for it. Jack Crusher’s personal favourite ship, it turns out, is the NCC1701-A, the same as mine. I like this kid. Elsewhere, there’s less agreement as LaForge is unwilling to help Picard in his hour of need and instead focusses his efforts on getting his estranged daughter, Titan’s pilot, to jump ship and stay with him at the museum. It’s a little similar to the disagreement between Riker and Picard in earlier episodes in that it doesn’t feel authentic to the relationships between the characters. It doesn’t ring true that Geordi would turn away any of his former shipmates in their hour of need – unless there’s a low-key attempt to suggest that with great age comes great cowardice?

There is a moment where it seems like the episode is called The Bounty because they’re going to “borrow” the Klingon Bird of Prey itself but instead they take the less fun route of just stealing its cloaking device instead, so they can sneak back to the Daystrom Station, something that presents an irresistible engineering challenge that persuades Geordi to remain on board.

Perhaps Geordi would have remained reluctant to get on board with Picard’s plans if he’d known that back on the Daystrom Station they were playing clips from Encounter At Farpoint but before the weasel can go ‘pop’, we’re in the presence of the Daystrom’s AI: Data, sort of.

Of all the Next Generation cast, bringing back Brent Spiner’s explicitly ageless android has always been the biggest challenge. Season One tried unconvincing make-up but here they finally find a satisfying way of potentially explaining Data’s revised appearance. Alton Soong (Season One Brent Spiner) built himself a new body after Picard coopted his last one but, at the last moment, realised he shouldn’t use it, but instead revive Data, Lore, B4, Lal and his own knowledge into a new gestalt android, except his work was unfinished at the time of his death. I wonder if someone else will finish his work now?

Having gone to the effort of stealing and integrating the cloaking device, for some reason the Titan warps to the Daystrom Station and then cloaks after it arrives, which seems like a dumb tactical move and probably goes some way to explaining why they’re drive-by beaming only succeeds in rescuing most, not all, of the landing party.

Despite some minor grumbles over missed opportunities, The Bounty is another rock-solid Star Trek Picard episode. If the Changelings stole Picard’s corpse, it means the MacGuffin is something genetic, not technological. Suely it can’t be another Picard chosen bloodline story?

And hanging over the cliffhanger is the question: Riker and Troi have been reunited – or have they? Is that even Troi? Set course for the next episode – maximum warp!