He contains multitudes.
Where Dominion’s title promised more than it delivered, this one feels like it must be a fake-out too. They’re already defeated, so surrender seems to be an inevitability – or is it? With Vadic threatening to execute the bridge crew one by one if Jack does not surrender, Picard faces a struggle to keep his son from doing just that, knowing that Vadic’s just as likely to kill them all once she has Jack anyway.
Locked out of the ship’s systems, Geordi comes up with a Hail Mary idea: to resolve the computational stalemate between Data and Lore’s personalities, he suggests removing the partition barrier that separates and preserves them and let them battle it out for full control. The only risk is whoever loses will be permanently erased. Meanwhile, with Vadic occupied with occupying the Titan’s bridge, Worf and Raffi sneak aboard the Shrike and set about rescuing Riker and Troi.
While the end of the last episode may have left things looking bleak for our heroes, Surrender shows them doing the exact opposite (where was this spirit for most of No Win Scenario, hmm?). The battle between Data and Lore proceeds entirely predictably at first, with Lore dominating the mild mannered and accommodating Data, but of course they haven’t dangled the prospect of Data coming back just to kill him off and it’s a clever exploitation of Lore’s need to gloat that proves to be his undoing.
Having surrendered himself to Vadic to prevent any further executions, Jack bargains for their release and Vadic agrees – moving all the prisoners to the observation deck and sealing them off from the bridge, except for Seven who refuses to leave the bridge. With Data back online, Jack springs a trap of his own, deploying a personal shield that protects him and Seven while Data – now in control of the Titan’s systems – vents the bridge to space, ejecting Vadic and her followers into the hard vacuum of space – following her with grim glee until she shatters, Picard Champagne-style against the hull of the Shrike. I don’t think she’ll be reconstituting herself after that.
It hardly seems to matter now, but I had a passing thought regarding Vadic’s fondness for sparking up: can mutant changelings get lung cancer? Or can they just repair the lungs or other organs when they get too damaged? Anyway, smoking isn’t cool, kids.
It’s funny that Beverly finds herself acting in much more of a tech role in this series. I guess it’s because she needs something to do and there’s no real ongoing medical storyline. Maybe she took an engineering extension course during the past twenty years? She always did like learning new skills.
Although full of incident and plot progression, Surrender is still an episode that slows things down a little. I’m not sure we needed Troi and Riker’s marriage counselling sessions and so far, this is the most Star Trek Picard episode of Season 3, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. It’s the first time this season “I can’t wait to see what comes next” has slumped to “get on with it”. At least it livens up when Worf turns up and the homage to the Riker-Troi-Worf love triangle of season seven of The Next Generation is at least mildly amusing.
It does feel a little contrived that they’re so immediately helpless, echoing the tendency towards resignation that’s incongruously manifested before. After all, time and again, Starfleet vessels have been retaken after the bridge has been lost, even when the crew are locked out of the controls, so the fact it takes them so long to realise Data can probably decrypt the ship if they can just eradicate Lore strains credibility just a little.
Credit to Spiner, though, he sure can play the hell out of Data and Lore, and as irritating as all his other Soongs are, those two are all time classics. If you thought the Starfleet Museum was the height of Season Three’s Easter Egg hunt, it’s nothing compared to the carnival of callbacks that occur during Lore’s looting of Data’s memories, with Tasha Yar’s appearance just one of many. Of course, Data’s pacifist bait and switch is classic Star Trek in its purest form and almost single-handedly salvages this episode. Data’s back. Properly back, sort of. He has emotions this time, but hopefully we’re not in for the goofy, gurning emotionally unstable Data of Star Trek: Generations any time soon.
What does redeem this episode though, is how it delivers the one thing all Next Generation fans have missed since the series ended: a conference table scene. Aboard the Shrike, Riker, Worf, Troi and Raffi find Picard’s original body and discover that the Changelings have removed portions of the parietal lobe, specifically those supposedly infected with Irumodic Syndrome and after downloading the Shrike’s database, the group are transported to the Titan, the Shrike is destroyed and the reunited crew gather in the Titan’s briefing room to discuss their next move in a scene you’d almost suspect was filmed as Star Trek’s second ever Thanksgiving scene. There’s a genuine joy in seeing them all sitting around a table – an event they themselves comment on – although its tempered by how quickly these Next Generation alums fall back into old habits, like making Worf the comic relief.
But with “Frontier Day” mere hours away and the full extent of the Changelings’ plan still not understood, Troi suggests helping Jack discover the truth behind his visions using her empathic abilities. Is it time for an unexpected Star Trek/ Insidious crossover? Let’s go through the red door!
