* Picard and friends come out of the transwarp conduit and arrive at the android planet, which Shoji Tabuchi informs them is called Compaelius because her android memories have magically been restored but only the ones convenient to the plot.
* Brother Romulan immediately comes out of the conduit behind them in his starfighter. They wonder how he was able to track them since the tracker that was eaten by Agnes had been disabled when she tried to kill herself.
* "He must have extrapolated our destination based on our direction and last location," Soji explains.
* What the fuck
* They have a space dogfight and the Romulan fighter appears damaged. Picard orders that Brother Romulan be beamed to sickbay but it's a deception!
* The damaged fighter was an illusion and the real one attacks from behind them. "He reversed his cloaking device and uses it as a projector!" Rios explains.
* What the fuck
* Suddenly a third ship emerges from the conduit. It's the Borg cube!
* At the same time several giant flowers take off from the android planet and come to meet the ships.
* One closes its petals around Picard and friends, instantly draining their ship of all power.
* The Borg cube just smashes them aside however and plunges into the planet's atmosphere.
* The flower holding Picard's ship is knocked out of control and they plummet to the planet below. Picard blacks out.
* He comes to to find Agnes holding an "old-fashioned medical tricorder" over him.
* She explains that the ship is okay but it has no power and all its systems are offline.
* How is it okay then?
* She tells him that the tricorder detected a fatal abnormality in his brain so Picard gathers the crew around and explains that he is dying.
* No one ever says what's wrong with him though, they just say "brain abnormality."
* Is this supposed to be the irumodic syndrome from All Good Things or something different?
* Even Picard's personal doctor from the second episode of the show wouldn't give it a name.
* Anyway the crew sets out for the android city to warn them of the impending Romulan attack.
* On the way they notice smoke rising from behind a mountain range several miles in the distance.
* They immediately assume that this is the Borg cube. "Something that massive falling that fast couldn't have any survivors," says Raffi.
* Why would they assume it's the cube? The cube didn't take any damage, it entered the atmosphere of its own volition so why would it crash? Also Picard's ship fell from just as high and they're all fine.
* Why did the cube even enter the atmosphere in the first place? It doesn't make any sense and no answer is ever given.
* Picard is like "I know we're in a hurry but we should go see if Hugh and Legolas are all right."
* There's plenty to say about the show's AI apocalypse plot being ripped from Mass Effect but they're also really nailing the whole "ignoring the ticking clock of the main story to waste time on optional side quests" aspect of those games.
* Picard already wasted an entire episode recruiting this ninja dude who has been completely irrelevant to everything that's happened since, now he wants to do it again!
* They get to the cube and find Legolas and several ex-B's making repairs.
* WHY DID IT CRASH IN THE FIRST PLACE
* Seven of Nine is there and they tell Picard about Hugh being dead and Picard says "Hugh was such a gentle soul, I can't imagine what he could have endured that would turn him to such violence."
* Wtf are you talking about, old man?
* Picard asks Seven to get the cube's long-range scanners online and they reveal that a fleet of 218 Romulan Warbirds is on its way toward the planet.
* TWO HUNDRED EIGHTEEN
* If I remember correctly just one Warbird was a match for a Galaxy-class starship during TNG.
* And the Jacques Vash, the most secret society to ever exist, has more than 200 of them?
* How many did the whole Romulan Empire have?
* Or are the Jacques Vash being supported by the main empire now?
* Does the Romulan Star Empire still exist in any capacity?
* I predict that none of these questions will be answered.
* Again remember that this show is being written by a Hugo Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning science fiction novelist.
* Legolas tells Picard that he needs his sword now more than ever but Picard says no stay and help the Borgs and then they're off again.
* They arrive at the android city which resembles a cross between an Ancient Greek acropolis and a community college campus, where gold-skinned yellow-eyed androids wear togas and play hackysack on the quad.
* By gold-skinned I mean literally sparkling gold, not the yellowish hue Data had but who can even remember that?
* It's unclear how many androids there are but they must be few enough to all fit aboard Rios's small ship because that is Picard's plan to evacuate them.
* Only 3 characters in the city are of any importance however: Ro Khanna, the naive but good-intentioned spokeslady for the nameless citizens; Sutra, a gold reskin of Soji/Douche who is evil; and Brent Spiner, who plays Alton Inigo Soong, the son of Data's creator.
* "I know what a shock it must be to see me, Captain Picard," says Brent Spiner. "I look like Data if he got old and soft."
* Rios sees Sutra and says "omg it's Janna" who was the android that his former captain murdered in that first contact assassination he described last episode.
* But Brent Spiner says no no this is Sutra, Janna was her sister.
* So are they saying that all androids are created in twin pairs, not just the "fractal cloning" biological androids like Soji and Douche?
* Is that supposed to be a reference to Data and Lore?
* But weren't there three identical Data's? B4 already appeared in the first episode of this show.
* If androids are created as twins and Soji/Douche were cloned from one of Data's positrons, why are the Soji/Douche clone pair identical to the Sutra/Janna clone pair?
* I predict that none of these questions will be answered.
* Just then two nameless androids drag in Brother Romulan who they have captured.
* I guess he also crashed? Maybe another flower for him? Whatever, he's here now too.
* They put him in jail and the group discusses their options. 218 Romulan Warbirds are on the way and the androids have only ten flowers remaining. They can construct more but it will take time.
* They also have no ships because they lost their only one when Janna and their ambassador were killed.
* A city full of hyper-intelligent androids can make spacefaring ship-killing giant flowers but they don't know how to build actual ships, I guess?
* Maybe they just never saw a reason to.
* Brent Spiner and the androids are upset with Agnes for murdering their fiend Bruce Maddox but Rios defends her because they had sex that one time so they are in love.
* Agnes tries to explain that the vision Karen O gave her made her crazy and made her do it.
* Sutra believes that the reason the Admonition drives people insane is because it isn't a warning about synthetics after all but a message intended FOR synthetics!
* Brent Spiner explains that Sutra has studied Vulcan culture extensively and even "taught herself the famous mindmeld."
* What the fuck
* They came up with that Karen O being half-Vulcan asspull to explain why she could mindmeld even though there's no reason Romulans shouldn't have the same psychic powers as Vulcans, but now a robot can do it because she read about it in a book.
* Sutra mindmelds with Agnes and learns that the message in the laser table with the eight suns wasn't left by the protheans but by the Reapers themselves.
* As organic life grows and evolves and strives toward perfection they will create synthetic life, but when they realize their creation doesn't age or die they will become jealous of its perfection and try to destroy it, and in doing so will destroy themselves.
* The message contains instructions for how synthetics can contact an ancient hyper-advanced race of synthetic life to come get them.
* The group splits up, with Raffi and Rios going back to the ship to try to fix it and Picard trying to Starfleet.
* Brent Spiner shows Agnes an android body he's building for himself. Agnes is like "omg have you perfected the mind transfer?" and Brent Spiner is like not yet but if you help me you can make up for killing Maddox.
* Meanwhile Ro Khanna is guarding Brother Romulan but Sutra comes in and sends her out, then she releases Brother Romulan and says "Now you will help me with my evil plan."
* Soji talks to Picard about moral questions like "can the good of the few outweigh the good of the many?" and "maybe mass genocide is okay sometimes?" when they hear a scream and run outside to find Brent Spiner cradling Ro Khanna's body, except it's not Ro Khanna it's her twin Saga for some reason, so who cares.
* Brother Romulan has apparently escaped and in doing so murdered Saga by stabbing her in the eye with a hummingbird pin she was wearing.
* "What did he do to your beautiful golden eyes?" Brent Spiner weeps, apparently much more upset about this than the fact that she's dead.
* Sutra is like this proves that the organics will destroy us all, we must call the Reapers and have them cleanse this galaxy of organic life.
* We also learn in this scene that the Reapers apparently have a federation that spans entire galaxies. Is this the first time we've heard of extra-galactic life in Star Trek?
* I feel like the Traveler might have sent them to another galaxy one time? Or was that another quantum realm or something?
* In any case they shouldn't be in any danger because I'm sure the writers will respect the galactic barrier established in the second TOS pilot.
* Picard gives a Picard speech about how violence is not the way and he has a plan to fly everyone to safety aboard his ship and then he will become an advocate for them and lobby the Federation to respect android rights like he already did back in season 2 of TNG.
* But Brent Spiner declares that the Federation didn't listen to him after the Mars attack and they won't listen to him now.
* Look how the androids look at him, they've never known anyone like him before, someone willing to stand up for them and fight on their behalf.
* Everyone else wants them dead, so they have to lock up Picard in jail so he can't make them doubt themselves.
* "Don't do this, Soji," pleads Picard. "You will become the Destroyer they feared you to be all along."
* But she's like "No we have to kill everyone."
* So basically the Jacques Vash had the right idea the whole time.
* Jesus Christ.
* Ro Khanna says lock up Agnes too but Agnes says no wait I can help you and Brent Spiner says yeah she's gonna put my brain in a robot body so they're all cool with her.
* Meanwhile Karen O and the fleet of Warbirds are on their way...
* TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT WEEK
* Something else I just thought of:
* The whole reason they were able to find the android home planet was because of Soji's dream where she was on a planet with two moons and lightning storms, which is apparently unique to this one world.
* But when they get there it just looks like California.
* I expect better of this $50 billion prestige series than the 30-year-old shows where they had $45 to spend on cardboard sets and costumes from Spirit Halloween.
* It's like this show was written by Gen Xers who watched TNG as kids and thought "this is pretty good but it would be even better if it was more like real life! why doesn't Picard call Q a motherfucker?"
* Not to harp on the swearing bc I swear like a fucking sailor but it's an easy example. It's not that swearing is anathema to Star Trek but 1) it's always been a PG franchise so it's weird that it's suddenly R now and 2) humans in Star Trek are supposed to be more thoughtful and enlightened than humans in real life. Like that's the point of the franchise I think?
* Swearing is fine but casually dropping f-bombs mid-conversation is how people talk today. Why do they still talk like that in a utopian future?
* Pretty sure there's only one curse word in the entirety of TOS, when Kirk says "Let's get the hell out of here" after letting Edith Keeler die.
* That's like the tamest swear word there is but it packs more of a punch than any "fuck" said on Picard so far.
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