Star Trek: Picard Season 2 Episode 2 Review: Penance – Socially Keeda

In this warped version of the reality we know, Picard is a monster, an authoritarian warrior who revels in conquering other races and preaching the gospel of human superiority. He’s got an office full of the literal skulls of his enemies (Sarek!!!), a houseful of oppressed alien slaves, and an apparent penchant for dramatic public executions. But Picard’s personality is not the only thing in this timeline that was apparently vastly altered. Seven of Nine is Annika Hansen once more, but while her human self wasn’t assimilated by a species of cybernetic humanoids in this timeline, she still appears to have somehow been equally transformed. Here, she’s the President of the Confederation of Earth, she’s married to a man, and it seems as though she is as much of a true believer in alien eradication as Picard was.Raffi appears to be Picard’s Chief of Security in this timeline, where Rios is a captain helping to lead an attack on Vulcan, and Elnor is a Romulan rebel, pushing back against the Confederation government. (And possibly committing some mild terrorism, I’m not super clear on that.) Even the Earth itself has changed, its skies darkened by pollution and crisscrossed by what appears to be some sort of half-finished bioshield. The only character who generally seems anything like themselves is Agnes, who is apparently a lonely anti-social scientist in every possible reality. (In this one, she has built herself a truly amazing Tomagachi-esque animated cat friend. I want one, is what I’m saying.)Thankfully, at least everyone remembers both who they are and the original world they come from so valuable screen real estate isn’t wasted on getting them all on the same page. Instead, we get to watch Picard, Seven, and the rest of the La Sirena team play-act at being fascists while attempting to figure out both what has happened to them and what their best path to putting the timeline to rights might be. Which is truly more entertaining than it has any right to be. Seven is probably the most terrifyingly good at her role, but it’s Agnes who steals the show for me with her hilarious off-the-cuff lying about everything from how she knows Seven to what their group of misfits was doing hanging out together in her lab with a decapitated Borg head.(In truth, I”m honestly a bit sad that we only get one episode in this dystopian nightmare reality—watching Picard and friends try to pretend to enjoy being the worst versions of themselves was actually kind of fun.)Alternate timelines are always fascinating narrative concepts because they allow us to see how different potential futures for characters we know and love could have been caused by the simplest of changes or different decisions. (My personal favorite example of this trope is the Doctor Who Season 4 episode “Turn Left,” in which the fate of the Doctor and much of humanity hinges on which direction a particular character turns at an intersection.) So many things go into the formation of a person and our lives are full of these tiny moments, that seem so unremarkable at the time but that might contain the seeds of multiple futures.on Picard, we don’t know what specific change Q has made to the past in order to bring about this specific dystopian nightmare, merely the location and time (Los Angeles, 2024) in which whatever it is takes place. Therefore, our faves will need to embrace some Star Trek: The Original Series-style time travel in order to stop whatever it is from happening and thereby restore the world they knew. (And presumably without, as so many science fiction shows have taught us, drastically changing anything else.)