Plenty of really dumb stuff in this episode, but it does push past some of the worst parts of the story quicker than I was expecting. Shaw has an emotional purge that will hopefully move him beyond his most ridiculous antagonistic establishing moments. Though he might not even show up again now that his arc is a little more realized? I hope they still spend most of their time on the Titan, at least.
Impending death forces everyone to get back on good terms pretty quickly. It’s also nice that the overall plot is just figuring out how to escape a space phenomena. We even get characters saying technobabble!
We’re back to “people love Picard and TNG” after the “people hate Picard and TNG” stuff in the first episode. Riker tells Picard he was right, even though he wasn’t. Seemed like both the ‘run’ and the ‘fight’ options yielded the same result. But how else would they be able to explicitly state their emotional turmoil to each other if a conflict wasn’t previously contrived??Picard tries to spend quality time with his son before they all die.Seven is tracking down the changeling and for some reason goes to Shaw for help.Vadic ‘talks to the hand’They detach their portal system cause I guess it blows up in nebulas. Shaw is mad at Picard about Wolf 359. We did this already, Star Trek!! So goofy when someone is mad at Picard for being assimilated by the Borg. Do they really think he did something wrong?But then Beverly theorizes that they are in a space womb and the womb is pregnant and it has energy wave contractions and they can ride one of the contractions out of the space wombThey need a “grease monkey,” and guess what only Shaw can help.Picard is the best at yelling coordinates out real fast, so he takes command. It’s a good thing, too, because the TNG music was about to play.They catch the changeling because it didn’t remember the heartwarming scene from a previous episode also it mimicked LaForge – the pilot. Kind of a weird choice for the changeling. There aren’t any random engineers wandering around that could be impersonated? They work out a system where Jack sees asteroids ahead, tells Picard, and then Picard relays the maneuvers to Sidney. See isn’t contrived teamwork a lot better than contrived conflict!!space-surfing!The Shrike shows up just to get bonked by an asteroid.space octopusesBut then Picard remembers that in his flashback, Jack was there! Picard accidentally said “I love Starfleet, and if I were to, say, have a son I didn’t know about, I would love Starfleet more than him!!”But Jack has a secret.
