Okay everyone, too much excitement last two weeks, let’s slow it down a bit and have a slower, thinkier episode about conspiracies and inner pain. And also Worf. (Worf is fine this week. I don’t know what the deal was – mine or his – back in his last appearance, but he seems okay now).

The big news of course is that Michelle Forbes returns as Ro Laren, in order to be nobly sacrificed at the climax. Ro Laren appeared in a handful of late TNG episodes kinda as a way to tease Deep Space Nine. She’s the first Bajoran character we meet, a refugee with “attitude” who is introduced by handing Picard and Riker the idiot ball so they can fumble such basic things as “Objecting to someone wearing a permitted religious adornment despite the fact that Worf has been wearing a whole-ass sash for six years,” and “Being baffled by the existence of cultures where the family name comes first despite there being a bunch of those on Earth and hey also no one ever once calling Worf any of ‘Rozhenko’, ‘O’Mogh’, or ‘de Khitomer'”. She ultimately left the show when her character betrayed Starfleet to join the Maquis, a terror group primarily made up of disgruntled Federation colonists whose planets had been ceded to the Cardassians, named for the French resistance in World War II and heavily identified with the forced relocation of Native Americans, who would end up becoming half the cast in Voyager and having some recurring plots in Deep Space Nine before being wiped out by the Dominion. Ro was originally planned to be the Bajoran liaison on Deep Space Nine, a source of friction with Sisko, who, like Picard, would view her as a traitor, while her own government viewed her as a freedom-fighter. That role was reimagined into Kira Nerys, who like Ro was a former terrorist, but one whose scope was strictly limited to the Cardassian force occupying her homeworld, not anything to do with the Federation.

Also, in Ro’s first epsiode, there’s a scene where she takes off her uniform shirt to give to a cold refugee child, and they were super careful about how they filmed the scene so that you can’t see her zipper, because they wanted to maintain the idea that their uniform closures were something weird and sci-fi rather than just plain zippers. This was neat and completely overlooked the fact that there’s a scene back in season 1 where Beverly visibly plays with her zipper while feeling drunk and flirty, and also that as a result of the clever intercuts and camera angles, Ro’s communicator magically teleports onto her undershirt.

Anyway, the fate of Ro had been kept from us all these years. There’s conflicting versions in the EU novels, but they all generally agreed that she’d survived the Dominion war. Some have her arrested and serving out a sentence in Federation prison, others have her repatriating to Bajor. They all sort of converge on the idea that she does eventually end up back in uniform, either directly or as a result of the Bajoran military eventually becoming part of Starfleet, and in the later rounds of novels, she’s said to succeed Kira as commander of Deep Space Nine.

The canonical story we finally get here omits that last bit, instead having Ro recruited out of prison into Starfleet Intelligence, and she turns up here ostensibly to investigate Picard for the whole “Stole a ship and got it shot up good by a scary space lady,” thing.

Love Shaw in that bit, too. Soon as Riker gives him the keys back, he’s all like, “Yeah I turned you guys in, you’d better get your story straight. Hey Hansen, you want your job back so that you’re on the clock when they fire you?” Shaw is the right way to do an antagonistic “frenemy” character. He doesn’t obstruct more than is actually necessary, he sells that he is trying to do the right thing, and he’s kind of just delightful as an asshole. You kinda get the feeling that he’s not even happy at the prospect of Picard and Riker facing their comeuppance per se; rather, he’s neutral on the subject, and happy that he’s able to be neutral about it. They get hailed as heroes, fine; they get thrown in jail, fine; not his problem any more and that’s what really counts.

When Picard tells him they have to leg it because the Intrepid has been compromised and he calls security on him? Chef’s kiss. My only complaint about him this week is that he remains confused maybe one beat too long at the end, when Ro – in her official capacity – has explained what’s going on and nobly sacrificed herself and the Intrepid responds by very obviously being compromised, and he’s still not quite on the same page. But he recovers and we get another, “Well fine okay then we’ll be big damn heroes, but if this screws up my nap, I’m coming for you Picard,” moment.

Yeah, so Ro dies and that’s sad. You sort of knew very quickly that there were only two ways this was going to go. Either she was a changeling herself (Nice timing having her very aggressively make a point of showing off her blood in the minute between the audience learning that changelings can do blood now and Picard getting the memo), or else she was about to die. Her and Picard instead prove their authenticity to each other by crying over their past in Holodeck Ten Forward. Now, it has been a long time since I watched this late TNG arc, but I feel like I kind of remember the emotions being different here. I mean, this makes plenty of sense, but I remember Riker having a harder time with it, and Picard having some begrudging respect for Ro – or at least comprehend – when she decided to stick to her moral convictions over her duty to Starfleet. Here, Riker is willing to forgive and move one, which befits his more laid-back persona I guess. Picard, on the other hand, is still raw, and pretty galled at being accused of treason by Ro Laren, who in turn is hurt that Picard couldn’t accept her reasons or validate the pain it caused her. They’re playing on the idea of Picard struggling to separate his sense of duty from his sense of morality, which is an entirely valid character element for a character like Picard, but, I mean, I feel like that was pretty much settled in… I dunno, First Contact? Insurrection? Season 1 of Picard? Heck, that time Picard went to Starfleet command and murdered half the admiralty? I mean, what about the previous four episodes?

Anyway, we do get resolution, and it’s nice, and Ro gives Picard her earring, which is symbolic and also contains all her secret files on the conspiracy (I hope there’s a Lower Decks cameo showing maybe not how Riker is able to figure that out, but perhaps how he’s able to figure it out instantly?), and then she gets blown up because the two security people she brought with her are changelings, and is it weird that she’s been able to get this close to the truth but couldn’t avoid bringing a team with her which was in fact “Oops, all changelings”? In death, she manages to disable the Intrepid, buying time for the Titan to escape, which it almost squanders with Shaw’s aforementioned slightly-excessive-confusion.

The Intrepid is an intensely ugly ship. Just profoundly stupid-looking. Modern Trek seems to have an aversion to having two of the same kind of ship on-screen at once. I guess this makes sense in terms of making it easy to tell what’s going on (Though cough Sombra-class).

I really hope this isn’t going to be followed up with, “The conspirators announce that Highly Decorated Galactically Celebrated Admiral Jean-Luc Picard has gone rogue and must be shot on sight and everyone in the galaxy is happy to go along with that except for a handful of his oldest and dearest friends.” This is the Star Trek universe; they could just as easily announce that Picard got possessed by space ghosts and it’s important he not be allowed to give any speeches because that is how space ghosts reproduce. Insert joke about that time Beverly had sex with a space ghost here.

Meanwhile, Bev learns that the changelings have “evolved” and can now not only imitate internal organs, but retain their form even after death until subjected to serious tissue damage. This, rather than “It’s 2023” might be why they look so much meatier, and answers last week’s question about why Sydney LaForgery (God how did I fail to make that joke last week?) didn’t melt upon being shot. It’s a little weird to drop this tidbit after we saw the changeling Worf and Raffi caught struggling to maintain his form, and the whole thing with the bucket. If a changeling can hold their shape even after death, it’s weird that they would need to take regular goo-breaks while, y’know, living. Not saying it’s wrong, just a weird choice.

The changing of the lings points back at my unease last week over Vadic potentially being a changeling. Something has Happened to these renegade changelings, and possibly they are beholden to some outside force because of it. Who? There’s the rub. Obviously, someone new we’ve never heard of before would be a weird choice for the last season of the TNG Reunion Tour. But who, then? I mean, there’s a lot of candidates, I guess; various powerful entities who Picard dicked over. But I’m not overly sure there’s a fully satisfying answer for who would hold a grudge against Starfleet great enough to justify this plan (currently presumed to be wiping out the entire fleet during the Frontier Day celebration), powerful enough to pull it off, with the specific abilities to reengineer a species, and yet without the necessary resources to just mount a direct attack. But some of Ro’s language when talking about the conspiracy reminds me of some language from the TNG season 1 conspiracy arc. So… Could the flue-gill aliens be back and for some reason pursuing a changeling-based strategy?

Meanwhile, the Worf-Raffi side of the plot doesn’t actually go far, but it does it with style. I’m interested in how the show is playing with letting the audience know things before the characters do. Last week, I questioned the storycrafting in making it clear to us that LaForgery couldn’t possibly be the real deal before Seven figured it out. Similarly, they make a point of withholding the identity of Ro’s two trusted field agents even though we both know darn right well who they are. It’s not like Ro isn’t aware of the relationship between Picard and Raffi, much less Worf. Then, the camera isn’t shy about letting us see Raffi’s mobile emitter as she and Worf provoke the Shady Part of Town set until the local gangsters show up. And yet they try to present it as a great surprise when they shoot Raffi, only for her to turn out to be a hologram. But then there’s the double-twist: the gangsters knew she was a hologram as well, and have a man in position to catch the real Raffi.

But then there’s another twist, when Worf and Raffi are forced to fight to the death. But again, we all know full well that this is not how Worf is going to die, so the tension is weird. Raffi “kills” Worf, his body is carried away, then he shows up again having murdered everyone. I do really like when Worf starts to belt out one of his warrior monk aphorisms, but has to stop short because he’s lost quite a lot of blood.

I also dig the idea of a Vulcan gangster who got into the life because, given crime was inevitable, organized crime was more logical than disorganized crime. There’s also a great exchange where he points out that they can’t kill him since he has the chip they need to bypass Daystrom Station security, and Raffi counters that Worf has lost a lot of blood and isn’t necessarily going to be able to show the logical amount of restraint. It reminds me of my favorite bit in The Maltese Falcon, where Sam Spade explains that his goal is to make the bad guys angry enough that they make a mistake, but not so angry that the mistake they make is killing him before they get what they want from him.

So… bets on the “illogical” AI that protects Daystrom? Lore seems like an obvious choice, except that they have been very consistent so far that androids aren’t AIs. So… Moriarty then? That would be kind of funny. The Enterprise’s space baby? But honestly, it could be no one in particular. It could be Peanut Hamper. (It could not be Peanut Hamper)

We’re left then with the mystery of Jack, which I’m guessing we won’t be resolving for another episode or three. He takes out four changelings when they corner him by going all Matrix, in a scene that is so reminiscent of Dahj and Soji going Android Mode in season 1 that its reuse here almost feels like they forgot. He’s mostly worried about the possibility that he will be compelled to kill while red vines grow. He of course will not talk about this with his mom, because drama. Meh.

So… Red vines? Martian, then? I think we have to assume, due to the laws of conservation of storytelling, that Beverly was right and the interest the changelings (or their superiors) have in him is linked to Picard; it’s late in the season to add another big curveball about that part. So… Something that happened to Picard, which would be reflected in his son, but may not be reflected in Picard himself, whether due to age or because his body is synthetic. Logically, it would have to be something that happened to him specifically rather than the whole crew, as no one’s seeking out Kestra Riker or Molly O’Brien or the LaForge sisters. A side effect of Q whanging him around through time in “All Good Things”? Something to do with that time he got possessed by a space ghost, yes, that really happened and wasn’t just me making a Sub Rosa joke? You have to reckon it’s related to a TNG thing, just for the sake of being dramatically satisfying. Ooh, maybe it’s the Ressikans. Like, maybe they did something to his DNA in addition to 40 years of gaslighting and flute lessons?

There’s a bunch of ways they can go from here, and not all of them are good. But just for the moment, let’s have some faith…. of the heart.