Season 2, Episode 3: ‘Assimilation’
“Star Trek” has historically been at its best when it comes to time travel.
The best “Next Generation” movie? ‘First Contact’, when the crew of the Enterprise must go back in time to prevent Earth from being assimilated by the Borg. The Best Original Series Movie? “The Voyage Home”, a story about another crew of the Enterprise who goes back to 1980s Earth to save some whales. (Imagine that pitch meeting.) Some of the best television episodes, such as the “Next Generation” episode “Time’s Arrow” or the original “The City on the Edge of Forever,” are also time jump stories.
One of the reasons these stories are so satisfying is that they briefly bring “Trek” closer to our world. Of course there’s the easy fish out of water humor. (Whoa! There is money here?!) But they also provide an opportunity to highlight perplexing inequalities in our society. It’s always funny to see Dr. McCoy is stunned by, for example, medical treatments in the 1980s, or to see Kirk’s fascination with the concept of capitalism. It’s also fun to watch someone from our world, like Mark Twain, be seduced by the future utopia envisioned by “Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry.
So it’s not surprising that “Picard” would be dusting off an – ahem – time-honored tradition this week.
“You’ll finish it, 2024,” Raffi says, as the proverbial fish jumps ashore. “You know, I’ve never been able to understand how a society could exist with so many contradictions and not collapse before it did.”
But first a business. Picard and his friends must escape the clutches of Seven of Nine’s evil husband. This poor guy. First he finds out that his wife is no longer bloodthirsty. Then he discovers that she doesn’t even know his name. In the end, he is shot by his wife’s lover. It’s the second worst Tinder Swindle in history!
But Elnor is also shot, and then he dies. “Picard” has shown that it is willing to kill characters at random, if necessary. And really, it’s a refreshing change from previous iterations of “Trek”, where despite countless risky road missions, none of the primary crew members ever actually die. But Elnor’s death doesn’t hit as hard as the death of a typical lead character for two reasons: one because audiences don’t get to know him very well on the show, and two because I’m guessing it won’t stick. † Time travel and everything.
Raffi is extremely angry about Elnor’s death and accuses Picard of choosing the Borg Queen over him. I don’t exactly follow the logic of this or of Raffi’s berating Picard for “playing games” with Q, as if Picard ever found Q to be anything but a threat. (This is something that Picard MEEKLY notices – you’d think Picard would be a bit more powerful, since he was also grieving Elnor.) Raffi’s impulsiveness has an ominous tone. She is an experienced Starfleet officer. You’d think she’d want to be intentional, but she’s ready to do anything to get Elnor back.
The crew goes back in time and lands in modern Earth – well, modern for the rest of us anyway. It’s a shame we won’t see Elnor walking the streets of Los Angeles in 2024 – he would definitely be a TikTok influencer by the time the others catch up with him. Meanwhile, Picard and Jurati try to revive the Borg Queen.
There is a lot of politics going on here, and less subtle than usual. Raffi highlights the gentrification and inequality of the big cities, standing in a sea of tents against the background of high buildings. Rios is an undocumented immigrant who has been arrested by the Department of Homeland Security. (Recall Chekov being interrogated on charges of being a Russian spy in “The Voyage Home.”) Even the episode title – “Assimilation” – is a nod to the plight of immigrants in the United States.
The “Trek” franchise has a long history of using its world to respond directly to our own. This season, “Picard” has been more explicit than many previous “Trek” stories in using the characters, and their reactions to remind audiences that many of the modern problems we’ve come to accept should really not be acceptable.