Star Trek: Picard - S2 E9 - "Hide and Seek"
By: Maggie Lovitt
From Collider
April 28, 2022
'Star Trek: Picard' Season 2 Episode 9 Review: Long Live the Borg Queen
The Borg Queen closes in on her plans for power, but will Agnes be able to purpose an alternative path for the Borg?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The penultimate episode of Star Trek: Picard’s second season delivers on the action, thrills, and drama as the Borg Queen (Annie Wersching) makes moves to seize control of La Sirena with her army of newly assimilated soldiers and take over the galaxy centuries before the Borg first spoke of futile resistance. In the midst of all of this chaos, Picard (Patrick Stewart) continues to process the trauma that he experienced as a child, opening new doors to the corridors of his backstory that haven’t been explored before.
Aboard La Sirena, Rios (Santiago Cabrera), Teresa (Sol Rodriguez), and Ricardo (Steve Gutierrez) are forced to make a hasty escape when the Queen and her cronies beam aboard, ready to fight. They quickly reunite with Picard, Tallinn (Orla Brady), Raffi (Michelle Hurd), and Seven (Jerri Ryan) outside of the château and make their plan of attack. Unfortunately, they are no match for the assimilated soldiers—or Dr. Soong (Brent Spiner), who is leading them—and they are pushed into the château as the threat closes in. Rios ends up getting shot and, fortunately, it was a lot less serious than it could have been. He has spent all season getting banged up and hurt, so he’s really lucky that he met a doctor in the past.
Inside the château, Picard asks Tallinn to beam Rios, Teresa, and Ricardo out of the fray, and despite being injured Rios vows to come back and help them fight the Borg. Picard then instructs Tallinn to disable the device so that Rios can’t come back. It’s clear that Picard assumes that they are about to engage in a last stand, and he’s hopeful that at least someone will survive the firefight. It also plays into Rios’ previous comments about seeing Picard as a father figure. Whatever doubts that he may have had about whether that sentiment was reciprocated were confirmed by this action. Picard recognizes that Rios is the heroic type, and he knows that he has to intervene to keep him from getting hurt worse.
Teresa really is one of the best new characters to be introduced in Picard. She isn’t entirely put off by the situation she’s been thrust into, she adapts to the alien technology she’s asked to handle, and she seems excited to deviate from the day-to-day life she had been living prior to Rios’ arrival. In a lot of ways, she’s embracing the fun tropes that make out-of-time romances so much fun. She is all of us if we got dropped in the middle of a Star Trek episode. Maybe it’s because I’m a hopeless romantic at heart, but I adored the fact that she tried to convince Rios to stay in 2024 with her. She made some valid points—there are plenty of heroes out there, so why does he have to be the one? While Rios does ultimately decide to go back and join the fight, his decision isn’t without some hesitation. He definitely considered her suggestion and this plotline doesn’t feel like it’s run its course yet.
The Borg Queen’s plans hit a slight snag when Agnes (Alison Pill) manages to take back a little control and launch a hologram of Elnor (Evan Evagora) to play keep-away from the Borg Queen and her ilk. Picard has found really ingenious ways to keep beloved characters from the first season—Elnor and Daj (Isa Briones)—involved in the second season, even though their characters’ roles have been diminished. It also provides an ample opportunity for Raffi to confront her grief and get some answers about what Elnor was thinking before he died.
Raffi and Seven go up against the Borg Queen and Seven sustains a pretty serious injury that threatens to make her the second person to bleed out in front of Raffi this season. In a last-ditch effort to save Seven, Agnes fights for control of her mind and pushes the Borg Queen to reconsider how the Borg operates. After decades of the Borg wreaking havoc across three series, I think this is the first time someone has gone, “Hey, what if you actually try to be good.” With Seven as the example of a perfect Borg—someone who uses both her humanity and her connection to the collective to help the galaxy—the Queen actually considers Agnes’ suggestion. In exchange for La Sirena, the Borg Queen agrees to save Seven by reassimilating her.
Dr. Soong pursues Picard and Tallinn further into the château, which forces Picard to relive the last time he was in one particular room. After weeks (and honestly two seasons) of teasing Picard’s memories of his mother, we finally learned what happened to her. While caught in the throes of one of her mental health episodes, Picard’s mother hung herself, and he bore witness to her hanging from the rafters. As a child, he had locked that memory away as a trauma response, and now he has clarity on this point of pain. What’s so fascinating about him exploring these memories while being in the past, is that he is essentially fighting to save a future where this horrible thing happens to him.
Picard, Tallinn, Seven, Raffi, and Rios regroup outside the château and watch as the Borg Queen takes off with La Sirena. While there is still a lot of storytelling to explore, “Hide and Seek” ended with more closure than was anticipated, setting the scene for next week’s finale to be filled with surprises. With La Sirena in the Borg Queen’s hands, the crew is left stranded in 2024 with no way to get back to their own timeline, Q is still out there meddling with the past, and Dr. Soong didn’t seem done with his power play. It was announced that for the third and final season of Picard, several cast members from Star Trek: The Next Generation would be joining Stewart—signaling that the ramifications of this season must warrant a reunion. Will next week lay the groundwork? I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
At least now Rios can go back and see Teresa again since they’re not going back to the future anytime soon.
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The Borg Queen and some newly-assimilated drones capture La Sirena, Elnor makes a return (kind of), the story of Picard's mother ends with tragedy, Dr. Soong really is an evil bastard, Rios saves the day, but they still end up stranded without the ship, and I'm not quite sure what to make of this 'New Borg' thing.
Also, how are there going to be two Renées?
Much better than last week's episode, IMO. But there are lots of things to tie up in next week's season finale.
The watch party trial run with this episode worked out pretty well, so we're definitely on for the premiere of Strange New Worlds next week at 10 Eastern, 9 Central. I'll post a heads-up about it sometime before Thursday.
Such a good episode.
Rios makes up for being a twitterpated idiot, mostly.
We find out why Picard has never really been able to make a relationship work.
Agnes shows us that resistance might not be entirely futile.
And Raffi and Seven have finally stopped bickering, although now they're a bit saccharine. They really need to find a happy medium there.
Annie Wersching, who played the Borg Queen prior to Agnes's assimilation, has passed away at the age of 45. I thought she did an excellent job with the role.
I heard them say this is their last season. I didn't know they had a lot of the TNG players in this.
I think the storyline can easily be wrapped up in one more season. And yeah, I hear there will be quite a few TNG actors. I think they may be in post-production already, but I'm not sure.
Just a sad loss to the franchise. I think Annie had big shoes to fill, after Alice Krige, and she hit it out of the park.
It has to be in the can by now as it's set to be released on streaming Feb 16th.
Yes, I saw that on Facebook about half an hour after I posted.
And Susanna Thompson on Voyager, whom I could hardly tell apart from Alice Krige at the time.
Annie did well. It's a shame she passed so young.
Yes, Susanna did a great job, too. I just think Alice owned the role after First Contact.
Yeah, she did.
Ready for a few months of weekly Star Trek articles? It's about that time again.
Yes, please.
I've been ready for a while now.
That's so sad. I thought she was did a great job as the Borg Queen.