Star Trek: Picard - S3 E5 - "Imposters"
March 16, 2023
‘Star Trek: Picard’ Season 3 Episode 5 Recap: Old Friends Deliver Fighting Chances
An unexpected face from 'The Next Generation' turns up to give Picard a fighting chance against the Changelings.
With Vadic (Amanda Plummer) and the Shrike far behind them, one might assume that Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the crew of the U.S.S. Titan are finally on the path to safety in the fifth episode of Star Trek: Picard’s final season, but that isn’t the case. The full scale of the Changelings' plot begins to come into focus in the aptly titled “Imposters,” and no one could have predicted just how widespread the danger is—both near and far.
The episode, directed by Dan Liu and written by Cindy Appel and Chris Derrick, opens quite serenely with the bridge crew of the Titan making preparations to get the starship back into working order after their near-death stint in the nebula, but the peace is quickly shattered when a Starfleet uniform-clad Jack Crusher (Ed Speleers) steps onto the bridge to murder everyone. Luckily, for everyone involved, this terrifying episode is just a nightmare, but when Jack awakens from it, he is clutching a blaster, which suggests that maybe, just maybe, there’s something very real—and very wrong—at play. To his credit, Jack seems rightfully disturbed by the situation, but after two episodes of ominous red doors and creepy voices, Star Trek: Picard seems to be making a point that there’s something larger at play here for Jack. Just when it seems like he may be past this weird incident, his eyes turn red and that same creepy voice whispers: “Jack, come home.”
Elsewhere aboard the Titan, Picard, Riker (Jonathan Frakes), Seven (Jeri Ryan), and Captain Shaw (Todd Stashwick) convene to discuss the Changeling situation aboard the ship. After Riker hands control back over to Shaw, Shaw reveals that he already took the liberty of contacting Starfleet to report everything that has happened, including their misdeeds. He asks Seven if she wants to face the music reinstated, and she doesn’t even hesitate to ask to be reinstated. Picard vows to bear the brunt of the punishment since he was the one that orchestrated the whole takeover, and Shaw seems mightily pleased with the prospect that Picard might finally have to pay for his actions.
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Sorry I'm late with posting this (been busy), but what an episode!
I can't decide if the new Intrepid is cool or dumb.
That engineering section is certainly strange looking, and is that supposed to be a rear-facing deflector? I wonder if there's a new U.S.S. Voyager that looks like this as well? Voyager was Intrepid Class back in the day.
It was great to see Ro again, but sad to see her go so soon.
Worf's criminal search results had some fun callbacks to earlier shows – Morn from DS9, Brunt from DS9, and Okana from TNG. But why is Morn on that list? Is he supposed to be a criminal now? Wasn't he royalty on Luria in DS9? I though he was a good guy.
Kirk Acevedo plays the criminal Vulcan, Krinn, but he'll always be Joe Toye from Band of Brothers to me.
What I thought was a continuity error last week turns out to be an intentional plot development – Changelings can form real blood and organs now... or something. Not sure if I'm satisfied with how they tried to explain that.
And whatever is going on with Jack, it makes him a total badass. Four Changelings at once!
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So, Changelings are everywhere and can't be discerned from humans, even by a medical scan.
Starfleet is compromised! Trust no one!
I love it. This is getting good.
I loved this episode. Worf and Raffi. The re-introduction of Ro, her sacrifice, and the fact that she and Picard saw eye to eye at the end. The Changelings. Jack taking on the Changelings.
Shaw is maybe a bit too smug, but it's hard to argue with his assessment of their, as he puts it, "chicken and egg problem."
Shaw is still a dick, but I have to admit he's growing on me a little. At least he's on the right side.
I actually can appreciate his sense of humor, even when he's being a dick. I have to say, Trek writers in the past could be a bit iffy when they tried to do humor, IMO. But the moments that were meant to be funny in Picard and SNW have pretty much all worked.
Didn't Sisko from DS9 start his "emissary" status by seeing a door with light leaking around it? Are Jack's dreams any tie back to the wormhole and the lines "connect us" are a plea to bring the Changlings from the wormhole back with the renegades?
Now I'm gonna have to go back and rewatch DS9 to see.
I'm pretty sure the start of an orb experience was usually just a shot of a glowing orb, but sometimes they showed the box containing one slowly opening with light coming through. So yeah, maybe.
You might really be onto something there. Maybe one of the bad wormhole aliens has occupied his body like in DS9's "The Reckoning." Jake's eyes turned red when the Pah Wraith took him over in that episode, and Jack's eyes turned red after his vision/nightmare in the beginning of this one.
Jack Crusher in this episode...
Jake Sisko in "The Reckoning", Maybe a bit hard to see, but his eyes are red...
It couldn't be one of the good wormhole aliens, because the one that occupied Kira turned her eyes blue, when normally they're brown.
The Pah Wraiths probably want revenge on the Federation as much as the rogue Changelings do, so I'm not sure why one would be running from and/or attacking the Changelings. Unless maybe the Changelings are trying to capture the Pah Wraith.
Maybe that's the other thing they stole from the Daystrom Institute. Maybe Daystrom also had a Pah Wraith orb under lock and key, and the Changelings stole it along with the portal weapon. And then Jack, being somewhat shady, might have stolen it from the Changelings when it was in transport or something, and a Pah Wraith got into him when he opened the box and looked at it. That would explain why the Changelings are after him. Maybe they want to use the Pah Wraith to kill Sisko inside the wormhole or something.
Holy crap! We might have just figured this out!
Good call, man!
Now that I've thought about it some more, I don't remember any Pah Wraith orbs in DS9. Maybe what Daystrom had was something like the artifact that Dukat broke open to release a Pah Wraith in "Tears of the Prophets".
So I finally got around to catching up on the last two eps and I have to say that they don't disappoint. I was rather bummed that they killed off Ro so quickly but I was glad to see that Warf was alive and well. I don't dislike Shaw. He is a dick for sure, but he knows common sense when he sees it.
As for the wormhole beings, being behind the red eyes, I don't think so. Jack seems to be infected with something a bit more sinister than that. His visions are not good, and the wormhole beings are very centered.
Not being able to identify changelings is a huge problem ( I know I am stating the obvious), but maybe their lack of DNA (Dr. Crusher noted that although it looked like blood, it had no DNA), is why they didn't want to use the transporter to get onto the Titan.
This is going to be a really interesting ride!
I could of course be wrong about the whole thing, but I've been speculating about the Pah Wraiths, the evil wormhole aliens, not the ones the Bajorans called the Prophets. Do you remember the DS9 episode where a Pah Wraith took over Keiko's body and used her to try to destroy the other wormhole aliens? She looked perfectly normal and no one suspected anything for most of the episode except for the Chief, but the wraith revealed itself to him. That's the kind of thing I'm guessing is going on with Jack, especially considering how much other stuff from DS9 has been included in this season. Still, it's just a guess and could be wrong.
So I looked into those evil wormhole aliens, and they seemed to be banished to the Fire Caves on Bajor. Now I don't know if that makes them more accessible to others, hence Jack could harbor one or more, or not, since they never mention going near Bajor. That being said, there are enough hints about Bajor, especially with Ro showing up. How this ties in with the shapeshifters would be interesting.