Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Episode 3 Review: Seventeen Seconds
Diana Keng
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A feel-good adventure, Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Episode 3 is not.
It's always uncomfortable when Mom (Beverly) and Dad (JP) fight, but it may be even more painful when two icons like Riker and Picard clash as only long-time friends forced to work together again can.
As we watch our intrepid heroes hurtle towards the gravitational well at the heart of a bio-electric nebula anomaly, we can't help but empathize with Shaw's fate-baiting, "Anyone else want to throw more weird s--it at me?"
We have been through A LOT with Admiral Jean-Luc Picard since he returned to our screens on Star Trek: Picard Season 1 Episode 1 over three years ago.
If we've learned one thing, it is that very little of Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise-D exists. Still, if anyone knows the heart and soul of Jean-Luc Picard -- rank, be damned -- it's Dr. Beverly Crusher.
That being said, this Beverly Crusher -- frontier doctor, badass courier of aid to forgotten planets and plague-infected populations, and a woman making a second go at motherhood with yet another quirkily unique son -- bears only slight resemblance to the Enterprise's physician, dance instructor, and drama coach.
When Jack was on his way, I was terrified. All I knew was that if you’re the son of Jean-Luc Picard, there’s a target on your back. I lost my parents, then a husband, then my son Wesley, all to the same stars that own you. As a mother, your whole being is about protecting your child. I thought I could protect mine. I didn’t know if I could protect yours.
Beverly
Their reunion on the bridge of the Titan on Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Episode 2 -- their silent communication, their heart-felt understanding -- was a master class in emotive language.
But it was also a promise. A promise that there would be a difficult conversation that would attempt to span over twenty years of absence and willful secrets.
And there was no promise that it would go well.
Picard: You never thought if you had told me, it all might’ve been different?
Beverly: Jean-Luc, when the galaxy comes calling for you, you are not put upon by it. You love it. Don’t tell me you would’ve walked away.
I'm not sure I ever shipped Picard and Crusher back in the days before "shipping" was even a term. (If anything, I wanted Picard to go off with Vash.)
Jean-Luc and Beverly have a rich and layered history between them. Almost too much to contemplate embroiling them in an intimate relationship.
And what is it with Jean-Luc and the wives of dead friends? He was tight with Jack Crusher (the first) and was close with Zhaban. One would almost suspect something nefarious if it weren't obvious he had no designs on either woman before their respective husbands' demises.
I do hope Jack brings it up if he ever meets Laris, though. He seems like the type to name the elephant in the room.
Jack: In my time in this universe, I’ve always found one thing to be true. The bigger the legend, the more disappointing the reality.
Riker: We’re all faulty. Just human.
Jack: I heard he’s positronic.
Riker: He’s still the same man.
What is there to say about Picard and Beverly's discussion beyond how committed Stewart and McFadden were to authentically portraying both characters' hurt, angst, and regret?
Did Beverly do the right thing? From her perspective, absolutely yes. Wesley's proximity to Picard attracted The Traveler's attention, and then he was gone.
Beverly has always been a positive and reliable mother figure. She didn't have many obstacles with Wesley beyond keeping him with her on deployments and cautioning him from the usual star-faring escapades.
The situation with Jack has been an entirely new experience for her, especially now that they are being hunted.
Picard: I know nothing about this Vadic.
Beverly: No, neither do we. But that’s no bounty hunter’s ship. That’s a warship. With Jean-Luc Picard-sized enemies behind it.
And she did it alone. Cutting the ties to the old gang had to have been hard. Raising the boy to a man without a social network or people she felt safe contacting immeasurably challenging.
Still, she owns the choices she made.
You remember our shore leave on Casparia Prime? The waterfalls? A perfect day on borrowed time. They called you back early. That’s how it always was with us. There was always a clock. That day maybe more than any other because we both knew we were at the end.
Beverly
Beverly is a calm presence amid world-ending chaos. Considering his frenetic pacing, I suspect Jack relies on his mother's composure as much as Picard ever did.
Picard's thought process is fascinating. His belief that his relationship with Jack is irreparable is an absolute conclusion that the captain at Far Point wouldn't have come to, nor the captain who joked about hairlines on Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 7 Episode 22.
I don't think even think the admiral who sought to save Data's daughter or his own ancestor would've shut the door so quickly on the idea of fatherhood.
Riker: I thought I was losing him. My unborn son. His whole future flashed in front of my eyes.
Picard: And, in that moment, you became a father.
Riker: That’s right. And everything you’ve read in the books and the poems about fatherhood goes right out the window the moment you see your kid. He’s so, so small, and so fragile. You just know that you gotta take care of them at all costs. You’d burn the world to save them.
I'll admit that seeing him and Riker toasting Thaddeus's birth tugs many heartstrings, especially knowing the loss Riker and Deanna will suffer later.
The seventeen-second turbo lift parallel is a shade contrived, but I'll forgive the sweeping strokes of similarity in the name of narrative cohesion.
However, that leads us to the falling out of the Captain and his Number One, a role reversal that is initially a lot of fun but is inevitably unsustainable.
As Picard told Seven, he's never been one for taking orders.
Remove yourself from the bridge. You’ve just killed us all.
Riker
It's mystifying that no one predicts the Shrike using its portal device to redirect the Titan's weapons back on itself.
It's a tactical miscalculation I'm pretty sure Shaw would've been on immediately. It'll probably be the lead anecdote in his log if he survives traveling with the old men.
Lt. Mura: We’re losing visual on the stern.
Shaw: Send somebody down to look out the goddamn back window!
Intellectually, we know Picard survives the nebula. It's his show, after all, but I'll give props to the writers for creating a believably catastrophic scenario.
And all this just when we've drawn the two narratives together.
Changelings! Everywhere! On the Titan. On M'talas Prime. Raiding the Eleos. Probably watching Picard and Riker at Ten Forward. Basically, everyone who has given a soupçon of side-eye so far can be considered a Changeling.
Worf: In the past, the Changelings were a powerful enemy of the Federation, united in purpose. But when the Dominion War ended, there was a schism. A terrorist faction broke away, unwilling to accept defeat. I was contacted by a close friend within the Link, a man of honor. He informed me of this rogue group but if Starfleet were to acknowledge their existence…
Raffi: … we would be reigniting the Dominion War.
With Worf and Raffi headed to Daystrom and the Titan on a seemingly one-way trip into the heart of a hull-crushing nebula, our focus is still somewhat split, but the core story is fleshing out.
Will the Shrike swoop in to save the Titan? Is Jack Crusher worth that much to Vadic?
Can Worf keep Raffi on a healthy path of redemption? Does she actually need redemption?
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Diana Keng was a staff writer for TV Fanatic. She is a lifelong fan of smart sci-fi and fantasy media, an upstanding citizen of the United Federation of Planets, and a supporter of AFC Richmond 'til she dies. Her guilty pleasures include female-led procedurals, old-school sitcoms, and Bluey. She teaches, knits, and dreams big. Follow her on X.
