Yesterday’s sixth episode of Star Trek: Picard season 1 saw a surprising romance blossom between two of the crew members of La Sirena. In previous installments, there hadn’t been any hint of a relationship stirring between any of the characters, but things suddenly started getting steamy in space this week, in the episode titled “The Impossible Box.”
While killing time as the ship made its way to the ex-Borg Cube the Artifact, Christobel Rios (Santiago Cabrera) was playing a bit of soccer by himself when a distressed Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill) came to seek him out. “Why do you like space?” she asks him. “It’s cold, it’s empty, and it wants to kill you.” Before the brooding pilot can answer properly, Jurati pulls him in for a kiss. She then hesitates over whether this is the right thing to do. but ultimately expresses how she feels “hollow, hopeless” and “lonely, afraid.” She then kisses Rios again and leads him away towards the bedroom.
On the one hand, this is simply surprising as there hadn’t been any romantic tension previously shared between the pair, so we weren’t expecting this development. Even more than that, though, we weren’t prepared for the romance as Jurati is a traitor. Episode 5 ended with her killing her partner and former lover Bruce Maddox, decreeing that she must atone for her role in the creation of Soji and Dahj, Data’s daughters. We can assume, then, that she’s in league with the secret anti-synthetic society Zhat Vash.
Jurati isn’t evil, though, and her moment of vulnerability with Rios shows how conflicted and deeply troubled she is by her treachery. However, she may end up using her romance with him for her own ends. She may even try to recruit him to her cause or else manipulate his position as captain to usurp command away from Picard and stop his planned rescue mission.
Star Trek: Picard continues next Thursday, March 5th with episode 1×07 “Nepenthe” on CBS All Access.
