Star Trek: Picard might have had a few bumps along the way, but first season finale “Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2” is set to air this week and I can’t wait to see what happens. In an interesting twist, the core of Picard hasn’t been the titular captain, but rather Isa Briones’ Soji. She’s effectively Data’s daughter, and the first run has focused on her first discovering her Synthetic nature and then dealing with the information.
The penultimate episode ended with Picard and friends on a planet controlled by synthetics, which is about to be obliterated by a vast Romulan fleet. The synthetics see their only hope of survival as contacting a mysterious and powerful distant force, which will wipe out all organic life in the universe. As such, Soji is caught between her sympathies to her fellow Synthetics and the guidance of Picard.
This internal conflict looks to come to a head in the final episode. In a newly-released clip, we see Soji visiting a captive Picard. She says that the Synthetics see no other choice, and will not simply accept death at the hands of the Romulans. Picard counters with the extremely Picardish line “To say you have no choice is a failure of imagination.”
Writer Akiva Goldsman recently teased what to expect from the episode, saying the following:
As hopefully is the case for all good beginnings, everything is in motion, all the critical players are on the board. And now we are going to see what we like to see, which is who wins, who loses, or in this case: who lives and who dies?
Due to the show being titled Picard and the fact that there are two more seasons to come, I’m pretty sure Picard himself is going to make it. Plus, given that Soji thought she was human up until a few days ago, I’m also sure she’ll end up siding with him in the moral quandary. But here’s hoping Star Trek: Picard sticks the landing in its finale. Despite more than a few duff episodes, it’s been a nice nostalgia trip for the days of The Next Generation and has shown us some really neat sides of the Trek universe.
