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Feb 20, 2020 · Stardust City Rag: Directed by Jonathan Frakes. With Patrick Stewart, Alison Pill, Evan Evagora, Michelle Hurd. The La Sirena crew reach Freecloud and find Bruce Maddox in a precarious situation, so Seven of Nine, the ex-Borg they recently picked up, lends her assistance.
- (5.3K)
- Action, Adventure, Drama
- Jonathan Frakes
- 2020-02-20
Feb 20, 2020 · In a swanky lounge, Mr. Vup (Dominic Burgess) — a giant, unfriendly lizard man referred to later as a “sentient reptiloid” — tells crime boss Bjayzl (Necar Zadegan) that Bruce Maddox (John Ales) is...
- Nick Schager
- 6 min
Feb 20, 2020 · A recap of ‘Stardust City Rag,’ episode 5 of season 1 of Star Trek: Picard on CBS All Access.
- Contributor
Feb 20, 2020 · Star Trek: Picard Episode 5. If last week’s episode championed radical honesty (at least on the surface level), “Stardust City Rag” was all about the lies we tell ourselves and one...
- Resistance is futile as Seven of Nine ups Picard’s game.
- Star Trek: Picard Photos
- Star Trek: Picard - The Essential Treks to Take Before the Show
- Verdict
- Star Trek: Picard Episode 5 Review
- More Reviews by Scott Collura
- IGN Recommends
By Scott Collura
Updated: Feb 27, 2020 5:22 pm
Posted: Feb 20, 2020 2:00 pm
Full spoilers follow for this episode.
Still, it’s a striking and emotional scene, as Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine bursts in, phasers firing, only to find she’s too late to save her “child.” Back on Star Trek: Voyager, Seven formed a bond with the young man, as they had both escaped the Borg Collective, and it’s a nice play on continuity to bring him back into the fold here, even if it’s just to give Seven some revenge-based motivation on the new series.
This episode was written by Picard co-creator/supervising producer Kirsten Beyer, who has also penned an array of Voyager novels, and directed by Jonathan Frakes himself, so it’s no surprise that it would be particularly steeped in the details of Trek history. For in addition to reintroducing us to Seven -- and introducing her to her fellow ex-Borg Picard for the first time -- this is also the episode where we’re finally reunited with the Next Generation minor player Bruce Maddox, after the show spent the past four weeks talking about him.
Maddox has been recast as well (he’s now played by John Ales, who replaces Next Gen actor Brian Brophy), which seems sort of appropriate since much of this episode is about disguises. It starts with the Picard Squad donning disguises -- some more outlandish than others -- for a heist-style story, and also includes Seven disguising what she’s really up to on two different occasions.
The big draw of this episode of course is seeing Jean-Luc and Seven finally interact, and these scenes pay off as the philosophies of the two iconic characters clash in the brave new world of Star Trek: Picard. It seems Seven’s Fenris Rangers have taken it upon themselves to hold the former Romulan Neutral Zone together as best they can in the chaotic aftermath of the supernova, whereas Picard, after resigning from Starfleet, essentially turned tail and went home. It’s not hard to see why Seven has a chip on her soldier when she meets Picard.
Both actors, Stewart and Ryan, meld perfectly together; Ryan is completely believable as this latter-day version of Seven, more human and yet still always struggling with her Borg side. And while the pair’s ultimate connection -- that very Borg-ness -- isn’t directly dwelled upon initially, it does become a linchpin of their relationship by episode’s end in the hour’s finest scene.
“After they brought you back from your time in the Collective, did you honestly feel that you regained your humanity?” she asks him. He responds yes, and she counters with “All of it?” To which Picard must admit, “No. But we’re both working on it, aren’t we?” “Every damned day of my life,” she answers.
Questions and Notes from the Q Continuum:
•“Are we still pretending?”
•Voyager gets a name drop, though we have no idea what happened to the rest of her crew.
•It turns out that since Seven was assimilated at a young age, she is still full of Borg implants, unlike someone like Picard who could be de-Borgified much easier apparently.
•Some fans were complaining last week that Seven should be going by her human name of Annika now, but it seems clear that she gave up that name after Icheb’s death and other troubling experiences as part of the Fenris Rangers.
•Easter eggs abound on Freecloud, including signs for Mr. Mot and Quark’s!
Star Trek: Picard benefits greatly from the arrival of Jeri Ryan and Seven of Nine this week, offering some terrific interplay between Ryan and Patrick Stewart. The gambling planet Freecloud provides the perfect backdrop for an amusing heist-style change of pace for the Picard Squad, and the bigger storyline also seemed to make some progress after weeks of a slow crawl -- even while skipping the Soji/Narek/Artifact stuff felt like a relief.
For more on “Stardust City Rag,” listen to Scott Collura's Transporter Room 3 podcast review here.
Review scoring
great
Resistance is futile as Seven of Nine ups Picard’s game.
Scott Collura
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Mar 30, 2020 · Finally arriving at Freecloud, the crew of the La Sirena hatches a plan to extract Bruce Maddox from the clutches of Bjayzl, the woman who poisoned his drink – and the head of a powerful Stardust...
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Feb 20, 2020 · Episode 5 of Picard begins on the Planet Vergessen 15 years ago. Seven arrives to save her friend from being tortured but it's too late, he succumbs to his injuries and as she apologises, she blasts him in the stomach to save him from the pain.
