Picard 1x6 "The Impossible Box"

rating: ****

the story: Picard reaches the Artifact (Borg cube).

review: Such is the emerging interest in Picard itself (which for many fans is contrasting with their perceptions of Discovery, which isn't the case for me, as I like them both, and they're doing two entirely separate things) that fans are starting to hype up the relevance of its events.  With "The Impossible Box" I've seen a rash of articles explaining its relevance to Star Trek: First Contact, how it explains and reconciles Picard's mood from what we've typically seen from him.  But we knew this already, from "Family" and of course, "I, Borg," both of which tackle his emotional response to the events of "The Best of Both Worlds," and from other episodes as well ("The Drumhead," for instance).

But the idea that his time as Locutus continues to bother Picard, that it has in fact becoming a lingering bigotry for him, is perhaps something new.  "I, Borg" touched on it (this is the episode where we originally meet Hugh, of course), but Picard seemed to use it as a definitive turning point.  Instead, as First Contact and "Impossible Box" make clear, it was an experience he had much more difficulty forgetting, much less getting over.

The funny thing is, "Impossible Box" features this aspect of the story much less directly than Seven's role in "Stardust City Rag," which was allowed to create a whole deviation from the flow of the series, so that we didn't even visit the Artifact that episode.  "Impossible Box," meanwhile, is the point the season has been building toward since the first episode, in which Picard finally meets the other sister, Soji (the naming scheme of the sisters can't help but call to mind another Picard movie, Insurrection, at least for me, which might even have been intentional; in a sense Data found a "kid brother" in it), who herself is in the midst of both finding out the truth about her Romulan lover, and her own origins.

In that sense, "Impossible Box" is much more of a Soji episode than it is another Picard spotlight, which is the second episode in a row for that to happen, and only second in six episodes.  Picard's reaction to the Artifact becomes icing on the cake.  In a sense, it's wonderful parallel storytelling, which is something that can sometimes feel like a lost art in the new franchise paradigm (though Discovery attempted, perhaps too much, exactly that in its second season, in successive character arcs throughout the season).

One last note: In his second Picard appearance, Hugh a last gets to soak in his legacy, which was sort of robbed of him the first time.  Viewers were left to either recognize him or not.  Here the context is at the surface.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - I wonder if fans ever really ever tire of revisiting the Borg.
• series - A crucial turning point of the season.
• character - Soji manages to upstage a key moment for Picard.
• essential - All that, plus learning more about that elusive Borg Queen, which amounts to another of Star Trek's spectacular gateways.

notable guest-stars:
Jonathan Del Arco (Hugh)