Picard’s search for Bruce Maddox takes a detour to the planet Vashti, where Starfleet relocated 250,000 Romulan refugees 14 years earlier.

There’s still a lot of backstory to fill in but I’m not sure that the pre-credit sequence to each episode has to be a flashback. This time we’ve gone back 14 years to Vashti where Picard (dressed like the Man from Del Monte) is received by the locals as a hero, and spends time with young, displaced orphan Elnor. Coming back up to date, Jean-Luc wants to make a return visit to the planet (this could be his last opportunity) to reconcile with the abandoned child and build his crew.

Once again, Picard’s fallibility comes to the fore – why did he not research what it was like on Vashta now? There’s still the hubris that he was called out on in episode 2, and he could easily have been killed by the local mob if Elnor (a Lord of the Rings elf-alike played by Evan Agoria) hadn’t stepped in and performed a hasty decapitation. And there’s another secret Romulan organisation – warrior nuns called the Qowat Milat.

Back on the Borg Artefact, the awkward romantic relationship between Soji and Narek has progressed to sliding along corridors, though the Jeff Russo love theme suggests they’re closer than they are, and the way-too-inappropriate sister Narissa is losing her patience with her brother’s progress.

Over on La Sirena we get to meet two more holographic versions of Rios (a hospitality variant and Emmet the Spanish-speaking weapons expert). I’ve no idea if this running gag will continue, but it’s fun for now. Jurati and Rios have some zippy dialogue, Raffi is still very wound-up, and an old Trekker like me had great fun with with the return of a legacy spaceship. Erstwhile Riker, Jonathan Frakes, makes hay with Michael Chabon’s script, and what a great cliffhanger, though somewhat foreshadowed by the opening credits.

Verdict: Not quite firing on all cylinders, it’ll be good to have an instalment that looks forwards rather dwelling so much in the past, this is still a handsome-looking show with some great characters and an intriguing central narrative. 7/10

Nick Joy