With an instalment sillier than the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season four’s Our Man Bashir and season seven’s Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang combined, the Star Trek: Picard episode Stardust City Rag sees our heroes finally arrive on Freecloud. The series, with an episode that highlights great action shots, well-executed special effects, and cinematography worthy of the big screen, takes us undercover in one of the most dangerous parts of the universe. No one should beam down to Freecloud alone.

Whilst the Freecloud club where the on-planet action takes place isn’t exactly Vic Fontaine’s Las Vegas Lounge, the atmosphere is perfect for a double-cross worthy of the Rat Pack’s 1960 film Ocean’s 11. Less so with Elnor (Evan Evagora), the undercover operation requires retired Admiral Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Cristóbal Rios (Santiago Cabrera) to adopt new legends to conceal their true identities.

Armin Shimerman as Quark in “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”

Rios’s flamboyant costume, possibly more fitting of the legendary John Inman, possess as a Facer. When Mr Vup (Dominic Burgess) mentioned Mr Quark (Armin Shimerman) of Ferenginar, given my obsession with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, it felt like a nice touch.

Is there a more suitable person, given Quark’s history, to provide Rios with the references he needed? Quark engaged in numerous shady dealings when aboard DS9.

Rois apparent helped Quark with his Breen problem. The Breen, even though we might first think of ST:DS9, is a species that showed up in various Star Trek series.

Dr Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill) remained aboard the unregistered La Sirena to handle transporting the heroes off the surface. Using Seven (Jeri Ryan) as bait, the objective was to rescue Bruce Maddox (John Ales).

Trekkies will recall Maddox from the Star Trek: The Next Generation season two episode The Measure of a Man. I must admit I would have liked to have seen Brian Brophy reprise his role as Maddox from ST:TNG. I guess that wasn’t possible. As earlier Star Trek: Picard episodes referenced Maddox, given his connection to Commander Data (Brent Spiner), there were clear hopes of seeing something substantial.

Momentarily, as Jurati reviews archival footage, we see Maddox explaining to the doctor why it is he prefers to replicate ingredients for making chocolate chip cookies rather than have the replicator fashion the treat.

Image Credit; IMDb.com

In some ways, not completely, it’s a reminder of how Dr Leonard H. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) didn’t like using the transporter. In the ST:TNG series premiere, Encounter at Farpoint, Data was tasked with flying a shuttlecraft to take the then Admiral Leonard McCoy from the USS Enterprise-D to a Federation starbase.

Clint Howard as Balok in “Star Trek”

Did you see Bajayzel (Necar Zadegan) offer Maddox a glass of Tranya? Trekkies well-versed with the original series will recall this is the same beverage Balok (Clint Howard) offers Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), Commander Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and McCoy in the Star Trek first season episode The Corbonite Maneuver. It’s a fleeting moment which most people will have missed.

With what happened to Icheb (Manu Intiraymi), post-Star Trek: Voyager, considering Seven had started to think of him as a son, it’s not surprising she would seek revenge. The importance of Intiraymi’s Star Trek: Voyager character can’t be understated. There was a connection that transcended friendship.

After the USS Voyager finally made it back to the Alpha Quadrant, Icheb pursued a career in Starfleet. That career ended with his murder some 13-years prior to Star Trek: Picard. The way the character dies is horrifyingly painful.

If you seriously thought Seven was going to let Bajayzel live, recalling what happened to Icheb, that would have been a mistaken assumption.

Speaking of painful moments, in a poignant subplot, we discover why it is Raffi Musiker (Michelle Hurd) was so desperate to get to Freecloud. With his pregnant Romulan wife, her son is on Freecloud. The mother/son reunion didn’t go well. Because she had placed her Starfleet career ahead of family concerns, he wasn’t interested in seeing his mother.

The cookie ingredients clip shows a significantly different side to the Maddox we previously saw in ST:TNG. It’s a likeably Maddox. The Maddox we saw in The Measure of a Man was focused entirely on his work. We didn’t get to see what he was like beyond his Starfleet uniform. This was probably deliberate because we weren’t supposed to like the character.

In Stardust City Reg, even though Maddox’s scenes were fleeting, there is an ineffable quality to Ales’s performance which makes the character his own. Consequently, because of how little we see on Maddox, there is an undeniable disappointment in the character’s death. Even though I’d like to say I didn’t see Maddox’s death coming, considering how the Picard/Maddox scene aboard La Sirena had been set up, there is an obvious looming threat from an unexpected direction.

Welcome to The Ready Room …