Season 1, Episode 8: ‘Broken Pieces’

Man, “Star Trek: Picard” is dark. That is the thought that kept running through my head during this week’s episode. There have been other dark moments throughout the series — but this is the episode when the darkness really stood out. From the start of the episode — when several Romulans stand in a circle, go insane and commit suicide — to Admiral Clancy’s randomly telling Picard to shut up with an unnecessary expletive, I kept thinking that this is a grim world Picard inhabits — and a much different one than the franchise creator, Gene Roddenberry, had in mind decades ago.

But we are what is in front of us. And when Soji meets Rios for the first time, he has a moment of confusion and seemingly, panic. We finally get a bit of Rios’s back story and his history with a former captain, Alonzo Vandermeer — a father figure in his life. And filed under “What an Incredible Coincidence”: In a past life, Rios and Vandermeer picked up “a diplomatic mission out of nowhere” with two passengers. Vandermeer eventually murdered these two based on a directive from Starfleet and then killed himself, an incident that Rios covered up.

Remarkable, the two ended up being synths. Thank goodness that Rios happened to be hired as the pilot for a synth-related mission for Picard!

The uniting characteristic of the La Sirena crew is that all of them withdraw in times of deep discomfort, except, perhaps, for Picard. They are also all fundamentally broken human beings, as the episode’s title suggests. But in this showing, the members make an effort to look after one another: Raffi shows a compassionate side in dealing with Rios’s heartbreak (just as he did with her when she was rejected by her son). Soji is sympathetic toward Jurati, even though Jurati has orders to kill her and previously murdered her father. The crew recognizes that they are kindred spirits, having started off as distrusting strangers.