How can the producers of Picard wrap everything up? They have so much going on… so many stories and characters involved. I figured that Episode 8 must have to be the start of the end. And from the very beginning, it was. “Broken Pieces” got us closer to solving some of the riddles that the series posed.
We start the program surging through the galaxy (14 years ago), stopping in a solar system with eight stars (which is known as an octonary system). The narrator of our voyage is Commodore Oh, and she shares with us that their foremothers came to that system to solve the mystery of the Eightfold Stars. They found a data warehouse of memories from a dead civilization.
The camera resolves on Aia, the “Grief World.” A bunch of Romulan nuns (or something similar) stand around a glowing disc, suspended in the air. Oh said that there was a warning of death from the skies, called the “Admonition.” When the foremothers endured the Admonition, the Zhat Vash was created.
Oh walked around the others who wore the same cloak that she did. And, by the way, Rizzo was there, as was Ramdha. Oh said that fort hundreds of years, the Zhat Vash made sure that the Destroyer never returned. She then showed them an apocalyptic future so terrible that many of them killed themselves on the spot.

One cool part was a vision of an Android (or robot, which sort of looked like Sunny from the film “I, Robot”) that faded into the face of Commander Data.
Rizzo was the only one of them who remained standing after the vision was over.
“We have to stop them,” said Rizzo.
“We will,” said Oh, who said they’d start on Mars. Rizzo went over to help Ramdha, who she called “Auntie.” Ramdha just finished pulling out her hair and was whimpering on the dirt.
Then, we rejoin Rizzo in the present, as she stands by Ramdha’s bedside on the Cube. Rizzo said that there is no reason why she should be so sick.
“It was folly, taking in me and Narek after our parents died,” said Rizzo. “And sheer madness submitting yourself to Admonishment.” She looked down and noted that the Borg chose the wrong ship to assimilate when they chose the one Ramdha was aboard.

She then asked if her people had found “the freak.” They said they had, and that he was hiding in Hugh’s old office.
When they attacked Elnor, they used a shock grenade to stun him, but he was still able to repel their assault. When they pinned him to the floor (after a struggle), Seven burst in — phaser rifle blazing. Together, they beat the Romulans. She asked Elnor where Hugh was, but instead of an answer, she got a big sloppy hug from Elnor.
On the La Sirena, Rios took one look at Soji and felt dizzy. Picard spoke to him, but his words echoed in Rios’ mind. Picard finally broke through the haze and told Rios that he needed a secure subspace link to Starfleet Command. He also ordered Rios to lay in a course to Deep Space 12.
“I will lay in a course to Deep Space 12, but after that, you’re on your own Picard,” he said as he walked off. Looking at Soji shook up Captain Rios.
NOTE: It will be very cool to see another “Deep Space” station. Of course, I have DS9 in my mind, but that was an old Cardassian design. Will a standard DS station look like the classic Starfleet “mushroom?” Guess we’ll find out.
Soji turned to Picard and asked if he was still taking her home. He said that he was, but since they now faced this powerful enemy, he needed help. Picard told her that she had no choice but to trust him.
Raffi introduced herself to Soji and said that Picard had already brought them one “homicidal double agent.” Picard was confused. Raffi called him a fool, and he apologized to Soji for the “rudeness.”
“I will lay in a course to Deep Space 12, but after that, you’re on your own Picard,” he said as he walked off. Looking at Soji shook up Captain Rios.
She picked up a phaser and pointed it at Soji.
“A neuron,” said Raffi. “That’s all you know about her!” She said that Picard built the fantasy of redemption out of one “piss-ant little neuron.” Raffi explained to Picard about Agnes’ betrayal (as seen last episode). Raffi said she was a Romulan spy.
“Fact or theory?” Picard asked.
“Theory,” Raffi shrugged. “We think she killed Bruce Maddox.” That got Picard’s attention.
They went to the sickbay to visit Agnes, who was still not conscious. The EMH explained to Picard how she injected herself in an attempt to destabilize the tracker.
Picard and Raffi quibbled over Agnes’ intentions. Whether she was a spy or someone who was an unwitting accomplice with the Tal Shar. The EMH said that Maddox did not have to die. He explained how she killed Maddox. Picard tried to explain away everything. Raffi pressed him, challenging him to tell them what Soji is really like. He couldn’t answer.
Later, Picard met with Admiral Clancy (yes, that one), in his holostudy. She admitted that he was onto something. He argued for a squadron, and would not let her get a word in. Finally, after trying to have her say, she exploded.
“Admiral Picard, with all due respect, and at long last — shut the fuck up!” she said. “I’m sending a squadron to rendezvous with you at DS12. Now stay put until they get there!”
On the bridge, Raffi quizzed the Irish navigation hologram (named Enoch) about Agnes and how she killed Maddox. Enoch said that after Maddox laid in the course to DS12, he turned on the holograms and went to his quarters. Raffi asked Enoch why Rios was so spooked by Soji.
Enoch was not sure, but when he searched the records, he found that her name was Jana, but little more. She asked Enoch about the drawings of the octonary system, which the Romulans were drawing back on the Cube.
The holo said that there were records in old Romulan records, but they don’t appear to be accurate. Raffi said that she always assumed the “Conclave of Eight” was eight people who were part of the conspiracy. But now it must mean that it’s the place they met, she surmised. She told Enoch that he was her favorite holo.
On the Cube, Rizzo found where Seven had shot one of her Romulans. She picked up the Fenris Rangers tag that Elnor used to call Seven, and Rizzo put it all together.

At the same time, Seven and Elnor entered the Queencell. She activated it, and the Cube began to regenerate. Rizzo realized what was happening and planned to jettison the clones into space. Rizzo said that she would need to take care of the xBs herself.
NOTE: It was a very interesting thing to see the Cube regenerate. It looked like a million lightning bugs crawling over it. In the TNG days, parts sort of pushed out and back into place when it was regenerating. This effect was much more plausible.
On the La Sirena, Picard ate with Soji, who told him that she didn’t know anything about herself. Picard empathized and said that she did have a real past and a story. She asked if he meant Data, and he agreed. Picard said Data was brave, curious, and unbiased.
“He made us all laugh, except when he was trying to make us laugh,” Picard said of Data.
Soji said that Picard loved Data. Picard agreed. She asked if Data loved him.
“Data’s capacity for expressing and processing emotion was limited,” said Picard. “I suppose we had that in common.”
She said that Data loved him. Then they ate.
“He made us all laugh, except when he was trying to make us laugh,” Picard said of Data.
Raffi spoke to another holo, the Scottish one named Ian, who was the Emergency Engineering Hologram. She was looking for the real Rios. Ian said that he was in his quarters, hiding from Soji. Ian said that Soji brought back bad memories, but could not answer where Rios knew Soji from.
NOTE: It was a cool effect for whenever the holos were accessing data. They looked away, and it was as if a screen of information passed over their eyes.
Before she left him, Raffi asked Ian if he knew what the odds were of an octonary star system happening in nature. Ian said, “close to nil.” Raffi said that someone, then, would have had to capture eight suns and moved them into formation.
NOTE: When looking back at other past encounters, the Enterprise-D met a remnant from the Tkon Empire, in the episode The Last Outpost, who was supposed to possess the power to move stars. Could they be involved in this?
She asked why someone would want to move a star. Ian said, “to show off.” Raffi said that it could be to leave a message or warning.
Raffi rushed back into her quarters and tried to order some wine from her replicator. Each time, she was unable (the device made an angry buzz). Just then, a third holo appeared, the American sounding “hospitality” holo. She asked him what was wrong with Rios. The holo said that he could use someone to talk to, someone who did not look exactly like him (not a holo).
The holo explained that when Rios bought the La Sirena, he selected a “self-scan option,” which made copies of himself as holograms. He told her that Rios probably needed someone to confide in.
In his cabin, Rios was drunk, and he opened up an old cigar case full of memories. The one big thing he pulled out was a photo of himself with his old captain, Alonzo Vandermeer. And yeah, this was big too… an illustration of him with SOJI. WOW!

Raffi rang on his door, and he told her to “piss off.”
Back on the Cube…
CORRECTION: Remember a few episodes back when I said that the producers changed the way the Cube looked on the inside? I think I was wrong. I guess the white light everywhere meant that the Cube was not “active.” When we see the Borg and Cube after Seven took command, everything is green.
Elnor told Seven to wake up the sleeping Borg, who could help them defeat the Romulans. She said they’d be useless without the Collective. She said she could make a micro-collective on the Cube to beat the Romulans. Elnor was pleased. Seven lashed out a bit, explaining what it would mean to the sleeping Borg to be part of a collective again.
“You can release them when we win,” said Elnor.
“They won’t want to be released and I … I might not want to release them,” said Seven.
NOTE: That reminded me of the scene in The Fellowship of the Ring where Frodo tried to give the ring to Lady Galadriel, and she suddenly turned into a dark and evil power. Galadriel resisted the temptation of the ring… could Seven resist the power of the Collective?
Back on the ship, Raffi gathered all five of Rios’ holograms together in Picard’s office for a meeting. As soon as she got them talking about Jana and Rios, their eyes flickered with information, and they could not remember anything. They all agreed that she had something to do with his time on the ibn Majid and Captain Vandermeer.

Emmet (the Spanish holo) told her that Vandermeer killed himself. The EMH said that after Vandermeer died, Rios had a breakdown, which is why he was discharged from Starfleet.
In sickbay, Agnes came to as Picard sat on her bedside. He told her that the tracking mechanism was now dead, and they were no longer being tracked by the Tal Shiar. They were en route to DS12. He told her that when they arrived, she would turn herself in for the murder of Bruce Maddox. She agreed.
He asked her why she killed Maddox. Agnes told him that Oh did something to her brain the day they met on Okinawa.
“The coming of Seb Cheneb, The Destroyer,” said Soji. “Me.”
“She put poison in my mind, Picard,” said Agnes. She described the mind-meld experience and the scene she saw. She said that Oh also put in a “psychic block” to prevent Agnes from talking about the situation.
Agnes asked Picard if he believed in Hell. He scoffed. She said that she didn’t believe in Hell until now and that she considered suicide daily. She said that the memories were not Oh’s, but from thousands of centuries in the past. Due to the hubris of beings like Maddox, organic life was at a threshold, and unless they acted quickly, synthetic life would destroy them all.
“Hell will come again?” Picard asked. Agnes nodded in agreement. Picard asked what the threshold was. Soji walked in.
“The coming of Seb Cheneb, The Destroyer,” said Soji. “Me.”
Back in Rios’ room, Raffi entered and made him some coffee. She quizzed him about Vandermeer. Rios said that he used to think of him as a father figure. Rios told the story of when they encountered a diplomatic ship in the Vayt Sector. Their names were Beautiful Flower and Jana. They dined together, and then Vandermeer killed them both, just before killing himself.
“It was a black flag directive, straight from Starfleet Security,” said Rios. He added that Vandermeer said if he disobeyed, then the ibn Majid would be destroyed. Rios said that he went after Vandermeer “pretty hard,” which was when the captain killed himself. Rios said then he covered it up, and within six months he was out of Starfleet.
At the same time, Agnes quizzed Soji on eating, breathing, and other related bodily functions. Agnes gushed and asked about the “constellation” of moles on her cheek. She giggled whenever Soji gave another interesting detail about herself. But when Soji asked if she was a “person,” Agnes stopped smiling.
“Commodore Oh ordered you to kill me too,” stated Soji. “I would never give you the opportunity.”
“Now that I’ve met you, I would never take it,” said Agnes.
On the Cube, Rizzo was killing xBs wherever she saw them. Seven saw that the Borg lights were “going out” each time Rizzo killed an xB. She connected herself to the Cube (through Matrix-like cables in her spine), and her eyes turned green, then black.

“WE ARE BORG,” said all Borg on the Cube, including Seven.
NOTE: YIKES! This was a crazy moment. Like I said before, now that she had the power, would she be able to give it up?
Rizzo had the sides of the Cube opened up as to suck into space the just-activated drones. Seven screamed but seemed unable to stop this.
Meanwhile, Soji walked Agnes out of sickbay to join the rest of the crew. Rios, Raffi, and Picard all looked at her with disgust.
“Well,” she said. “I’m done murdering people. So, that’s a good thing. When we get to Deep Space 12, I’m going to turn myself in.”
She sobbed an apologized. Rios got Soji a peppermint milkshake and some French fries from the replicator. She was shocked that he knew what she liked. Then they all listened to Raffi as she broke down what was going on:
“Well,” she said. “I’m done murdering people. So, that’s a good thing. When we get to Deep Space 12, I’m going to turn myself in.”
They spoke about the threshold, which Rios compared to when the Vulcans made first contact with humans after Zefram Cochrane broke the warp barrier.
- Someone moved suns into a pattern thousands of years back
- They put a planet in the middle
- On the planet, they place a warning — The Admonition
- The warning was about synthetic life, which evolved
“When you cross that line, somebody shows up,” Rios said.
“Somebody really bad,” said Agnes.
The Romulans created the Zhat Vash to guard against this threshold. Between 30 and 40 years ago, Dr. Soong started to create androids like Data, Lore, and others. That’s when they sent a half Romulan, half-Vulcan spy into Starfleet (Oh), to infiltrate and subvert the development of the androids. Oh engineered the attack on Mars with the Romulans.
Rios then recounted his tale of meeting Jana and Beautiful Flower, which Soji seemed to know all about. She was puzzled to know this information, but Rios was not. That’s how he knew which foods she liked.
Jana and Mr. Flower have been searching for this world, which was created by Bruce Maddox after the ban. Soji got really mad and smashed the table they were all seated at when she realized that the Romulans used her to find the planet.
Soji ran to the bridge of the La Sirena and started plotting a course. Rios and Raffi were trapped outside, by a force field Soji erected. Soji brought up a map of the Borg’s transwarp conduit network.
NOTE: That’s cool! Did we know the Borg had such a thing?
Soji said that once she heard about the ban and the ibn Majid, she ‘suddenly’ seemed to know all sorts of things. While she was working, Rios used a song to override the La Sirena’s internal shields.
Picard walked up and said they needed to try it Soji’s way, and hope that they get to the Android planet before the Romulans. He then sat down in Rios’ captain chair and started using the on-screen commands. He then looked at Rios and said he didn’t know how to operate the ship.
That was a funny moment, for sure.
Rios scolded Soji for trying to take the ship into the conduit without the proper procedures. She asked him to take her home for “Jana’s sake.” He agreed.
Meanwhile, back at the Cube, the Romulans fleet was also preparing to go to the android homeworld. As Rizzo marched through the Cube on her way out, xBs jumped her and attacked. She fought them off for a moment but was beamed away to safety. The Romulan Snakehead ships all warped away.
In the queencell, Seven saw that the Romulans left, and the Cube was “ours.” Elnor looked nervous.

“Are you gonna assimilate me now?” he asked.
“Annika still has work to do,” said Seven, who then disconnected herself from the Borg.
As Rios prepared the La Sirena to enter the conduit, Picard reminisced about when he stood watch aboard the U.S.S. Reliant. He said he missed the silence and dark of space. He also said that he knew of Vandermeer.
NOTE: That’s a cool little throwback! The Reliant was featured in Star Trek II quite a bit. That wouldn’t have been the Reliant Picard served on. His might have been the Reliant-C.
Picard asked Rios if Vandermeer knew that Jana and Flower were synthetic. Rios said he must have. Picard said that he did not know Vandermeer well, but he felt that Vandermeer was a good man.
Rios said that he hated thinking that Vandermeer died thinking that he betrayed Starfleet. Picard said that the synth ban itself was a betrayal of Starfleet. The Romulans set a trap, but Starfleet stepped in it.
Rios noted that Soji hacked his ship in less than five minutes. He wondered if the Romulans were right about the “Destroyer” being Soji. Picard said that they might have been right about something that happened 200,000 years ago, but that was the past.
“The future is left for us to write,” said Picard. “And we have powerful tools, Rios. Openness, optimism, and the spirit of curiosity.”
Soji returned to the bridge, and Rios piloted the ship into the conduit. Only to be followed by a ROMULAN SNAKEHEAD!
TREK REPORT SUPPLEMENTAL:
What a great episode! We got to see the return of Seven, and when she became a Borg Queen (just for a little while). We also got to see Elnor kick some Romulan butt! Raffi was right about a good many things and got to see how the Zhat Vash was created and the great secret they are covering up.
I can’t wait to see what happened next time. Will the android planet be full of Soong-type Androids? We’ll find out!
RATING: 4 out of 5