To be fair, Picard does its best to position Jack as a sort of Han Solo-esque freedom fighter doing his best alongside his mother to bring medical supplies to those in need. But since it seems fairly obvious that Vadic’s designs for Jack go well beyond punishing him for something as simple as smuggling, the episode’s insistence on dragging its feet is kind of boring. Thankfully, Plummer’s over-the-top performance is absolutely ridiculous in the cigar-smoking, scenery-chewing way that often categorizes the best sort of sci-fi baddies. (Complete with a truly atrocious attempt at a French accent.) What does she really want? How does she know so much about Picard and Shaw? Who knows, but I’m looking forward to finding out. 

Unsurprisingly, Raffi’s story remains the weakest part of the episode (and of season 3) thus far. She spends most of the episode trying to find out why Starfleet has terminated the investigation into last week’s horrific terrorist attack. Her undercover work leads her to believe that the low-level Romulan criminal Starfleet’s trying to blame the tragedy on was most likely not responsible and she’s furious when her hilariously dry handler insists that she back off (i.e. “disengage”, get it?) from the investigation. In a completely predictable twist, Raffi does not in any way do that and instead insists that she’s going to find out the truth on her own. Which is, on the surface, an absolutely noble effort, and something we’d expect from pretty much any Starfleet officer. But, at the moment, this storyline seems so utterly isolated from everything else we’re watching that it’s hard to care about what the answers are.  

It doesn’t help that Picard has pinned this subplot on the weakest character remaining on the canvas. Yes, it’s obvious that this terrorist plot will inevitably somehow intersect with the Picard/Jack/Vadic storyline, a fact that’s made even more clear by the sudden appearance of Worf to rescue Raffi after she’s forced to fall off the narcotics wagon in an attempt to prove her street cred to a Ferengi source named Sneed. But that doesn’t make what we’re sitting through any more interesting. And even the addition of Worf—and it should be noted that Michael Dorn looks great, welcome back, sir!!—isn’t enough to stop this subplot from sapping every ounce of momentum from the rest of the episode. Multiple peoples’ heads get cut off and it’s still incredibly difficult not to immediately fast-forward whenever the episode switches back to this storyline.