“Watcher” is the fourth episode of the second season of the TV show “Star Trek: Picard” and follows “Assimilation“. It’s available in the USA on the Paramount+ streaming platform and in many other countries on Amazon Prime Video.
Note. This article contains some spoilers about “Watcher”.
Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill) discover that there are three days left before the event that will change the history of humanity driving it towards the timeline that leads to the Confederation. Picard follows the trace of the mysterious Watcher while Jurati tries to repair La Sirena’s onboard systems, a difficult job also due to the presence of the Borg Queen (Annie Wersching).
This episode fully goes into the mystery of the Watcher and the divergence in the history of humanity with the return of old acquaintances. The more or less explicit references to the past are more integrated into the plot than certain examples of pure fanservice seen in the previous episodes. There are still some of them, such as the references to Dixon Hill, but they’re at perfectly acceptable levels in my opinion.
The various subplots alternate moments of tension and drama with others that are far more light-hearted, perhaps even silly. The story of Chris Rios (Santiago Cabrera) is used to attack without half measures one of the dark sides of American society. Actually, it was hoped that at least that one would be gone at the end of the Trump administration but maybe it’s just better hidden. Despite this and other references to humanity’s dark sides, Picard’s words offer hope for a better future that is really needed.
The search for Rios by 7 of 9 (Jeri Ryan) and Raffi Musiker (Michelle Hurd) is quite over the top, perhaps too much. Despite the timeline alteration, the punk on the bus still seems to remember his meeting with Spock, but he’s never mentioned. It could be argued that Kirk went back in time and he was the one who beat him.
There’s much more tension between Agnes Jurati and the Borg Queen. In the fandom, there were already hypotheses about the possible developments after the mental link between the two of them. Waiting to see what happens, at least we saw a more serious Agnes and that’s good because she was already in danger of being reduced to a comic relief like Tilly was too often in “Star Trek: Discovery”.
The most interesting part of the episode remains the one about the search for the Watcher. At last, part of the plot goes beyond the more obvious developments leaving us with uncertainties about its continuation. Everything points to a connection with the episode of the original series “Assignment: Earth”. At the time, the project was the production of a spinoff that was abandoned. A few novels and comics continued that episode and, 54 years later, a TV sequel seems to have arrived as well.
The episode’s ending, with the link to NASA’s Europa mission, offers further moments of uncertainty about what’s going on. There are various forces at work and, reaching mid-season, “Watcher” starts bringing us to the heart of a plot that doesn’t only concern the future of humanity but goes well beyond.
