Review of No Win Scenario

This is a decent but underwhelming attempt at doing a classic standalone disaster/submarine episode within the confines of the show's overall arc. What works about the episode is its tone, not the details. There are fairly significant improvements to the dialog and characterization, though the plotting is still a mess.

First off, the quippery is dialled back and the characters feel much more like professionals in this episode. There is much, much less of the constant paraphrasing and reiteration that littered previous episodes, especially last week's. The script trusts us to be able to follow what's going on without it constantly being re-explained to us in overtly expository dialog and vernacular analogies. This is a very low bar but I'm happy to see it cleared. The couple of moments of exposition that don't work are bad because of plotting and logic, not the way they're written and delivered.

The Riker scenes are worthwhile and meaningful, and are actually thoughtfully written. Likewise Shaw's scene with Picard - even though I'm pretty much over the idea of Starfleet officers blaming Picard for Wolf 359 or being embittered towards "ex-Borg" generally, this was still well-written and performed. Seven and Shaw are used well and have meaningful stuff to do, as does Beverly. The main characters feel more like themselves than in previous weeks, and there's a TNG movie vibe to the episode, particularly towards the end.

The plot issues which nevertheless bring the episode down:

• Seven is told to hunt the changeling by finding its bucket(!) and scanning the "resi-goo"(!!) so as to enable the computer to locate the changeling on the ship. She then actually finds a hidden bucket(!!!) near-identical to Odo's (!!!!), but is unable to scan it before the changeling attacks her and mercifully puts this plot thread to rest. This is facepalm-level stuff. Yes, all changelings need to regenerate but there's no reason to think they would need a bucket to do so - and we've often seen that they don't need to spend long in their liquid form, it's more just the case that they can't maintain the same solid form for more than 16 hours without reverting to a liquid, however briefly. Odo outgrew his bucket right after discovering his true nature and instead regenerated by adopting different forms and "flowing around the room", so an experienced changeling would likely do similar. If a changeling who had replaced a Starfleet officer did need to use a receptacle for whatever reason, they could simply replicate one then put it back in the replicator when finished. The idea that every changeling operative uses a secret bucket that they have to hide somewhere is nonsensical, let alone the idea that they leave a residue, which likewise goes against everything we've seen before. I could give the show some leeway on this if the residue turned out to be microscopic, but it's clearly visible.

• The nebula turns out to be a "giant womb" for space jellyfish. How convenient, because if it hadn't, everyone would be dead. Picard, Riker and Seven hijack a starship with 500 innocent people on board and the only reason they escape is because of a completely unforeseeable fluke factor like this. It's lazy and cheesy plotting that does the characters a disservice by making them look like reckless idiots even as it simultaneously tries to portray them as heroic. They decide to "ride the wave" (sigh) not because their plan to escape the nebula makes any logical sense but for emotional reasons, because "this is what we do best". The plan is based around timing the nebula's contractions, which speaks for itself. The idea of space jellyfish was lame and cheesy in previous iterations like Farpoint and is lame and cheesy here, though it's the completely illogical escape scenario that's the problem here, not the corny jellyfish in and of themselves.

• All this, and Jack Crusher is still the main problem, and this week it's not even because of his dialog. In the holodeck scenes, Stewart and Stashwick give emotional and grounded performances, but Speelers again kills the scene with bad line readings that are glib and without any emotional weight whatsoever. Many of his lines are good on the page and would be perfectly effective with another actor, but he delivers them as if he hasn't read the script, hasn't thought about anything he's saying, isn't listening to it or feeling it while he's saying it and his mind is on his next job. It'd be an insult to call it phoned-in. You know the audition scenes in Mulholland Drive where Betty first gives an adequate, competent, entirely conventional performance of a scene, then a sensual, knockout, explosive performance of the same scene shortly afterwards? Speelers's acting here is way, way below the "badly acted" version of that scene. Isa Briones may have been given a lot of bad material in S1-2 but she herself was consistently strong whatever else was going on around her. Speelers is the opposite.

• The big reveal is... Jack Crusher anonymously talked to Picard a few years ago and Picard happened to say that "Starfleet is the only family I need", and that's why Jack is resentful of him. This is utter juvenilia, perhaps even worse than the big reveal in DIS S2 when we find out that the reason for the rift between Spock and Burnham is because she white-fanged him. Picard thinks he has no family, and Jack knows that, so of course he's going to say that. It's exactly what a man who had experienced a lot of loss would say. If Picard had actively chosen to leave Beverly and Jack, and then said "Starfleet is the only family I need" despite knowing he had a son, the scene would make sense.

• Nitpick, but one that points at greater issues: when did Picard have an encounter with the Hirogen (post-Voyager) where "Lieutenant Commander Worf" (pre-S4 DS9) saved the day?