WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Season 1, Episode 6 of Star Trek: Picard, "The Impossible Box," now streaming on CBS All Access.
The first half of Star Trek: Picard's first season took its time to establish the main players, mission, and stakes of its overarching narrative. But with the retired admiral's long-sought goal now in sight, "The Impossible Box" takes no time to stop and smell the orchids, sending the show hurtling forward at warp speed and finally showing the meeting Trekkies have waited for six weeks to see.
The episode eschews its traditional flashback opener to take us inside Soji's recurring dream. It seems to be a childhood memory of her as a child wandering through a hallway during a dark and stormy night. She enters her father's lab, though both his work and face are obscured. Before she and we can get a closer look, he sees her and calls out.
She awakens in a startle, as her bedmate Narek simultaneously comforts her and prods her with questions about what she just experienced. Though they made up from their last tiff in Episode 4, Soji is unhappy with the asymmetrical relationship tween the two of them, especially once Narek reveals he knows about her nightly calls with her mother. She asks for his true Romulan name, only usually revealed to their one true love. Naturally, Narek does not provide it, with his playful whispering obscuring yet another opportunity to dig deeper into the Romulan.
Aboard the La Sirena, Picard is comforting Dr. Jurati after the death of her co-worker and lover Bruce Maddox, unaware that she was responsible for ending his life. The conversation then changes to their new destination, the Artifact. Picard is understandably panicky, given his personal history with the Borg and what they made him do as Locutus back in Star Trek: The Next Generation. That trauma manifests itself in anger, as he furiously declares that the Borg "don’t change, they metastasize," likening them to a disease rather than a civilization. Even in the solitary of his ready room, the thought of what's to come haunts him, as he comes face to face with what the Borg have done to him previously.
Finding no solace with Picard, Jurati decides to drown her sorrows within the cool company of Rios. The doctor makes a move in the middle of their conversation and plants a kiss on him, which comes as a complete surprise. Over the past couple of episodes, Jurati and Rios had a playful relationship, but it never once bordered on flirtatious. With Jurati feeling hopeless, lonely and hollow after what she did, she's searching for a warm body to take her away from the emptiness of space. And though there's no mention of it after--save a remark from an observant Elnor--this relationship could develop into something to either help or hurt Picard's cause.
Speaking of romance, Rizzo drops in on Narek to once again accusing her brother of falling for Soji, compromising their mission to find the location of the other synths and destroy her. But he confidently turns to a childhood toy box he has on his desk, using it as a metaphor for his approach. With a gentle hand and a large dose of patience, the gears will line up in the right way to reveal the prize inside. And with Soji, her dreams could be a key into that box, a narrative placed there by design that could link to her origin.
Though Picard and his cohorts know where Soji is, getting into the former Borg Cube is an entirely different can of gagh. Picard suggests getting Federation diplomatic credentials, under the guise of meeting with the Executive Director of the Reclamation Project, his old friend Hugh. To get those credentials, the crew rouse Raffi from her drunken stupor, clearly still in depressed after her son turned her away last episode. Despite her malaise, she puts in a powerhouse performance when she calls in a favor from a former Starfleet colleague, earning applause from the crew. Rios takes her back to bed, where she reveals to him her family plight. He comforts her by simply saying, "No one gets all of it right, Raf," and encourages her to stop her wallowing.
In their next meeting, Narek tells Soji that the calls to her mom are being monitored for security purposes. But in reading the logs, a curious pattern occurred: they all last exactly 70 seconds. With that in mind, Soji partakes in her usual chat with her mother, only to strangely drift off after a minute or so. She forces herself awake past the 70-second mark, when everything falls apart.
The image of her mother begins to stutter and glitch, and the screen occasionally flashes images of a man. After she wakes up, she begins to scan her possessions, only to come to a horrific realization. Everything, from family pictures to her beloved necklace from her father, is exactly 37 months old. Finally, Soji begins to realize that everything she knows about her life has been a lie, something programmed in her to get her where she is right now.
Elsewhere on the Artifact, Picard finally beams in. Forced to arrive alone in an abandoned part of the cube, the trauma of his past experiences begins to creep up on him. Images of himself as Locutus dance across his head before manifesting in front of him, nearly sending him over the edge. Luckily, Hugh appears just in the nick of time, providing the friendly face of a fellow ex-Borg. As the two take off, Hugh brings Picard down from his panic, explaining the formerly assimilated's collective path back to humanity and showing that the Borg are ultimately victims, not monsters. But he raises the tension again when he tells Hugh the true nature of his mission, and the danger Soji is in.
Indeed, her situation gets much more dangerous when Narek finally reveals to her that she's been implanted with false memories. Her true objective is to find something for someone, and he vows to work with her to discover what that is. He proposes "zhal makh," a form of meditation that will give him access to her dreams, which can let them see further into their meaning. After taking her into a closed-off Romulan section of the Artifact, they seal themselves into a room lit with ominous lights. As one last show of trust, Narek reveals to Soji his true name--Rian--which is the last push she needed to show him what she sees.
We see Soji's dream again, this time with Narek talking her through (and unbeknownst to her, Rizzo monitoring in another room). He pushes her to reach beyond her boundaries, moving and looking at things and places she's never before to get a better sense of the full picture. And that full picture is a frightening one. It turns out Soji's father's face is merely a blur. And his work is a disassembled wooden dummy on a table, with Soji's face. Once she reveals her dream takes place on a planet with two moons and constant storms, the Romulans have officially accomplished their mission.
Soji wakes from her stupor in understandable panic and no longer in the warm comfort of Narek's embrace. Instead, he congratulates her for "finding home," kisses her, tells her that she's not real and leaves her inside to die via radioactive gas. As the room fills with red smoke, Soji's shock slowly turns to rage, and she ferociously tears through the floor with a superhuman strength. Narek can only look on from outside as she escapes from the room, as a grim realization spreads over his face: She's been activated.
Soji ends up dropping in right in front of Hugh and Picard. And Picard can only awkwardly exchange a few pleasantries and show her Dahj's necklace as they're sent on the run from the Romulans. Using his XB muscle memory, Hugh activates the secret cell of the Borg Queen, which contains an emergency transporter. Picard tells the La Sirena to rendezvous at Nepenthe, the planet from Soji's dream, only for the crew to radio back that Elnor is missing.
We don't need to look far, though, as the Romulan assassin drops in from above to take out those encroaching on the cell. He and Hugh volunteer to stay behind and guard the transporter, and Picard must heartbreakingly leave his young ward behind for the second time. As Picard and Soji go off to parts unknown, the two men prepare for battle.
"The Impossible Box" is Picard's longest episode yet at 54 minutes, and it's understandable given how much the action and plot development this episode crams into one sitting. Picard has accomplished his mission in finding and retrieving Soji, while the Zhat Vash have accomplished theirs in finding out the possible home planet of the synths. The next phase of the show now becomes a race to find the other synths out there, and protect them from the threat of genocide at the hands of the Romulans. We may have ended this episode with Elnor and Hugh walking into the heat of battle, but Star Trek: Picard's war has just begun.
Star Trek: Picard stars Patrick Stewart, Alison Pill, Michelle Hurd, Evan Evagora, Isa Briones, Santiago Cabrera and Harry Treadaway. A new episode arrives each Thursday on CBS All Access.