Star Trek: Picard’s Casino Planet Episode That Transported Us Back To TNG, DS9 and Voyager
Star Trek: Picard season finale was a blast, but we wanted to return to one the best episodes in the tv show. In episode five of the new Picard series, the crew of La Sirena pays a visit to the casino planet called Freecloud in an attempt to find Bruce Maddox for clues about the enigma behind “Data’s daughter”, Soji. The crew beams down to Stardust City, only to encounter a cyberpunk version of Las Vegas, it seems like this episode tops on David Bowie references, as true fans would notice immediately.
The twist on Freecloud is a lot of fun, and it’s a nice throwback to the one-off holodeck episodes of The Next Generation. But it also throws in a big nod to a Deep Space Nine’s fan-favourite, Quark. The futuristic casino planet theme is what makes most of this episode, somewhat comparable to a modern-day cruise ship casino with luxury interiors, but with fashionable alien species playing cards and dice. But let’s dive more into what was truly amazing about this episode.
Quark’s bar on Planet Freecloud?
It seems that everything is allowed on this planet; we’ve not seen anything quite like it. What happens on Freecloud stays on Freecloud. We also catch a quick glimpse to what seems to be Quark’s bar, but it’s much bigger now than from what we’ve seen on Deep Space Nine. But don’t let the bright signs and displays distract you from the fact that it is a planet founded on mercantilism, with some dangerous characters around. Although if you were based in the Star Trek Picard’s universe, and you were looking for some fun, then Freecloud would be your kind of place.
If you’ve ever seen The Last Jedi, you can compare it to Canto Bight, which was full of racetracks and casinos. It seems that everyone enjoys their fair share of casino callouts in the science fiction genre. Many comics, tv-shows and movie creators never ignored the opportunity to create new kinds of casino games.
But just like them, the iGaming industry has also featured games like slots and roulette that pay tribute to the sci-fi genre, many of them can be found at the best rated casinos by users in the UK, in case you’re craving a good casino game after this read.
Welcome Back Seven of Nine
This episode is dominated by Jeri Ryan, who makes an appearance as her Star Trek: Voyager character, Seven of Nine, and she immediately brings back Voyager nostalgia. She’s now a part of the Fenris Rangers who are a vigilante group, and it looks like she’s done a lot of work on getting her humanity back. Jeri’s performance feels like a natural continuation of the earlier Seven we saw on Voyager. But from the beginning of the episode, we could sense that she has a hidden agenda up her sleeve, even though she offered to help them on the rescue mission.
It later becomes evident in the episode, that she only wants revenge on the Freecloud’s crime lord Bjayzl, for ripping Borg parts from Icheb, who she considered as a son since their time on Voyager. We can’t say that Seven makes a bad decision here since this tv show addresses the need for forgiveness and law, but there doesn’t seem to be any system in place that could step up to right the wrongs.
Bruce Maddox’s Rescue Mission
This is essentially what the episode is about, with the crew going undercover to rescue Bruce Maddox from Bjayzl, looking to sell him out to the Tal Shiar, after he couldn’t repay his debt to her. It appears that after the synthetics ban throughout the Federation, he continued his research on organic androids.
We already met him at TNG’s “The Measure Of A Man” episode in The Next Generation, when he wanted to disassemble and reverse-engineer our beloved Lieutenant Commander Data. But luckily that doesn’t happen, and we saw Data encouraging Maddox to continue his research.
However, his rescue mission doesn’t go as planned. Still, we get a lot of fun from seeing Patrick Stewart enjoying himself, as a Frenchman wearing an eyepatch pretending to be an Englishman speaking English with a bad French accent. Seven of Nine pulls her own agenda, and Picard tries to talk Seven out of giving in to vengeance, which worked for a moment, and they end up with a trade.
Is Picard still looking for his humanity?
Once back on the ship, we see Seven of Nine and Picard exchanging an emotional moment about shared history. It looks we forgot that Picard is also an ex-Borg after his assimilation in TNG’s “The Best of Both Worlds”. She asks if he’s regained his humanity, and he says yes without doubt, then confirms it’s more complicated than that. Then she also acknowledges that she is still working on getting her humanity back “every damned day of my life”.
Finally, she returns to her main agenda, beams down on Freecloud and vaporises Bjayz, but before she does that she points out that Picard still thinks there’s a place in the galaxy for mercy. And that she didn’t want to disillusion him. Which completely wraps up both characters in the series.
But let’s hope more of this will unfold since season two has already been confirmed, the plot has certainly thickened!
