Throughout Star Trek’s vast history there has never been a series of episodes quite like the first three episodes of Star Trek: Picard.

We’ve had continuing stories with the traditional “Part I” and “Part II” labels going back to “The Menagerie.” We’ve had episodes presented as “mini-arcs,” like in Deep Space Nine’s Dominion Takeover and in Enterprise’s set of Season 4 storylines. Of course, we have also had our fair share of season-long serialized storytelling with Enterprise’s season 3 and Discovery’s first two seasons.

But what we haven’t had – until now – are three separate episodes that really stand as one. Three episodes that are absolutely best presented as one chapter of a novel. “The End Is the Beginning” is exactly right… and this ‘beginning’ has absolutely been worth the wait.

We open with a flashback to 2385 in this latest episode, where we see Admiral Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) defeated. He’s lost his battle with Starfleet on multiple fronts — synthetic lifeforms have been banned, and Romulan relief efforts have been canceled — and Starfleet Command called his bluff after the admiral threaten resignation.

This shocking moment, where Picard lamented that he never thought he’d see Starfleet “give in to intolerance and fear,” is the beginning of a 15-year decline for Trek’s pinnacle character into ‘the hermit of Le Barre.’ Picard’s decision to proceed with his resignation has ramifications on Commander Raffi Musiker (Michelle Hurd), his aide-de-camp during the Romulan relocation efforts, who gets “[her] ass fired” in the wake of his actions.

The demise of Picard and Musiker’s once-strong relationship is highlighted in the ex-officer’s anger as the conversation moves into present day. Picard has come to her home in the desert, not to check on her, but to ask her for help. He needs a ship, since his plans to be reinstated by Starfleet didn’t get very far. But Musiker is having none of it: she’s in a bad way. She’s an addict; she’s angry; she’s hurt.

Picard has never taken the time to even check to see how she was doing across the past 14 years. She told him in 2385 she couldn’t do this without him, and her current state is proof of that.

This behavior is certainly out of character for the Picard we knew in The Next Generation — but he’s not that man anymore. This reveal is probably the strongest single indicator of the life he has been leading at the end of the 24th century. In “Remembrance,” he said that he hadn’t been living and had just been “waiting to die” — and now we know just how true that was.

He has withdrawn not only from Starfleet, but also his friends, and he is a stranger to himself… but now he is starting to fight again and once more be the captain we remember.

These defining moments with his former XO are once again infused with the influence of showrunner Michael Chabon, who wrote the episode with James Duff, as Musiker’s conversation with Picard helps to slowly resurrect her from the “neglect” and “disappointment” she’s felt from her friend “J.L.” for the last decade and a half.

Musiker has long suspected the Tal Shiar had something to do with the synths who took down Utopia Planitia. She said it in the days after the Mars attack and she’s saying it again now: “I have concrete evidence that a high-ranking Starfleet official conspired (with Romulans) to allow the attack to go forward to put an end to the rescue mission.”

Picard hears her, but can’t connect the dots on how the Romulans — even the Tal Shiar — could possibly be responsible, since they were all working to save Romulan lives.

In the end, Musiker helps set-up Picard with a ship, but not before giving him a much-deserved scolding for telling Admiral Clancy his whole plan — and that’s good advice, as Commodore Oh (Tamlyn Tomita) is working behind the scenes to track Picard’s movements.

She surprises Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill) on the scientist’s lunch break in order to grill her on exactly what Picard is up to. The meeting begins outside the Daystrom Institute in Okinawa but largely takes place off screen — later summarized by Jurati to Picard — but it feels like there’s more to this moment than the cyberneticist lets on.

The less said about Oh’s bizarrely out-of-place sunglasses, the better — along with her hair pushing the Vulcan ear prosthetics to an odd stuck-out position, this look isn’t doing the normally-lovely Tamlyn Tomita any favors — but we’re sure to see at least one cosplay recreation at this year’s Las Vegas Star Trek convention.

Despite lots of conjecture by fans, we still don’t know for sure whether Oh is a Vulcan who has aligned herself with the Zhat Vash, or if she’s an undercover Romulan posing as Vulcan… but would a Vulcan need sunglasses with their inner eyelids to protect their vision?

Next up is the long-awaited introduction of Cristóbal Rios (Santiago Cabrera) on board the starship La Sirena, and it is a highlight of the series thus far. It’s smart. It’s telling. It’s surprising. And, most of all, it’s damn fun.

As Picard beams into the ship — a large open space that flows directly into the command deck — he meets the strait-laced Rios with a proper English accent, not the vagabond captain we’ve been promised in the series’ promotion. But wait — it’s not the ship’s captain, but La Sirena’s Emergency Medical Hologram, modeled after Rios and summoned to treat the shirtless, vagabond captain, sitting on the bridge with a piece of tritanium shrapnel sticking out of his shoulder.

How it got there is irrelevant. You’ll never find out how – which is part of the beauty of the scene, and again, the influence of Chabon. It doesn’t matter. Just like a thousand other little small details that don’t need to be explained and do not matter.

The surprises don’t end there, though, as later we see Rios alone with his Emergency Navigational Hologram, this one with an Irish accent, playfully calling out his captain for being intimidated and even “a teensy-bit star struck” following Picard’s first visit.

And the ENH is right. Rios is not a one-note, bitter, angry, damaged malcontent with a heart of gold that you’ve seen a dozen times elsewhere – he is star-struck, and it’s through his crew of holograms, who are there to accentuate his personality and motivations beyond any standard tropes, that we can see that.

The scenes with Rios are an invigorating bolt of energy, as is the performance from Cabrera who is obviously having a blast bringing all these characters to life — and who’s taking bets that we still have more Rios-themed holograms waiting in the wings? (An engineer with a Scottish brogue, perhaps?)

As for that meeting between Picard and Rios, it is wholly unexpected. We learn that Cristobal has some baggage and history with Starfleet, having served on a vessel that for some reason Starfleet “erased from the records” after an event which ended with the gristly death of that ship’s captain. Whoever that captain was, they had Rios’ full dedication and he is clearly not over it.

Of course, the core mystery of Star Trek: Picard continues to be the situation aboard the Borg cube, as we return to Soji’s work on “the artifact” where we find that she’s earned a special privilege that could only be granted by the Executive Director of the Borg Reclamation Project — a former Borg drone named Hugh (Jonathan Del Arco).

Last seen in 1993’s “Descent, Part II,” Director Hugh is now in charge of the Romulan’s expansive vision related to the xBs — ex-Borg — the most “despised people in the Galaxy.” The Romulans are mostly focused on exploiting the technology on the cube, but they are also profiting from the access they are granting to a myriad of species to study the Borg

It’s a treat to see Del Arco inhabiting Hugh again, now with the confidence and wisdom of a character that has seen a lot in the last 25 years. Here, Hugh has taken a liking to Soji (Isa Briones) and was very impressed by the care she took during the reclamation of a drone for speaking to one of the “nameless” in its own language.

He’s decided to allow her to meet with one of a handful of “disordered” Romulans, freed from the Collective but still a shadow of their former selves. Her primary subject is Ramdha (Rebecca Wisocky), formerly an expert on ancient Romulan mythology — but Soji’s probing sparks a moment of recognition in Ramdha, and not in a good way.

“I remember you from tomorrow,” says the increasingly agitated Ramdha, as Soji starts to grill her with classified facts that Hugh is not even aware of — and Ramdha steals a guard’s unprotected weapon, terrified at Soji and not able to tell which of the Maddox daughters she might be.

As she screams and appears on the verge of firing, Soji rushes at Ramdha at super-speed — as only a synthetic being could — disarming the distraught woman at the last moment, while Ramdha calls her “the destroyer” in her moment of panic, a phrase simultaneously used by a Zhat Vash commando back on Earth where he and his cohorts were narrowly stopped from killing Jean-Luc Picard.

The integration of the two sequences is seamless and expertly executed, thanks to another fine outing from director Hanelle Culpepper. After the situation calms, Soji goes back to her quarters to call her mother about Dahj… and suddenly she passes out: her “mother” literally put the synth to sleep for reasons still unknown.

Elsewhere on the Artifact, Narissa (Peyton List) has arrived to meet briefly with Narek (Harry Treadaway), who is happy to see her back to her Romulan self. The energy between this apparent brother and sister in this brief scene is, uh, uncomfortable to say the least, so the less said the better, but the two gothic Romulan baddies restate their goal to find the nest of synthetic abominations.

Meanwhile, after an impassioned speech from Jurati to join his mission to find Bruce Maddox and Soji, Picard and the doctor beam up to the starship La Sirena where Musiker has surprisingly decided to tag along. She has figured out that Maddox is apparently on a gambling world of some sort called Freecloud — and with that, we engage warp speed at Jean-Luc Picard’s command.

A few stray observations we picked up on subspace:

• Hodgkin’s Law of Parallel Planetary Development finally hits home as we learn that Musiker’s home is at the base of Vasquez Rocks in California, which famously served as many alien worlds in Star Trek production — and is finally featured as its true self for the first time in franchise history.
   
• The flashback to 2385 features not only our first good look at that era’s Starfleet uniforms, but also a bit of digital de-aging work on Patrick Stewart to bring his appearance closer to his Star Trek: Nemesis look (which was set in 2379).
   
• The synths working on Mars — including poor F8 — were model A-500 androids.
   
• Musiker’s habit of calling Picard by his nickname “J.L.” was first introduced in the Star Trek: Picard — Countdown comics in November.
   
• Rios is reading a copy of Miguel de Unamuno’s 1912 essay The Tragic Sense of Life aboard his ship, and drinking from a bottle of Pisco, a Peruvian brandy.

• Speaking of alcohol, we can see the distinctive shape of a bottle of Saurian Brandy on Musiker’s table while she’s researching Bruce Maddox’s disappearance.
   
• Laris (Orla Brady) chides Zhaban (Jamie McShane) for being “a Northerner” like the captive Zhat Vash commando, implying that the Next Generation-era Romulans with forehead ridges are from the northern part of Romulus, and those without ridges — like herself and Romulans from the Original Series — are from another part of the planet.
   
• Cris Rios’ former Starfleet posting was the heavy cruiser ibn Mājid — most likely named for 15th century explorer Ahmad ibn Mājid, who was nicknamed “The Shooting Star” for his fearlessness and prowess at celestial navigation.
   
• During her lunch break, Jurati was listening to the same Kasselian Opera track that was a favorite of Hugh Culber’s, last heard in the Discovery Season 2 premiere, “Brother.”
   
• Musiker finds a reference to a string of code labeled “Gorn Egg” as she hunts for Maddox, an obvious reference to the classic Original Series alien… which William Shatner battled at the same Vasquez Rocks filming location.

With Jeff Russo’s score singing — pulling strains of the classic Next Generation theme into 2020 as La Sarina leaves Earth orbit — “The End is the Beginning” finally wraps up this opening chapter to Star Trek: Picard, launching our quintessential captain back into the final frontier.

As the series previews have hinted, the next phase of this first season will take us to meet Elnor (Evan Evagora) on his remote Romulan colony world, reunite Picard with Hugh aboard the Borg artifact, and bring the two-time Enterprise captain face to face with his former shipmates Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis)… and eventually, he’ll share the screen with that other famous ex-Borg, Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan).

But when will each of those long-awaited events take place? We’ll find out next week as Star Trek: Picard continues with “Absolute Candor.”

Jim Moorhouse is the creator of TrekRanks.com and the TrekRanks Podcast. He can be found living and breathing Trek every day on Twitter at @EnterpriseExtra.