Each episode of Star Trek: Picard’s second season seems to pack in more and more, while moving at a faster and faster pace — and that is once again true in this fifth installment, “Fly Me to the Moon.”

As an example of how much is jammed into this week’s new episode, we get answers to several questions: Who’s the blonde girl? What is Q’s plan? Who is that Laris lookalike? When will we see Brent Spiner? Where’s Isa Briones?

On top of all that, we also get Round 3 of Jurati vs. the Borg Queen, and finally complete the Seven, Raffi, and Rios guided tour through Los Angeles. That’s a lot. And it all works. (Especially when the pressure is off, and you sit down to watch this one a second time. Which we recommend you do right now.)

The episode quickly answers two of the questions above. First, we learn the identity of the woman Q was trolling in last week’s episode: it’s Renée Picard (Penelope Mitchell), an astronaut taking off in a few days on the pioneering Europa Mission to Jupiter… and, clearly, an ancestor of one Jean-Luc Picard.

The other early answer aligns with the information about Renée Picard, as we learn that the Laris lookalike in 2024 is named Tallinn (Orla Brady), assigned to monitor the hugely important historical figure. The visual of Tallinn “beaming” into her home office with Picard is one of the most memorable Trek images we’ve seen in a while. A strikingly beautiful callback to classic Trek’s “Assignment: Earth” and the vault transporter used by Gary Seven, another “supervisor” assigned to monitor some important happenings on Earth.

The confirmation that Tallinn is one of the mysterious “supervisors” from Trek’s ancient history is executed with perfection by the Picard production team, who give us the answer we expected about her identity, while also building on the lore of these guardians who are often charged with protecting a single thread in “the tapestry of history.”

But the producers also keep the mystery alive, as we leave this episode not knowing anything more concrete about the strange interlopers on Earth than when “Assignment: Earth” aired more than 50 years ago. It’s a fun, satisfying connection to the Original Series.

For 24 years, Tallinn has been protecting Renée, but now as the launch approaches, the smart, overachiever is filled with self-doubt that is being festered by Q (John de Lancie). He tried to snap her into a place of fear and self-loathing in “Watcher,” but with his powers amiss, he has been forced to get his hands dirty by instead trying to lead her astray as a counselor in therapy sessions. He’s doing whatever he can to stop her from succeeding on the mission.

Q has also been busy on earth helping scientiest Adam Soong (Brent Spiner) with his genetic research. This version of Soong (famous in the Confederation Timeline for his decree that a “safe galaxy is a human galaxy”) is the fourth human variation played by Spiner, to go along with multiple appearances as Noonian, Arik and Altan Inigo, dating back more than 30 years.

Soong is researching a genetic cure for his daughter, Kore (Isa Briones). Following a short appearance in “The Star Gazer,” it’s nice to see the young actor back on screen, and even better to see her now playing the flesh-and-blood daughter of Spiner’s character — in contrast to the android daughter created by Bruce Maddox and modeled after Data’s original daughter, Lal. (The Data/Soong family tree is complicated!)

In this scenario, Q is offering to assist Soong with research that will allow Kore to live a normal life — she has a defect that won’t allow her to be exposed directly to sunlight. Q teases Soong with a small sample of what his cure can do and, in exchange for his help, promises him the full dose by intoning, “Does the name ‘Picard’ mean anything to you?” As with many story beats in this very serialized season of Picard, we’ll have to wait for another episode to find out exactly what Soong’s role in Q’s plan will be.

Back on the road in L.A., Raffi (Michelle Hurd) and Seven (Jeri Ryan) have freed Rios (Santiago Cabrera) in an anti-climactic bus hijacking. The scenes leading to Rios being freed are punctuated by one telling moment in which we are reminded what Raffi’s single-minded focus is in 2024: she wants to reset the timeline and resurrect Elnor.

We see Elnor (Evan Evagora) briefly as the bus passengers escape, though it’s only a mirage; Raffi quickly sees that it’s just a similarly-built young man and not the departed Romulan cadet. The fleeting glimpse of the young Australian actor reminded me how much I miss the Qowat Milat warrior, too.

On La Sirena, the Borg Queen (Annie Wersching) is determined to escape her confinement as a strung-up legless torso by assimilating a new body… and she wants it to be her new bestie, Agnes (Alison Pill). The Queen works the system to capture a French police officer and threatens Agnes with an ultimatum: join with me or the police officer becomes my host.

This Borg Queen can do more than just help you with your nicotine addiction, she is promising the “forever invisible” Jurati that if she allows their two minds to merge, she will be “loved, completely” and “truly seen” for the first time. It’s a scary and appealing proposition that is ultimately greeted with a single blast from Jurati’s shotgun.

The reveal of Annie Wersching’s torso hanging in the back of La Sirena to open this scene is a classic horror movie moment, directed with extreme style and confidence by Jonathan Frakes. Of course, it was Frakes who first brought the Borg Queen to life for the first time in Star Trek: First Contact with the original shot of her legless torso famously being hung from the rafters before merging with her body.

To further emphasize the horror movie vibe permeating the scenes with the Borg Queen, once the entire crew reunites on board La Sirena, they are greeted by Agnes covered in the dead Borg’s blood. Following that gory reveal the tone and pacing of the episode abruptly changes — in a surprising, but somewhat successful way — as we move from the body horror genre to a fun, heist-film romp as the crew turns their attention to a gala being thrown in honor of the Europa Mission.

The gala is starting in a few hours and the team is now focused on Renée Picard, who they need to help guide through the evening safely to make sure nothing derails her plans to lead the mission to Jupiter.

The crew knows that if Renée drops out, there will be no Europa Mission and no hope — a bad combination for a historical period in which records are scarce and incomplete and “everyone hates everyone.” The discussion about this era in Trek between Picard and Tallinn is a nice callback to the different ways Trek has represented the window of time between the late 1990s and First Contact in 2063, which through certain lenses could be considered contradictory.

At the gala, our crew is hoping to guide the young Picard without making contact, but first they need to gain access to the party via some classic Hollywood heist movie shenanigans involving IDs, invitations and computer hacks… you know the drill. In a few quick glimpses of the party, we see Renée struggling and thinking about her recent failed flight simulator test, we see Agnes purposefully get picked up by security so she can get closer to their main server for hacking purposes.

In a surprise twist, we see a flashback to Jurati’s killing of the Borg Queen, who prior to dying made physical contact with the lonely cyberneticist and was able to assimilate her consciousness into the young doctor’s body. Those dang nanoprobes!

Back at the Gala, the full-bodied Borg Queen is now a part of Agnes, and we see the two sitting together as a single mind, plotting their next steps as one consciousness that together is now so much more. From her confident smile to her décolleté style, the whole “being the Borg Queen thing” definitely suits Jurati. And although Jurati seems to be no worse for wear, we have to give Round of 3 of this season-long battle to the Borg Queen.

Oh… and did you happen to dial Q’s telephone number?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMdF90pB4SE

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

• Tallinn’s transportation device, just like Gary Seven before her, is housed behind a massive bank vault-style steel door.
   
• “Assignment: Earth” was originally conceived as a backdoor pilot for a possible Gary Seven spinoff series (which obviously never came to fruition), but it’s remarkable that it took the franchise more than 50 years to return to the idea of high-tech Supervisors and their role in Star Trek history.
   
• Tallinn’s control tablet seems to be of Romulan origin, despite her human-looking ears; the device’s screen features Romulan writing, and its trapezoidal-shaped holographic display is distinctly Romulan as well.

• Astronaut Renée Picard was mentioned by Admiral Picard in “The Star Gazer,” described during his Starfleet Academy speech as a “great-great cousin” who was “instrumental in early exploration of [Earth’s] solar system.”
   
• According to her passport Renée Picard’s was born November 22, 1996… which just so happens to be the same day Star Trek: First Contact premiered in the United States.
   
• Renée Picard’s passport lists the document’s issue and expiration dates in the Europe an format (DD-MM-YYYY), however her birth date is listed in the US format (MM-DD-YYYY).
   
• The spaceship taking Picard and crew to Europe is called the “Shango X-1.”
   
• Historical records of the Europa mission are tough to find in the future; the only information known about Renée Picard was that she discovered a microorganism on Io which “she believed was sentient,” which she brought back to earth.

• The Borg Queen is the first Star Trek character to make a cellular phone call since young Jim Kirk hung up on his stepfather back in 2009.
   
• Seven mentions Raffi’s son Gabe (Mason Gooding), seen last season in “Stardust City Rag.”
   
• Confederation tricorders have the ability to release both electromagnetic pulse and sonic stun blasts.
   
• Thanks to his handcuffed state, Rios’ bus companion Pedro knocks out the ICE officer using the classic-double-fisted Star Trek hit.
   
• Lea Thompson makes a cameo appearance as Dr. Diane Werner, head of Soong’s review board; Thompson was the director of both “Assimilation” and “Watcher” this season.
   
• Next to Dr. Werner sits “Dr. Vasily Rozhenko,” likely an ancestor of Worf’s adoptive father.

• Adam Soong drives a Tesla, another confirmation that Elon Musk exists within the Star Trek universe, following the tech mogul’s multiple name-drops in Star Trek: Discovery’s early days.
   
• Accused of performing “unmonitored, unregulated, illegal… genetic experiments with a privatized military organization; spearhead operations on soldiers,” it certainly sounds like whatever Adam Soong was up to was — or will be — a key part of the Eugenics Wars.
   
• Soong is also said to have violated “the Shenzhen Convention,” a (fictional) international ban on human genetic experiments which may be based upon this 2018 incident where a scientist in Shenzhen, China claimed to have edited the genes of twin girls.
   
• With his revered status in the Confederation, the atmospheric scrubbers seen in use in that timeline’s dark future likely stem from the protective force fields Soong uses to protect Kore from sunlight.
   
• Jurati’s fake identification bears the name “Holly Eva Visser.”

Halfway through the second season, Star Trek: Picard is continuing to deliver the goods with great characters, mysteries and time travel. “Fly Me to the Moon” advances themes, crosses genres and generally is having a ton of fun helping to drive the series’ overall narrative.

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.

Star Trek: Picard returns April 7 with “Two of One” on Paramount+ in the United States, and on CTV Sci Fi Channel and Crave in Canada. Outside of North America, the series is available on Amazon’s Prime Video service in most international locations.