Star Trek: Picard soars once again this week. It may not be the most surprising episode of the season, but it takes yet another fun Star Trek trope and makes it its own, allowing it to further the season-long narrative in fun and dynamic ways.

With a deep dive into the mind of a comatose Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), the troubling guilt from the admiral’s childhood begins to take focus.Elements of the psychological thriller emerging in “Monsters” have been teased throughout the season as the admiral’s mental battle with an internal guilt from his childhood takes form within the dark and deserted canvas of Chateau Picard.

He has something buried deep in his psyche and the only way to get it unstuck is for one or more characters to take a sci-fi leap straight into a shared amygdala. In this case, that would be Tallinn (Orla Brady) and a mysterious Starfleet counselor played by the great James Callis (Battlestar Galactica).

The episode is told in a very traditional Star Trek style, and features an epic battle of wits between Stewart and Callis, who are both on top of their acting game as secrets are revealed and elements for the remainder of the season are set-up.

The episode opens with Picard receiving psychoanalysis from Callis’ Starfleet counselor, who we eventually learn is a representative version of Maurice Picard, Jean-Luc’s overbearing father who has been seen once before in TNG’s “Tapestry.” Behind the strength of the first solo script from Picard writer Jane Maggs, the war of words between the two is tight and challenging – and interesting.

In one of the best reveals of Picard’s innermost psyche, we learn it was his mother’s foresight that encouraged him to lead in his career with inspiring speeches while also educating him that there is “no better teacher than one’s enemy.” Sounds like a Picard to me.

As previewed at the end of “Two of One,” Tallinn enters Picard’s mind and quickly runs into the younger version of Jean-Luc who is recounting a fairytale constructed to help shield the elder Picard from the truth he is hiding from.

As the counselor, Maurice tells Picard there are a thousand ways to die, in reference to his time in space — but it is actually a refrain from his father in childhood, warning Picard of the many dangers found in the tunnels beneath their home.

And it is those tunnels where Tallinn joins the fray, teaming up with young Jean-Luc to try and help his mother. In another nice link to the way this Picard writer’s room has supported their season-long story with elements from past Trek, “counselor” Maurice illustrates that the internal walls Jean-Luc has built up around his childhood guilt are so thick that “even a Betazoid couldn’t detect it” — a critical piece in the puzzle helping us get a deeper appreciation for one of Trek’s most celebrated characters.

Maurice continues to push Picard, cajoling him to reveal just one real thing about himself — to acknowledge why he finds it so hard to open up, and why he keeps everyone at arm’s length. Eventually the elderly Picard mumbles that he is “stuck,” while also lashing out at the paranoid banging he keeps hearing in his mind – the banging is emblematic of the “knocking” in MacBeth that serves as a reminder of the guilt he feels from his childhood (an appropriate association for Stewart’s past as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company).

All of the moments in Picard’s mind are layered just like that one in this superb script, and it all leads to the reveal that the counselor is actually Maurice Picard, labeled by his son as a cruel, relentless monster, but perhaps not in the way Jean-Luc has thought all these years. Maurice explains that he worked to protect both Yvette (Madeline Wise) and young Jean-Luc, but he wasn’t actually the monster. Instead, the monster was her personal battle with her own mental health.

The moment seems to be a breakthrough for Picard in his relationship with his father, but as he finally wakes up from his coma, it is Tallinn who realizes there is more to this story — something we’re sure to see in one of the three remaining episodes of the season.

(At this time, it is no state secret that Picard Season 2 is going to be one of the most bingeable shows in science fiction history. And there is also no doubt, that the show has been built to binge. It’s a better show when you watch in chunks.)

While that mental foray into Picard’s mind was going down, action moved apace in the other critical storyline of the season, which this week means Raffi (Michelle Hurd) and Seven (Jeri Ryan) needing to track down Agnes (Alison Pill), who they know is losing herself to the Borg Queen.

From Borg encrypted command lockouts on La Sirena to her increasingly erratic behavior on the streets of L.A., Seven realizes they are witnessing the birth of a new Borg Queen, who is trying to speed up the process by putting Agnes in amped-up situations to increase her endorphins. Forget about butterflies and broken windows, if Queen Agnes gets her way, she will assimilate the entire planet.

Elsewhere, Rios (Santiago Cabrera) has been navigating things with Dr. Ramirez (Sol Rodriguez) — who assisted the team by opening her clinic up to the wounded Picard — and it’s not going great. She is filled with unanswerable questions when she sees the way Tallinn is hooked up to Picard, and after stabilizing him with an assist from some 25th century tech that Rios has beamed in from La Sirena.

Where is Rios from, outer space? No, the pilot is forced to admit, he’s from Chile…. he only works in outer space.

That delivery of the Star Trek IV iconic line from Rios is a joyous showstopper! Where Admiral Kirk laid that line on Gillian Taylor with braggadocious swagger, Rios does it as both a last resort — and with the heart of man who clearly wants to give his away. As he continues to open up to Teresa, he breaks everyone’s heart with the admission that he views Picard as a father figure, even though he knows Picard doesn’t see him as a son.

It doesn’t take long before he goes all the way with Teresa, introducing this Alice and her son to the Wonderland that is La Sirena, as all three beam aboard the ship to prepare for next week’s adventure! It’s a wholly satisfying development and adds to the feeling that being “stuck in the past” might just end up being a choice for Rios once everything wraps up.

As if this episode didn’t already have enough crammed into it, once Picard is revived, he quickly deconstructs a way to perhaps go on the offensive with Q, realizing that the omnipotent being’s obsession with him after all these years is actually a “tell” for once. It’s time to turn the tables: “There’s no better teacher than one’s enemies.”

Picard realizes that Q’s on-going fixation with him isn’t about Picard at all, but instead is deeply personal and urgent for Q himself. And to find out exactly what all that means, he needs to circle back with Guinan (Ito Aghayere) one more time to ask the El-Aurian to summon him for a meeting.

Back in Guinan’s bar, she agrees to try and reach him, but it doesn’t really work – at least not instantaneously. The process in which she summons Q adds some cool detail to the generally nebulous things we know about El-Aurians. It is visually dynamic, visceral and boundary pushing, and I’m here for it.

In the end, a sad sack in a suit (character actor Jay Karnes) shows up in Guinan’s bar instead of Q, and plays a few little mind-games with Guinan and Picard before announcing he is a cop and taking them into custody after finding footage of Picard’s transporter beam-in from a few episodes back. Uh oh!

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

• Jay Karnes previously portrayed Lt. Duchane of the Federation timeship Relativity back in Star Trek: Voyager’s “Relativity.”
   
• Singer Sunny Ozell performs at the bar Jurati trashes in the early part of this episode, performing her song “Take You Down.” (Ozell just happens to be married to one Patrick Stewart.)
   
• As her  Romulan-looking equipment hinted, Tallinn is in fact a Romulan disguised as a rounded-eared human.
   
• Summoning Q, Guinan takes on the same claw-hand stance Whoopi Goldberg made when first encountering the character back in “Q Who.”

As with every episode this season, “Monsters” is another satisfying touchpoint in a season that increasingly feels like one gloriously massive 10-part episode of Trek. Fun times.

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 21 with “Mercy” 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.