Any feelings of nostalgia that may have hit you while you watched “Penance” last week are going to be slingshot around the sun when you catch up with this week’s Star Trek: Picard, another fun romp in the series with vibes both familiar and surprising baked into its neuro-processing.

The fish-out-of-water time-travel story is at the core of the gloriously familiar parts of this episode, right down to a spectacular time-jump sequence masterfully directed by Lea Thompson (who obviously knows a thing or two about time travel). And as for those surprising elements? I’ll help you assimilate those in just a minute!

“Assimilation” picks up right where we left off, as Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the La Sirena gang turn the tables on the Confederation team holding the crew at gunpoint, all while orchestrating their time jump courtesy of the Borg Queen (Annie Wersching).

In the space of just a few beats, we get all of the following from Wersching as she makes this Borg Queen her own: a shot of the Queen creepily crawling across the floor with her arms and torso, connecting to La Sirena in classic Borg fashion, an authoritative announcement of her time-travel calculations, a neutralizing takedown of the Confederation fleet with some nifty green torpedoes — and with Rios (Santiago Cabrera) locked out of the ship’s controls, she makes a declaration of “Move backward to go forward… the past is now.”

And if that wasn’t enough, in the middle of all that we also get another flash of Q (John de Lancie), popping in over Picard’s shoulder mid-battle to remind him exactly what this entire dark-reality timeline is all about: the decisions he’s made in the face of fear to live a life among the stars, alone and away from his home.

From the visual effects to the performances to the direction, the entire sequence is phenomenal — and it doesn’t end until the ship has discreetly crashed near the Picard vineyards in LeBarre, France, circa 2024. What little power remains on board the crashed vessel is being syphoned off by the Borg Queen to save herself, something the crew needs to happen so she can point them toward the fissure in time to correct the Confederation timeline (and hopefully get them home).

However, Elnor (Evan Evagora) is also in need of that power to stay alive on a biobed after suffering a phaser wound at the end of “Penance.” With only seconds to make a decision, Picard won’t allow the Borg Queen to be terminated, leaving Raffi (Michelle Hurd) devastated as the young Romulan dies in her arms.

It’s a tough, dramatic death – a moment that both fans and Raffi alike will be hoping can be reversed with a repaired timeline, but for now, the trusting, questioning young Qowat Milat warrior is gone. With Raffi spewing venom at Picard’s leadership choices, she decides they are not waiting on the Borg Queen to get back up to speed before beginning her quest to find the “watcher,” who hopefully can save Elnor while resetting the timeline.

It’s here where the fun familiarity begins, as Raffi, Seven (Jeri Ryan) and Rios beam into LA and go equal parts Voyage Home, “Past Tense” and “Future’s End.”

In the Voyage Home column you have the fantastic slingshot effect, a search for a watcher (which in the case of Star Trek IV, we had whales) and a dramatic conclusion with police crashing a medical facility to try and apprehend one of our heroes. In this last element, the “of-the-moment” scenes in a community clinic — operating primarily to supporting undocumented residents — are set up when Rios is injured after a transporter beam drops him thirty feet onto bare concrete.

He ends up in the care of the clinic’s lead physician, Teresa (Sol Rodriguez), and their connection is on full display when she hilariously implores him to tell a heartfelt story about his happiest childhood memory before cutting him off harshly with a crunching reset of the bones in his injured hand. (“Cool story.” Instant chemistry!)

In the end, the facility is raided by U.S. Immigration and the pair are both arrested, setting up a major problem for Rios — who remains injured, with no identification and no comm badge to call for help.

Rios being on his own with no ID goes straight into the “Past Tense” column, echoing Jadzia Dax’s story after being separated from Sisko and Bashir in the classic Deep Space Nine episode. The Sanctuary Districts from 2024 also make an appearance (via a few signs in the background) when Raffi is mugged right after beaming in.

This being Raffi, she immediately gets the better of her attacker and then she and Seven head to an LA landmark (a la “Future’s End”) and make cute with a security guard at the city’s tallest skyscraper to get a cellular photograph — and a lead on finding both Rios and the Watcher.

The scenes in Los Angles feel fresh and fun (though not funner than security guard Kevin, of course), but are mostly doing the work to set up the story to come. The real surprise in this episode comes back on La Sirena, where Picard and Jurati (Alison Pill) have been taxed with trying to revive the Borq Queen… while also keeping her from taking control.

The acting in the frequent Stewart/Pill team-up scenes has been a high-point throughout the Picard series run, and this one is no different. Pill is again exceptionally strong in portraying the lonely and caustic Jurati as a character trying to relax and fit in, while also processing the information of the world around her with an intelligence that won’t allow her to do so.

After rattling off some superb Borg technobabble, the pair decide that their starting point with the Queen is to access her central core system — where they believe she is still mentally active, but without a way to communicate. Picard would be quickly recognized as Locutus (even in his new body, it seems), so to slow down the threat of assimilation, it falls to Jurati as the only option.

Of course, Picard is against it, knowing that the longer Jurati is inside the Queen, the tougher she will be to control, but Jurati argues that the partial assimilation can be stopped at any time as Picard monitors and speaks to her subconscious (where he will surely learn more than just how much she misses her grade school cat).

The journey into a character’s subconscious is a classic Star Trek trope used throughout the past 56 years and it is executed to perfection here with Jurati. She wishes Picard was her dad. She uses humor as a deflection. She gets angry, calling Picard a “pretentious prick” who hides his own feelings; she gets sad, revealing deep suicidal thoughts.

As the intensity builds, the Queen’s voice emerges in Agnes, followed closely by Agnes’ voice in the disembodied Queen hanging over them. Back and forth it goes until Picard finally succumbs to the pressure and he moves to disconnect her. But Jurati grabs his hand to stop him, and here Thompson directs the scene to a thrilling climax with Picard exclaiming, “Who’s hand is this?!?” and the Queen and Agnes rotating answers between them (“Mine.” “Mine.” “Mine.” “Mine.” “Mine.” “Mine.”) — as he finally pulls the plug.

Whew. What a moment. Honestly, as good as anything we’ve seen in eight previous appearances from the Borg Queen since making her debut in Star Trek: First Contact more than 25 years ago.

With “small companion” (a Borg dis’!) out of commission temporarily, the Borg Queen has regained her “clarity of vision” and is now trying to negotiate with Locutus. She’ll give up the Watcher’s location for the ship… until Jurati perks up with a confident, “Are you sure about that?”

With the most convincing swagger and confidence you will ever see, she utters a line for the ages, delivered with such knowing accomplishment that it would stagger any collective: “Computer, dictate the file-log ‘Shit I Stole from the Borg Queen.’”

And just like that, Jurati has won this round. And as satisfying as that line is for the viewer, the Queen is even more into it, declaring, “What you have done here is more difficult and vastly more dangerous than you realize: you’ve impressed me.”

Watching these two powerhouses continue their war of wits and minds has quickly moved to the top of the wish list in anticipating how the remainder of this season unfolds. This is especially true, given the fact that Jurati has clearly been affected by her connection with the Borg Queen, something that will surely play out in interesting ways in the episodes to come.

With the Queen nullified for now and with the coordinates of the watcher in hand, Picard tries to contact the away team, where his calls to Rios go unanswered in another fun episode-ending mini-cliffhanger.

BUTTERFLY BEATS

In the season’s first bit of timey-wimey mysteriousness, Jurati warns the away team that when one is 400 years in the past, “You have to look out for butterflies,” urging caution against accidentally causing more damage to the timeline.

After falling two stories onto the street, Rios is taken to Clinica Las Mariposas — which translates to “The Butterflies” — where not only does her clinic feature kid-crafted butterflies around the office, but the facility’s logo (a stylized butterfly) actually first appeared among the crates of medical supplies in La Sirena’s cargo hold back in the season premiere.

Even the Borg Queen herself is posed like a preserved butterfly when hung in front of La Sirena’s engine core. “A leads to B leads to C leads to A,” once said Captain Braxton; it’s time to start pondering what ‘C’ will be for the La Sirena gang as the season pushes forward.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS

• Seven suggests that Raffi use Dermaline pads to bandage Elnor’s wound, at least temporarily, when no real medical supplies were available to help him.
   
• The Confederation starships that chase La Sirena to the sun are comprised of a Steamrunner-class design and two Nova-class ships; both digital models are CGI work developed by Eaglemoss for the Official Starships Collection model line (spotted by Jörg Hillebrand).
   
• Jurati estimates their year of arrival to past-Earth based upon the pollution content of the atmosphere (like Spock in The Voyage Home) and the status of detectable radioactivity (like Data in First Contact).
   
• La Sirena has physical blast shields which can be lowered over the forward viewports.
   
• Rios’ ship crashes to a planetary surface for the second time in five episodes.

• Elnor’s medallion reads “Now is the Only Moment,” echoing Laris’ phrase from the season premiere, “Seize Today, For We Know Nothing of Tomorrow.”
   
• Raffi suggests the team scan Los Angeles for subspace signals (which shouldn’t exist yet) to find the Watcher, the same thing which led the Voyager crew to find old-man Captain Braxton on Earth in “Future’s End.”
   
• According to Jurati’s warning, Federation citizens of the Star Trek: Picard era have identification implants and vaccination chips embedded in their bodies.
   
• Confederation trooper jackets feature a shoulder patch with a Borg skull.
   
• Jurati aims to beam the away team as close as possible to “Markridge Tower,” another reference to Terry Matalas’ 12 Monkeys TV show.
   
• The cover of “California Dreaming” which plays as Seven, Raffi and Rios beam to LA is from German DJ Freischwimmer.

• The business located where Rios beams (and falls) to the streets of Los Angeles is called “Tipton Bros. Deli” — established in 1966, of course — which is a nod to Star Trek comics writers Scott and David Tipton (currently overseeing TNG — The Mirror War).
   
• Raffi materializes inside an LA-based Sanctuary District, one of the class-segregated areas first seen in “Past Tense.”
   
• On the building above the Sanctuary District, a large billboard advertising a forthcoming space mission to Europa carries the tagline, “… To Boldly Go!”
   
• Raffi’s mugger reminds her that in the 21st century, people still need money (unlike those from the Federation future).

• Last week, 9 to 5 Google identified the Confederation’s padd devices as Samsung Galaxy Z Fold tablets wrapped up in a fancy case, and this week we get a good look at a Confederation tricorder — which is, in reality, the Galaxy Z Flip folding smartphone in its own space-age case.
   
• Coming from a galaxy full of replicated food, Rios marvels at the taste of “real” peanut butter cookies.
   
• Rick & Morty is now part of the Star Trek canon, which means somewhere Lower Decks creator Mike McMahan — who worked on that series for several years — must also exist inside the franchise he’s helping to shape.
   
• The immigration officer who arrests Rios notes that he’s got “no UHC card,” the special type of identification issued by the 2020s-era United States — established in “Past Tense.”

Although not quite as riveting as the first two episodes in total, “Assimilation” soars in the unexpected showdown between Jurati and the Borq Queen, and certainly is setting up some amazing stories to be told in that particular relationship.

More, please!

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 March 24 with “Watcher” 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.