It was bound to happen. They can’t all be better than the one before it, and after an amazing run of six episodes, “Dominion” is arguably the least-successful entry in Star Trek: Picard this season.
Although the episode contains some amazing surprises and incredible character reveals — as well as some uniquely staged action sequences — in the end, it doesn’t quite equal the sum of its parts and, ultimately, just isn’t as fun as what we’ve seen up to this point. Whether that is a valid criticism or not is up to the viewer, as “Dominion” is likely a victim of its own success… namely, the high standard of the episodes that have preceded it.
More than anything, “Dominion” is a showcase for the compelling, boundary-pushing choices of Amanda Plummer as Vadic, the scenery-chewing villain leading the Changeling cabal trying to get their hands on Jack Crusher (Ed Speleers). We’ve already seen the unique way in which Plummer brings Vadic to life, alternating between a chilling, melodic cadence, giddy laughter and unhinged, repetitive speech patterns (and everything in between), but for the first time we are also getting a taste of her disturbing backstory in a face-off with both Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden).
Before that showdown arrives, though, the episode opens with the Titan on the run from, well, everyone, trying to figure out their next move, which includes Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) reaching out to a familiar face. In a genuine surprise that no one saw coming, Tim Russ reprises his role as Tuvok, now a captain, 23 years after the USS Voyager’s return from the Delta quadrant.
Russ slips right back into his old character and gets to feature nicely in a lively game of kal-toh-and-mouse with Seven, who is trying to determine if her old friend is a Changeling or not. The scene is staged quite cleverly by writer Jane Maggs, who sets up a double-bluff for the viewer. When you think Tuvok has passed Seven’s test, as she brings up their many games of kal-toh on Voyager and he commends her on having “beaten (him) countless times,” a composer Stephen Barton’s score once again pumps in the fanfare from Jerry Goldsmith’s fabulous Voyager theme music.
But the trick is on us, not Seven, who gets the Vulcan-imposter to reveal himself a moment later by suggesting a meeting on Aklion VII, where she says she once underwent a procedure to stabilize her neural patterns. Game, set, kal-toh to Seven. (Of course, it was Tuvok himself who helped stabilize Seven with a mindmeld back in “Infinite Regress,” and with just a hint of an evil smile, Russ gives up the game.)
He is in fact a Changeling posing as Voyager’s former security chief — and yes, thankfully, he acknowledges that the REAL Tuvok is still alive so the Changelings can use him as a source of information. (He better make it out of this alive!) The scene is a fun one, helping the crew of the Titan finally realize: they are on their own.
Which leads them to turn to another old friend for answers, this one in the form of Data (Brent Spiner), who they are hoping will be able to provide some guidance on exactly why the Changelings have absconded with the original, organic remains of Jean-Luc Picard.
As he was in his brief appearance last week, Spiner is back to his old, scene-stealing self in bringing the many faces of Data back to the screen. There is a lot of fun, background exposition in these scenes setting up the internal battle between Data and Lore in this new Soong android, but none of that really matters once the engrossing Spiner begins snapping back-and-forth between the two characters.
When he first awakens, he’s Data, quickly realizing he is no longer on the Scimitar (where he died for the first time in back in Star Trek: Nemesis), and then he’s quickly Lore, hammering home to Picard that “time has been very cruel to you.” Combined with Spiner’s impressive performance, the production team has fashioned a killer sound design to accompany the actor’s movements and inflection changes. The results are an effective and visually disturbing representation of the struggle taking place inside the android.
Data eventually reveals that Altan Soong’s research on Picard’s remains — which he had in his possession following everything that went down at the end of the show’s first season — would seem to indicate that he may not have had Irumodic Syndrome after all. The answers to what that might mean, and how it might be affecting what Jack is going through this season, will wait for another episode, but it is a potentially fascinating development… especially with Jack’s foreshadowing statement of “I’ve always felt different. Like there is something wrong with me. Deep, deep down inside.”
In terms of their immediate predicament, the Titan crew put a plan in place to lure the Shrike to them after receiving a compromised captain’s code communication request from Riker, confirming once and for all he is being held by the Changelings.
The set-up with Vadic and her minions boarding the Titan is where the episode goes slighty awry — not so much in execution, which is fine — but the choice to end the episode with a starship takeover we’ve seen executed many, many other times in Trek. It all feels a little rote, in the way none of the season has in the first six episodes.
As the Changelings board the ship, the crew of the Titan play some forcefield games to try and gain an advantage, but the real joy here is watching Plummer sink her teeth into Vadic with erratic and melodic line reads like: “He’s right there. Right there. I can almost touch him. Don’t you hear that. Don’t you? Tick-tock, tick-toc, goes the ancient clock. We are out of time. We. Are. Going.”
It isn’t long before she has been cornered behind a forcefield in sickbay and adds to the mystery around Jack by answering a query about her own “evolved physiology” by challenging both Picard and Dr Crusher with, “What about your son? Do you know about his physiology?” She later reveals that getting her hands on Jack has nothing to do with her, “He’s not for me. We could bond over that since he was never really for you either.”
When Beverly responds with, “What the hell does that mean?” she is clearly a stand-in for the audience, because that is exactly what I said in that revealing moment.
With the mystery of Jack ratcheted all the way up Warp 10, we finally get to learn the backstory of Vadic, which is steeped in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine lore surrounding the Dominion War — a war in which the Changeling was tortured by Section 31 as a prisoner of the Federation.
In telling her story, we get a great rehashing of DS9’s seventh season, in which Vadic pointedly reminds Picard that the Federation may have created a cure for the biological warfare unleashed on them, but they also voted not to give it to them.
Vadic’s story time is accompanied by scenes of a masochistic, misguided Federation scientist (also played by Amanda Plummer), whose face she now wears to “remind herself of her hate,” and it is effective in creating some sympathy for the character. Her descriptive narration of the ordeal faced by her and nine of her brothers and sisters is quite visceral, with squealing wheels on a cart in a hallway, squeaking boots on concrete, creaking cage doors, and “screams of all temperance, pitches and whistling.”
Her torture included “more pain than any being should be expected to endure” and was designed to weaponize the Changeling subjects by turning them into the “perfect, undetectable spies, able to drop into any species, and spread chaos. Happy ending, though. Through those experiments you created the perfect monster. Us.”
It’s all quite disturbing. But even in the face of that horror, Picard and Crusher quite rightly point out to Vadic that, “There never would have been a war if the Changelings had not initiated it.” Her response is an afront to reason when she says, “Do not compare the atrocities committed by your side to the warfare executed by mine,” as if the “execution of warfare” has some level of nobility to it.
Regardless of the atrocities both sides might be capable of committing (and Star Trek has shown us for more than 50 years that the Federation is capable of their own malfeasance in many different shapes and sizes), Vadic’s attempts to minimize the argument that the Dominion began the conflict with indiscriminate destruction and killing is offensive, especially when she tries to argue it was all done out of “necessity,” because “solids like you were coming and you ruin every world you touch.” So, the Changeling atrocities were preventative? Got it. This is the same kind of logic you get when you waste time arguing with Nazis — there is no “both sides” in that argument.
Fortunately, Picard and Crusher see right through it, and despite briefly weighing the moral implications involved, the fact that she is the “executioner for her cause” leads them to quickly and satisfyingly decide that it is time for Vadic to cease to exist. (Yep, they are going to kill her. They both acknowledge they have fundamentally changed and will compromise everything they believed in to do it. And I love it.)
In the end, if Vadic’s backstory was designed to illicit emotions and debate, mission accomplished. And the added touch of it all being wrapped up in something called “Project Proteus” makes it all the more interesting. In Greek mythology, Proteus was a shapeshifter, but proteus is also bacterium found in both the soil and in the intestines of animals, which helps guide Crusher to discover that each of Vadic’s Changeling friends were exposed to a formula that contained Thalonium 847, a substance still found in each of them which makes them trackable on sensors.
While Vadic is regaling us with her backstory, Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) and his daughter Alandra (Micah Burton) are working on trying to restore Data’s cognitive functions to normal parameters. The scenes with Geordi and this new version of Data are the most emotionally resonant of the episode and are integrated nicely with the action taking place across the Titan, especially when Lore takes control of some of the ship’s key system at the precise moment that his other daughter, Sidney (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut), and Jack are pinned behind two forcefields while engaging the Changelings.
In an emotional appeal to his friend, Geordi pleads with Data to find a way to circumvent the control Lore has exerted in their battle. The plea is both for his daughter, who is at risk if the forcefields come down, and also personal: he can’t lose Data again. LeVar Burton has been a force to behold in his return to La Forge, and the emotion he showcases in this scene is impossible to contain.
“Life rarely gives you second chances to say what you should,” he says with tears rolling down his face. “Data, you made me better. You did. You made me a better man. A better father. A better friend. And when you died, it broke me. But see, you put me back together, you repaired me. The memory of you.”
It’s a special moment, and it does eventually work as he continues his emotional appeals, but not right away, as Lore drops the forcefields, allowing Vadic to escape Picard and Beverly — while forcing Sidney and Jack into hand-to-hand combat with the Changelings who have been waiting for them. But as we saw earlier when the two were sharing a quiet moment in the turbolift, Jack is exhibiting a strange telekinetic ability to enter someone else’s mind, jumping into Sidney’s head to assist her in defeating her combatant.
When it’s all said and done, Sidney (understandably) is none too pleased and holds her phaser on Jack before they both scramble away from Vadic, who appears in the corridor before moving onto the bridge. In finally taking control of the ship, Vadic declares to the crew on board: “I am Vadic, captain of the USS Titan. And Jack, my dear, if you can hear me, it’s time you learnt who you truly are.”
And as a wise woman already said once in this episode, we say again… what the hell does that mean?
MOMENTS OF STASHWICK
We think Todd Stashwick and his portrayal of USS Titan captain Liam Shaw is destined for Trek icon status — each week this season, we’ll be highlighting one one of the character’s (and actor’s) best moments.
After six episodes of being in the thick of the action, Captain Shaw doesn’t have as much to do this week, but he does take a beating from the Changelings while trying to stop them from reaching the bridge in the episode’s final act, which leads us to this week’s choice.
Knowing the ship is about to be compromised as Vadic and her shapeshifters head to the bridge in a turbolift, an injured Shaw — from inside that turbolift — quickly gets off a command to Seven to “blow the turbolift,” which, of course, Seven does not do, unwilling to sacrifice her captain.
Instead, she and the crew put up a fight… but it is to no avail as Vadic takes the ship, setting up a cliffhanger for next week’s episode.
OBSERVATION LOUNGE
- Though he’s eventually revealed to be a Changeling, this episode marks the first appearance of Tim Russ as Tuvok since Star Trek: Voyager ended in 2001. (Of course, Tuvok was seen briefly as a participant in efforts to clear Carol Freeman’s name in “Grounded,” but that was just a still image in Star Trek: Lower Decks).
- Born in 2264 — and thankfully still alive, despite Changeling infiltration — Tuvok is now 137 years old as of “Dominion.”
- We get yet another Admiral Janeway reference during Seven’s interrogation of Changeling Tuvok. It’s the fourth time this season Janeway has been namedropped.
- The Titan is seen hiding in the Chin’toka scrapyard, likely filled with wreckage from the Dominion War still floating about. The Chin’toka system first appeared in a major battle in Deep Space Nine’s “Tears of the Prophets,” and is where Captain Sisko’s first USS Defiant starship was destroyed in “The Changing Face of Evil.”
- As the Titan hides from the Changelings amid space debris, we get a shot of what appears to be the remains of a D’kyr-class Vulcan starship.
- Jonathan Frakes’ only appearance in the episode comes when Changeling Tuvok morphs into a corpse-like image of Captain Riker, saying: “I’m as good as dead.” (Creepy.)
- Last week we had Riker whistling “Pop Goes the Weasel” to unlock the mysteries of Daystrom Station, and this week we get to hear Vadic’s rendition of “Three Blind Mice.”
- A key piece of background detail on these new Changelings is that Vadic evolved from the biological experiments conducted on her. As part of that, she was able to pass her enhanced (but limited) abilities to any Changeling that wanted to join her cause. When they link, “they inherit a shorter life, eternal pain, for the ability to fool those who took everything from us.”
- In three different scenes, an evolving Dr. Crusher first acknowledges her openness to exploring a biological solution in their fight with the Changelings, and then in her first confrontation with Vadic says she is rethinking her oath “to do no harm.” Later, as she contemplates killing Vadic with Picard, she admits, “Yes, I think I’m losing my compass.” Of course, we’ve already seen Crusher kill without hesitation in the season premiere (“The Next Generation”), when Changelings boarded her ship.
- When Picard and Crusher open fire on the escaping Vadic, the Changeling escapes into a conduit in a shot not unlike the VFX seen in Deep Space Nine’s “The Adversary” of Changelings twice escaping into ceiling conduits.
- There seems to be a notable difference in how modern ‘pulse’ phasers affect Changelings — hardly injuring them in goo form — compared to the older-style ‘beam’ phasers Worf and Jack Crusher carry, which appear to vaporize Changelings relatively easily.
- Michael Dorn (Worf), Michelle Hurd (Raffi), and Marina Sirtis (Troi) do not appear in this episode.
- The episode was written by Jane Maggs, who now has four writing credits on the series (including “Seventeen Seconds” earlier this season).
- “Dominion” is the first episode of Picard from director Deborah Kampmeier, who previously directed Star Trek: Discovery’s “The Galactic Barrier.”
Although many of the elements in “Dominion” shine — including those involving Vadic’s backstory, Data’s emergence, Geordi’s emotion and that great cameo from Tim Russ — the episode as a whole doesn’t quite gel in comparison to the rest of the season, and that includes the decision the Titan crew made to allow the Changelings on board to try and bring the fight to them.
It’s an interesting, but not entirely successful, leap in the series’ narrative structure that will play out next week in “Surrender,” with Vadic in control of the Titan.
Jim Moorhouse is the creator of TrekRanks.com and the TrekRanks Podcast.
He can be found living and breathing Trek every day on Twitter as @EnterpriseExtra.
Star Trek: Picard Season 3 will continue with “Surrender” on April 6 on Paramount+ in the United States and on CTV Sci Fi Channel and Crave in Canada — following the next day in the UK, Australia, Italy, France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The series is also available on Amazon’s Prime Video service in most other international locations.
