Meanwhile, Adam Soong’s daughter Kore (Isa Briones, who played multiple androids in the show’s first season) has introduced a new, unrelated plot that will undoubtedly have to be addressed in the show’s final four episodes. Kore suffers from an unnamed genetic ailment that prevents her from breathing unfiltered air or standing in direct sunlight. She spends most of her time in a posh basement room only occasionally talking to her father. When she goes snooping through Adam’s computer, she finds several online articles on how her father was a mad scientist whose wild genetic experiments cost him his livelihood and credibility in the medical community. She also finds a series of her own childhood photos … that she does not remember taking. It turns out Kore is merely the latest in a string of failed clones that Soong has been creating for, no doubt, nefarious purposes. 

Surely, say I, the notion of a mad scientist using shady genetic experimentation would have been cause enough to suspect a fascist future. It appears the Renée plot, the Watcher, etc., were but window-dressing to a more direct plot about Data’s great-great-etc.-grandfather deliberately causing a dark timeline. A more interesting confrontation, surely I say again, would have been Picard facing off against a man who looks like an old officer of his, discussing the ethics of genetic manipulation. 

“Picard” is overwritten to the point of nonsense. And while I do appreciate the setting, the overall idea for the plot, and some of the characters, I find “Picard” is still merely stumbling along. 

Yet to be resolved: Dr. Jurati possessed by the Borg Queen, the flashbacks with Picard’s mother, and Adam Soong. I can’t say I have much faith in any potentially clever denouement.