Picard takes Jurati to the place he crash-landed La Sirena at: Chateau Picard, currently abandoned in the wake of World War II. In the morning, he convinces Jurati to beam him to the coordinates of the Watcher, which she stole from the Borg Queen last episode. Here, he finds... Guinan, but from this timeline, in which the CSS World Razer (what the Prime Timeline called the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D) never had adventures that involved visiting San Francisco in 1893... meaning that Guinan has never met Picard before. (She's also been re-cast.) Picard tries to avoid contaminating the timeline by saying too much... which only slows things down, because when he admits his name, Guinan realizes she needs to help him.
Jurati needs the Borg Queen's help to get La Sirena's systems back online. The Queen identifies Jurati as an Ineffectual Loner, and in exchange for her help, Jurati offers... friendship of some form, since it takes a totally-isolated person to know another. The Queen agrees.
Rios has been detained by ICE. Raffi visits a LAPD
office to try to find him, where a friendly bystander explains that the different law-enforcement agencies aren't yet sharing a database. She and Seven break into a LAPD cruiser and get into ICE's system, where they find that Rios has indeed been earmarked for deportation. (Teresa, who is in the country legally, is let go.) After a Car Chase that goes nowhere, Jurati beams them both to just outside Castaic, where his deportation bus is traveling. The two plan to seize the bus.
Guinan takes Picard to a park bench in Los Angeles, where he meets with the Watcher. After possessing several people to lead him to her real self, the Watcher turns out to be (or look exactly like) Laris, sans Romulan ears. She takes him through a door which she creates out of nothing.
The last scene involves Q, blending in wearing a lab coat and observing NASA's manned mission to Europa. He's observing someone — apparently the mission's commander — and believes she's going to crumble under the pressure... but when he performs his Badass Fingersnap to work his will on the universe, nothing happens.
Tropes:
- Abandoned Area: Chateau Picard in 2024 is currently abandoned, and will remain so for another century. Picard explains that the Nazis used the chateau as a base during the Second World War while his family fled to England.
- Ancient Conspiracy: The Watcher is implied to be a member of one. Guinan knows very few details, only that they protect the destiny of certain individuals throughout space and time, suggesting a fairly broad knowledge (if not outright enforcement) of the Prime Timeline.
- Blatant Lies: "I have no idea how this got here," Raffi says of the phaser she took with her in defiance of the ban against having future tech.
- Brought Down to Normal: In the final scene, Q finds his powers are gone.
- Celebrity Paradox: In Guinan's bar, there is a picture of someone wearing a Star Trek: The Next Generation t-shirt, featuring both Patrick Stewart and Whoopi Goldberg.
- Cerebus Retcon: Why does the French Jean-Luc Picard have an English accent? As Picard himself explains, during World War II, the lands in which the Chateau Picard reside on were taken over when the Nazis invaded France. As a result, the Picard clan was forced to flee to England, and as of 2024, have not returned.
- Continuity Nod:
- Jurati calls Picard "Dixon Hill" in response to his sleuthing, after his favourite holoprogram in The Next Generation.
- The punk rock guy on the bus from Star Trek IV returns, played by the same actor (Kirk Thatcher) as last time. He's still listening to "I Hate You" — or rather, a Sequel Song judging by the lyric "35 years later ...". When Seven asks him to shut off the noise, he rubs his neck with his hand, as though remembering the past injury that Spock inflicted upon him. This time around, he decides to simply listen to her and he turns off his music, apologising for it.
- The frontpage of the newspaper that Q reads has a secondary by-line of "Brynner fights unionization". This is a reference to Christopher Brynner from the Deep Space Nine episodes "Past Tense" that saw Sisko, Bashir and Dax travel back to 2024. The "Sanctuary District" that Rios is being transported to is from the same episode.
- Jurati succeeded in stealing the location of The Watcher from the Borg Queen last episode. When Picard beams to those coordinates, he finds himself at Number 10, Forward Avenue.
- Jackson Roykirk Plaza is named for the scientist who created the Nomad space probe from the original series episode "The Changeling".
- Though the events of TNG's "Time's Arrow" are implied not to have taken place due to changes in the timeline, Guinan does allude to her past by saying she has been on Earth for a very long time.
- Guinan mentions to Picard that the Watcher is another name for a Supervisor. In the TOS episode "Assignment: Earth", Gary Seven had the designation Supervisor 194.
- El-Aurians have a sensitivity to the timeline changing, something we also saw with Guinan in "Yesterday's Enterprise".
- Dirty Cop: The ICE Officer is a Smug Snake, a bit too quick to taser Rios when he tries to help an inmate and hints that a Fate Worse than Death is in store for him and the others being deported without due process.
- Drives Like Crazy: Seven of Nine, due to her lack of formal training using a steering wheel and foot pedals. Exaggerated when it turns into a Car Chase.
- Flashback: Picard has a few flashbacks to his childhood with his mother.
- Foreshadowing: There are more direct references to a NASA manned mission to Europa. Previous episodes had some posters on buildings, but this episode has a newspaper article and Q has a Europa patch on his outfit, suggesting he's placed himself among the staff.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus:
- You can read some details on the Europa mission, including the name of the ship, "Shango", which is the name of a deity in the Yoruba religion that originated in the area of modern-day Nigeria.
- The book the young woman is reading at the end of the episode has a cover reminiscent of Dixon Hill, and was written by Tracy Tormé, a writer in the earliest seasons of TNG, including the first episode Hill appeared in.
- Inner Monologue: At the end of the episode Q looks to be narrating the inner thoughts of the woman he is watching. It suggests she is significant to the Europa mission, and that she is terrified internally, and that it will cost people their lives. He comes out of the monologue when he tries to snap his fingers but nothing happens.
- Invisibility Cloak: The Confederation La Sirena has a cloaking device, since the Confederation wouldn't be obligated (or expected) to honour any treaty with the Romulans banning their use.
- Lampshade Hanging: Rios finishes off his Sarcastic Confession (see below) by casually mentioning that Picard is now some kind of flesh and blood robot but nobody's explained to him what exactly all of that means. Which really just means he knows as much as the audience does.
- Mind-Control Eyes: Those taken over by the Watcher gain white eyes for the duration.
- Rousing Speech: Picard pleads with Guinan to stay by telling her that change always takes longer than it should, but it happens nonetheless.
- Sarcastic Confession: Rios tells an ICE officer the truth about himself and his mission, knowing he won't be believed.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Picard reunites with a young Guinan while she is in the process of closing down her bar and leaving Earth behind. Two hundred years of seeing the worst in humans have led Guinan to lose all faith in humanity and has left her feeling defeated, bitter and wishing to go home. Before they part ways, Picard makes one last plea for her to remain on Earth.
- Temporal Sickness: Guinan vomits when Picard repeats words to her that she'll tell him in the future, an El-Aurian condition known as "Af-kelt" that occurs when the timeline has been changed.
- Time-Shifted Actor: Ito Aghayere plays a young Guinan.
- Timey-Wimey Ball:
- The Stable Time Loop between the 19th and the 24th centuries in TNG's "Time's Arrow" has completely disappeared, even though the point of divergence happens after one-half of the loop has already taken place. Although, if Starfleet never existed in the changed timeline it's likely that Picard's Enterprise would never have found the artifacts in the mineshaft and, therefore would never have been in a position to leave them there in the first place. Confirmed by the showrunner.
- Similarly, the crew of the TOS Enterprise dropping by 1986 San Francisco to nab some whales presumably didn't include Spock, if it happened at all. (Indeed, given the Confederation's blasé attitude towards the environment, it's possible that no one went back in time, probe crisis or not.) Despite this, the punk Spock nerve-pinched in the Prime Timeline still gets nervous and feels his neck when asked to turn his music down.
- Wham Shot: Two back-to-back to end the episode.
- The first is that "The Watcher" that Picard is searching for turns out to (apparently) be Laris!
- The very next shot is a Q monologue that ends with him clicking his fingers...and nothing happens.Q: (looks at his hand in confusion, snaps his fingers again, with no result) That's unexpected...and most unfortunate.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: The Queen tries to convince Jurati that she can be so much more if she would stop hiding herself. Subverted in that she might just be playing mind games.
