Two weeks ago, Jack Crusher (Ed Speleers) sails the Eleos XII into contested space, and is confronted by the Fenris Rangers. While he's in violation of various laws, he claims to be on a mission of humanitarian aid to help relieve the Galarian fever on the planet down below. He also bribes the Rangers with a shipment of weapons. As they leave, the Ranger radios in: "Reach out to the Marked Woman. We've found him."
Today, Picard, Riker and Jack Crusher investigate their options aboard the ailing Eleos. While Riker tries to devise a technobabble solution, Picard sets up transport inhibitors — narrowly preventing the giant ship from beaming Jack away, and confirming to Picard that they are after the boy specifically. Jack, meanwhile, wants to get Beverly's medpod to Picard's shuttle... but the giant ship blows the shuttle up, stranding them aboard. Back at the Titan-A, sensors pick up the weapons fire. Captain Shaw is not interested in bringing his ship in — the Titan is a Fragile Speedster built for science and exploration — but Seven has a firm word with him about whether he wants to be remembered as the man who saved two Famed In-Story Living Legends... or the man who stood by and let them die. Therefore, as the giant ship begins to haul the Eleos in with its Tractor Beam, the Titan arrives to break the lock. After a bit of a kerfuffle with the transport inhibitors, all four occupants of the ship are evacuated by transporter, with Dr. Crusher being transported directly to Sickbay.
Raffi consults with Starfleet Intelligence, upset that she was unable to save anyone. She requests permission from her handler to go deeper, but her handler (again via text message) claims they have identified a culprit, a Romulan extremist named T'Luco who purchased the portal technology from a Ferengi crime lord named Sneed. "Repeat: Starfleet Command has terminated investigation. Disengage." Raffi, after being denied a face-to-face meeting with her handler, resolves to go it alone. To do this, however, she needs to connect with Sneed... And to do that, she needs to talk to her ex-husband, Jae Hwang. Jae hoped that she wanted him (Jae) to reach out to their son Gabriel, and is disappointed when she's more interested in her theories.
The giant ship hails Captain Shaw, and its captain introduces herself as Vadic. She claims that she's a bounty hunter and Jack Crusher is a wanted criminal. She gives Shaw one hour to make a decision, and then lowers her ship's shields as a sign of good faith. Titan's scans reveal that her ship is armed to the teeth; there's no way they can fight their way out, and also no way the ship is merely for bounty hunting. Vadic proves her point by using her ship's tractor beam to throw the Eleos at the Titan bodily, resulting in a collision that the shields barely handle. A cursory search of Memory Alpha reveals that Jack is indeed an intergalactic fugitive, and Shaw has him held in the brig, with Picard trying in vain to get Jack to reveal what the big deal is. Riker, meanwhile, needles Picard about Jack's resemblance to himselfnote .
Raffi meets with Sneed. She claims to want to know — on behalf of her boss, T'Luco — who is spreading the rumors that T'Luco used the portal phlebotinum. Sneed suspects she's Starfleet Intelligence, maybe even Section 31, and demands she prove herself by taking a hallucinogen. Despite this, Musiker manages to maintain her cover story. However, Sneed has already seen through it: he knows for a fact that nobody works for T'Luco anymore, and proves it with a Decapitation Presentation of the Romulan's head. He then orders his mooks to kill Raffi. Musiker is, of course, completely inebriated by the drug... But whoever comes in for a Big Damn Heroes moment, fighting off the mooks with a bladed weapon and then killing Sneed, is not. The rescuer helps Raffi up and begins to walk her out of the den: "I told you, do not engage." It's Worf, son of Mogh.
Jack Crusher manages to disable the force field over the brig and begins a mad dash through the ship. Seven finds him at the transporter room, holding an ensign at bay and demanding the transporters be unlocked. Picard interprets this as Jack performing a Heroic Sacrifice for The Needs of the Many, and Shaw obligingly orders the transporter unlocked. However, at that exact moment, Riker returns to the bridge with Beverly Crusher, healed but still recuperating. Her wordless Held Gaze is enough, and Admiral Picard suddenly overrides Shaw's order, insisting that Jack will remain here: "Because he's my son." He orders the Titan to fire torpedoes and fly into the nebula, and Vadic, Laughing Mad, orders the Shrike to pursue.
Tropes:
- Art Evolution: Sneed is the first Ferengi seen in live action in a long time, and his design is subtly different than contemporary Ferengi. His eyebrow line in particular is much larger and appears to be a mixture of muscle, fat and ligaments, as previous Ferengi had more of a thin ridge across their eyebrow line linking to their ears and had an implied bone structure to it. His head shape also appears slightly more bulbous and segmented.
- Ax-Crazy: From her scenes in her debut episode, it's evident Vadic isn't the most stable member of the Trek rogues gallery.
- Big Damn Heroes:
- The Shrike has the Eleos in a tractor beam when the Titan downwarps between the two ships, breaking the beam.
- Worf rescues Raffi from Sneed and his mooks with a Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind.
- Bounty Hunter: Vadic claims to be one who's trying to collect the price on Jack Crusher's head. While Jack is guilty of these transgressions, the sheer size of Vadic's resources and time she's put into this hunt implies there's much more going on here than a simple bounty collection.
- Call-Back:
- Lower Decks had the Drookmani scavengers similarly weaponize their tractor beam by reversing it, though on a much smaller scale.
- For that matter, it's appropriate that Ensign La Forge explains how the tractor beam could be weaponized; her father reversed its intended function several times over the course of TNG.
- Speaking of Lower Decks, background details in Sneed's lair reveal the Ferengi are still harvesting Mugato horns. The Ready Room explicitly confirms the nod.
- The tactical analysis of the Shrike's overwhelming complement of weapons mirrors Worf's similar analysis of Shinzon's Scimitar during Star Trek: Nemesis. The Shrike is also stated to be carrying Isolytic Burst weapons, which haven't been seen in TNG-era Trek since the days of the Son'a (and which won't chronologically be seen again until later on Star Trek: Discovery courtesy of Ruon Tarka).
- Cherry Tapping: Vadic has the Shrike take the Eleos in a tractor beam and throw it at the Titan, which destroyed the Eleos but the Titan managed to maneuver enough to make it a glancing blow, yet still penetrated the shield and caused some hull damage. Ensign La Forge explains that a combination of Techno Babble in the tractor beam and raw kinetic force got around the shield. It was Vadic affirming they were outmatched.
- Cool Chair: Vadic's command chair aboard the Shrike. Amanda Plummer gushes
about it in The Ready Room featurette. (Ironically, as she orders the Shrike to pursue, the chair shakes back and forth. The Doylist reason is that it's a set, so of course everything's a bit shoddy ... but the Watsonian answer, which is that Vadic is just that crazy, is just as satisfying.) - Continuity Nod:
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The Son of Mogh delivers one of these to the Ferengi Sneed and his associates.
- Cutting the Knot: Picard opts to simply shoot the transport inhibitors he previously set up so that the Titan can beam everyone to safety, rather than waste time individually deactivating them when a hostile ship is bearing down on them.
- Dare to Be Badass: Seven tells Shaw that he can be remembered as the hero who saved two of Starfleet's greatest legends, or the man who let them both die.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Implied with Shaw during negotiations with Vadic. Upon recognizing him, Vadic reveals she's read Shaw's official Starfleet psychological profile. We don't learn its contents, but Vadic is mockingly relieved that Shaw's still "functional" in spite of whatever's in that file, a pointed choice of wording. Indeed, it's telling that Shaw's already sour expression hardens in response to Vadic's specific choice of words.
- Dead Guy Junior: Beverly's son reveals his name to be Jack — the name of Beverly's first husband and Picard's best friend, killed in action aboard the first U.S.S. Stargazer eleven years before TNG began.
- Decapitation Presentation: Sneed tells Raffi that he knows she isn't working for T'Luco, and proves it by pulling the Romulan's head from his ice box.
- Deadly Euphemism: Jack snarks that the Starfleet officers that came after him and Beverly tried to "Prime Direct" him into an early grave.
- Double-Meaning Title: "Disengage" not only refers to Worf's orders to Raffi as her handler, but also to the Titan-A's tactic of fleeing from the Shrike into the Ryton Nebula to buy themselves time and space to get away more conclusively. It's also a Mythology Gag to Picard's Catchphrase command of "engage".
- Entertainingly Wrong: Vadic opens her conversation with the Titan-A's bridge crew with "good afternoon", noting that it supposedly is afternoon in Earth's solar system. If she knew anything about Earth's rotation and time zones, it's always afternoon somewhere on the planet, unless perhaps she's going by UTC or some other standard baseline.
- Evil Laugh: The episode cuts to black at the end with Vadic's gleeful laugh echoing as she and her ship pursue the Titan-A and the protagonists into a nearby nebula.
- Face–Heel Turn: To the extent that they even were heroic at all back in the first season, the Fenris Rangers in Jack's flashback are blockading a planet on which a bioengineered plague is raging, and when Jack manages to get the Eleos past their inspection (by bribing the patrol's leader), the Rangers then call up Vadic to tell her where Jack is. It's possible that Seven, back when she was a Fenris Ranger, was more of a Token Good Teammate than she was representative of the group in general.
- Facial Dialogue: Beverly can still barely stand when Riker brings her to the Titan-A's bridge, but she and Picard need no words to confirm what Picard and Riker already know — that Jack is Jean-Luc and Beverly's son.
- Fan of the Past: Sneed is a fan of 20th century Earth culture, mostly because it's valuable to the right buyer.
- Faux Affably Evil: Vadic (which amusingly contrasts Amanda Plummer's role to her father's Affably Evil General Chang from Star Trek VI).
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Motion can be seen in the shadows outside Sneed's hideout right before Worf pulls a Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind on Sneed's guards for a Big Damn Heroes moment, takes the gangster's head off, and rescues Raffi.
- From Bad to Worse: Beverly's pod is losing power, and this is immediately followed by the Shrike blowing up the Titan's shuttle with its opening volley, preventing any escape.
- Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Vadic lights one up during "negotiations" with the Titan.
- Grievous Harm with a Body: A shipborne version; with the Eleos unoccupied, Vadic has the Shrike's tractor beam throw the medical vessel straight at the Titan-A. It doesn't do much damage, but may have been intended more for the intimidation factor anyways.
- Impairment Shot: After Raffi takes Sneed's "splinter", the camera from her POV goes distorted as she succumbs to its effects.
- I Shall Taunt You: Vadic orders her ship's shields to be dropped at one point so that the Shrike's weapons can be scanned. She also promises one hour, but hails the Titan-A well before it expires to taunt Shaw and Picard about the name of her vessel and what she promises to do in her quest for vengeance.
- Jerkass Has a Point:
- Shaw's tact leaves something to be desired, but he was absolutely right in not wanting to risk the lives of his crew to save Picard and Riker after their rogue mission goes awry.
- Shaw is also right that Jack's multiple aliases and criminal records make him very untrustworthy.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Shaw certainly has issues (to put it politely), but when Picard finally pulls rank to stop Jack going to Vadic's ship and Shaw asks him why (that Jack is his son), he immediately acquiesces to Picard and works with him to escape Vadic.
- Laughing Mad: Vadic, especially in the climax when she's manically giggling at the Titan's attempts to evade them.
- Leitmotif: Jerry Goldsmith's "Klingon Theme" from The Motion Picture plays at the end of Worf's Big Damn Heroes moment. This is the first time it's been used as a personal theme for Worf since Insurrection.
- List of Transgressions: Picard confronts Jack with his extensive criminal record.Picard: You're accused of organized crime on Andoria, actual terrorism on Binar III and you're wanted for the death of a man on Andreus 5.
Jack: That's unfair, he's a Falsetti, and they go into a deep hibernation for seven cycles, so is he dead or is he alive? Who's to say?
Picard: Says here you were recently sighted on Kemiyo. That's a war zone.
Jack: It's a rebellion. The Kemiyans have been fighting against their oppressors for decades. I brought them medicine, supplies.
Picard: Oh, so you're a freedom fighter?
Jack: Only in the sense that a doctor fights for the freedom of his patient to not be dead. I'm that, at best. At worst? Well, I'm a thief.
Picard: Of stolen medical supplies, yes. But also, stolen weapons and other prohibited cargo.
Jack: Currency is currency and medicine isn't free. - Luke, You Are My Father: Beverly and Jean-Luc confirm through some Facial Dialogue near the end of the episode that Jack Crusher is indeed their son. Riker catches on substantially earlier but isn't able to conclusively prove it.
- Meaningful Name: Invoked by Vadic as she gives a Cold Ham To the Pain description of how the Shrike resembles its Earth namesake."It's an Earth creature. A small carrion bird, one that doesn't attack in anger or malice, one that isn't made frantic by hunger but rather kills surgically, carefully. Give me the boy now or continue to delay, but with each ticking moment, I will take another piece of you. I'll peck, and I'll jab at everything that makes you you. Every system that makes your ship your ship, until there's nothing left but the choice to have given me what you could have given me now. But certainly... take your time."
- Mildly Military: Picard has no right to give the orders he does. He might have been an admiral once, but today he's retired and is therefore outside the chain of command. For Shaw to ignore him and just throw Jack to the wolves would be a Jerkass move, but he'd have military law entirely on his side. To keep the show moving, this Loophole Abuse is not addressed.
- Multiple Identity IDs: Jack is revealed to have multiple aliases, and they all have his initials: Jack Canby, John Carson, James Cole, and Jarlis Carvel (the last one being Shaw's favorite).
- Mythology Gag:
- The episode title, "Disengage", is the negative form of Picard's famed Catchphrase, "engage" — which he utters at the end of the episode for good measure, as the Titan-A flees into the nearby Ryton Nebula.
- Among Sneed's various goods for sale is an evidently antique baseball in a clear box, just like the one that Captain Sisko used to keep on his desk in his office on DS9. Depending on what happened in the intervening nearly thirty years, it might even be the same ball.
- The Titan-A physically cutting off a tractor beam to shield a smaller ship and beam its occupants aboard is the same tactic used by the Enterprise-D when dealing with the Garidians' dispute in the opening section of the renowned TNG video game A Final Unity.
- Vadic hailing the Titan and casually addressing Shaw and others by name recalls Nero from 2009's Star Trek, where he opened a conversation with the alternate-reality Captain Pike and Enterprise with "Hi Christopher, I'm Nero".
- The medical supplies on the Eleos are labeled as coming from an organization called the Mariposas. This is the medical foundation formed by Cristobal Rios and Teresa Ramirez after the former stayed in the past at the end of Picard Season 2.
- Never My Fault: Among the things Shaw berates Seven for, that she persuaded him to rescue Picard and Riker, never mind that he’s the captain and he clearly didn’t trust or respect her even before she helped Picard and Riker take the shuttlecraft.
- Noodle Incident:
- Jack mentions multiple run-ins with agents of Vadic's conspiracy. We only get the broad strokes from Jack, along with a flashback, but they serve to illustrate how long the Crushers have been on the run and how extensive the conspiracy is.
- The list of outstanding charges against Jack in Federation and non-Federation space, which Picard reads out in the Brig.
- Vadic references Shaw's psychological profile, and mockingly notes that he is still "functional", alluding to something severe happening to him in his past.
- Off with His Head!: Sneed shows T'Luco's severed head to Raffi to underline his refutation of her cover story and tells his lackeys to chop off hers as well. Sneed loses his own head only moments later when Worf kills him and his men to rescue Raffi.
- Outside-Context Problem: At this point no one has a clue who Vadic is or what the Shrike is capable of. Once they get a good look at its weapon systems, which includes five types of torpedoes and several weapons they don't recognize, the Titan bridge crew is well aware they are outside its weight class.
- Properly Paranoid: Jack reveals to Picard and Riker why Beverly was so paranoid in her transmission last episode. The conspiracy targeting the Crushers evidently has substantial resources and pull at their disposal, as they managed to sic Fenris Rangers, Klingons, and even Starfleet officers on them over the last few months — hence Beverly's warnings not to bring Starfleet into this or to trust anyone. She's vindicated, as Vadic proves to have extensive knowledge of Starfleet — including access to Shaw's private Starfleet psychological profile.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: Picard is perfectly okay with Beverly's son's Heroic Sacrifice. He's completely opposed to his son doing the same thing — even though these two characters are the same person. While Picard's dismay at being the Last of His Kind has been on his mind ever since his brother and nephew died untimely in 2371 (thirty years ago), it's still one hell of an about-face... especially since "approving of my son's Heroic Sacrifice" is very in-character for Jean-Luc Picard.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Shaw does this several times to Seven of Nine — oh, wait, Annika Hansen — for her Military Maverick tendencies.
- The Reveal:
- Worf is Raffi's handler.
- Jack is Picard's son, a fact so obvious that Riker badgers Picard about it several times before confirming with Beverly.
- Rewatch Bonus: Vadic's reactions during her first meeting with Picard — in particular, her emphasis on him being here in the synthetic flesh — take on a much different context after the revelations of "The Bounty".
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!:
- Raffi refuses to give up her investigation because she knows Starfleet is wrong about the culprit.
- Shaw relieves Seven of duty for going behind his back, but this doesn't stop her from commanding teams to hunt down Jack when he breaks out of the Brig. The crew evidently don't mind, either, since not one raises an objection.
- Snark-to-Snark Combat: Vadic and Shaw's opening dialogue during "negotiations".
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- Jack reminds Picard and Riker that the Eleos has been on the run for months and, after having been moored in the Ryton Nebula for too long, its systems are now running on fumes and fried.
- The Deflector Shields on the Titan can only do so much when Vadic hits them with the full, kinetic mass of the Eleos. As Sidney explains, physics will always be physics.
- Surrounded by Idiots: Jack's opinion of Picard and Riker for ignoring his mother's explicit warnings to not trust anyone and to not bring Starfleet into this, having done pretty much the exact opposite.
- Teleport Interdiction: Picard wisely sets up transport inhibitors moments before Jack Crusher is nearly beamed away by the Shrike. He then has to destroy the inhibitors so the Titan can beam them aboard.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Vadic uses three photon torpedoes to destroy Picard's shuttle. One should have been more than sufficient, and could have also destroyed the Eleos.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Picard silently winces as he accepts he's about to do something really stupid to protect his son, and Shaw is equally dismayed when Picard reveals that fact and he has no option but to go along with it.Shaw: (under his breath) ... God damn it ...
- Title Drop: Raffi's handler tells her to "disengage" from her investigation.
- Tractor Beam:
- The Shrike tries to tractor in the Eleos when transporters and boarding prove useless, the sheer force of the beam combined with the state of the Eleos nearly tearing the ship apart. The Titan warps in between the two ships to break the connection.
- Vadic then uses the tractor beam to toss the Eleos at the Titan, just to prove how outmatched they are.
- Unknown Rival: Jack and Beverly have no idea who Vadic is or why she and her followers have been targeting them.
- Villain Has a Point: Despite Starfleet's opposition to working with bounty hunters, Shaw admits that Vadic's claim on Jack has legal validity.
- Villain Respect:
- Sneed is genuinely impressed that Raffi managed to maintain her lucidity after taking his drugs, and accurately pegs her as a former addict.
- Sarcasm Mode or not, Vadic says she's impressed that Shaw is still "functional" after the events of his Dark and Troubled Past.
- Wakeup Makeup: After spending years on the run as a renegade, being severely injured, kept in stasis, operated on, and abruptly awoken from a coma, Beverly limps onto the bridge with perfect mascara and lipstick and elegantly styled hair.
- Wham Line:
- "I told you, 'Do not engage'!", by Worf, revealing to the audience that he was Raffi's Starfleet intelligence handler.
- "Because he is my son.", by Picard regarding Jack.
- Wham Shot: Worf is revealed to be Raffi's rescuer and handler from Starfleet Intelligence.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Riker lightly tears into Picard for dancing around the issue of his obvious relation to Jack, with Picard merely insisting that they not jump to conclusions. Riker revives Beverly despite her weakened state to force Picard's hand.
- The Worf Effect: Averted when the Son of Mogh shows up to rescue Raffi as he takes out three of Sneed's mooks before taking off Sneed's head.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Jack's incredulous reaction to Picard's insistence that they open a dialogue with the Shrike and find out who they are and what they want, when it's currently targeting every system on the ship.
