Ragtime and Pretending in Picard

Picard and Seven: two levels of "pretending" in Stardust City

"Stardust City Rag". What a wonderful title! Considering this and the episode's setting, I used to wonder if it was a David Bowie reference (see "The Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud"), a thought confirmed by Michael Chabon's "Some Notes on Freecloud". As for the "rag" part, I looked that up and was reminded that the signature trait of ragtime music is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Syncopation is "a disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of rhythm" - a "placement of rhythmic stresses or accents where they wouldn't normally occur". Which describes the episode perfectly! "Stardust City Rag" is known for its unusual juxtapositions of tone and style, something which is undeniably disconcerting, and seems to have left some critics just as much at sea as poor Elnor, who is a perfectly congruent being in an ocean of incongruence!

These tonal shifts give the episode its characteristic feeling of unease. Beginning with the most shocking cold open in all of Star Trek (the brutal torture and death of a beloved Voyager character), it juxtaposes the Picard equivalent of a holodeck romp with scenes of emotional heartbreak and more murder. Also, an editing technique used before in the series, that of cutting back and forth between one scene and another that takes place some time later. In this case it's simultaneously fun (except when it isn't) and disorienting. We can't relax into the holodeck romp because Icheb's horrific vivisection haunts us and we never know what to expect next. Whatever happens might be equally traumatising.

 "But you like it enough to keep it!" Seven sees through Picard's statement that his anachronous holo-office wasn't his idea.

Nothing else is as horror film as that, though. But the effect of all these weird contrasts and juxtapositions is very jarring, especially on a first viewing, and I think it's meant to be. It's the most brutal episode of Season 1, physically and emotionally, and the "syncopation" is brutal too in its way. The scene where Raffi visits her son (ironically, at a maternity clinic) is a devastating contrast to the high jinks in the casino. And it's another odd juxtaposition, because it doesn't seem at first to have anything to do with the rest of the episode. What's the scene doing here? It has to be more than Raffi simply needing a reason to hitch a ride on La Sirena with Picard and Rios.

The two main themes of the episode are these:

1) Deceit (what Elnor calls "pretending").

2) Characters hurting people they were once close to.

Almost every scene expresses one or both of these themes - the unity beneath all the jarring contrasts. The deceit is lighthearted on the surface, when the crew play dress up to trick Bjayzl, but it's a high risk game; they're deceiving people who could kill them if it all goes wrong. They're also deceiving each other. Seven deceives them first about her real motive for confronting Bjayzl, then let's Picard think that she only wants two phasers because they might come in handy. Agnes has been deceiving them all since the mission began. And Raffi tries to convince her son Gabe that she's clean now, "doing well" and rebuilding her life - when we know, and can plainly see, that she isn't.

As for the second theme: Seven mercy kills Icheb, who she loves like her own son, and then later shows no mercy to Bjayzl (where the subtext is that they once had a sexual/romantic relationship). Agnes kills, heartbreakingly, the man she loves, because she believes she has no other choice. And Gabe (the theme of parenthood also permeates this episode; even Bruce Maddox is much older than his former lover Agnes) metaphorically sticks the knife into his mother, with a viciousness which comes from his own pain but is no less distressing to see. Michelle Hurd's acting in this moment is unforgettable. Raffi says nothing in response to Gabe's cruel words, but she feels it in her body, and you can see the precise moment that the knife sinks in. Again, more syncopation: Picard's awful over-acting in the casino (and Elnor's touching inability to even try to act) is contrasted with the fact that Seven and Agnes are acting all too well. And the actors themselves give absolute tour de forces, especially Alison Pill and Michelle Hurd. It needs to be this way because the episode is only "pretending" to be a holodeck romp. Underneath the quirky surface it's as serious as the season gets - a season which I think is the most original in all of Star Trek.

Raffi's emotional wounding.

Another reason for the Raffi scene is that like the season itself, this is the point where she reaches her lowest ebb. The worst thing has happened to her once her son has rejected her; all she can do now is follow Picard on his seemingly quixotic quest (which she shares his interest in, after all) and see where it takes her. In fact, at this point Raffi's emotional trajectory can only move upwards. Because having lost her blood family, Raffi (like the rest of the crew) begins to find a new family. It doesn't happen all at once, for any of them, but every starship crew in Star Trek is a "found family", and Season 1 of Picard is partly about how a dysfunctional group of broken people (as broken as the XBs, in their way) gradually find a sense of trust and belonging to each other. Three episodes after "Stardust City Rag", the broken pieces of the story and the crew finally come together.

This fifth episode of the series, however, is as dark as it gets, as is the deceit. For deceit isn't just a theme of the episode, but of the whole season - "lies upon lies", as Maddox tells Picard. Everything the Federation believes about synthetic life, about the Mars attack, maybe even the Romulan supernova itself (we shall see!) is based on a web of lies, which Raffi has long suspected and Picard now has a personal reason for uncovering. These layers of deception and distrust that are so characteristic of the Romulan power structure are cleverly juxtaposed with their opposite: the absolute candour practised by the Qowat Milat. Elnor has spent his whole life with this group, so he instinctively expects the truth all the time and is disconcerted when he finds its opposite. And he'll never find more deceit than in this episode, where we don't know what's going on either, because the web of lies and confusion is at its thickest (even Elnor's friends are "pretending"). 

Perhaps that's another reason for the humour, the playfulness; without it, the episode would be simply too dark! The first time I saw it I was absolutely wracked by the ending, which in its own way was as shocking as the cold open. The horror of Maddox's death, and the emotional agony of his murderer, the heartbreaking acting of Alison Pill, was just devastating. Here, exactly halfway through the season, the story reaches its lowest, deepest, darkest point; Season 1 forms a perfect (upside down) arch. I don't think it's coincidental that of all the places the story visits, Freecloud is the furthest from the Federation's utopian values. And there'll be more pain, loss and heartbreak ahead, but from here on the story begins its gradual climb back into the light, and to healing for all the characters we've come to love in such a short time.

The darkest point in the season.