Star Trek Picard: Ranking All 10 Episodes From Season 1

"Maps and Legends" is the second part of the three-part pilot episode, bracketed by the superior "Remembrance" and "The End is the Beginning" and suffering for it.

The episode opens compellingly enough with the first of many patented Star Trek: Picard flashbacks and features a fun, CSI-ish sequence with Laris using illegal Tal Shiar tech to sleuth around Dahj's apartment. There's also the now infamous (or iconic) scene in which Picard makes a tone-deaf plea for help from Starfleet's Admiral Kirsten Clancy and has his ass handed to him with the first of many F-bombs the series would drop into Star Trek canon.

But the episode's nature as a bridge between two other episodes ultimately makes it feel like a series of vignettes, rather than a cohesive narrative. According to director Hanelle Culpepper in the official Star Trek: Picard Podcast, after it was decided to expand the pilot from two to three episodes, "Maps and Legends" became the installment that housed the bulk of the added expository material, and it shows.

"Maps and Legends" also frustratingly introduces a couple of interesting ideas that ultimately prove to be dead ends for the series – the mysterious gray zone aboard the Borg Artifact and the inclusion of Laris and Zhaban as charming and useful additions to the cast are promising but sadly boldly go nowhere.