“Et in Arcadia Ego” was painted by Nicolas Poussin around 1637-38 and hangs in the Louvre.

And they’re living life like it’s a hippie commune, doing public calisthenics and tai chi in the town square. This is where we’re to believe the rest of Data’s “children” were either made or settled. After bidding farewell to Elnor and Seven - a lovely exchange in which Seven says “Keep saving the galaxy, Picard” and the captain replies, passing the torch, “That’s all on you now” - they visit the settlement where the synths have been growing their community. Let’s hope the denizens of this planet have quite the greenhouse to grow more of those deadly flowers! Raffi uses the cube’s sensors to search for the Romulan fleet following in their wake: it’s 218 warbirds. Our heroes venture over to the cube to see who survived, and, reuniting with Seven of Nine and Elnor, Picard learns that Hugh sacrificed himself trying to expel the Romulans once and for all. Giant flowers from the surface of the planet suddenly appear, each enveloping these ships in orbit and causing them to crash down onto the surface - including the Cube. All of this reminds one of the classic real-time strategy games “Star Trek: Armada” and “Star Trek: Armada II” which depicted transwarp corridors very much the same way.

Seven of Nine pilots what was once “The Artifact” over Coppelius herself, the Borg cube emerging from its own transwarp tunnel with a satisfying thwang (spectacular sound editing in this episode). The combination of the two results in a synthesis that could be the defining aesthetic of “Star Trek: Picard.” But then you throw Brent Spiner in the mix as a self-described “mad scientist” and Jean-Luc Picard’s speechifying and you’ve got a dash of “Next Gen” added to the mix. This could be the setup of any number of “Original Series” episodes. They also use giant space flowers as weapons!

And they all live in a kind of Eden where any disruption to their utopian ways could result in an apocalyptic, deus ex machina solution. Their men, shirtless, leave no impression at all.

Their women are scantily clad, unnaturally hued, and a tad spacey. What does that mean? Well, think about this: we’ve got a race of higher life forms that look somewhat human, but in manner are clearly not. “Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1” does a spectacular job of synthesizing the style of “The Next Generation” with that of “The Original Series” - and the result is something new altogether.

Star trek armada ii white stars