The following episode discusses Star Trek: Picard, Season Three, Episode Five, “Imposters.”

Efficient storytelling is not a strength you can traditionally attribute to Star Trek: Picard, which has often felt padded. Each of its three seasons have felt like one or two made-for-TV-movies' worth of story stretched thin to ten near-hour long episodes. Nowhere is this more evident than in this season’s fifth episode, where five minutes of plot is expanded to a full episode. Here, Team Picard learns that Starfleet has been infiltrated by super-Changelings before teaming up with Team Worffi. Oh, and Beverley, who has been in relatively close contact with him for most of his life, has finally noticed that Something Is Up With Her Son. But even that fairly slender advance in the plot has to take a back seat to the main centerpiece of the episode: The moment when Picard stands face-to-face with [CHARACTER].

The power of [CHARACTER’S] return is all held in the moment that they step into camera focus, such is the extent of the surprise. After all, there are textual and meta-textual reasons why you wouldn’t expect to see them popping up in any Star Trek, let alone this one. For a start, their plot was done after they – for right or wrong reasons – betrayed the Enterprise crew in [TNG EPISODE]. And, of course, [ACTOR] had been expected to make the transition to Deep Space Nine, but turned the role down. In fact, esteemed Trek wiki Memory Alpha suggested they were even offered a role in Voyager, either as a regular or as a guest star, and similarly turned it down. If there’s any person who you’d think was never coming back to any Star Trek, it would be [ACTOR]. And not even I, much as you keep telling me I’m a cynical hater expressing these opinions to milk your hate-clicks, was immune to the initial flush of emotion seeing them in a Starfleet uniform again.

Unfortunately, the main confrontation between Picard and [CHARACTER] is dulled by both the needlessness of it all, and its execution. The pair talk about their “faith” in “institutions” or the lack of such, and why this is or is not a good thing, but I don’t feel any of this. Part of it is the streaming era-Trek problem of telling us things rather than showing, so we have these gestures toward a grander theme that are never properly explored on screen. But it’s also because many of these themes were already well-explored on Deep Space Nine, even if the execution there was always a little hamfisted. After all, while there was every sense that we should side with the Maquis – don't forget that they were the little people tossed aside by the grand machinations of empires with no care of the lives that were directly impacted. But this is Star Trek, and so whatever the problem, whatever the grand conundrum at hand, the answer is pretty much always Starfleet.

Picard’s obsession with continuity for the sake of itself does little more than remind us of older, better Treks. I might as well add, because it’s been on my mind for years at this point, that there’s a YouTube clip from the DS9 episode “For The Uniform” describing Sisko as a “badass.” Specifically because he carries through a threat to sterilize a planet to inflict petty revenge on Commander Eddington, who he felt betrayed Starfleet to go support the Maquis. This is the Star Trek problem in a nutshell: Sisko’s in the wrong here, but the show can never quite allow us to stop sympathizing with our hero because he’s our hero. Picard, this year, has behaved pretty illogically, and recklessly, and yet because he’s our hero too, the show can’t quite question his actions in anything more than a single line of sassy dialog from Riker.

I don’t consider myself pharisaical in my approach to continuity, and I do think that it can be a benefit to storytelling rather than a burden. But Picard’s use of golden-era Trek deep cuts often takes me out of the show as I wonder how this tracks in any way logically. Picard himself even says as much, asking how in the hell [CHARACTER] wound up back in a Starfleet uniform. She explains the “arduous” process taken to get back into the fleet, but I couldn’t help but interrogate this further. Imagine if a mid-level officer in the US Navy put a major aircraft carrier in any degree of jeopardy to cover their own defection to an (ostensibly) enemy terror group? Do you think any military organization worth its salt would allow that same person to serve in active, regular duty again? And if anyone says “but Tom Paris…” bear in mind that he was a) a Nepo Baby, b) Wasn’t with the Maquis for very long and c) Wasn’t expected to serve once he’d done his time assisting Voyager during its short trip into the badlands. 

And then [Character] dies in a set-up to implicate the Titan, and you wonder if death will be doled out so cheaply in the rest of the series. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had whole seasons of Picard structured around saying farewell to long-running characters.

There’s not much to say about this week’s b and c-stories because they feel so derivative and shallow. Worf and Raffi’s plan to smoke out the villains with a fake-out sniper that’s instantly foiled feels pulled from an early-noughties thriller. The fact it was counter-foiled by a fake-out death on Worf’s part felt thin too, there’s no way you’d bring back Michael Dorn just to off him so cheaply. And on a similar theme, Jack is yet another streaming-era Trek character with the Jason Bourne disease; troubled by visions of a secret past that keeps going into a phaser-fu fugue state whenever placed in danger. A storyline so stale it was already covered with mold when this very series did it with Dahj and Soji in its first season. I haven’t seen any episode after the next one, so I genuinely don’t know how this particular plotline is going to resolve itself. But I’ve seen those threads on Reddit, and if it’s true, I’m really going to sigh myself in two if we’re doing this same stuff yet-a-bloody-gain.

Speaking as a parent, if my kid coughs more than twice in their sleep in quick succession, I’ll just stick my head into their bedroom door to check if they’re okay. If I was the chief medical officer on a starship that spent more than a decade at the far reaches of known space investigating weird stuff, I reckon I might have a tricorder or two at hand. And if my kid stopped being able to sleep, was troubled with dangerous visions and his eyes started to glow red in moments of emotional or physical turmoil, I reckon I wouldn’t keep it to myself until he reached adulthood. In fact, I might even have thought to take them to a hospital or biobed myself just, you know, to be on the safe side. Just a thought, Beverley.

An hour north of Marseille sits Château La Coste, a winery, hotel and art gallery nestled in the heart of a beautiful Provincial valley. In its grounds is a Renzo Piano-designed steel and glass oubliette, buried in a knife wound carved out of the undulating vineyards. It’s here that Lexus has gathered the world’s press to show off its latest vision for the future of driving. Lexus believes the new RZ 450e is a new dawn for electric vehicles, but also for the way that we control them. That’s because several of the prototypes on show utilize the company’s long in development steer-by-wire system that threatens to upend more than a century of technology.

The RZ 450e is Lexus’ first battery electric vehicle, so long as you forget about all of the other ones it's sold over the years. Unlike its predecessors, this is the first to be conceived as an EV from the get-go, rather than as a variation of a model built to accommodate an engine. It sits atop Toyota’s E-TNGA platform, the same underpinning both the bZ4X and Subaru’s Solterra. As much as the platform is common, however, Lexus was keen to point out that this is not just a rebadged bZ4X, and is very much its own vehicle. Whereas that car was designed to be more friendly when going off-road, this car is built exclusively for town-and-city living.

Given both are midsize crossover SUVs built on the same platform, there are many similarities between the two. But Lexus’ design language makes the RZ look less bland than its cheaper sibling, with sharper side lines and a more aggressive nose. Unlike the Toyota, the Lexus is only available in a four-wheel-drive, dual-motor system that outputs a combined 230kW power (150kW from the front, 80kW back). But that translates into a quoted brake horsepower of 309, so it won’t be as quick as some of its would-be rivals in raw speed. The company would probably point out, however, that its Direct4 system, which uses a variety of digital control units to monitor where force needs to be distributed to ensure the car remains planted on the road, potentially offers a far better sense of driving than its rivals.

There are other differences: The boot is larger, 522 liters in the main boot, plus an extra 58 liters under the false floor, compared to the bZ4X’s 452 liters. The interior options are nicer, and for more cash you can get Alcantara-esque trims and nicer metallic paint jobs. The interior plastics are all high quality, with all the surfaces you come into contact with feeling thicker and nicer than some vehicles I could mention. Which is to say that this is still a Lexus.

Unlike other EVs, Lexus will sell you just one battery size, with each RZ coming with a 71.4kWh battery, of which 64kWh is available to drive. Lexus says that rather than messing with different battery sizes, it’s worked instead to squeeze a lot of performance and efficiency out of this cell. You should expect to wring 245 miles from a charge with 20-inch wheels, and get closer to 265 miles if you opt instead for the 18-inchers. I have an urge to castigate the company for not even breaching the 300 mile range limit given that, to many, it might feel like a dealbreaker. That said, I’m not sure I could drive from my house to Liverpool (4 hours, 42 minutes, 254 miles) without stopping for a comfort break.

And despite its obvious weight and size, Lexus said that it has made the RZ 450e as efficient as it can be. It should be able to get between 3.4 and 3.7 miles per kWh, although another midsize SUV, Hyundai’s Kona Electric, has it beat in the on-paper efficiency stakes. There’s an 11kW charger on board that, Lexus promises, will harness enough DC fast charging to re-juice the 450e’s battery to 80 percent within half an hour. None of those figures are eye-grabbing on their own, but speak to a package that’s solid, uncontroversial and hopefully reliable on the longer term. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping that, since Toyota and Lexus have lagged so far behind the rest of the industry, that its new generation of EVs would have performance figures to make it stand out against its high-priced competition.

Lexus is already taking orders for the 450e in select territories, but you can only pick it up with the standard electrically-assisted rack and pinion steering system. At the launch I attended, Lexus also equipped some of the trial vehicles with its One Motion Grip (OMG) steer-by-wire system which will be available as an additional option at some point in 2025. OMG removes the mechanical link between steering wheel and wheels, replacing it with a torque actuator on the driver’s end, which is connected by wire to a control actuator on the axles. Rather than turning the wheel directly, you’re issuing instructions which are transmitted to the wheels for it to carry out. A bit like when you play any video game, come to think of it.

Lexus pre-programmed our test vehicles with routes designed to take advantage of Provence’s twisty, scenery-filled roads. But it was on one mercifully straight highway that I wondered how much of this system will be the last straw for purists craving connection to the road. Even with so many aids added to steering systems as they presently exist, there’s still a physical sense that you turn a wheel, and the vehicle obeys. This ever-so-slightly feels like the beginning of the end for mechanical steering, the drawing of a veil over the last century plus of driving.

Daniel Cooper

With any new technology, there is the inevitable culture shock as you get to grips with the change. Spending a few hours with it does not constitute enough time for endorsement or indictment, but I do have some initial thoughts. Driving with One Motion Grip is a lot more alive and active than you may expect from a stately SUV, especially one from Lexus. The system does demand your attention, and going around my first roundabout I needed to make lots of fine-tuned adjustments to my steering. I can see why the press who tested a very early version of this system a few years back described it as “twitchy.” It’s not the right word, but you get a sense that you need to recalibrate your sense of turning, which is hampered by the fact that the turning will change depending on the speed you’re traveling at.

It has taken the better part of twelve years for Lexus to develop this system, although it’s not the first to the idea. Infiniti, Nissan’s luxury car marque, launched the 2014 Q50 with Direct Adaptive Steering, albeit it remained a mechanical connection to the wheels as well. Lexus is going all in on wires, but to reassure wary would-be purchasers about reliability, also added redundant actuators at both ends, as well as a back-up battery, to ensure steering never loses power. That means there’s no great weight saving (vital for BEVs) compared to “real” steering, but you still get all of the other potential benefits of switching to the technology.

With One Motion Grip, the 450e can offer the same level of dynamism for driving as seen in other parts of the car. The Direct4 system can already alter the torque put to each wheel to balance the ride, and you get a similar level of dynamic-alteration when driving. For instance, the system will adjust how much turn you get depending on the speed you’re driving at, with tricky car-park maneuvers more dramatic than switching lanes on a highway. And for that, we come to Lexus’ most eye-catching, controversial and interesting change, ditching the steering wheel for a yoke in a quest to end “hand-over-hand” driving.

Ditching the steering wheel also means that Lexus can reduce clutter and make it easier for drivers to see the instrument binnacle. This is a great idea in theory, but falls victim to the problem that more than a few Toyota and Lexus vehicles have suffered from over the last few years. I don’t know why, but many models (including the 2014 Mirai, 2015 Prius, 2012 and 2018 Corolla, amongst others) have their infotainment displays too low down in the center console. So when you want driving directions, you need to physically take your eyes off the road to look at the screen. At least in the bZ4X, the display is at the same height as the steering wheel, but here, the 14-inch infotainment display is buried below the air vents. Maybe it’s all a clever ploy to ensure everyone opts for a heads-up display, but it’s a persistent bugbear of mine.

Towards the end of my time with the setup, it got easier, and I suspect that it’ll only take a few days of regular use before it becomes second nature. It’s almost tragic that, for all of the effort, this technology will eventually pass unremarked into everyone’s daily driving habits. But I will admit that, when it came time for our last trip, driving the 450e back to the airport, me and my driving partner James both said we’d prefer driving the version with the wheel. But then, it’s always easier to run screaming back toward the comfort of the familiar when you’re pressured for time.

Lexus has been in the process of building electrified vehicles for the better part of two decades but it’s only now that it has launched its first clean-sheet EV. Toyota may have been the first to make a partially-electric vehicle work as a mass-market proposition, but it always had hydrogen as its north star of its strategy. It, in tandem with fuel companies and the Japanese government, opted to pursue hydrogen as the wonder-fuel of the future. Company officials frequently cited the cost and weight of batteries, and the speedy refueling times of hydrogen, as justification to avoid following the market. Inch-by-inch, sector-by-sector, the corporation has ceded more and more of the ground it initially cultivated to upstart rivals. The only evidence the company still clings to the hope of re-litigating the last decade of auto industry evolution was in a clearing across from the chateau’s polished concrete garage.

There, surrounded by metal barriers clad in Toyota-branded banners, was a hydrogen generator used to feed power into the facility necessary to charge so many cars all at once. But for my own pessimism, there remains hopeful shoots that Toyota’s fuel cells may finally find their place. The company recently announced a deal to sell hardware to Hyliko, a French trucking startup, to build the sort of heavy-duty equipment that hydrogen power is ideal for. Similarly, BMW has started showing off its iX5 Hydrogen, a prototype hydrogen EV that uses Toyota’s technology. But these are still little more than green shoots of hope that hydrogen hasn’t become a technological cul-de-sac the company has driven itself down into. Especially given the natural benefits of generation, transport and efficiency that electricity has always had over its rival.

As for the RZ 450e, it’s an EV that makes a better case for your head than perhaps it does your heart. Perhaps it’s because all EVs are a little more bloodless than their gas-powered rivals, and that the company has spent so long refining its offering. It’s powerful enough that you’ll feel a real kick when you put your foot to the floor, and the steering is a lot more active and direct than you would expect from a big, heavy, Lexus-branded SUV. But there’s also something sterile about the whole thing, the seriousness of the machine stripping out some of the fun. But that’s flimsy criticism of a grown-up vehicle that gets the fundamentals right, and should leave you with no doubts about the reliability of its hardware.

The Lexus RZ 450e is available to order in the UK for £62,000, with the most expensive Takumi variation costing £72,100. Deliveries for the vehicle are expected to begin at the end of May.

An hour north of Marseille sits Château La Coste, a winery, hotel and art gallery nestled in the heart of a beautiful Provincial valley. In its grounds is a Renzo Piano-designed steel and glass oubliette, buried in a knife wound carved out of the undulating vineyards. It’s here that Lexus has gathered the world’s press to show off its latest vision for the future of driving. Lexus believes the new RZ 450e is a new dawn for electric vehicles, but also for the way that we control them. That’s because several of the prototypes on show utilize the company’s long in development steer-by-wire system that threatens to upend more than a century of technology.

The RZ 450e is Lexus’ first battery electric vehicle, so long as you forget about all of the other ones it's sold over the years. Unlike its predecessors, this is the first to be conceived as an EV from the get-go, rather than as a variation of a model built to accommodate an engine. It sits atop Toyota’s E-TNGA platform, the same underpinning both the bZ4X and Subaru’s Solterra. As much as the platform is common, however, Lexus was keen to point out that this is not just a rebadged bZ4X, and is very much its own vehicle. Whereas that car was designed to be more friendly when going off-road, this car is built exclusively for town-and-city living.

Given both are midsize crossover SUVs built on the same platform, there are many similarities between the two. But Lexus’ design language makes the RZ look less bland than its cheaper sibling, with sharper side lines and a more aggressive nose. Unlike the Toyota, the Lexus is only available in a four-wheel-drive, dual-motor system that outputs a combined 230kW power (150kW from the front, 80kW back). But that translates into a quoted brake horsepower of 309, so it won’t be as quick as some of its would-be rivals in raw speed. The company would probably point out, however, that its Direct4 system, which uses a variety of digital control units to monitor where force needs to be distributed to ensure the car remains planted on the road, potentially offers a far better sense of driving than its rivals.

There are other differences: The boot is larger, 522 liters in the main boot, plus an extra 58 liters under the false floor, compared to the bZ4X’s 452 liters. The interior options are nicer, and for more cash you can get Alcantara-esque trims and nicer metallic paint jobs. The interior plastics are all high quality, with all the surfaces you come into contact with feeling thicker and nicer than some vehicles I could mention. Which is to say that this is still a Lexus.

Unlike other EVs, Lexus will sell you just one battery size, with each RZ coming with a 71.4kWh battery, of which 64kWh is available to drive. Lexus says that rather than messing with different battery sizes, it’s worked instead to squeeze a lot of performance and efficiency out of this cell. You should expect to wring 245 miles from a charge with 20-inch wheels, and get closer to 265 miles if you opt instead for the 18-inchers. I have an urge to castigate the company for not even breaching the 300 mile range limit given that, to many, it might feel like a dealbreaker. That said, I’m not sure I could drive from my house to Liverpool (4 hours, 42 minutes, 254 miles) without stopping for a comfort break.

And despite its obvious weight and size, Lexus said that it has made the RZ 450e as efficient as it can be. It should be able to get between 3.4 and 3.7 miles per kWh, although another midsize SUV, Hyundai’s Kona Electric, has it beat in the on-paper efficiency stakes. There’s an 11kW charger on board that, Lexus promises, will harness enough DC fast charging to re-juice the 450e’s battery to 80 percent within half an hour. None of those figures are eye-grabbing on their own, but speak to a package that’s solid, uncontroversial and hopefully reliable on the longer term. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping that, since Toyota and Lexus have lagged so far behind the rest of the industry, that its new generation of EVs would have performance figures to make it stand out against its high-priced competition.

Lexus is already taking orders for the 450e in select territories, but you can only pick it up with the standard electrically-assisted rack and pinion steering system. At the launch I attended, Lexus also equipped some of the trial vehicles with its One Motion Grip (OMG) steer-by-wire system which will be available as an additional option at some point in 2025. OMG removes the mechanical link between steering wheel and wheels, replacing it with a torque actuator on the driver’s end, which is connected by wire to a control actuator on the axles. Rather than turning the wheel directly, you’re issuing instructions which are transmitted to the wheels for it to carry out. A bit like when you play any video game, come to think of it.

Lexus pre-programmed our test vehicles with routes designed to take advantage of Provence’s twisty, scenery-filled roads. But it was on one mercifully straight highway that I wondered how much of this system will be the last straw for purists craving connection to the road. Even with so many aids added to steering systems as they presently exist, there’s still a physical sense that you turn a wheel, and the vehicle obeys. This ever-so-slightly feels like the beginning of the end for mechanical steering, the drawing of a veil over the last century plus of driving.

Daniel Cooper

With any new technology, there is the inevitable culture shock as you get to grips with the change. Spending a few hours with it does not constitute enough time for endorsement or indictment, but I do have some initial thoughts. Driving with One Motion Grip is a lot more alive and active than you may expect from a stately SUV, especially one from Lexus. The system does demand your attention, and going around my first roundabout I needed to make lots of fine-tuned adjustments to my steering. I can see why the press who tested a very early version of this system a few years back described it as “twitchy.” It’s not the right word, but you get a sense that you need to recalibrate your sense of turning, which is hampered by the fact that the turning will change depending on the speed you’re traveling at.

It has taken the better part of twelve years for Lexus to develop this system, although it’s not the first to the idea. Infiniti, Nissan’s luxury car marque, launched the 2014 Q50 with Direct Adaptive Steering, albeit it remained a mechanical connection to the wheels as well. Lexus is going all in on wires, but to reassure wary would-be purchasers about reliability, also added redundant actuators at both ends, as well as a back-up battery, to ensure steering never loses power. That means there’s no great weight saving (vital for BEVs) compared to “real” steering, but you still get all of the other potential benefits of switching to the technology.

With One Motion Grip, the 450e can offer the same level of dynamism for driving as seen in other parts of the car. The Direct4 system can already alter the torque put to each wheel to balance the ride, and you get a similar level of dynamic-alteration when driving. For instance, the system will adjust how much turn you get depending on the speed you’re driving at, with tricky car-park maneuvers more dramatic than switching lanes on a highway. And for that, we come to Lexus’ most eye-catching, controversial and interesting change, ditching the steering wheel for a yoke in a quest to end “hand-over-hand” driving.

Ditching the steering wheel also means that Lexus can reduce clutter and make it easier for drivers to see the instrument binnacle. This is a great idea in theory, but falls victim to the problem that more than a few Toyota and Lexus vehicles have suffered from over the last few years. I don’t know why, but many models (including the 2014 Mirai, 2015 Prius, 2012 and 2018 Corolla, amongst others) have their infotainment displays too low down in the center console. So when you want driving directions, you need to physically take your eyes off the road to look at the screen. At least in the bZ4X, the display is at the same height as the steering wheel, but here, the 14-inch infotainment display is buried below the air vents. Maybe it’s all a clever ploy to ensure everyone opts for a heads-up display, but it’s a persistent bugbear of mine.

Towards the end of my time with the setup, it got easier, and I suspect that it’ll only take a few days of regular use before it becomes second nature. It’s almost tragic that, for all of the effort, this technology will eventually pass unremarked into everyone’s daily driving habits. But I will admit that, when it came time for our last trip, driving the 450e back to the airport, me and my driving partner James both said we’d prefer driving the version with the wheel. But then, it’s always easier to run screaming back toward the comfort of the familiar when you’re pressured for time.

Lexus has been in the process of building electrified vehicles for the better part of two decades but it’s only now that it has launched its first clean-sheet EV. Toyota may have been the first to make a partially-electric vehicle work as a mass-market proposition, but it always had hydrogen as its north star of its strategy. It, in tandem with fuel companies and the Japanese government, opted to pursue hydrogen as the wonder-fuel of the future. Company officials frequently cited the cost and weight of batteries, and the speedy refueling times of hydrogen, as justification to avoid following the market. Inch-by-inch, sector-by-sector, the corporation has ceded more and more of the ground it initially cultivated to upstart rivals. The only evidence the company still clings to the hope of re-litigating the last decade of auto industry evolution was in a clearing across from the chateau’s polished concrete garage.

There, surrounded by metal barriers clad in Toyota-branded banners, was a hydrogen generator used to feed power into the facility necessary to charge so many cars all at once. But for my own pessimism, there remains hopeful shoots that Toyota’s fuel cells may finally find their place. The company recently announced a deal to sell hardware to Hyliko, a French trucking startup, to build the sort of heavy-duty equipment that hydrogen power is ideal for. Similarly, BMW has started showing off its iX5 Hydrogen, a prototype hydrogen EV that uses Toyota’s technology. But these are still little more than green shoots of hope that hydrogen hasn’t become a technological cul-de-sac the company has driven itself down into. Especially given the natural benefits of generation, transport and efficiency that electricity has always had over its rival.

As for the RZ 450e, it’s an EV that makes a better case for your head than perhaps it does your heart. Perhaps it’s because all EVs are a little more bloodless than their gas-powered rivals, and that the company has spent so long refining its offering. It’s powerful enough that you’ll feel a real kick when you put your foot to the floor, and the steering is a lot more active and direct than you would expect from a big, heavy, Lexus-branded SUV. But there’s also something sterile about the whole thing, the seriousness of the machine stripping out some of the fun. But that’s flimsy criticism of a grown-up vehicle that gets the fundamentals right, and should leave you with no doubts about the reliability of its hardware.

The Lexus RZ 450e is available to order in the UK for £62,000, with the most expensive Takumi variation costing £72,100. Deliveries for the vehicle are expected to begin at the end of May.

I’ve always found the major criticism against Ted Lasso, that it’s too saccharine, to be quite unfair. This is a series in the Frank Capra mold, where the sunny skies and primary colors sweeten the bitter pills being handed out. For every scene of wish fulfillment designed to get you pumping the air, there are meditations on suicide, betrayal and emotional neglect. It’s also funny – enough that Emmy voters gave it Best Comedy two years in a row. Now the third and, far as we know, final season of the show will return to Apple TV on March 15th.

It picks up after the summer break, in the run-up to Richmond’s return season in the Premier League (EPL) after winning promotion by the skin of its teeth last time around. It’s been a long while since the second season aired, the longer gap attributed to behind the scenes issues. Jason Sudekis, who became co-showrunner this time around, reportedly ordered a ground-up rewrite after becoming dissatisfied with the original direction this season was taking. On the basis of the first four episodes, which Apple made available ahead of broadcast, our patience has been well-rewarded.

Such is the nature of Apple’s restrictive covenant on spoilers that I can’t talk about many specifics about the third season. The first episode is the weakest of the bunch, taking time to re-establish where everyone is after their summer break. (Are placeholder episodes necessary given the nature of streaming these days?) Keeley is finding the rigors of running her own business to be harder than expected, while Rebecca has taken Ted’s pledge of winning the league to heart. Ted, meanwhile, is feeling just as emotionally stunted as he has been previously, moreso after spending a summer with Henry, clearly having not dealt with Nate’s betrayal, or the contrived reasons behind it.

As part of Lasso’s evolution from a sitcom to a comedy drama, the runtimes of each episode are now firmly measured in hours, rather than half hours. The narrative has broadened out to cover the personal lives of many of the main footballers, as well as giving Keeley a whole new team to work with. We even get our first proper glimpse of Michelle and Henry back home in Kansas, not to mention the storylines featuring Sam and, of course, the dreaded Nate. That’s a lot for a show to handle, especially one that – similarly unfairly – was described as unfocused and messy in its second season. (Blame must go to Apple for that one, given its late-in-the-day request to add a further two episodes to the order.)

There are more threads in the storyline, but Ted Lasso has refocused its episodic structure around the Premier League season. And two parallel narratives come to the fore: Ted’s struggle to access his emotions in a healthy way, and the battle over Nate’s soul. Rupert, played with evil relish by Anthony Head, is the devil lurking on the wonder kid’s shoulder, dangling temptation before him at every turn. I probably can’t talk about [ACTOR] playing [CHARACTER], either, a condensed version of every mono-named prima-donna footballer that is often idolized and hated in equal measure.

I was interested to see how the show’s newfound embrace by the footballestablishment would alter its customary lack of grounding in reality. This season sees plenty of filming at some big name stadiums, even down to the retention of the sponsor walls for post-match interviews. But don’t go in expecting a new-found commitment to footballing verisimilitude, with the opposition teams all played by actors with little resemblance to their real-world counterparts. Just remember that this is still Ted’s world, we’re just lucky enough to spend a little time watching it.

Spoiler warning: The following article discusses the Star Trek: Picard episodes “Seventeen Seconds” and “No Win Scenario.”

I was away last week and so didn’t write up last week’s utterly inessential episode of Picard, although if you’re curious, Darren Mooney at The Escapist’s feelings mirror my own. The whole affair only makes sense if you assume the whole crew had taken a big dose of idiot pills an hour before the episode began, and wish you’d had some as well. This week, there’s a lot more to say, especially since it’s the first episode this season that feels even remotely fun. And while the setup for all of these conflicts was pretty flimsy, their resolutions are all very enjoyable to watch.

After the Shrike uses its Portal gun to encourage the Titan to shoot itself in the back, the ship drifts into a gravity well and certain doom. It’s here we get one of the worst tell-not-show moments in the series so far as the bridge crew state, and then restate (and then re-restate) the situation the ship finds itself in. Loss of power, is it? Sinking into a gravity well, is it? We don’t have enough power to get out of the gravity well, is it? Is that because we’ve not got much power, is it? And because of the gravity well? Sorry, not following, can you explain it to me like I’m five, please? It doesn’t help that while the decision to take the shields offline is set up as some big, dangerous decision, it’s never mentioned again.

It’s here that Picard, opting to get his affairs in order, chooses to sit down for a touching moment with Jack. And they choose to do so on the holodeck, in the Ten Forward bar that’s been turning up time and again this run. Picard says that holodecks are hooked up to their own power supply because it’s better to die in comfort than use that power to survive. I think we can all tell that it’s a cover for either a production or a budget issue that meant they had to re-use the set. (Picard’s first season did the same, endlessly going back to the chateau office on La Sirena’s holodeck.) And, again, the two-hander between Patrick Stewart and Ed Speelers is great.

Also, remember when a broken leg wouldn’t require much more than a quick waft of a med bay doodad and you’d be good as new? Not in Picard, where Shaw storms into Picard’s heart to heart, apparently full of painkillers, and reveals why he’s so angry at both Seven and Picard. It turns out that, like a big chunk of Starfleet, he’s a survivor from Wolf 359! And if this wasn’t another thing that was explored pretty well by Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, it might carry a bit more dramatic weight. It also feels like the start of a pre-ordained redemption arc for Todd Stashwick’s Captain Shaw as the powers that be use Picard as a way to backdoor pilot a Titan-A spin-off series. (You can imagine the pitch: We’ve got the cast, and the sets are already built, it’s practically free content if you greenlight another ten!) And, to be fair, Todd Stashwick’s such a charismatic actor that you could feel him straining to play someone more unlikeable at the start of the series.

From here until the conclusion, however, the tone starts to lighten, and Beverley’s realization that the nebula is a space lifeform gives everyone a sense of purpose. You see, the nebula is undergoing the exact same contractions that a pregnant person would when they’re in labor. The moment that Riker stops pointlessly objecting to the plan of riding the contractions out of the gravity well, it suddenly feels like we’re watching Star Trek again. The gang works together, Seven and Shaw successfully lure out the changeling infiltrator, and they even have a nice spot of payback for the Shrike as Riker orders the Titan to lock onto a massive asteroid, dragging it behind long enough for it to smash the enemy vessel out of contention long enough for them to escape.

And that’s not even the best bit, because there’s also the wonderful B-Story of Picard dealing with his adoring fans while in (the real) Ten Forward five years previously. Patrick Stewart Picard is accosted by a bunch of fans cadets who ask him to regale them with stories of his time on Star Trek the Enterprise. All the while, unseen, Jack lingers in the background, listening to Picard as he builds out his myth and his legacy while minimizing any reference to his own family. When Picard closes the gathering by saying that Starfleet is his family, it’s both an unwittingly hollow indictment of Picard’s own life (his co-workers are his only friends, oof) and an unwitting rejection of the son he could have grown to know years previously. This, my friends, is a great moment, full of depth and pathos and I just wish that it hadn’t taken this long to get here.

Speaking of which, Paramount recently punted Star Trek: Discovery’s fifth season to 2024, adding it would now be that show’s final run. With news that the studio is looking to tighten its belt in order to milk some actual profit from its streaming service, fans are feeling antsy. After all, Trek shows aren’t cheap to make, and it’s not clear how much crossover appeal these shows have. Despite David Stapf’s 2018 promise that we’d have “a Star Trek something on all the time,” there’s a worry that it’s closing time at the all-you-can-eat buffet. With Discovery and Picard on the outs, and no sign (yet) that Lower Decks and Prodigy will get renewals, we could go from five shows to three, or one, in no time at all. But, based on the merits of some of what’s been released under the Trek brand of late, would that really be such a bad thing?

After all, these four episodes of Picard form little more than an extended prologue for the rest of the run. It’s taken the better part of four hours to establish the broad outline of the plot as well as the main antagonists, and the stakes at hand. Even then, we’ve still not encountered more than half of the Next Generation returnees who formed such a key part of the marketing. A prologue that I would have enjoyed a hell of a lot more if it had been compressed down to closer to ninety minutes. Imagine if, rather than filling out a corporate-mandated ten-week block each year, the format was designed to suit the story being told at each time. On the merits of the last four weeks alone, fewer episodes of higher quality Trek would be infinitely preferable.

It’s easy to be cynical about a lot of things, but then you see a picture of clouds taken from the soil of another planet, and you remember what a great gift human ingenuity can be. For the first time, a Mars probe has taken a clear image of sunbeams seen from the Martian surface. Curiosity rover, during a survey of twilight cloud formations, took a shot clearly showing crepuscular rays emerging from the heavens.

Researchers say this cloud formation is higher in the atmosphere than normal, and is made of dry ice rather than water ice. Other treats from Curiosity’s current survey include sight of an iridescent cloud shaped like a feather. This, too, is helping teams here on Earth get a better sense of the Martian atmosphere, not to mention giving us a lovely stream of new desktop backgrounds.

– Dan Cooper

The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.

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'Starfield' has been delayed to September 6th

We’ll learn more about the ambitious RPG in June.

Bethesda

Starfield, Bethesda Studios’ ambitious sci-fi RPG, has once again been delayed, this time to September 6th. That may be a pain to fans who’ve been waiting since the last pledged release date of November 11th, 2022, to get their hands on the title. In compensation, the studio will release a lengthy deep-dive on June 11th, immediately after Microsoft and Bethesda’s own Xbox summer showcase ahead of E3.

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VW's connected emergency service is free for 5 years after botched carjacking response

It refused police requests to activate dormant tracking features to help save a child.

Volkswagen is offering its Car-Net connected emergency service free to a number of 2020 to 2023 vehicles after a high-profile bungle. An Atlas SUV was carjacked, with the thief not realizing a child was still inside, but VW staff refused requests made by police officers to activate remote tracking. Mercifully, the child was found safe and well, but as part of a high-profile mea culpa, VW will offer five years’ service free to all qualifying models.

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Ring’s latest doorbell offers head-to-toe views of your visitor

The Battery Doorbell Plus is the first battery-powered machine to get the feature.

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Ring’s brought one of the best features from its Pro 2 video doorbell to its range of battery powered units. The new Battery Doorbell Plus gets the same 150 x 150-degree field of vision and 1536p video as the flagship. That gives you a proper view of your doorstep, letting you keep an eye on packages dumped there when you’re out.

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Google One's VPN will soon be available to all subscribers

That includes base-tier subscribers paying as little as $2 per month.

Google’s One subscription plan offers cloud storage and backup, extra support and better offers on Google products. It also has a VPN, but that’s only on offer to people paying for the Premium tier with 2TB of storage. Now, however, the search giant is opening up its VPN for all users and will even bring the feature to base-tier users paying as little as $2 a month.

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Bowers & Wilkins Pi7 S2 review: Excellent sound only goes so far

The whole package lacks polish, especially at this sort of price.

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Our audio expert Billy Steele has reviewed Bowers & Wilkins’ new Pi7 S2 true wireless earbuds, and it makes for great reading. Unless you’re Bowers or Wilkins. He takes the company to task for not pairing the admittedly great sound with a package to match it. Lackluster noise cancellation, poor battery life and limited customization paired with a price far in excess of its better, cheaper competitors means you might be better off looking elsewhere for your next pair of earbuds.

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Ring may boast that it’s good to monitor when visitors and packages arrive at your front door, but sometimes it’s hard to see everything that’s going on. That’s why the company today announced the Battery Doorbell Plus, its first unit with a 150-by-150 degree field of vision and 1536p video. It says that the greatly-increased view of the vertical space will make it easier to get a “head to toe” view of your visitors, as well as better visibility when a driver leaves a box on the floor. Plus, the higher resolution footage will make it easier for users to identify what’s going on when they’re away from home.

Despite claims that this unit has a longer battery life compared to some of its brethren, the Plus does not compromise on features. Users will be able to set the usual alerts for Motion Detection and Privacy Zones, as well as Quick Replies, use Live View and talk to whoever’s at the door. It’s also equipped to support end-to-end encryption, but you’ll have to opt-in if you want to activate it, and you should. Plus, Ring will sell you a subscription package for $4 a month that’ll let you set rich notifications as well as the aforementioned Package Alerts.

The Ring Battery Doorbell Plus is available to pre-order today for $180, with shipping expected to begin on April 5th.

Over the last decade, Meta has done all it can to establish each part of its business as a separate but equal contributor to its bottom line. After all, that’s why part of Facebook’s brand identity is little icons denoting Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus. Plus, you know, it helps to deflect from any suggestion it’s operating a sprawling digital monopoly owning a big chunk of the internet.

But now, nine years after Facebook cleaved its Messenger product into a standalone mobile app, the pair are to be reunited. Facebook head Tom Alison said in a blog post the company is testing the ability to access Messenger from within the Facebook app. This is, of course, all part of its attempts to claw back relevancy from TikTok, with Alison saying the big blue app is pivoting to become a platform for entertainment and discovery.

– Dan Cooper

The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.

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reMarkable launches a gorgeous, if expensive, Type Folio for its e-paper tablet

It’s a niche accessory for a niche product, but you can’t help but love it.

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A few years after launching an updated version of its e-paper writing slate, reMarkable is adding a keyboard folio. It’s a pricey add-on to the device but one, I think, makes the right compromises. I found it pretty easy to use as a distraction-free writing machine. But given reMarkable’s intentionally limited writing slate is already a niche proposition, this can only ever appeal to a niche inside a niche.

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Sonos is betting big on spatial audio with the $450 Era 300 speaker

And it’ll offer support for Apple Music’s spatial audio.

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Sonos has unveiled the most dramatic update to its speaker line in some time, replacing both the One and Five with the Era 100 and Era 300. It’s the latter that’s more interesting, since it’s designed to support spatial audio, offering more nuance to your music. And, shortly after the pair arrived, Apple let it be known the Era 300 would support spatial audio from Apple Music, giving would-be purchasers one big reason to try it out.

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Hyundai's revamped Kona EV offers more room and a longer range

It’s the first clean-sheet Kona EV, with all the benefits.

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YouTube reverses course on controversial swearing and monetization policy

Now you can do a naughty word in the opening moments of a video.

YouTube’s interesting approach to colorful metaphors, the sort you’d never see used in a respectable technology newsletter, is changing. Last November, the company said any shocking utterances in the initial moments of a clip would render it ineligible for monetization. Now, officials have walked that back slightly, saying only strong profanity will see a clip marked for limited adverts, while milder, sub-f-and-s-word utterances will probably be OK.

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I’ve always thought the folks at reMarkable were missing a trick by not offering a keyboard for their e-paper tablet. I’m a fan of portable, distraction-reducing writing machines, and when my brain gets too cluttered, I go stand by my window with a keyboard-equipped iPad in front of me. reMarkable’s community has already found ways to jerry-rig a keyboard to the machine, but I’d much prefer to get a finished package than something knocked together on the fly.

So I was excited to learn that the company is now launching its own keyboard, stand and cover accessory in the form of the Type Folio. It’s the company’s take on the cover-stand-keyboard unit offered for pretty much every other tablet on the market. But it’s also blessed with its own quirks, designed to ensure that it won’t ruin the skinny silhouette of the existing hardware.

For the uninitiated, reMarkable 2 is an e-paper tablet promising paper-like responsiveness, letting you read, amend and write documents with a stylus. Its low weight, long battery life and the stripped-down nature of its offering has earned it plenty of plaudits from its hardcore fans. But while it makes many of its (intentional) limitations into virtues, it is still quite niche. As my beloved former colleague Chris Velazco said two years ago, “This is a device for people who care about writing and reading to the exclusion of just about everything else.”

To get started with Type Folio, you just slide reMarkable 2 into it, connecting to a small chin on the slate’s left hand side/bottom. Unfold the case and the stand will hold it upright to expose the keys underneath, and once it’s clicked in, the tablet reorientates itself to landscape mode. Flip the tablet back down to cover the keys, and it’ll jump back into portrait mode, in a way that feels natural, and seamless.

reMarkable opted to make the letter keys full size, sat over rubber dome switches with 1.3mm of travel. The number and other keys are compressed to fill space left over, but while I expected to need some adjustment time, it all came together fairly instantly. I was also delighted that the arrow keys (vital when moving the cursor around) were left in space to help your fingers find them.

In fact, I think I probably made just two more errors writing the first draft of this piece on the slate than I would on my regular keyboard. The lack of autocorrect and spell check could be an issue if you enjoy, or need, the assistance offered by most normal systems these days. If you use this for nothing more than first and second drafts, before finishing things on a different screen, then I can’t imagine it being an issue.

And for people who need something a little more limited to help keep their minds focused, this is a delight. I could well imagine myself taking this, rather than my iPad, over to the window when I need to avoid the numerous temptations of the internet. I especially liked the ability to make live notes with the stylus when proofing the draft while sat eating lunch, too. It’s as close to being able to print out and amend your work as I’m likely to get until I finally give in and buy a printer again.

Type Folio comes in two faux-leather finishes, the Sepia Brown I tried and an Ink Black. It’s slim and light enough that it doesn’t feel like too much bulk has been added to the already pretty slender tablet. Given that you’re now able to do a lot more with it than you could before, it feels like there’s been very little trade off or sacrifice made here.

If there’s one place I feel compelled to take points off, it’s in the price, which fails the “would I spend my own money to buy this” test. The slate itself is $299, and only really works if you buy a stylus priced at either $79, or $129 if you opt for the built-in “eraser.” So it’s hard to swallow when the keyboard folio is $199, a full two-thirds of the price of the main hardware itself, as much as I think it’s a beautiful and well-engineered piece of gear. I do imagine that, for most would-be reMarkable buyers, price is less of a consideration than it is for other gadgets. But, in aggregate, the sticker gets close to the point where you start asking questions about how much you’d need this over, say, a 9th generation iPad and its own stylus and keyboard folio. By comparison, reMarkable remains a product that you’ll need to fall in love with before you start forking over that much cash, but mercifully, it’s also very easy to fall in love with.

Back in December, I got to play with Honor’s second foldable, the Magic VS, but the first one it will sell in the West. It was a Chinese-market prototype with several rough edges, but even so, it made a fairly compelling case for its own existence. Now, three months later, the company has rocked up to MWC with the finished version that’s intended to be sold on this side of the equator. The big news is the price, which is pegged at €1,599 (around $1,690) for the one model, with 12GB RAM and 512GB storage, the same as Samsung’s Z Flip 4. The only difference is that, with Samsung’s handset, you’ll get 12GB RAM but only 256GB storage.

When I spent a few days with the handset, I found plenty of features that merited praise, like the fact it folds flat. Certainly, Honor feels that its second-generation hinge, which keeps the handset tidy in your pocket, is worthy of shouting about. And it has promised that the hinge will withstand 400,000 folds before conking out, and you’ll find yourself gravitating towards that internal screen more than you might expect. While not as well-equipped as the 6.45-inch exterior screen, the 7.9-inch foldable OLED is good enough to sit back and enjoy a movie, or your emails, with. And it’s fast enough to run pretty much anything you’d want to throw at it without breaking much of a sweat.

If there’s one wrinkle, it’s that these devices may not be the future of foldables as much as the narrower, more fashionable clamshells. Devices like Oppo’s Find N2 and Samsung’s latest Z Flip are both more pocket-and-wallet-friendly than their swole counterparts. And that counts for a lot for folks who don’t feel the need to whip out a small tablet when they’re scrolling Instagram. But for the sort of people who, like me, are nerdy enough to want a machine they could theoretically do some work from while on the go, the meatier versions are still king.