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We kind of, sort of got a look at the overarching secret the Zhat Vash have been guarding for centuries–the one that’s worth killing in order to keep. That secret is something known as the Admonition, a vision from an ancient alien society about how it somehow wiped itself out by creating synthetic life. The vision is so horrible and the destruction so profound that not everyone who witnesses the Admonition can even handle the knowledge, with Zhat Vash recruits often going mad or committing suicide immediately after learning the secret. It seems like there’s more to the situation, though; another civilization creating synthetic life and then getting wiped out by it doesn’t seem like much of a secret, really–and wouldn’t the Zhat Vash be more apt to accomplish their anti-synth goals by sharing that information with others, rather than hiding it and doing a bunch of spy stuff? It seems like there’s more here that hasn’t been uncovered yet.

There are a lot of quick shots hidden within the Admonition, but a key one is a look at one of the non-sentient Federation synths, whose face then transforms into the visage of Data. We know hatred of synthetics is the big thing driving the Zhat Vash, and that obviously extended to Data as one of the only sentient androids in existence, but his appearance here suggests that the Zhat Vash have been very worried about Data for a long while. Though Soji is referred to as the Destroyer by the Zhat Vash, it’s probably more accurate to say that Data, as the progenitor of a new synthetic race through Bruce Maddox’s work, is the real Destroyer.

One of the mysteries of Picard so far is the Artifact, the decommissioned Borg Cube the Romulans have been studying and salvaging for quite a while now. As Soji mentioned earlier in the season, nobody is quite sure what happened to the Artifact–it just stopped functioning one day, and the Romulans discovered it and took it over. Now we know that what really happened was Ramdha. According to Soji, Ramdha’s ship was the only Romulan vessel known to ever be assimilated by the Borg. It was a Tal Shiar vessel, but it seems the crew might have been entirely Zhat Vash. Instead of becoming regular drones, it seems, the Romulans went mad when they were assimilated into the Borg race, since it combined them with synthetic life, the thing they hated the most.

Ramdha, on the other hand, had direct knowledge of the Admonition. According to Narissa, her despair about the Admonition filtered through the Collective when she was assimilated. Essentially, she hated synthetic life so much that those thoughts and feelings were sent to every other Borg in the Cube, which caused it to shut down. It sounds like a variation on what happened to the Borg on The Next Generation when Hugh returned to his Collective after discovering his individuality. When Hugh rejoined the other Borg, his individuality filtered out to all the other drones, which caused them to become individuals as well. That fractured the Collective, messing up everyone on the Cube, and giving rise to a whole separate Borg subculture that wasn’t sure how to live or survive without its Collective.

A long-running Star Trek communication technology is subspace communication, which is what Picard asks for to contact Starfleet for help. Subspace is a feature of regular space that allows for faster-than-light travel–basically, it allows for communications over vast distances without waiting years for something like a radio signal to arrive. Starfleet mostly uses subspace for command communications with its ships, and there are relays throughout the Federation to help get subspace signals where they need to go as quickly as possible.

There are a whole bunch of Starfleet starbases scattered throughout the Federation, as well as the Deep Space stations, which are positioned out toward the borders of Federation territory. The most famous is Deep Space 9, of course, which was located close to Bajor and the Cardassian border. Picard and the La Sirena are headed for Deep Space 12, which sounds like it’s closer to Romulan territory.

Raffi calls out Picard for his commitment to Soji when the pair finally make it back to La Sirena–as Raffi puts it, Picard built an entire heroic fantasy out of “one pissant little neuron.” She’s referring to the “fractal cloning” technique that apparently brought Soji and Dahj into existence. According to Agnes Jurati in Episode 1, Bruce Maddox was able to use a single positronic neuron from Data to recreate an entire positronic brain. So Soji and Dahj were created from Data, and from Raffi’s point of view, it’s Picard’s loyalty to Data that’s making him so willing to risk everything for Soji.

After Rios meets Soji, he shuts himself up in his quarters and activates all his crew holograms to run the ship in his stead. We learn that the holograms are all scans of Rios, and also have some information about his past–although much of it has been blocked or deleted by Rios, it seems. We also learn that the holograms have names related to their functions: Enoch for the Emergency Navigation Hologram, Emmit for the Emergency Tactical Hologram, and Ian for the Emergency Engineering Hologram.

Back in Episode 3, we saw a flashback of Raffi trying to convince Picard that the attack on Mars was the work of a Romulan conspiracy, someone she referred to as the Conclave of Eight. At the time, Raffi thought the Conclave was a group of conspirators, but with the help of Enoch, she comes around to the theory that the Conclave of Eight is an octonary star system–the place where the Romulans discovered the Admonition.

The Borg are an incredibly dangerous threat throughout many Star Trek series, largely because they’re so tough to kill. Borg drones are able to adapt to protect themselves against weapons like phasers and disruptors after a few shots, and their ships have a similar capacity. When a Borg Cube does take damage, it rebuilds itself, or “regenerates,” since the entire ship is also a machine linked to the Collective. When Seven of Nine taps into the Cube’s controls, she starts its regeneration in hopes of stealing it from the Romulans.

Picard spends some time explaining who Data was to Soji, and it becomes clear to her very quickly that Picard cared deeply for his android friend. They also had a lot in common, including the inability to express emotion well. In talking about Data, Picard also notes that he tried very hard to understand the concept of humor, but never quite got it. “Data never made anyone laugh on purpose,” Picard says, although Data made a lot of attempts. In “The Outrageous Okona” in Season 4 of The Next Generation, Data even took lessons from a computer-generated comedian on the holodeck of the Enterprise, in hopes of figuring out how to make people laugh.

When the Emergency Hospitality Hologram explains to Raffi why his personality mirrors Rios’s, he also explains that Rios deleted a lot of information and files from the holograms’ database. Among the removals is the correct temperature for serving Yridian tea. The Yridians are one of the alien races in the alpha quadrant that have appeared a few times on Trek series over the years. On The Next Generation, a Yridian once tried to sell Worf information about his deceased father, Mogh. The race tends to be seen as untrustworthy, but apparently, they have a pretty decent tea.

Rios has a bunch of books in his quarters, most of them on a philosophical theme about the meaning of life and death. Hemingway, Camus, and Kierkegaard are all represented, as well as a famous Star Trek figure: Sarek. That’s the Vulcan ambassador who was father to Spock. Sarek has a history with Jean-Luc Picard, as well; during a diplomatic mission in the episode “Sarek” in Season 3 of The Next Generation, Picard and Sarek shared a mindmeld in order to help Sarek deal with a degenerative condition that was causing him to lose control of his emotions. That created a tight bond between the captain and the ambassador, which allowed Picard to later relate to Spock when he met him on Romulus in the Season 5 episode “Unification.”

We also see the remnants of Rios’s time in Starfleet in the footlocker he keeps in his quarters. Inside are Rios’s uniform and the pips used to display his rank, as well as a photo of Rios with the captain of the Ibin Majid, Alonzo Vandermeer.

Back on the Artifact, Seven of Nine and Elnor are trying to figure out how to escape from the Romulans and liberate the Borg Cube. Seven isn’t a fan of the plan, but one way they can do it is for her to take control of the Cube and create a mini-Collective, activating the remaining Borg drones on the Cube who haven’t been reclaimed yet. It means, basically, re-assimilating them into the Borg, something Seven is not excited about doing; as a former Borg herself, she knows how horrific being made a slave to the Borg can be, and she’s not excited about being responsible for that.

When Raffi talks to Rios, she finds him listening to a vinyl record of Ella Fitzgerald’s “In My Solitude.” Rios had a whole bunch of vinyl records in his Starfleet footlocker. What’s funny is that, at this point in history, vinyl as a medium would be more than 400 years old, so those records might be ancient–Picard would probably say they belong in a museum.

It’s been a long time since Seven of Nine said one of the signature phrases of the Collective, and it’s definitely just as chilling as it was on Star Trek: Voyager years ago.

The Admonition suggested to the Zhat Vash that there’s a point in the development of artificial intelligence that acts as a threshold, and once that threshold is passed, it’s too late to stop anything that might happen–including the creation of the Destroyer. Rios likens it to the creation of warp drive. In Star Trek: First Contact, the Enterprise crew saw humanity’s first warp flight, conducted by a scientist named Zefram Cochran, when they traveled to the past. Cochran is a famous figure in Star Trek lore, because his warp flight ushered in humanity’s era of space exploration and led eventually to the creation of the Federation. The crew likens Cochran to Noonien Soong, the cyberneticist who created synthetic life in Data and carried the Federation through the AI threshold.

The Borg are able to travel even faster than Warp 10, something that’s generally seen as impossible (although Warp 10 has popped up in a few different ways in various Star Trek series). To do that, the Borg use a network of “transwarp conduits” that let them use a part of subspace to travel great distances relatively quickly. A transwarp conduit was what allowed Voyager to return from the Delta quadrant at the end of Star Trek: Voyager, but the Federation doesn’t really have a handle on transwarp technology in general.

With the Cube liberated, Seven of Nine has full power over the small Borg collective she’s created. A nervous Elnor asks if she’s about to assimilate him, but Seven responds that “Annika still has work to do.” Annika Hansen was Seven’s human name before she was assimilated–despite being connected to her own Collective, Seven’s human side is still asserting itself.

We’ve known a fair bit about Picard’s past Starfleet assignments, especially his time on the Stargazer, the first ship he served on as captain. On the way to the transwarp conduit, Picard mentions the Reliant, the first ship he served on as an ensign.

Before Alonzo Vandermeer was captain of the Ibin Majid, he served as first officer to Captain Marta Batanides. She was one of Picard’s best friends in Starfleet Academy, and was present with him during the bar fight in which Picard was stabbed, which resulted in him receiving an artificial heart. Picard and Batanides actually even had romantic feelings for each other that they never explored, which we learned about in the Next Generation episode “Tapestry.”