For its first four episodes, Star Trek: Picard was a pretty dark and dour affair. Unlike The Next Generation, the cheerier and often easier-going series it follows, Picard has been imagining a Star Trek galaxy where things are a little more lawless and people are a little less moral. That makes for an interesting deconstruction of a legendary Starfleet captain, but it also has meant that Picard has lacked some of the lighter moments that are also a big part of Star Trek. Episode 5, "Stardust City Rag," corrects that issue to make for one of the more fun episodes the series has seen so far.

At the center of the episode is a fairly formulaic heist-type scenario, with Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the crew brokering a deal with criminals by pretending to be gangsters themselves. It's a fairly worn idea, one that's popped up on all sorts of TV shows, including Star Trek. But while the premise is played out, there's a good reason these moments have become such a cliche: they push characters into unexpected situations and encourage them to do something other than brood. In "Stardust City Rag," it seems like the cast is reveling in that opportunity, but nobody as much as Stewart himself.

Up to now, Picard's plan has been to find Bruce Maddox, the cyberneticist who created Data's daughters, in hopes of locating and rescuing Soji (Isa Briones). That takes him and his crew to a planet called Freecloud and its Star Trek equivalent of a seedier Las Vegas, Stardust City. A local criminal has Maddox, and in order to free him, the good guys are forced to pretend to be bad guys, with the help of the recently arrived Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan). In order to pull off the plan, everyone has to dress up and play comically over-the-top crooks.