Star Trek begins to move forward again.
What They Say:
Retired admiral Jean-Luc Picard — still deeply affected by the loss of Lieutenant Commander Data and the destruction of Romulus — steps into the next chapter of his life.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After the launch of Star Trek: Discovery, the reveal of Star Trek: Picard definitely got me excited because it was a chance to finally start what Star Trek always did until it hit the 2000s: move forward. The original series begat The Next Generation and from there we moved forward incrementally with Deep Space 9 and Voyager. After that, it was all backward with Enterprise and Discovery. What I loved about Trek was that you could do a Next Generation aspect regularly and advance a couple hundred years or some such and reinvent how everything works. With Picard, we’re incrementally moving forward against but we haven’t done this in decades when it comes to the live-action side (shh, we’ll talk Discovery later this year).
Taking place some fourteen years after events on Romulus that lead to its end because of the supernova, we’re introduced to a retired Picard that’s managing the fields at the family home. He’s not truly living, which you can tell easily, and he’s haunted by his past. That’s no surprise either considering his history, what he’s seen, and the choices that he’s made. Dreams of Data in particular are no surprise considering the bond and the loss but it’s also sign and portent of things to come. The opening episode does some good stuff in establishing this period; the supernova was something that strained the Federation as they had to help an enemy and they reneged along the way when things went south due to a group of rogue synthetics that destroyed the ship foundries on Mars. Picard had already taken leave from Starfleet to help with the plan to help people off Romulus and when he saw them start to turn isolationist, he retired as Starfleet was not what he thought it should be. He did an immense amount of good in helping to rescue as many as they did and we see that a couple have chosen to help manage the estate for him as well, which is a nice touch.
The other story that operates along the pilot is in regards to a brilliant young woman named Dahj who has been accepted to the Daystrom Institute as a fellow. But just as she celebrates that news with her boyfriend, a group of disguised Romulans arrive and attempt to bring her in after trying to discover if she’s been activated yet. This ends up “activating” her and like a super-soldier come to life, she’s able to eliminate them and struggle with a new memory of Picard that is dominant in her mind. Dahj’s story is interesting across it as she realizes that she’s something more than a synthetic as a next evolution aspect is here and it ties well into Picard in a way that I’m holding out to see if it really works right. Part of me sees it as the kind of thing that Data would have been involved in with his sense of humor combined with his bond with Picard. A good bit is explored with Dahj and synthetics in general with Picard jetsetting around the world and all of it helps to shape what the Federation is like at this point in time.
And it sets Picard on his new mission to find Dahj’s twin sister because of the danger that she’s going to be in. Picard’s story is very Earthbound here but it provides the right teases for the bigger story to come, especially the ending as we see some of what Romulans are up to and some of the fallout of past battles that the Federation has fought. Patrick Stewart does a great job of bringing us a Picard at this age where he’s spent his time closing down parts of his life and being introverted and realizing that it was the wrong thing to do by the end of it. He’s brought to life by the arrival of Dahj and it has a natural if fast feeling to it. Everything about how he’s presented feels like a very plausible piece after his life and after what happened with Starfleet and the Federation after the supernova.
And that has me excited to see what’s going to come next as there’s a growing cast that hasn’t been introduced yet and a kind of “off the books” storyline that’s going to have significant repercussions that I hope impact a true next-generation series within the next few years.
So, let’s talk a bit deeper in the spoiler territory and some of the frustrations with the show. I’ll be honest, I totally understand the way a segment of fans feel about this dishonoring the Federation and Roddenberry’s utopian view of the future that he wanted to present through it. Ronald Moore and other writers have complained about his view for years and I like how they chipped away at it during DS9 by exposing us to more of the galaxy and some Federation flaws. And I know that annoyed a lot of fans at the time. For me, it feels like it’s the smart thing to do for the here and now. When the original series first aired, while we were a nation at strife we were also a country that had spent years flying all around the world thanks to cheap air travel and the allure of it. People were exposed to new cultures, boldly going where they hadn’t gone before. Here, Picard takes place at a time when the nation is fighting as it turns isolationist and divided. Starfleet and the Federation reflects that and Picard realized his mistake was in walking away when it wasn’t what it should be instead of fighting for it. You can understand it because after so long, sometimes you just have no fight left.
I really like what we get out of the whole synthetics thing and I’m curious to see where that’s going to end up as it’s explored further. There’s some good dialogue about it and how things got shut down within the Federation for research because of the reaction to the destruction they caused, essentially a 24th century 9/11. The synthetics were able to be pulled, basically, and programs shut down. Data’s more of a myth at this point in some ways and there’s a frustration among those that worked in the field as they were getting closer to making something almost indistinguishable from humanity. I suspect that there’ll be some difficult subplot material out of this because of how it can be viewed in different ways and not in a clean and clear way at that. Those that favor Data will likely be swayed more toward seeing the programs restart, especially if his core is what’s involved in it. But I’m not ready to commit much in this area because it feels like we’ve gotten maybe 1% of what this story is going to involve.
One area that I really got excited about was the ending piece where we get to see some of the Romulan process where they’re working to deal with keeping their civilization going. It’s not gone into in much detail as it’s designed to introduce two new non-Romulan characters, but it deals with what I wanted from a post-TNG/DS9/VOY era show if it was going to be within touching distance. The idea of retrofitting Borg Cubes as a place for millions of Romulans to go and connect is fascinating. I can see it being really good on some levels because it’s space that exists and it avoids relocating all of them to other worlds and spawning new problems. At the same time, with the threat that the Borg were and the problems with the Federation for decades upon decades, seeing your former(?) enemy set up inside of them must have been frightening on some level. And that leans into that early interview Picard has where the journalist keeps saying Romulan lives were saved with a touch of venom, causing Picard to push back that he would do it again because all lives must be saved. There’s a lot of loaded material in these phrases that don’t match quite one to one culturally right now, but the senses are most definitely there.
In Summary:
I had a fascinating time watching this. I grew up on TOS in reruns in the 70s and experienced TNG as the big new cultural event that it was. I watched with my mother who watched TOS live and has a real affection for TNG and Picard in particular. I watched with my daughter who hasn’t seen a ton of Trek outside of some TOS and the Kelvin timeline movies and Discovery. I spent a good bit of time outlining the Borg and Romulans at the end of it just to fill her in and you can see through that how Picard may be pulling on some long threads to tell its tale. I really liked seeing much of what they do here, focusing on the fallout of events that have lead to some rough places for our cast and for the Federation. I’m of the mind that the utopian aspect of the Federation is something that should be preserved but there are times when it must be weakened in order to show that it must be fought for. Roddenberry didn’t want it challenged because storytelling focuses were different. So, this leaves me excited to see what Picard can do to challenge the state of things with him not a part of Starfleet and exploring new corners of the Trek universe – and hopefully setting for the larger fight to achieve the ideals that he spent his life fighting for.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: CBS All Access
