Star Trek: Picard season one review

    Picard was a series that I was tremendously excited about. Like a lot of Trekkies my age, I grew up on the adventures of Captain Jean Luc Picard rather than Captain Kirk, Sisko, Janeway, or Archer. I watched him and the Galaxy-Class version of the Enterprise deal with everything from Q to the Borg. The Next Generation may not have always been amazing. I slightly prefer Deep Space Nine, but it was a classic that stands alongside the best of the original series or movies. Captain Picard was a stuffier, more idealistic, and less action-focused leader than Captain Kirk. Well, at least when he wasn't hooking up with Vash or doing Die Hard like in "Starship Mine."

      I was a bit iffy about Patrick Stewart coming back to do a sequel show to Star Trek: The Next Generation, though. No offense to a classically trained actor and someone healthy for his age, but he's seventy-nine years old and that's an odd time to take on a major career project unless you're going to do the majority of it sitting. Also, I wasn't sure I trusted the current holders of the Star Trek IP to deliver a satisfying look into the future of Roddenberry's vision. Was there still room for that sort of idealistic science fiction in the 21st century? Well, yes and no.

    The setting for Picard is a wounded Federation. Some people have said it's a darker Federation but I don't think that's the case. Synthetic life-forms have been banned in the Federation after the Mars colony was destroyed along with its entire population in what appeared to be a robot revolt. This happened during the destruction of Romulus via supernova. As such, 900,000,000 Romulans were not evacuated who might have been during the backstory of the 2009 Star Trek reboot. Worse, Romulan refugees are not appreciated within the borders of the Federation.

     I say wounded instead of darker despite the uncomfortable similarities to 9/11, Brexit, and the Trump administration that the creators have said they were dealing with because I don't think it's actually malevolent. It's made some questionable decisions but no overtly evil ones. The Federation has always been slightly behind, sometimes even antagonistic to our heroes, even when they are still the most enlightened people in the Quadrant.

    Aside from the endless parade of insane Admirals, there's a never-ending stream of horrifying events that the Federation was willing to let slide because of the Prime Directive. Really, I'm honestly surprised they were willing to evacuate any Romulans given it seemed the definition of an "internal matter" but perhaps they were planning to do Khitomer Accords 2.0. Kudos if you get that reference and aren't on the Star Trek BBS.

    The premise homages "All Good Things" with Captain Picard having been forced to retire on his vineyard with no sign of his marriage to Beverly Crusher (though that doesn't mean it didn't happen). He's suffering from the same condition he was there and is living a half-life with only his Romulan workers for company. He also has dreams of Data, still dead after all of these years, that lead him to helping a mysterious young girl named Dahj. Romulan troopers soon attack and he is soon sent on a quixotic quest to find Dahj's sister Soiji.

    Picard gathers a small crews of oddballs and misfits from the fringe of both the Federation as well as Romulan space. It's distinctly different from other Star Trek stories because they all have the reserved and professional feel of Starfleet. This is much closer to something like Firefly, Farscape, or even Star Wars to an extent as a ragtag band of misfits is something we haven't really seen in Star Trek before. That isn't to say it's bad but it's something that we haven't seen before in a canon work.

    I like Picard's crew of the La Sirena with Alison Pill as Dr. Agnes Jurati, Evan Evangora as Elnor, Santiago Cabera as Cristobal "Chris" Rios, and Michelle Hurd as Rafaella "Raffi" Musiker. They are a robotocist in over her head, a Romulan samurai, Han Solo, and a substance abusing Space Marine. I also appreciate Isa Briones as the android twins Dahj and Soji as she feels like the most "typical" Federation citizen ironically enough. Some people may dislike that the crew seems to have so many problems in the post-scarcity Federation but I feel like this isn't too far from what we saw in Deep Space Nine or the Original Series.

    Perhaps the biggest surprise is the large role played by Jeri Ryan, reprising her role as Seven of Nine. She's changed from the emotionally stunted and repressed to becoming Commander Shepard of Mass Effect. She's an butt-kicking, hard-drinking, and utterly take no prisoners action heroine that is also something we've seen before in Star Trek but not from a man. I think of her as probably how Tasha Yar might have been if not for network standards and practices of the late Eighties. Still, it's going to contrast with the memories of many fans.

    The villains of the series are a somewhat generic brother and sister pair of Romulans, Narissa and Narek, who are overtly evil. Harry Treadaway does a decent job making Narek seem like he has depths but Narissa is a bit scene chewingly evil. They're both very-very pretty people and that makes them watchable even in their most Cersei and Jaime Lannister-esque moments. The Zhat Vash is a "Tal Shiar within the Tal Shiar" and I don't really think that was necessary to add to Romulan lore.

   The plotline is, unfortunately, overly convoluted. There's a story about the banning of synths, a secret Romulan conspiracy, Data having daughters created from his neurons, Borg harvesting rings, a captured Borg cube, and an ancient prophecy that is built around a precursor race's marker. It comes together surprisingly well, much better than either of the two Discovery seasons, but it feels overly packed. Amazingly, I might have thrown out the couple of nostalgia episodes (despite those being the most entertaining in the series), to give the regular cast a chance to breathe.

    The show does suffer from an attempt to be darker and edgier. There's gratuitous swearing, sex, and violence. However, honestly, it's not that bad and I do think Star Trek could have been a little less sanitized regarding personal relationships. There's hints Seven of Nine is bisexual, for example, and that nicely retcons away Rick Berman's insistence homosexuality didn't exist for his decades of control over the franchise. In fact, I was kind of annoyed that it wasn't more overt that she had past romantic relationships with women.

    The action, special affects, and acting were all solid in this show. Indeed, I think the decision to hire excellent character actors I recognized from other programs was a solid decision. There's perhaps a bit too much reliance on past Star Trek incarnations but Trekkies are the original continuity fanatics. Overall, I really enjoyed this season and while I think they really need to stop being so overproduced in their episodes, I have a real strong hope for Star Trek's future.

8.5/10