Picard Review

Just finished watching the first season of Star Trek: Picard. I went into this one hopeful but apprehensive. If they screwed up Jean-Luc Picard there would be hell to pay. He’s one of my childhood heroes/role models.

Spoiler-free review I’d say they stuck to the character fairly well. This is a different style of show than TNG so it is hard to make a direct comparison. What was different due to the intervening thirty years versus poor character choices? One thing that struck me early on was that the sharp difference in look and style to the show is very much like TOS to TNG. But even more so because it’s been 32yrs since TNG aired (as opposed to 21yrs from TOS to TNG) and TV now is dramatically different while TV in the 80’s wasn’t fundamentally different to shows in the 60’s.

Another aspect that makes a comparison hard is the character of Picard is a fundamentally different person. According to ST lore, at the launch of the Enterprise-D, Picard was just shy of 60, at the peak of his career. But this new show is thirty-five years later, twenty years after the last movie, with Picard approaching 100. Given that this is the far future, so subtract about 10-20yrs from all those numbers to a modern equivalent.  Regardless, Picard whose been retired for over a decade is going to be a very different person to the Picard at the height of his career.

I mentioned how the style of the show is a generational leap just like TOS to TNG is. The sets feel like real places compared the relatively cheap style of TNG. Which, again, was a giant leap forward in quality from TOS. Seeing the familiar characters in this new setting is a bit off putting at first. As I imagine making the leap from TOS to the movies would have been. But then, the later TNG movies, despite their flaws, pulled things in this direction a little bit. So you adapt quickly.

It helps that they do go a long way to try and bridge the gap. The familiar LCARS screen layout is evident on the computers, just updated. The fancy holographic displays don’t stand out because A) this is the future of the future, unlike Discovery which was the past of the future, and B) DS9 makes off hand reference to holographic displays replacing old terminals in one episode that takes place in the future. I thought it was a nice touch that Picard didn’t know how to to use them. The man’s almost 100, been away for a decade plus, and as an admiral probably hasn’t worked a console since that one episode of TNG where he flew the ship for some reason.

The one visual difference I still can’t stand is the goddamn lens-flares. Enough already. I hate them.

Given all that, I’d say the show did the character enough justice. We got some good Picard quotes “Fear is an incompetent teacher.”

I’d say it was worth a watch though it does suffer from a number of issues overall.

Now, for spoilers.

The Frustrations

The show appeared to be telling three different stories. One about this Borg cube, one about synthetic lifeforms and one about Picard getting old and no one listening to him. It meanders a bit getting to the end and just drops the ball on a lot of things.

That is the show’s biggest flaw. It tried to do to many things. If the show ends when Picard dies, that would have been an okay end to his story.  But then he comes back right away. It felt pointless. And the bit with Data, while I get what they were going for, it felt forced and crammed in. It just came out of nowhere that Data’s been alive in this simulation the whole time. And then he wants to die.

By the end the show has forgotten about a lot of things. These aren’t dangling plot threads to pick up later. They have just been ignored. The Borg cube on the synth planet. Narek was captured or not? Jurati was a murderer who planned to turn herself in but didn’t. Most the synths were really passive and didn’t care one way that Soong shut one of them down and if Soji used the beacon or not.

The whole Borg cube felt entirely unnecessary. The story would have been a lot more interesting if Hugh and Seven argued over Seven becoming a new Queen. That would have been some good story telling and dealing with the consequences there. But instead Hugh died before that and Seven de-queenified with little consequence (considering all the Borg died).  That would have made for an interesting story arc; Seven and Hugh on the warpath with a Cube while Picard is dealing with synthetics and Romulans. Would be a good reason to bring La Forge and Janeway back.

But the cube had zero real impact on the story. In the end, it’s just abandoned on the surface of the synth world and forgotten about. I liked the interaction between Picard and Hugh. But it felt like it was only there because its a show about Picard so the Borg must be involved somehow. Had the cube been left behind when Picard escaped it would have worked better. Then it was a set piece that they could have returned to in the next season. Instead they literally dropped the cube.

The Goods

Now, before I rant to much, the show had some good parts. Overall, I liked the characters and they all felt more fleshed out than Discovery managed. They maybe tried a little to hard to be edgy characters, compared to the neat and tidy Starfleet we normally see. But they were all still good people in the end.

The show dealt with fear and how it allows people to make poor decisions. Both the synths, Romulans and Federation reacted poorly out of fear. But it had a message of overcoming fear to make the right choice.

Picard got to be the hero without it feeling to contrived. He always tried to do the right thing. He gave some good Picard speeches.

The story was resolved without a big fight! I was so expecting a fight between the Romulans and Starfleet or the synths at the end. But they resolved things the TNG way, by talking it out with a Picard speech and everyone deciding to do the right thing in the end. That right there makes the show worth making.

Picard’s interaction with old TNG characters were great. I loved the episode at the Riker’s. There are some quibbles in there (like their kid dying because of the ban, really? that felt stupid) and how the hell did Riker get from his planet to Starfleet, to the synth world so fast? But Jonathan Franks went full Riker with his demeanor on the bridge with his confrontation with the Romulans. And Picard thanking him at the end without telling him he’s about to die felt right.

A couple more rants:

• Related to the synths, one thing that the show kind of ignores is holographic intelligence. It’s riddled with emergency holograms. And it has Seven of Nine. But there’s no mention of the Doctor. What became of him? Where does he fit into all this? Is he a threat or just androids? It feels like an oversight to have not mentioned him at all when talking about the bans on synthetic life.
• Oh, and the added gore. I get that this isn’t network TV anymore and they can get away with throwing in some ‘fucks’ and more graphic things than you could with TNG. But do you need too? They didn’t go to wild fortunately, but the scene where Icheb’s eye gets removed was unnecessary. I get they were showing how evil the bad guy for that episode was. But Star Trek is for watching with kids.
• Speaking of Icheb, that touches on another of my concerns. They made a point of bringing back old characters from the shows. And in almost every case, killed them off right away. Icheb shows up and dies all in a flashback. Maddox is rescued and immediately murdered. Hugh gets a few episodes, and does a good performance, only to die. I would have much preferred a scene between him and Seven.
• The two Romulans who worked for/lived with Picard at the beginning were great characters. And then they just stayed behind and were forgotten about. That seems a waste of good characters.
• Starfleet and the Romulan fleet were rather disappointing. All the ships looked the same. And there were so many of them crammed so close together. It was just a mess. Less is more. That’s a lesson modern movies/tv need to learn. A dozen warbirds vs a dozen Starfleet ships would have been far more compelling.
• It was nice though, that Riker’s ship wasn’t the Enterprise. That would have felt cheap. Though, it would have been cool if it were his old ship the Titan. Be nice to see that on screen.

I have no idea what they’re planning for a second season.