TV Review: Star Trek: Picard, season 1

TV #56 of 2023:

Star Trek: Picard, season 1

Patrick Stewart seems to be enjoying himself in reprising the title role of this Star Trek sequel series set and produced decades after his time on The Next Generation, but this whole first season is built around a huge miscalculation of what sort of story would be worth taking the character out of mothballs over. I wouldn’t dismiss the plot idea outright as a misstep for the franchise — though it cribs more than a bit off Battlestar Galactica with its identical androids who don’t know they’re androids and the video game series Mass Effect with its beacons to signal advanced synthetic lifeforms — but it’s never a tale that feels personal or essential for Jean-Luc Picard to be involved with, and it’s ultimately executed pretty poorly, with wide gaps in the narrative logic and needless retcons to established canon.

We learn that the Romulans, for example, have a super-secret cult operating inside of their already fairly secretive security force, and that this inner group has for millennia been dedicated to the destruction of all artificial life. This is despite the fact that they obviously never did anything to Data or any of the other synths seen in previous Trek series, and while their clandestine nature explains why we’ve never heard of them before, it doesn’t account for how brazenly they operate here or how little they seem to mind having their ancient secret finally outed. And of course, their entire existence carries no dramatic weight, as we’re given no Romulan protagonists to invest in who might plausibly feel betrayed to find out about the order and its murderous actions carried out in their name.

But that’s this season in a nutshell. It goes for flashy concepts that fall apart the longer you think about them, features a few frankly silly coincidences, draws certain key developments out for too many episodes, and tries to cram in last-minute declarations of how much the characters mean to one another despite their having basically just met. As expected for a nostalgia piece like this, the most affecting moments are when the hero rejoins his old crew members Troi and Riker, allowing the program to slow down and reflect on their shared history and catch us up on everything they’ve been doing in the meantime. But that’s a brief interlude in all the underbaked chaos, and must be balanced with how the show brings back three (arguably five!) other named characters from TNG and Voyager only to subsequently kill them off.

On the Voyager connection — yes, Seven of Nine is here too, for some reason. If this year’s storyline doesn’t seem especially relevant for Picard, at least the Borg angle brings this other fan-favorite into play. But the two powerhouses don’t share that many scenes together, leaving her inclusion feeling like yet another squandered opportunity.

I missed The Next Generation when I was growing up, and perhaps came at it too late to ever be a properly committed fan. If you are that sort of viewer, maybe this all works better for you and you’ll be able to glide over the bumps on the emotional wavelength of getting to see your old captain again. Make it so! Engage! Tea, Earl Grey, hot! I won’t deny that there’s a totemic power in those familiar elements, which is something TV and film producers seem to be increasingly realizing in greenlighting belated follow-up projects like this. But spot-the-reference isn’t enough to sustain a work of fiction that hopes to become iconic in its own right, and this one sadly falters along its other dimensions. I hope the writers get more serious in the seasons ahead.

[Content warning for suicide, genocide, incest, gun violence, and gore.]

★★☆☆☆

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