Make It So: Spoiler-Filled Thoughts on Star Trek Picard

So what would it take to get me to subscribe to CBS All Access, you ask? It turns out a global pandemic did the trick.

I took advantage of their offer of a free month, and in about a week managed to binge the whole ten episodes. When I saw the first few trailers, I was worried that it would be a Star Trek-flavored retread of Logan, in which Patrick Stewart reappears with a brain illness, helps a mysterious girl to safety, and dies in the attempt.

So...

Look, there's no way around it, those things all happen in Picard. But I'm happy to report that unlike Logan, this is his story, so his death is decidedly not very permanent and doesn't occur midway through. I'm less happy to report that this impermanence is foreshadowed pretty quickly.

Overall, I'd call it a good show. Not a great one, necessarily, but it seems to have avoided some of the key pitfalls that made season 2 of Discovery so infuriating. It does suffer from the same problems of gratuitous violence and swearing that make it come off less grown-up than juvenile, and it retreads some of the same conflicts as Disco, such as the corruption at the heart of the Federation and the conflict between organic and synthetic life.

Taking that first point about the corrupt Federation, I considered doing a whole blog about it, but I'll try and knock it out here. What occurred to me while watching this is that every era of Trek has approached the inviolability of the Federation according to the age it's in. For all that we consider the 60s to be a time of counter-culture, TOS was a very conservative and straight-laced show (racial and gender inclusion notwithstanding). If we take the Federation as America, you can look at the Federation in the 60s as either the idealized America, or an acknowledgement of what America could be if it solved its problems.

TNG started when the Cold War was in its final years, and the USSR collapsed during the show's run, so that when DS9 and Voyager came along the US was the sole remaining superpower. This is reflected both in the fact that the Auld Enemy, the Klingons, are now the allies of the Federation, and in the portrayal of the Federation way as the "best" way. Voyager sticks to this narrative a lot more, while DS9 questions it by introducing Section 31, the "dirty tricks" division of Starfleet.

Discovery and Picard arrive at a time when America's faith in itself is at perhaps its lowest ever, and I think that's reflected in the increased role that Section 31 has, especially in Season 2. For Picard it manifests in the widespread infiltration of Starfleet by the Romulans, and by the acknowledgement that the universe is a scary place so they have to take actions inconsistent with their ethos to preserve their citizens' living standards.

Notably, though, this topicality also means Picard examines income inequality on Earth in the 25th century, by having him live in a French chateau while his ally Raffi lives in a trailer in Vasquez Rocks, California. It's not explored much further, but the fact that the two characters are shown living so differently is noteworthy, since up to now Trek has always just waved some of those economic questions away (most infamously for me, by having Ensign Harry Kim from Voyager living in downtown San Francisco - as if).

Picard also examines the effect of his personality on the people around him, such as how his quest to save the Romulans put him at odds with Starfleet, while trying to root out Romulan infiltration caused Raffi to lose her family in a haze of substance abuse. We're used to seeing him as the undisputed moral beacon of TNG, a role he played well, so it was interesting to see that role questioned.

On the negative side, Picard suffers from the same predictability that dogged Disco. Once an element is introduced, you can see immediately how it will play out. The most egregious example is the synthetic body that's just lying there when Picard and co arrive on Coppelius. Once you hear that it's awaiting a brain transfer, you know that's where he's going to end up - and of course, that's exactly what happens.

It's hard to call the writers lazy or out of touch with Star Trek, but it's also hard to escape the feeling that maybe their reach exceeds their grasp here - or at least, you suspect they might be able to tell a more nuanced story if they weren't also trying to stuff in explosions and action scenes every episode or two. On the other hand, I have to appreciate that they avoided the big climactic ship battle that Disco went for, by having Picard deliver one of his usual speeches and saving the day.

So overall, Picard works, even if it doesn't quite hit the heights of DS9 or of TNG at its best. It gives us time with the characters, to catch up with them after decades away (and wash away the bitter taste of Nemesis), and it gives them moments of joy - like the episode where Picard and Soji take refuge with Riker and Troi on their idyllic planet. Most importantly, the plot fits much better with the main character, in contrast to Disco, which was saddled with an uninteresting main character (Michael Burnham) and compounded the problem by trying to tie every plot point back to her.

So I'll be looking forward to what they do with Season 2. It'd be nice to see him catch up with other characters, like Geordie, Worf, Dr Crusher and even Wesley. I do hope that we can move on from the organic vs synthetic life plot line, of course.

I still think I'll cancel my subscription to All Access by 23 April, though. I've found very little I want to watch on it beyond Trek...