Star Trek Picard MID-SEASON REVIEW(SPOILERS)

Like many other devout fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation, I had high hopes and great expectations for the return of Jean-Luc Picard to the small screen.

Unlike a lot of those devout fans, my expectations have so far been greatly exceeded.

Seriously, Star Trek Picard is fantastic. No joke, CBS isn’t paying me to write this(though I wish they were) and I’m being 100% honest here.

There has been a sentiment among purist Trekkies that Picard has been a major disappointment for several reasons, the biggest one apparently being that the show is almost nothing like the TNG that we all know and love that many of us grew up with.

That is exactly the reason why I LOVE Star Trek Picard……because it is NOTHING like TNG at all.

Don’t get me wrong, the easter eggs, the references, the fact that they have built an intriguing plot not only from some of TNG’s best characters, but also from some of the entire franchise’s best themes and story beats is all wonderful and greatly appreciated, but this is not Jean-Luc Picard of the 2360’s or the 2370’s. It’s the 2399 version that has weathered an entire career filled with everything from clashes with the Q Continuum, a Klingon civil war, time travel paradoxes, alternate lives, covert operations, diplomatic relations, to of course, more than a few Borg incursions, one of which included his own brief but damaging assimilation. This is a Jean-Luc Picard that has all of that and then some under his belt, and is in reflection of his own life and place in the galaxy as much as how it has changed and is continuing to change as he marches toward the twilight of his story.

The thing is, we knew that’s what this show was going to be. Patrick Stewart TOLD US that. He wasn’t interested in simply revisiting TNG and rehashing those tales, he wanted to tell a story about what Picard is doing now, mirroring his own life at the spry age of 79.

That is seriously the story I have been curious about for years now. I’ve always wanted to know what happened in the prime timeline after TNG, DS9 and Voyager. What did Starfleet and the Federation become after the Dominion War? Where did the crew all go? How has the galaxy changed in the wake of the Romulan supernova?

Oh yes……the Romulan supernova. The one that prime Spock told us about in Star Trek(2009).

But that’s a Kelvin Timeline movie! Yes. Yes it is.

Believe me, I wear my smug grin of satisfaction proudly knowing that Star Trek Picard not only acknowledges the event that literally led to the creation of the Kelvin Timeline, but also acknowledges the prime continuity now established in Star Trek Discovery, specifically the U.S.S. Enterprise. Indeed, when Picard walked into that Starfleet archive and saw the hologram of past Enterprises, it pleased me to no end to see the Disco version of the TOS Enterprise morph into Picard’s Galaxy Class D.

Why? Because I detest the purist Trekkies that are now spending every waking moment on social media setting fire to everything Gene Roddenberry stood for with Star Trek in the first place with their selfish, gatekeeping, close-minded and yes, outwardly bigoted behavior towards not only Star Trek Picard, but Discovery as well. It’s sickening and any chance I have to basically flip them off with a creative choice made by the CBS All Access showrunners, I’m going to take. That might be petty, but you know I hate negativity.

I digress, sorry. Back to celebrating the show.

One of the best things that Star Trek has learned as a franchise over 53 years and counting is to change with the times of both television and society itself. TNG was a great departure from TOS that fit the late 80’s and the early 90’s. DS9 was the perfect transition into the grey area of Starfleet, the Federation and humanity itself. Even Voyager and Enterprise(from what I know) had their strong moments of deeper storytelling surrounding ethics, morality and the nature of humanity in general.

Star Trek Picard does all of this perfectly in a show that takes place at the tail end of the 24th century, but is written for 21st century television structure and style. In this show we are seeing a Federation that has plenty of allegorical and symbolic connection to our current world, from the proliferation of media and news, to the structure of commerce, to the questions of existence relative to government interference or otherwise that we face on a regular basis as people wherever we live. Star Trek has always been a place where tougher questions have certainly been asked of us, and this show is no different whatsoever.

The plot is genuinely intriguing to this point. The idea of synthetic life being banned across the board after a major tragedy on Utopia Planitia, which effectively silenced a grand plan by Dr. Bruce Maddox and his assistant Agnes Jurati(Alison Pill) to recreate sentient android children from the cells of Data, my favorite character from TNG, is genuinely stunning and unexpected at times. I never thought I would hear the name Maddox again, much less see him again, even if it is a recast actor(John Ales).

The underlying theme of organic vs. synthetic life is unmistakable here, not only with Dahj and Sofi, Data’s “daughters” played brilliantly by Isa Briones, but also with the Borg connection and this artifact the Romulans are in possession of. This is another rewarding payoff for longtime Trekkies as we see a Federation that is anything but in the dark about how the Borg Collective operates, so much to the point that they are examining and studying a defunct cube complete with “rescued” survivors and other bodies. This has led to some intriguing consequences on the galaxy, such as a black market for Borg parts and technology that includes hunting down former drones and surgically excising the components from them. Ghastly, but understandable in a timeline that appears to be largely lawless and all over the place. Yes the Federation still exists and so does Starfleet, but it’s not the same organizations we knew in TNG or even the beginning of DS9. These are now much older versions that are more insulated, paranoid and selfish with respect to their reputations and their place in the galaxy.

This is what leads Picard to hire and assemble his own crew to find Sofi, the daughter of Data that is still alive and is aboard the Borg artifact studying it, along with Hugh(Jonathan Del Arco) who makes his welcome return since Descent, Part 2, the season 7 premiere of TNG. There’s a deeper, more nefarious situation at play complete with Romulan Tal Shiar agents investigating Sofi, their more militant and deadly operatives known as the Zhat Vash, who are utterly opposed to all artificial life existence, and their connection with Vulcan Starfleet Chief of Security Oh, who is somehow connected to all of this.

The deeper mystery not only involves Sofi, but whatever horrific secret is being kept about the existence of artificial life and its impact on the Romulans, as well as why Starfleet is playing along with it. It’s been suggested more than a few times now from Raffi Musiker(Michelle Hurd) that the Utopia Planitia disaster is a setup to enable the ban, and Sofi’s own investigation into Romulans assimilated by the cube in question that has yielded a proclamation that she is “the Destroyer,” only thickens the plot further. Whatever it is that the Zhat Vash and perhaps Starfleet Command know about the Destroyer and the terrible secret being kept about artificial life, it must seriously be a doozy. At least I hope it is, with all of this build-up for it.

I love the crew. All of them. Maybe especially Raffi. Her strength combined with a definitive vulnerability and humanity that Picard has always clearly latched onto with her, is awesome. I like that she’s the tech head, a smartass, and puts on a fearless face despite being scared as hell. I really felt for her when she confronted her son and his wife and was basically shut out without remorse. She is loyal almost to a fault, but you know she’s in good hands with Picard, even if she doesn’t think so given their checkered past.

Santiago Cabrera deserves some real praise here not just for how he plays Rios, the captain of the La Sirena, but also for how he plays the various emergency hologram versions of himself throughout the ship. It’s one thing to ask an actor to play one role, and another to ask them to play multiple versions of the same role. Cabrera does this pretty effortlessly as we are introduced to at least 2 to 3 other versions of him, and Rios himself despite his brooding is a loyal Starfleet officer to his core, which comes out in his respect for Picard and in the diplomacy of how he operates. You got the feeling at first that he might be the jaded, angry member of the crew, but that’s really Raffi and not him at this point. He’s content to take his cues from Picard and operate as de facto Starfleet in this case, which is cool.

I like Alison Pill as an actress when she played Maggie Jordan in The Newsroom, and I was excited that she was going to be a part of this show. Still am, honestly. I think she’s a very underrated actress.

I knew what they were going to do with Agnes the moment she walked into Picard’s house. You don’t meet with a shifty, secret-keeping admiral like that and then suddenly just show up eager to join the mission. I don’t know if her objective was strictly to take Maddox out or not, but clearly Oh told her whatever the secret is and it’s torturing her, so she’s at least operating as a character that thinks she has no choice but to do what she does. How much trouble she causes down the road and how long it is before Picard and crew find out what she’s doing remains to be seen.

The whole thing with Narek(Harry Treadway) and Sofi is kind of the most static aspect of the show. The idea that he thinks he can charm his way into observing and manipulating her while his sister, acting under orders from Oh, wants to just be blunt about it like the agents that killed Dahj, is a dynamic we’ve seen before even in prior versions of Star Trek. It’s hardly bad, just not as interesting, at least for me.

What IS interesting though, is Seven of Nine the badass vigilante. I mean seriously, I’m ready for that spin-off. It’s great to see Jeri Ryan back and I don’t know if she’ll pop up later in the season, but if not it was a great performance. Stardust City Rag is arguably the most maligned episode of the show so far, but I loved it. The moment between Seven and Picard where she asks him if he got all of his humanity back after his assimilation is seriously a moment that nearly made me tear up. I’ve wanted that meeting for years between the two of them after seeing Voyager. To have “Annika,” relearning her humanity further by consulting with the man formerly “Locutus” was something I thought I would never see, and yet this show gave me that moment and it was heartfelt, emotional and satisfying in every possible way.

Oh and yes, I love Absolute Candor. A group of painfully honest Romulan nuns that trust Picard, but are also adept warriors that train a young boy Elnor (Evan Evagora) to literally become his alarmingly lethal bodyguard for this mission? Amazing.

I dig Star Trek Picard A LOT. The first half of this season was very good and I look forward to where this whole storyline is headed with respect to the truth about the synthetics ban, Sofi’s future, and how Picard and his crew are going to deal with all of it. At the end of the day, it’s just great to see one of my heroes back on screen saving the galaxy yet again, no matter how old he is.

Bring me the rest of the season, and then Season 2 with Whoopi Goldberg back as Guinan. I’m ready for all of it.