# Star Trek: Picard
#star-trek #review

!! Spoilers.

# Season 1: Surprisingly Okay
I put off watching _Picard_ for a long time because I thought I'd hate it, but after putting myself though numerous other bad Star Trek shows, I've developed a sense of resignation and indifference. Unlike other things I enjoy, the "canon" of Star Trek does not really matter because it doesn't really have one. It retcons itself constantly, and almost always for the worse. This predates even TNG; consider the soft-retcon of Spock suddenly having a brother who's Vulcan Jesus in the TOS film _The Final Frontier_, another bad entry in the Star Trek non-canon. As much as TNG means to me, it has several terrible episodes that do not detract from my overall opinion of the series (and let's not even talk about the films). I think this attitude served me well, because I ended up enjoying Season 1, despite many reasons not to.

Season 1 does *not* get off to a good start. This is a recurring problem with Star Trek. The first episode has so much *stupid shit* in it that's hard to look past, and stuff that's just... weird. Picard has live-in servants? Um, okay. He quit Starfleet 25 years ago and hasn't talked to anyone since? Uh, sure, whatever. A stranger shows up on his doorstep, tells him she just killed three people, and he welcomes her inside? He decides her incredibly pedestrian necklace has some special significance? What the fuck is going on? Between all this weird shit and the dream sequence opening, I thought for sure this was going to be a false/alternate/time-loop reality story. Nope, it's just strange creative decisions.

The absolute nadir of all Star Trek technobabble arrives in this episode: we're informed you can recover Data's entire personality from a single neuron. I know this series thinks I'm stupid, but seriously? We also learn that androids have to be made in pairs. This is never justified. I can only conclude that since Data had a twin, they decided that's just a fact of reality for androids. It's like a Star Wars prequel.

Thankfully, it got much more watchable from there. It's still a trainwreck, but it's a fun trainwreck. It's campy and earnest instead of self-serious and cynical. It's a show that wants to be a deep meditation on death... that also happens to have a ninja elf with a sword.

For some reason, this show has a fixation on taking Picard down a peg. He constantly makes an ass of himself. He's out of touch and full of himself, and everyone lets him know. Ultimately though, this is excusable, given he's used to being the big man in charge and has been a hermit for the last quarter-century.

Picard's storyline is the least interesting part. The more compelling storyline is about an android who doesn't know she's an android and her abusive Romulan boyfriend. The way it all plays out is pretty stupid, but I had fun with it. I'm a sucker for the sentient robot trope; it's just so very trans. I'll put up a whole post about that eventually.

We should talk about Seven of Nine. They made her into a badass pirate queen and let her wear clothing. She murders a bunch of people who have it coming. Sure, cool, I dig it. They got a little carried away with the grimdark brutality, though. Remember Icheb? The sweet little Borg kid from Voyager? Yeah, he makes an appearance only long enough to have his eyeball ripped out and be euthanized by his mother figure. Hugh, the singleton Borg from TNG, sticks around longer but he too is ultimately dispatched. It's like anti-fanservice.

Sadly, the shows goes out on a whimper with a finale that's nearly as bad as the first episode. It has by this point become obvious that a) the story is building up to Picard's death, and that b) he will not actually die since there are two more seasons left. And indeed, we get a fake death with no emotional heft. There's also an extremely irritating scene where we get the whole "death is Good Actually because without it life has no meaning" spiel. Babby's first mortality cope. But even this is tolerable, because it puts the nail in Data's coffin. They reassure us that he is actually, really dead this time. I respected that; after Episode 1 I assumed they'd bring him back ASAP. One scene with a suicidal ghost is fine by comparison.

The rest of the plot has issues too. It's your classic genocide story: we have to wipe them out before they wipe us out. Only, it's true! If the Romulans don't wipe out the robots, they *will* activate a doomsday device! And it's asymmetrical; the robots could just get on the ship and fly away. Picard's big moment is telling the robot girl that it's actually fine if she chooses to wipe them out, it's up to her, but he hopes she won't. This incredibly stupid plan, of course, works.

So, we have a few issues: one, you can't really blame the bad guys for trying to wipe out a few dozen robots when their first recourse is gigadeathcrime. SF narratives that justify genocide are bad, actually. The more aggravating part is that Picard makes a stupid gamble and it pays off. This is presented as validating his philosophy, but he actually just got lucky. Instead of a daring captain and brilliant diplomat, he seems like a total shmuck who is willing to sacrifice *literally everyone* for his friend's robot daughter (who isn't even really his daughter!).

Still, it felt very Star Trek to have the grand resolution of the conflict be Picard saying "everyone please just be nice, okay?" It didn't end with them blowing something up. That's a win in my book.


# Season 2: Surprisingly Not Okay
After Season 1, I made the mistake of going into Season 2 with optimism. At first, it did not seem misplaced. In the first episode, it seems like it will be a story about Picard negotiating the entrance of the Borg into the Federation. I was honestly really fucking stoked about this. They're doubling down on the peacefulness! Picard has to be an ambassador instead of a gunslinger! Imagine the intercultural conflicts!

Yeah, no.

Some stupid shit happens. My hopes are dashed. But then they find themselves in a new reality where the Federation is evil. *Gasp*... could this be... an entire season-long Mirror Universe episode? What have I done to deserve this bounty?!

Yeah, no.

Some more stupid shit happens and it turns out this is not a season-long Mirror Universe episode, it's a season-long Stupid Fucking Time Travel Episode, and we will never get to see the evil Federation again. God dammit.

Now that death has been conquered in Season 1, the overarching theme of Season 2 is regret. Just like in Season 1, this season is obsessed with shitting on the namesake. This time, instead of attacking Picard for being old and out of touch, they attack him for being insufficiently emotionally available (and for not sleeping with his housekeeper). Once again, they've taken a trait that is normal and expected of a captain — emotional distance from his crew — and turned it into a character flaw.

As if that weren't bad enough, they've given him a tragic backstory to explain this supposed flaw. You thought his demeanor in TNG was just professionalism? Nope, it's because his mom killed herself when he was little and now he's broken. I guess this is intended to make us more sympathetic, but it kind of backfires. We get a bunch of scenes of him being a spoiled little rich kid (who somehow grew up in the 19th century? were his parents LARPers?) and it's just so annoying. I hate you baby Picard! I hope your mom kills herself!

Picard makes such baffling decisions and spends so much time smiling amiably that I developed a pet theory: he has no idea where he is or what's happening at any given moment. He's not just old, he's senile. He's 100% confused at all times.

It's not all bad. They have to fight ICE agents, who are correctly portrayed as psychopathic racist monsters. Seven of Nine's obvious queerness is made explicit and hence undeniable, although in classic Star Trek style she's dating someone she has zero chemistry with. The hot lesbian from American Horror Story becomes a Borg and is hot and Borgy. Young Guinan screams really loud. Um. There was probably other stuff. 

The show ends predictably, with everything put back the way it was and a detente with the Borg that was obvious from the jump. The only thing that changes is that they left a guy in the past because he fell for a 2024 woman during the three days they were there. Very stupid. The new, gentler Borg thing is interesting, but we obviously will never see them again. All the previous Borg stuff from TNG didn't get undone, so really it didn't matter at all.

They never explain why the housekeeper that Q wants Picard to sleep with (which he does, then she shows up in the first episode of Season 3 and is never heard from again) looks exactly the same as the Supervisor from 2024. I can only assume we're supposed to infer that she became his live-in servant because she was assigned to do it by some annoying extratemporal dork like Wesley Crusher or that guy from _Enterprise_.


# Season 3: The Slopfest Arrives
Up until this point, _Picard_, for all its flaws, has shown remarkable artistic integrity. They tried to do something new instead of churning out corporate slop. They didn't resurrect Data (at least, not in the flesh). Besides Picard and Seven of Nine, characters from the classic series only made brief appearances. It was very much *not* just "TNG, but they're old". The results weren't exactly good, but at least they tried.

Someone higher up must have noticed they weren't selling enough toys. The theme song is literally just the TNG theme.

I guess the Federation are the good guys again, because Seven of Nine is inexplicably a member of Starfleet. I don't know how that fits in with the pirate queen thing. I guess she has range? Her asshole captain, one of the few highlights of the season, forces her to deadname herself as Annika Hansen; people show respect by calling her Seven. (I'm telling you, robots are trans!)

One by one, all the olds are brought back for one last depressing outing. The only original character left from past seasons is Raffi, who is not very interesting to begin with and has a lame storyline. She and Seven broke up, which is the only thing about this season that makes any sense.

Worf makes his appearance by murdering a bunch of low-level gangsters for no reason... with a sword! That's right, another stupid goddamn sword. It's not even the bat'leth, it's a brand new stupid Klingon sword. He's still a member of Starfleet, too, so I guess they relaxed their rules about murder.

Crusher, too, is introduced in a fit of ultraviolence. Her hair isn't red anymore for some reason. Her entire storyline makes zero sense. It turns out Picard doesn't know about condoms and knocked her up, then she disappeared and hasn't been seen since. She has a son who inherited Picard's British accent and totally sucks ass. Her explanation for why she never told Picard about him is that she wanted to keep him safe from all the dangerous hijinx he's always involved in. I would maybe buy that if she did not then decide to gallivant around the galaxy with him in a different starship, smuggling medical supplies and getting in firefights.

The hilarious decision to give the kid a British accent (justified with a throwaway about studying in London) is another rerun of the last godawful TNG outing, _Nemesis_. The nemesis in question was a young clone of Picard, and... he was bald. The writers for this franchise think their audience is so, so stupid. This season drives home that _Picard_ is not so much a sequel to TNG as a sequel to the TNG films we all wish we could forget.

There is a brief hint that something cool might happen when they bring back the Founders from DS9 as the bad guys and have them compromise Starfleet. We didn't really see their supposed genius infiltration abilities in DS9, so that seemed like it might go somewhere. The crackpot Founder villain who was driven mad by unethical Starfleet experiments is kind of fun; she smokes a clove cigarette and overpronounces Picard's name.

Then, in yet another a twist that makes no sense, it turns out it was really the Borg behind it all. Yeah, they really wanted to make sure we know Season 2 didn't matter. They finally figured out how to do genetic engineering and hatched this elaborate plot using the transporters. I liked that bit about the transporters; they really should not be used outside of emergencies.

Data gets resurrected again and it sucks. Riker makes a bunch of unfunny quips and it sucks. Troi is there and it sucks. Worf is pretending to be a zen master and is nothing like himself and it sucks. Geordi has kids and it sucks. There's a nauseating amount of fanservice that culminates in an exhausting nostalgia-fest over the resurrected Enterprise-D. It felt like I was at a Rolling Stones concert in the present day.

There's not much else to say. Picard makes more bad calls and gets away with it. The credit sequence is pretty. Oh, they brought back Ro Laren only to kill her off.

We end on Picard's son. Tune in next week for the first episode of Young Picard!