Star Trek: Picard (Season One)

Star Trek: Picard is the show I thought about subscribing to CBS All-Access for. And then, when the stars aligned just right, well, I went for it. Patrick Stewart is a great actor, Jean-Luc has always been my favorite Star Trek captain.

Well, I covered the premier way back when, so how did the rest of the season turn out?

The first episode set up a basic premise: Captain Picard learned his late friend and longtime crewman Data had a pair of daughters. One died shortly after asking Picard for help, but she had a twin sister, and Picard takes it upon himself to get to the girl before an ancient, secret Romulan sect that has it in for synthetic life gets to her first.

Now, normally, you would think Jean-Luc Picard could just use his reputation and get Starfleet to take this whole thing seriously, perhaps get himself recommissioned, get a ship, and find this girl. Except, this is a very different Starfleet that has passed Picard by. Not as idealistic as they used to be, or at least not to Picard’s personal taste. Picard’s disappointment in Starfleet is somewhat mutual. He’s a problem for the institution, and they aren’t inclined to help him. The only thing for him to do is find a crew that would help him out. Sure, his old Enterprise crew would be happy to help him, but he doesn’t want to use them because that would ruin all of their own careers.

That means he ends up with a small crew of rejects, namely a pair of disgraced former Starfleet officers, one of whom was a First Officer under Picard during his final command, by the names of Raffi and Rios (Michelle Herd and Santiago Cabrera respectively); a male Romunlan warrior monk from an otherwise all-female order by the name of Elnor (Evan Evagora); and a somewhat disorganized synthetics specialist whose never been off the planet before, Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill). Together, they need to find young Soji Asha (Isa Briones) before the Romulans do, though they may be too late as she is actually sleeping with one of them.

So, while it wasn’t perfect, Picard was actually pretty good. Stewart made it clear in interviews he wouldn’t come back just to do what he’s done in the past. That shows. This Picard is often accused, even by old friends, of arrogance, of being the man who decides things for others. That’s appropriate for a starship captain, but not so much for a retired admiral who hadn’t so much as stepped foot on a starship in years. Sure, there are small moments when Picard checks himself, but he still tries to carry that moral authority that, for people outside the audience, he just doesn’t have.

That makes sense when we see his crew. Jurati has secrets, and despite initially seeming like a more comedic character, she has some real issues brimming beneath a bubbly exterior. Soji has seen her whole life turned upside down and isn’t sure why she should trust anybody, let alone some stranger who just showed up out of nowhere. Both Raffi and Elnor have reasons from their respective pasts to distrust Picard. And then there’s Rios, perhaps a standout of a broken character on a ship full of them. Cabrera’s portrays not just Rios, captain of the ship Picard is using, but also multiple holographic members of that ship’s “crew,” each with their own persona and (often comedic) accent.

But the series, rightfully, resolves around Picard. He’s the reason for the expedition, and he has personal ties, not just to Soji through Data, but also with the Romulans and a group of reclaimed Borg. And while there are a couple former Next Generation stars in small cameos peppered throughout the season, the best may have been someone from a different series: Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine. It’s a smart move, seeing as how she, like Picard, are both former Borg drones, that the two have connections and very different reactions to post-Collective life. If there’s something that makes me extra pleased for how season two looks, it’s the implication Seven might be a regular next season.

But really, this one ended well. It may not have always been the best possible Trek, and the finale perhaps played a little too much with moments clearly designed just to please the fanboys in ways the series maybe hadn’t quite earned (everything seems to wrap up in a very pat way), though a final scene between Picard and a figure who had been haunting him the entire season made it much better. Otherwise, it seems as if the showrunners remembered this was Star Trek, a franchise where the heroes perhaps don’t have much in the way of shades of gray. I really liked what I saw, but there were moments that could have been better.

That said, it’s always a treat to watch Stewart do what he does so well. He put his heart into this character’s return, and it shows.

Grade: A-