CBS All Access’ long-awaited Star Trek: Picard began with a giant lore dump. Last week’s premiere was so packed with information, it was hard to keep it all straight. This week begins with probably the most important detail, except it actually shows us this time. The show begins on Mars 14 years ago. A mining crew greets a a ship full of androids. These are much more robotic than Data was, acting more like tools than coworkers. We see one join his crew, who each razz him a bit. Some are good-natured about it, others less so. Later in the day, something flips inside the android’s eyes. He directs a weapons satellite to destroy the martian colony before killing his crew and then himself. So that’s how that happened.
I like the way the show gave us this information. We hear about what happened from nearly every character in last week’s episode. It’s presented to us as a big traumatic attack. If we took nothing else away from the premiere, Picard made sure we remembered that synthetics destroyed the Mars colony and the Federation outlawed their existence. This week, it’s the first thing we see. We’re shown the Martian mines operating as normal. People are going about their day, having work conversations. We know what’s coming, we’re just waiting to see how. The anticipation builds as the humans poke fun at their synthetic workmate. It’s a really well-done scene. And now we know that something or someone seems to have accessed the androids and made them destroy the colony. Wonder why nobody thought to look into that instead of just outlawing synthetics outright.
Orla Brady, Jamie McShane, Patrick Stewart (via CBS)
In the present, we check back in with Picard, who’s investigating the death of Data’s apparent daughter. Already, the surveillance footage of the rooftop incident has been mysteriously wiped. Only Picard is shown alone on the roof. No Romulans, no Dahj, just Picard and an unprompted explosion. Picard theorizes it was the Romulan secret police, but Laris has another theory. She tells him of the Zhat Vash, an even more secret order of Romulans who guard a secret. That secret is said to be so horrible that knowing it can break a person’s brain. They also harbor a deep loathing and fear of synthetic intelligences. That’s why their computers are limited to numeric functions and they’ve never developed androids or AI.
Picard and Laris search Dahj’s apartment only to find it has been scrubbed clean. Not even her particle scanner can recreate the scene of what happened. No record of what happened there still exists. Even Dahj’s phone records have been altered to hide who she was talking to. They’re able to suss out one call to her sister, but not much more information than that. Laris is able to find out that wherever Dahj’s sister is, she’s not on Earth. Picard needs to get off world. He has an old doctor friend certify him for Starfleet. We find out that Picard’s vitals and mental faculties are all above the Starfleet minimum, but the doctor implies that Picard has a brain tumor, possibly related to his time as Locutus. Now, that would add a sense of urgency and finality to Picard’s mission, but the knowledge that there’s going to be a Season Two undercuts that a bit. It will eventually be an important plot point, but we know that won’t happen this year.
Sir Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard – Photo Cr: Trae Patton/CBS
After last week’s story-packed episode, this was an abrupt change of pace. The show couldn’t possibly keep the story going at the rate of the premiere, nor should it try. I still expected something more to have happened by the episode’s end, though. Instead, we go from a premiere full of Picard meeting people and doing things to an episode of him wandering around, asking other people if he can do things. It wouldn’t be nearly as noticeable if it hadn’t followed such a plot-heavy premier. As it is, it feels like we went an hour with nothing really happening on the Picard front. Starfleet Admiral Kirsten Clancy rejects his request for a small ship and crew. She’s not happy with how his interview went, and sends him home. By the end of the episode, Picard is no closer to getting a ship. He called an old friend, Raffi, but the episode ends just as they begin talking. Picard’s storyline felt like stalling after a while. It started out strong with the investigation stuff, but then the show didn’t have time to actually get him a ship and crew, so it just wandered around in circles for the rest of the episode.
At least the rest of the episode had some interesting things going on. We check in with Soji, Dahj’s twin aboard the Romulan cube. She’s a doctor who’s there to extract the Borg components from dead bodies and assist the Romulans in recovering their assimilated dead. After she sleeps with the handsome Romulan dude from the end of the last episode, she finds him to be incredibly secretive. He won’t tell her what he does or even whether Narek is his real name. He does appear to be in a position of power, though. When he says he wants to watch Soji work, she says he’ll need permisson. Turns out he doesn’t. He’s standing in the operating room with her, and Soji’s boss appears to be checking in with him.
Harry Treadaway as Narek; Isa Briones as Soji (Via CBS)
Things get even more interesting when Admiral Clancy asks Commodore Oh about Picard’s report of Romulan secret police. Oh says she’s heard nothing about it, noting that would be an act of war. She promises to look into it, and immediately goes full mustache-twirling villain as soon as the screen turns off. She calls in her subordinate, Lt. Rizzo. Rizzo, we learn, is secretly a Romulan, having her ears altered to appear human. Oh scolds her for losing Dahj before they could interrogate her, and Rizzo assures her she has her best man on the other twin. Well, that doesn’t sound good for Soji. Or Picard for that matter. He’s on Oh’s radar, and she has promised she’ll deal with him if his investigation gets out of hand.
I don’t mind when Star Trek is slow. Some of the best episodes of TNG had very little action at all. Star Trek doesn’t need giant battles, but when it doesn’t have those, it needs something else of substance. The good slower Star Trek episodes were about something. They had a point to make. Characters disagreed with each other and the episodes were used to weigh issues of morality, society and humanity. This episode didn’t do any of that. It didn’t have action and it didn’t have much of anything to say. We got some interesting setup and worldbuilding, but that’s about it. It’s only the second episode, and in a serialized format like this, we’re bound to run into these. The show is still entertaining, and Patrick Stewart’s performance remains fantastic. I just wish there was more here in this episode. The story is headed to some undoubtedly cool places. It’s just taking its sweet time getting there.
Star Trek: Picard streams Thursdays on CBS All Access
Previously on Star Trek: Picard
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