Well, it’s that time of year again. Time to give CBS more of your money for a couple months of Star Trek. It’s not more Discovery this time though. We’re going all the way back (or forward, depending on your perspective) to the cast of The Next Generation. CBS is really pushing those All Access subscriptions with the one thing Star Trek fans have wanted since Star Trek: Nemesis: One more Jean Luc Picard adventure. Just so that didn’t have to be the last we ever saw of him. So how’s the Captain doing these days? Let’s dive into Star Trek: Picard and find out.
Well right away, it sure is nice to zoom in on the old Enterprise-D traveling through space and see Captain Jean Luc Picard enjoying a poker game with Data. Both look much older now than they did 30 years ago, but it seems neither of them have missed a beat. Picard is still confusing data about the nature of emotion and deception, and Data is still responding in his smarmy android way. It’s perfect, which is how you know it’s not going to last. As Mars appears out the window, Picard expresses confusion before waking up. It was all a dream. He appears to be retired with his own winery in France. He assures his dog, Number One (aww), that everything’s alright, but it appears he misses his days exploring the stars. It’d make sense. Kirk went through a something similar back during the first Star Trek movies.
Patrick Stewart and Isa Briones (Via CBS)
It looks like he’s about to get plenty of adventure though. Across an ocean in Boston, a woman named Dahj and her boyfriend are attacked by masked, armored figures. They kill her boyfriend, and are about to knock her out when she suddenly starts fighting back. “She’s activating,” they cry as she expertly takes them all down with well-placed kicks and phaser blasts, all while blindfolded. When she reverts to normal, scared and confused by what just happened, she sees a vision of Picard’s face.
An interview at Picard’s vineyard gives us all the backstory. As far as scenes that just deliver exposition go, this was a good one. The TV personality conducting the interview tells us that it’s the anniversary of Romulus’ sun going supernova. You might remember that as the event old Spock tried and failed to prevent in the 2009 movie. Picard organized a great rescue mission to shuttle the imperiled Romulans to worlds where they’d be safe. During the rescue, a group of synthetics went rogue and attacked the community on Mars. They set the Martian sky on fire, killing everyone on that planet. After that, the Federation made all androids illegal (how quickly the lessons of “Measure of a Man” are forgotten) and withdrew from the rescue mission. That act of cowardice forced Picard to retire and distance himself from Starfleet. It definitely helps that the exposition is interesting, but Patrick Stewart delivers the monologue so well, barely keeping his emotions in check, this simple conversation is mesmerizing.
Patrick Stewart, Orla Brady, and Jamie McShane (Via CBS)
Dahj sees the interview and finds Picard. After she explains her story, he gives her a place to stay, but she’s gone before morning. We later see her call her mother and tell her what happened. Her mother knows she was with Picard and urges her to go back to him. Even though Dahj never mentioned Picard. Now that’s strange, how would she know about that? Picard, meanwhile, remembers her face from a painting Data made before he died in Nemesis. He travels to the Starfleet museum in San Francisco to confirm, he realizes the painting is called “Daughter.” His suspicions are confirmed when Dahj is able to track his location despite having no security clearances. She’s an android. One made of actual flesh and blood.
Dahj is horrified to learn she’s synthetic. Her only association with synthetic beings are the ones that destroyed Mars. Before she can fully deal with the realization though, the assassins attack again. She and Picard run to the roof of a nearby building, and Picard’s showing his age here. Stewart is 79 years old, after all. Neither he nor the character are built for action scenes anymore. The assassins follow them to the roof, where we realize they’re Romulan. She fights them off, but as one of them dies, he spits a corroding solution onto her and the phaser she’s holding. (Do Romulans do that? I don’t remember ever seeing them spit acid before.) Picard cries out as Dahj dies in a fiery explosion. After recovering, he sets out to find out where she came from and why the Romulans wanted to kill her.
Alison Pill as Jurati; Sir Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard (Photo Cr: Trae Patton/CBS)
He begins his search at the Daystrom Institute’s synthetic research department. It’s now severely underfunded and dilapidated, since they’re only able to work theoretically. He meets Dr. Jurati, who tells him about Dr. Maddox. Now that’s a name TNG fans should remember. When last we saw him in “Measure of a Man,” Maddox wanted to create another Data. After synthetics were banned, he left the institute and that’s the last anyone ever heard of him. When Picard shows Jurati Dahj’s necklace, she explains that an androids essence can theoretically be recreated from a pair of positronic neurons. Maddox might have figured out how to do it. Jurati also reveals that the clones have to be created in pairs. Meaning Dahj has a twin out there somewhere. Picard decides he has to find her, and we know just where she is.
Far out in space, at a Romulan restoration site, we see a Romulan approach and start flirting with Dahj’s twin sister. She’s receptive, and as we zoom out, the structure is revealed to be a Borg cube. Huh. If you’ve kept up with Star Trek over the years, you’ll remember the Borg were wiped out at the end of Star Trek: Voyager. So how are they back? And are the Romulans joining up with them to reclaim what they both lost? That would definitely be an interesting direction to go.
(Via CBS)
The first episode of Star Trek: Picard was absolutely overloaded with plot. It had a ton of stuff to set up, and it whirled through all of it at a dizzying pace. I never felt lost, though. The episode played in enough nostalgia to make fans of the franchise feel comfortable and at home, even when receiving new information and story at a rapid fire rate. Despite the new state of the galaxy, and a much older Picard severed from Starfleet, this series feels like we never left TNG. This could have easily been pandering and unnecessary. So far at least, the story is delivering a natural and exciting continuation of Jean Luc Picard’s story. I can’t wait to see where the old man boldly goes next.
Star Trek: Picard streams Thursdays on CBS: All Access
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