To give a little bit of my Star Trek background, my first introduction to the franchise was the 2009 Star Trek movie starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, John Cho, Simon Pegg, and Anton Yelchin. Then, about two years ago I started watching The Next Generation. Now I have completely binged Discovery and am halfway through Deep Space 9, Voyager, and Enterprise.
*there will be spoilers for Picard in this review*
To set the stage, Picard is more of a sequel to both Nemesis and Star Trek (2009) then it is TNG. 14 years prior, the Planetia Utopia on Mars is attacked, causing the Federation to halt any plans on assisting Romulans with evacuations because a star close to their capital system is about to go supernova. This also indirectly deems anything to do with “synths” as banned due to it being believed that they were the ones that caused it (but it turns out they were hacked by a secret Romulan terrorist group called the Zhat Vash).
Old characters
Star Trek is one of the most expansive universes in television (second only to Law & Order, maybe). And, Picard is one of the most highly regarded Star Trek captain, which is why it’s difficult to see him as older and slower. The show treats him as though he’s gone half mad and to their credit, anyone who would embark on an adventure involving crossing half the alpha quadrant to rescue not only someone who may or may not be there but their entire species that have been deemed “illegal” by the governing would also be taken seriously with a grain of salt.
The opening scene of the series of Data and Picard playing cards really did a good job in setting the tone for the season. It shows that everything he does from that moment to the end was for his fallen friend. Data and Picard were never really shown as being close, but with the finale Picard finally gets the closure he needs to move on from Data’s death. It also gives Data what he truly wants, which was to be given every chance he can take to be human. By destroying the remainder of Data’s digital consciousness, Picard granted him the gift of mortality and the ability to rest in peace
I thought it was interesting to include 7 of 9 in the series because we’ve never seen her interact with any characters from TNG before and her only relevance to Picard is being an XB (or ex-borg). While I feel like she didn’t really fit in with the main plotline, I will say she was handled in a much better manner than Voyager did. Don’t get me wrong, Voyager did a great job with her transition from Borg back to human and adapting to Federation culture, but she was, in an extremely unnecessary manner, sexualized. It was so relieving to not see her in a catsuit and to see that she had fully embraced her humanity. I really hope that we see more of her and the rangers. Also, her interactions with Elnor were the best and love that they were paired together because his naivete reminds me so much of when she was first deassimilated.
Speaking of former Borg members, HUGH!!! It was so good to see Picard reuniting with Hugh and to see the impact that Picard had on him all those years ago. Hugh is seen heading up the Borg Reclamation Project on the Artifact (a former Borg cube). I was hoping that we would see some interactions between him and 7 of 9, so that was a bit of a let down. I think they could have done a lot more with him and was sad to see him go.
The next (and final) old characters that we see are Will and Deanna. While they’re really only there for one episode, we see that they’ve also retired and are living in a somewhat paradise while raising a young daughter named Kes. It’s discovered in this episode that they had a son who passed away due to a brain disease that would have easily of been treated if it hadn’t been for the ban on anything related to synths, in this case being a positronic neuron. The writers had Deanna do more counseling in this one episode than her entire run on TNG and had Will figure out pretty much instantly what was going on based on very little information. I think these things do a good job of showing just how well they know Picard, even after all these years.
New characters
Out of all the new characters, Elnor is definitely my favorite. I really enjoyed the Lord of the Rings type of vibe his character had and I think it will be interesting to see how his character will grow as he spends more time away from the convent-type place he was raised.
Raffi and Rios were great in that we see what Starfleet officers go through when they’re forced to go through with orders that may be deemed questionable and that they strongly disagree with. I loved that Raffi did not immediately welcome Picard back, especially since her career was tanked after Picard resigned in protest of synths being deemed illegal. She had become estranged from both her husband and son, to the point of which her son treated her very coldly when she went to see him, telling her that he wants nothing to with her. Rios resigned after both he and his captain were given the order to kill what he thought was an innocent ambassador and his friend (turns out the friend was a synth). His captain then committed suicide after not being able to deal with the sheer amount of guilt he felt for following through. Both Raffi and Rios have developed a drinking problem because of what they went through towards the end of their respective Starfleet careers. I believe that this is the first time Star Trek has ever tackled alcoholism (please correct me if I’m wrong) and am interested to see how they’re going to handle moving forward.
Then there’s Agnes Jurati. I feel like Agnes’s character was severely mishandled by the writers. First of all, there was absolutely no reason for her to be in a romantic relationship with Maddox, playing into the borderline creepy student-teacher relationship tropes. Second, her character seemed very hot and cold. In one episode she murders Maddox because of a horrifying vision she was shown, then in the next episode she’s sleeping with Rios. They also really downplayed the fact that she straight up murdered someone in cold blood.
Soji suffered from a horribly paced story line. I was fine with her sleeping with Narek right of the bat, for the most part, but by the time we got to episode 3 or 4 it started to feel like her story was being dragged out for no reason other than to remind people that she is there and important. Also, I say that I was fine with her sleeping with Narek right off the bat, but then there were so many red flags and gas-lighting that by the time the finale came around I was silently hoping he would murder her. I don’t oppose the relationship though because I thought it did a good job of showing just how naive she was and how much she grows throughout the season.
The Villains
The villains of this season were a bit confusing for most of it. You have the Tal Shiar, which is basically the Romulan secret police, and then you have the even more secretive Zhat Vash. Because these two factions are so secretive, it was kind of confusing as to which one was the true villain and which one was the one being used by the other. The final two episodes show that the Zhat Vash are the real villains and the Tal Shiar were being somewhat manipulated by them. As it turns out, the Zhat Vash is a small group of female Romulans that have been tasked with handing down a prophecy in the form of a vision that they don’t really understand. They believe it to mean that synthetic life forms will bring about widespread destruction and must be stopped at all costs, which is why when they found out about Data 30 years prior, they sent an agent (Commodore Oh) to infiltrate Starfleet. She ends up being the one that orchestrated the Attack on Mars, showing how far the Zhat Vash are willing to go to prevent synthetic life from being developed. I think that this offers up for some interesting future storylines as the Zhat Vash may be confused as to what to do next, much like how Section 31 may be after Discovery’s season 2 finale.
Conclusions
I would give the season an overall 3.5/5 stars. I think it relies a little too much on information not only from prior series/movies, but also from tie-in books and comics. If you hadn’t read the Countdown comics, then you wouldn’t really understand who Laris (Momulan) or Zhaban are and how they met Picard, or how big of an event the supernova was. And even if you did have that prior knowledge, it may still be difficult to follow at some points. I also still don’t understand the significance of including the Borg. Yeah they’re cool and all, but how much did it actually contribute to the story? Maybe an argument could be made for needing a reason to have Soji so close to former Romulan space, but still.
Shameless plug, I help run a fangirl/non-binary -only Star Trek facebook group called USS Janeway, please come check it out!
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