Picard is an exciting yet ultimately disappointing show. After watching the core trilogy of shows from the 90’s (The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager) and Star Trek movies 1–10, it was extremely refreshing to see a fully modern Star Trek show. The difference is night and day: Picard takes itself quite seriously, and presents a cohesive linear narrative across ten one-hour episode seasons (a format I’ve heard Discovery, which I have yet to watch, started in and then quickly shifted away from), in contrast to the more than twice as long episodic seasons of the past. And I was incredibly excited to finally see something in the Star Trek universe that was not a prequel! For almost twenty years we had not seen the timeline move forward an inch since Voyager / the tenth film (something else I later realized Discovery does also do–jumping into the far future at some point…perhaps I need to watch it now). So there is a feeling that with this new era of the Star Trek Expanded Universe led by Alex Kurtzman, Star Trek was finally back–first with a bang in 2017’s somewhat shaky Discovery and then with a boom with 2020’s Picard and the multitude of shows launched since.
In many ways these expectations were met for me by Picard, as the first season starts off strong, with a lot of exposition showing interesting shakeups in the politics of Star Trek’s universe (finally, yay!), a new (to me, as someone who hasn’t seen Discovery) far more serious story-telling style and structure, and an interesting plot with themes that pick up right where we left off with The Next Generation crew and their films. My excitement slowly tempered, however, as the benefit of the doubt naturally given to the show, afforded by not yet having all the pieces assembled in the first half of the season, began to fade. Once Season 1 settles in to its routine, some characters had moments that felt a little silly and poorly executed (which I probably could forgive for most Star Trek media, if this show didn’t demand to be taken so seriously), and some flaws began to appear. The finale mostly made this up for me, however, as it was quite touching, and somehow wrapped everything up (mostly) in the end.
Then the second season began, and it amplified all of the problems of the first, with the final payoff being sweet, but not as impactful. While the first season began to remind me that the show may be less well-written than it wants you to think, it mostly held itself together. But the second season really felt quite boring for a while. It starts out with an interesting whirlwind plot similar to the first season (though sadly the seasons are very detached), but that feeling doesn’t last for as long. The flawed middle bits, wherein they settle into a boring routine with artificial stakes and make strange and boring character decisions, occupy much more space in this season, which is barely held together in the end with a decent and focused final two episodes.
The season ends up feeling like it could have cut out most of the plot in the middle and clocked in at maybe 3–5 episodes and have been much stronger for it. The plot was instead meandering and unfocused, as if they couldn’t figure out a way to explore the central premise for an entire season, so they just didn’t–rather than expanding further on the premise, they put a bunch of boring obstacles and poor character development in the way to get to the relatively simple conclusion of the main plot. The first season, in contrast, was overall quite focused and clear on the story that was being told, a story that was followed all the way through the ten episodes.
The second season, disconnected, boring, and unsure of itself, thus sours the whole show to a degree. I do have some hope for the future, though, as the finale seems to hint at some ways the third season could end up continuing the story of the first more directly and tie this whole thing together. And given that the third season was announced to be the last, I have hope that they will try to make this all feel more cohesive and give some finality to Jean-Luc’s storyline. One half of the second season’s new co-showrunners, whom surely must share the blame for the drop in quality, are sticking around for the final season, however, so I’ll try not to get my hopes up.
Read on for more in-depth thoughts that delve into specifics. Note that I consider the broad strokes of The Next Generation to be fair play to discuss in the spoilers below, given that Picard already sits in the context of many of its storylines.
Cinematography and aesthetics
The show has a high gloss to it, but without much substance. Following the opening dream sequence, the show begins in Château Picard with an exaggerated wide angle shot from the corner, making Jean-Luc’s bedroom seem oppressively empty as he awakes. At least, that’s what I thought the intention was, as I began to watch the show and be happy to see a quite “pretty” Star Trek show. As the season continues, however, it became clear to me that this type of shot, along with the intense backlighting and lens flares, was just one of many tools in the arsenal, and they didn’t seem to ever be used for any particular reason or with much creativity. The show has this defined “look” that it maintains but it is pretty static and does not add much to any scene. This is disappointing given how in your face the cinematography is. It’s stylistic but not used in a good enough way to warrant it, I feel. It ends up seeming like more like a statement than anything, to make sure you know this is a serious Star Trek show, but this lack of substance results in a bland and boring aesthetic.
Similarly, the aesthetics of Star Trek are updated all over, with flashy new technology abound, yet most of it feels more like stock futuristic tropes than an actual creative decision that’s grounded in the world. Aside from the overuse of drones (we get it, current-day society now has access to cheap drones, please stop putting them in every sci-fi show now) which is a pet peeve of mine, the show particularly loves holograms. As I watched the first season, I saw the entire aesthetic of Star Trek essentially wiped out. There are no more black glass screens, there are only holograms, long live the holograms. There is no good in-universe explanation for this–in the late 24th century, when holodecks have already existed for decades (and are advanced enough to create sentient life as seen in prior shows), nevermind basic holographic screens, are we really supposed to believe that in the 22 years since Nemesis some sort of tech boom or other unspoken societal change happened such that all screens have been replaced with holo emitters? Obviously this is simply a product of the real-world time of production, meaning VFX and modern sci-fi aesthetics have lazily been grafted onto Star Trek.
It’s not that I think things have to be static, it’s fine to want to imbue new influences into the universe, I just think the way that it’s done here is particularly jarring and unnecessary. Thankfully, the second season strikes a bit better of a balance (probably in response to some backlash I imagine), opening on the first interior of a Starfleet ship we see in the show, the Stargazer, having a much more believable mix of holograms and screens. They also retcon some screens into Rios’ (or now Seven’s) ship, which is better (I can imagine that Rios’ ship is different from Starfleet aesthetics, with its holographic heads up display probably necessary for a captain who is piloting the ship rather than delegating all tasks).
Holograms
Speaking of holograms, I would be remiss to not mention my great disappointment that more was not said on their importance. This discussion only fully makes sense in the context of Voyager, including its finale, so I’ll include it in another spoiler section below.
Voyager spoilers
The first season focuses on “synths,” a storyline I enjoyed quite a bit, as it finally expanded upon Data’s impact on future android life. And no, they do not speak of androids, they speak of synths, which is a choice I like. “Synth” feels almost like a slur in comparison to “android.” “Android” merely describes a thing–presumably a type of person, or sentient life–but to speak of a synth, or of synthetics, sounds like a quality something or someone has, and an undesirable one at that. They are an android versus they are synthetic. Yet I also was intrigued at the word choice because I assumed that it may have been chosen in order to serve as an umbrella term to encompass both androids like Data and holograms like Voyager’s Doctor.
I quickly realized that this was not the case, however, as the first season came and went with nary a word spoken on sentient holographic life, and the second season (in error, I feel) essentially totally dropped the synth storyline. This was sad to me, as I loved The Doctor’s storyline in Voyager. While both his and Data’s arcs see them become respected as fully sentient life forms, his has a greater potential for impact, given that we are shown a variety of versions of The Doctor and other upgraded Emergency Medical Holograms being used all over Starfleet throughout Voyager. By its finale, we see (in a potential future prior to the finale’s timey-wimey mess, though there is no good reason to believe that this would end up not happening) The Doctor having gained status as a free and equal life form a mere ten years following Voyager’s return to Earth (a good deal of time prior to Picard). Presumably this would have followed for other holographic life forms, and new systems would likely have been put in place to regulate the creation and use of such advanced holograms. We see none of this having taken place in Picard, however, which is truly a pity.
We do not have any mention of The Doctor, either. Is he alone in his unique freedom and/or sentience? In the omission of him and all other exposition on holographic life the show essentially quietly undoes The Doctor’s seven season arc in favor of having worry-free (or at least worry unspoken) holographic assistants bumbling around as just another bit of fun sci-fi set dressing. We see holographic assistants used everywhere, but merely as tools. The issue of whether or not they are fully sentient (and they surely seem it) and what the ethics of that may be is never considered. Perhaps we could assume that as a result of the synth ban or some other decision that holograms are no longer being made with full sentience (thus ensuring it’s fine to essentially enslave them I guess), but this is not ever supported in the text. Even something like this put in some early expository dialogue would have added quite a bit to the worldbuilding in my opinion.
Story
The first season’s story was quite fun, interesting, and touching. As I was being wowed with the concept of a “serious” Trek show, I was simultaneously impressed with the topics being explored. As the first continuation of the timeline since 2002’s Nemesis, much of it felt like a good continuation of the world. We have some actual movement on the Romulans for the first time since the original series, something slightly setup as a theme going forward by Nemesis that we finally get to explore (an actual change in the shift of power re: Romulans, Romulans being used in interesting ways with empathetic characters? Sign me up!). Ex-Borg are somewhat becoming a people (though fittingly still repressed), and an older broken Jean-Luc struggles with the trauma from his time as Locutus, which is a good shift from his mostly stoic dealings with the Borg seen in the eighth movie, First Contact (though perhaps understandable given the context of the film). Finally, the main storyline regarding the synth ban picks up straight from Data’s sacrifice for Jean-Luc in Nemesis, and is lovely in my opinion. It makes perfect sense not only that Jean-Luc would still be haunted by Data (he was essentially a father figure to him, their connection had a large role in The Next Generation, or TNG), but that we would finally get to see what became of the Federation post-Data.
TNG skirted around the issue of actually building a world that has androids in it by making Data one of a kind, the work of a mad scientist. And that’s a fine decision for the show. Moving forward in the timeline, however, you of course can’t get away from the fact that androids have been introduced into this universe. So it’s very interesting to see that that did indeed happen (relatively successfully at first), but also that androids’ status in the world could be so easily undone through a conspiratorial plot to fearmonger. The central conflict being about this fear, the ban, and Jean-Luc’s resulting disgust and resignation was all great in my view. Premonitions of a synth-apocalypse being baked into Romulan’s culture is neat, and the idea of an uber-powerful race of synths waiting to be called upon to defend a fledgling synth populace seems like classic Trek to me, I loved it. Finally, Jean-Luc getting to say goodbye one final time to Data (or at least a version of him), after having died fighting for peaceful coexistence between Starfleet and his kind, was touching and felt like a great send off to Data.
The second season for some reason decided to throw caution to the wind and completely ditch all of this, however.
All of season one’s interesting ideas, which felt like natural extensions of the Trek timeline befit for a modern continuation of TNG, are left in season one. We do not have any more mention of the synth ban (disappointing)–Jean-Luc and his shipmates Raffi and Rios are reinstated at Starfleet, and we are quickly whisked away to a time travel plot that is essentially a very poor and much too drawn out version of one of Star Trek’s numerous “Starfleet has to blend in with humans in the past” adventures. This is brought on by Q, one of TNG’s most beloved characters, who is reduced to a flimsy plot device rather than himself telling an interesting story. He is so criminally mis- and under-utilized that there is almost no expansion on why he has brought the crew to an alternative timeline until the very last episode, his motivations are thin and forgotten for most of the season.
As it becomes clear that we are not getting to anything interesting in the central premise with Q, we are greeted with a slog of episodes that are plain boring filler. Obstacles to the plot that provide no interesting character development or themes. Where the best of past Trek has used these kinds of episodes for interesting political commentary on a dystopic Earth (their past our potential future, e.g., the Bell Riots in Deep Space Nine’s “Past Tense” two-parter showing a not-too-far in the future portent of our society’s inequality), the political commentary in these episodes was fine but not very interesting. It felt more like present-day commentary, focusing more on showcasing things as they already happen in real life (e.g., their version of ICE do what ICE…already does, rather than something worse) rather than any interesting ideas of what turned humanity away from Starfleet’s egalitarianism in this timeline. The final two episodes at least brought some focus: they provided me with something to chew on regarding Q, and successfully tugged on my heartstrings in the finale. Upon reflection, though, it all felt a bit cheap.
The season is ultimately meandering and features a striking amount (much more than the first season) of stupid and annoying moments. Classic BS-TV stuff that makes you look at the screen and just wonder “why?”
Characters
A lot of these annoying moments come out in the characters, particularly in the second season.
For example, the straight man scientist, Jurati, is given the weirdest scenes in the show. Seemingly not knowing what to do with her character after season one, in which the show had her (checks notes) quickly careen from “I’m so convinced by Romulan spies that hell on Earth will come if I don’t kill all synths, such that I murdered my lover in cold blood” to “I’m just a quirky scientist who is fulfilling my lifelong dream of creating lifelike synths” upon meeting the main synth character Soji, they quickly gave her a “romance” with Rios. I put air quotes on this because the relationship came out of and went nowhere, having been established in one scene in the finale, and having vaguely existed and ended completely offscreen by the time we meet our characters again in the second season (note that this exact same thing also happens with Raffi and Seven of Nine, but it’s somehow way worse).
Unclear what her whole deal is, they then proceed to have her physically merge with the Borg Queen in the second season (which ends up in a weird twist that may or may not lead to anything interesting with the future of the Borg, who can say at this point!) and undergo a series of laughably bad personality outbursts. This includes the worst scene in the entire show, in which the new JuratiQueen, who has at this point been given the most “she is sexy now” 1990s nerdy girl makeover (minus the removal of any glasses, at least), uses her new body’s nanoprobes (or whatever) to send out an EM pulse killing everything but the spotlights and breaks out into a full song to distract highfalutin partygoers as a plot point (the band, of course, plays along). The reason for this supposedly being that the Borg Queen needed “endorphins” to fully take control of her body. Sure man. From that point on she is incredibly sexualized and Breasts Around Boobily wherever she goes, even as she strangles-but-then-doesn’t-strangle Raffi. The entire thing is incredibly goofy, strange, and unnecessary.
A lot of the show ends up like this. Raffi’s endearing story as an alcoholic mother in the first season is reduced to her becoming the central point of in-group conflict and boringly bickering with Seven the entire season for a relationship that we never saw and have no good reason to care about. Rios wants to fuck a doctor now and stay in the alternate timeline I guess because he needed to be written out; and Elnor cannot establish a consistent tone, so I guess he’s just the weird comic relief character who can’t understand sarcasm even after two years in the academy (seriously, is he supposed to be on the spectrum? It’s weird and I don’t get it!). And in the first season, the sister of Soji’s Romulan spy boyfriend Narek is incredibly annoying–every episode or two having the same scene in which she makes clearly asinine complaints about her brother’s strategy, has weird almost sexual tension with him (???), and gives poor exposition for the story.
So the cracks in the writing that begin to show in season one are sadly expanded in season two. Characters (and plotlines) that I was excited to see develop into something great (e.g., Seven’s character, which feels like an underdeveloped progression from Voyager thus far) have retreated such that I can no longer give the show the benefit of the doubt.
Looking forward
I am very tentatively hopeful that the third season will be able to right this ship. In addition to the plot details regarding the The third season has been rumored for a long time to be bringing back more characters from TNG, and this has now been confirmed in the most recent trailers and announcements (though in my opinion they have revealed way too much about the characters and plot, so I would advise not looking into it if you are particularly spoiler-averse like myself). This could very easily be a bad thing, trotting out past characters and plot points just for one last poorly-written dance. As much as it sounds enjoyable in some respects, I do not want this show to set a precedent for Star Trek going forward–we do not need sequel shows to Voyager and DS9 to follow, we need to move on in the timeline with fresh blood. However, I also know that pulling from established canon can make things much easier, and that the scenes in the first season with TNG’s Riker and Troi were easily among my favorites in the whole show, helping propel the takedown of Jean-Luc’s holier-than-thou attitude. So, here’s hoping that they can pull this thing together and that this will spell good fortune for the current Star Trek renaissance.
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