Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Picard 2.1

In a recent Guardian article, Patrick Stewart confirmed he’d been lying with intent when he deadpanned an intention to re-watch all 178 episodes (not 176 as stated in the Mark Lawson piece) of Star Trek: The Next Generation in order to re-occupy the headspace of Jean-Luc Picard. Yes, that promise to fans, when the show was announced, was stodgy, foul-smelling bullshit. Instead, he’d opted to rely on memory, he said, craving the same distance from the character’s middle-aged incarnation as the geriatric android version enjoyed.

He also confirmed that this very blog was on to something when it suggested Stewart’s fanatical devotion to reinventing his iconic character as a subdued, wistful, contemplative old duffer (now a synthetic recreation of the same) – the least dynamic element in the show that bears the character’s name, was attributable to Stewart’s own sense of being subsumed by the anglicised Frenchman; the portrayal too close to those aspects of the one-time RSC thesp, from which he’d like to diverge.

Two long years ago we speculated these aspects may be that which reminded Sir Patrick of his authoritarian father – a man that commanded respect but lacked emotion and warmth. Well, now Season 2’s here and the bad news is that we’re no closer to recapturing a recognisable version of the man we once revered – a man loved by millions but not by the man who played him. That character is dead both figuratively and in-universe. In his place we have a kind of facsimile – a synthetic if you will.

As we re-join the now wholly artificial Picard, he’s still pootling around the vineyard he never cared for and had no interest in growing up, being uncomfortably amorous toward Laris – his surviving Romulan servant, a woman half his age, who nevertheless sees a romantic future with a man made of plastic who’s programmed to resemble a 90 year-old and die in a few short years.

If that wasn’t enough excitement for the fully operational android programmed in multiple techniques, he’s having curiously elliptical flash-backs – adorned with twenty-first century post-production clichés, in which he exchanges heightened and awkward philosophical dialogue with a woman purporting to be his mother. Okay, this woman of some stature in no way resembles or sounds like the petit lady who passed for an old incarnation of the character in “Where No One Has Gone Before”, but Picard’s a robot now, so might be remembering it wrong.

Memory files can be corrupted and that being the case it could explain why, upon meeting Guinan in a L.A bar curiously named after the Enterprise’s ten forward – a place the El-Aurian only managed for a fraction of her centuries-long lifespan, he neglects to mention Beverley Crusher – perhaps the unconsummated love of his life. You’d think Guinan would have jumped in and mentioned her as the conversation gravitated toward Jean-Luc’s missed opportunities, but no – best not to tease the character’s reappearance. This isn’t TNG y’know – it doesn’t pay to get your hopes up.

The rest of “The Star Gazer” was setting up the wholly original, that is to say derivative storyline of the season, in which the Borg will, once again, use time travel to alter the past in a bid to colonise the future, or something. Sometimes on Picard it’s like The Next Generation was just a long-prologue to the schlock-heavy movies that followed it, which until this show began, were the only regrettable codas. Now we have a show that looks to these broad, inane offerings as source material for serialised continuation. The brain trust behind Season One thought we’d enjoy a sequel to Star Trek: Nemesis, the least popular Star Trek movie (but the one most informed by Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner’s creative contribution). Now, we have a reprise of Star Trek: First Contact, albeit one that’s shoe-horned in Q – the conspicuous missing element from the TNG flicks, and the unloved cast of the Picard’s botched first season.

One can take comfort that Picard isn’t flying around with Captain Rios as the series begins, and that new head hack Terry Matalas has at least repositioned the Han Solo inspired, cigar-smoking skipper as chief cock of a grand looking Federation starship (the Stargazer naturally). From that it was reassuring to see the episode find a semi-credible way to reunite the disparate group that filled space in the first serial. Yet you’re a liar if you felt any exhilaration upon seeing Soji and Jurati surrounded by creepy Deltans, or Seven plying her new action heroine schtick on Rios’s old ship, or Rafi as the XO of, er, the Excelsior, or Elnor – the Romulan archer, now a Starfleet cadet.

Matalas has probably realised that if we’re going to spend more time with these people they need to better resemble the Starfleet archetypes we’d prefer to deal with. To that end we can be broadly supportive of the rejigging evident in this first episode. But no amount of tinkering can hide the fact that the star attraction – the titular Admiral – is a shadow of his former self. When Q appeared at episode’s end, following the Stargazer’s encounter with a power-sapping, time rift activating Borg emissary, he aged himself (as we hoped he would) to mirror the accrued years of his former sparring partner. But John de Lancie, in this first scene at least, still has that glint in his eye – the hint of mischief that signals the frivolous madness to come. The contrast with Patrick Stewart, who sounds drunk and moves like a man fighting osteoarthritis could not be more stark. Picard’s back in name, kids. But in body and spirit…?

Anomalous Readings

• We’ve moved into Trek’s twenty-fifth century, it’s 2401, and the odd news is that technology wise, everything looks better than on sister show Star Trek: Discovery, set 700 years later.
• The de-aging CG used to (very) briefly show us Q as we sort of remembered him, was pretty awful, but it was the right call – even if the technology wasn’t up to the task, as Q appearing as a 73 year-old would have been strange. Nearly as strange as a bloated Guinan.
• So Guinan was bloated but made a remark suggesting she’d deliberately piled on the pounds and the years to make her human customers feel more comfortable. At least I think that’s what she said. I couldn’t quite connect with the scene on account of Whoopi Goldberg’s stilted delivery.
• There’s nothing new under the sun in Picard and that extends to the name of Starfleet’s ships, all of which, though now mercifully varied, appear to be references to, or refits of those past. The producers will call that nostalgia, a homage, Easter Eggs – all that crap – but new ships and ideas are the stuff that gets the Trekkie heart pumping. Too much fan service shrinks the universe and makes us horny for all the better Trek Patrick Stewart doesn’t watch. Can you imagine him treating Shakespeare like that? “I read it decades ago, so I’ll just go on the sense impressions that remain.”  
• The worry with this season is that its Voyage Home meets First Contact scenario is going to be both derivative of, and inferior to those popular flicks. With the story constrained within such familiar tramlines, what scope do Picard’s hacks have to innovate and surprise us with new elements that fit comfortably into the Star Trek universe and don’t undermine Gene Roddenberry’s philosophy? I’m not a betting man, but my suspicion is not much.
• Why is the show still using the strange, Discovery season one and two-era font for “Star Trek”? Wasn’t that font linked to the Klingon war, according to Alex Kurtzman – a plot, and indeed period, that’s never been part of this series? Seriously, what the fuck is going on with that font?

The Old Man’s Back Again

• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Picard 1.1 
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Picard 1.2 
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Picard 1.3 
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Picard 1.4 
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Picard 1.5
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Picard 1.6
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Picard 1.7 
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Picard 1.8
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Picard 1.9
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Picard 1.10 (End of Season Special)

Picard Portents

• Ed’s Star Trek: Picard Test Audience Tale (Video)
• On the Return of Star Trek (Discovery announcement, November 2015)
• The Return of Picard: A Warning from Star Trek History 

Michael Burnham in the 32^nd Century

• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 3.1
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 3.2
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 3.3
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 3.4
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 3.5
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 3.6
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 3.7
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 3.8
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 3.9
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 3.10
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 3.11
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 3.12
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 3.13 (End of season psychosis)
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 4.1
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 4.2
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 4.3
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 4.4
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 4.5
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 4.6
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 4.7
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 4.8
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 4.9
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 4.10

Mick’s Calamitous 23^rd Century

• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 1.1/1.2
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 1.3
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 1.4
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 1.5
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 1.6
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 1.7
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 1.8
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 1.9
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 1.10
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 1.11
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 1.12
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 1.13
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 1.14
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 1.15 (End of Season Special)
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 2.1
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 2.2
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 2.3 
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 2.4
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 2.5
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 2.6 
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 2.7 
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 2.8 
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 2.9
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 2.10 
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 2.11
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 2.12
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 2.13
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Discovery 2.14 (End of Season Post-Mortem)

Station Keeping

• A Deep Dive into Deep Space Nine

Teen Fan Fic

• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Lower Decks – Season One
• Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Lower Decks – Season Two

Things to Come

• Take a Sedative, it’s time to visit Alex Kurtzman’s Strange New Worlds