WHY WE LIKE IT: Jean-Luc Picard is back!
WHY WE DON'T: Doughy Data.
REVIEW: Plot aside, there are two things the new show had to nail. One was fan service, making Easter Eggs and such feel natural and justified, but also balancing it against moving forward with the story. On that score, I think Star Trek: Picard is off to a great start, with Data guesting as a dream figure, and more of characters and concepts from the TNG era yet to come, and all sorts of winks at continuity without stopping the story dead in its tracks to craft a moment. For example, it's fun that Picard calls his dog Number One (which has always been his name for his second, it's not a dig at Riker), and that he dreams of playing poker (as he did in All Good Things...) on the good ol' Enterprise-D with Data, while "Blue Skies" plays (Data sang it in Nemesis, though here's it's Bing Crosby's version, who is through Denise, sort of a member of the family anyway). The dream turns to a nightmare, and Picard wakes with a start, a mirror of First Contact's opening sequence. Hey, did Data's 5 queens make Picard uneasy as a reference to the Borg Queen? The final scene reorchestrates a musical cue from Balance of Terror, and there's a bit of Ressikan flute in the score (well piccolo). The Romulan logo now has no planets in the bird's talons. The bits that figure in the plot are well explained and are treated like new information, such as Bruce Maddox's involvement, or showing B4 in a drawer. The only pure Easter Egg, really, is a quick shot of a Captain Picard Day banner, a memory that's meant for us, who were treating this ordinary Thursday as OUR Captain Picard Day.
But wait, I want to get back into that dream (oh boy, how long is this review going to be if I can't get out of the first scene?), and talk about how, when it could have been a self-indulgent moment, an excuse to bring back a dead character, it is instead a great Data moment. Picard discovers his "tell", and it creates a mathematical conundrum for the android that's amusing in that Data way. And then it gets better, with Picard stalling because he doesn't want the game to end - Kirk warned him about this in Generations - and yet being "all in". Yes he is, and so are we. Okay, back to what I was saying.
The second thing they had to nail was advancing the era 20 years and making it relevant to our times. And did they ever succeed! Now, we all figured that the Picard would still be dealing with the fallout of Romulus' destruction in the Reboot Star Trek film, but then the prequel to this series, Children of Mars, threw us for a loop. "Synths" (as it turns out, man-made androids) attacked the Utopia Planetia shipyards, and this became the 9/11 of the 24th Century. I'd call the interview with Picard to commemorate the Romulan disaster a cheap device if he didn't give us our first impassioned Picard speech! In short, Starfleet was dealing with a humanitarian crisis, not unlike but much worse than the Praxis explosion in The Undiscovered Country, when this attack happened, making the Federation turn its back on the wider galaxy, ban the building of synthetics (what happens to already built ones, I wonder), and prompting Picard to quit in disgust. 9/11, Muslim bans, and oh, the Romulans as a refugee population that even on Picard's estate are holding servile positions. Zhaban and Laris are delightful people, but of course, if a people are desperate enough, they'll go on the offense, so we also have Romulan villains who... well we don't know yet, and they may be working for the Feds for all we know. It's not a genre show these days unless there's a conspiracy. I expect to sigh about this eventually, but not today. Getting back to the metaphors for our own world, we also have a trashy media, and Picard in very real danger of being told "OK Boomer". He's an old man, and I like that he gets condescending in his irritation. It would be too easy for him to be perfect. In any case, it's recognizably the Federation utopia we know, but everything in the situation speaks to today's problems, as good Trek should.
As for the story, it's Star Trek does Blade Runner as Picard meets a young woman who could be Data's daughter (of sorts), a flesh and blood android with amazing fighting capability - Dahj's two fights are great, especially the one on the stairs - and implanted memories. It's Blade Runner, yes, but I love how Picard makes himself reassuring about her nature, and how proud he already is of her achievements. If this is Data's daughter, the carrier of his essence, then he is the kindly uncle. Well, no surprise, whatever the required emotion, Patrick Stewart knocks it out of the park. Dahj as the new Lal? Well, Lal was a Hindi name, and Dahj and her twin sister Soji Asha have culturally similar names. Perfect. The whole thing with Maddox's process necessarily making twins is the weakest part of this, just a bit too metaphysical for my tastes, but Alison Pill is a nice addition to the Trek family as Dr. Agnes Jurati, a disappointed, super-smart, but also frequently amusing cyberneticist and a part of the regular cast.
What we don't expect is Dahj exploding (especially since it happens before a twin is revealed - which I do think is a bit of a cheat, since she had ample occasion to mention it - wait, are her parents real or just holograms?), but of course, we meet Soji and realize what's going on. This is where the episode leans into the Romulan side of things. She's working at a "Romulan Reclamation Site" built inside a a Borg Cube (such an important part of Picard's life, one of the times he was a "stranger to [him]self", and one of the lasting questions post-Voyager - what happened to the suddenly de-assimilated Borg and their tech?), getting cute with a handsome Romulan who may have an agenda. Borg, Romulans... all the enemies with green accents are gonna be in this.
I was so overwhelmingly positive, I want to end on a pet peeve. It's just me, but I gotta get it off my chest. No, it's not Picard's French, though it's pretty terrible. It's that his vineyard is obviously not in France. The Spanish style villa overlooks distinctly Californian mountains, but what really sticks out to me is the vineyard itself. The plants are set too far apart! It's HALF the distance in Europe! Well, obviously, it was shot in California, I realize that. Like I said, it's just me.
LESSON: The game's not over 'til it's over.
REWATCHABILITY - High: Like curling up in a favorite blanket by the fire, Star Trek: Picard hits the ground running, with Stewart in great form, and the season promises a meaningful Star Trek allegory.
Comments
I loved this episode so much. Just having a character like Picard, with so much compassion and grace, back on screen felt really important. I know I'm a hopeless fanboy but my god, my soul needed this show.
What I do find really funny, and I've said this before about Discovery, is how in many ways modern Trek owes so much more to Babylon 5 than it does to 90s Trek shows. The trashy journalism was such a Babylon 5's ISN thing to do. Of course the question is, is it because B5 has influenced science fiction TV, or is it because this new show is just reflecting real life, and real life has come to resemble the very things JMS was warning us about?
Great spot on the Romulan logo too, that's immense.
Also, and this is more a general pet peeve, but I really hate the "wow,.yoyr necklace/earrings/pendant looks distinctive" "thanks. It was a present from my secret uncle and it represents a hidden key". Especially here, where "two linked circles" is pretty much the exact opposite of "striking design that will definitely catch the eye".
Reminds me of my pet peeve. When Q kept calling Picard constantly "mon capitaine", he never gave the traditional answer: Dans la marine, il y a mon Dieu et mon cul, pas mon capitaine !