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Star Trek: Picard can't seem to make up its mind about where it wants to go

By Hoots the Owl - 9 Apr 2020

Star Trek: Picard can't seem to make up its mind about where it wants to go

This is not a spoiler-free review. You've been warned!

Jean-Luc Picard is at his family's ancestral home in France. Chateau Picard is a rustic beauty, with warm brick walls and massive beams spanning the ceiling. When he throws back the curtains, tractors are tending to decidedly idyllic rows of grapes. By most measures, this looks like the perfect picture of retirement – a decorated Starfleet admiral, now living out his last years in the Gallic countryside.

So it's odd when Picard tells his dog, who he has tellingly named Number One, that "It's all right," distress visibly written all over his face. The dog is barking, and Picard appears to be attempting to get him to quiet down, but it's almost as if Picard meant those words for himself. Everything is, quite clearly, not all right. 

The opening scene sets the tone for much of Picard. Throughout much of the show, it's difficult to shake the feeling that something, somewhere, is rotten. Whether it is a revered institution like Starfleet or a cherished relationship, they all harbour a hidden blight somewhere deep below the shiny layers they present to the world. The series wastes no time in making that point. In "Remembrance", Picard gives a disastrous interview where he excoriates Starfleet for its "criminal" decision to abandon the Romulans they had sworn to rescue, saying that he had quit Starfleet "Because it was no longer Starfleet."

With that, Picard upends the central conceit underlying much of the Star Trek of yesteryear. The hope and optimism that characterized the Federation and Starfleet officers have worn away, replaced by a dark cynicism that permeates much of the series, from Picard's ragtag new crew to Admiral Clancy telling Jean-Luc to shut the *uck up. Picard isn't alone in this grittier take on Star Trek – Star Trek: Discovery has similarly adopted ⁠a more sombre sensibility, and you could argue that the two are very much a reflection of the disillusionment that has characterised the modern age. Fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation may lament the loss of its vision of a buoyant and inclusive future, and Picard is very much devoid of the sincere desire to boldly go where no man has gone before. Instead, the characters are mainly motivated by loss, and one could argue that the only reason Picard is so invested in protecting Soji and Dahj is because they were born from the late Commander Data's positronic neurons.

The sisters are androids, synthetic beings who, until recently, believed they were human. The top-secret Romulan force known as the Zhat Vash believe that they will bring about the end of days, and the end of all organic life in the universe. We get a lot of Revelations-esque imagery from Narek, who dramatically regales the La Sirena crew with tales of what will happen–⁠some entrails and a pale hell beast are involved–if Soji is allowed to live. ⁠The Zhat Vash's sole purpose is to destroy synthetic life, and they serve as the main antagonists in the series, with agents that have infiltrated even the upper ranks of Starfleet.

When Picard sets out to find and rescue Soji, he does so without the backing of Starfleet, a radical shift for Star Trek as a whole. He's going it alone, cast adrift and forced to rely on the dubious loyalties of his new crew. And unlike the crew of the Enterprise, Rios, Raffi, and Dr. Jurati are hardly paragons of virtue, each of them deeply flawed and broken human beings. You could argue that this is a more grounded take on Star Trek, and that the earnestness that defined the series in the 1960s and 70s is too naive for our times. After all, there may be a reason why one of the most popular science fiction series today is Black Mirror, which features notoriously bleak depictions of technology and the future. With issues like climate change nipping at our heels and technology progressing at an almost frightening clip, maybe we simply don't believe that we're going to be all right anymore. 

But that merely seems like a capitulation to me. To accuse the earlier Star Trek series of being naive and unsophisticated is to forget that the 60s and 70s were turbulent times as well. There was widespread racial strife, and it was the middle of the Cold War, when the threat of nuclear annihilation hung in the air. Star Trek dared to imagine a brighter future, one where humanity had managed to eradicate things like poverty and put aside its petty differences to look toward the stars. Today, the entire concept of globalization seems in peril. With the far-right and populist demagogues enjoying a resurgence, and longstanding crises festering in the background, the world is more divided than ever. We could certainly use Star Trek's optimism now, but Picard has decided that it's more interested in mirroring today's issues in the 24th century. 

Until the end, that is. After Picard makes a last-ditch attempt to call for the Federation's help, he and Dr. Jurati throw a Hail Mary and try to stall 218 Romulan Warbirds with a single ship. But lo and behold, a huge Starfleet armada shows up at the very last minute, a deus ex machina led by none other than Picard's old friend Will Riker. All of a sudden, Starfleet is prepared to defend a village of synthetics, whom the Federation had previously outlawed. It's a puzzling shift, to say the least, as is the rest of the final episode.

We see our characters almost magically made whole again. New relationships are blossoming, and Seven of Nine and Raffi are apparently a thing now. Don't get me wrong –⁠ I'm fully on board with LGBT representation, but the duo had barely even interacted before! It's a small development, but it speaks volumes about the haphazard manner in which the series tries to cram feel-good vibes into the last episode. Inconvenient storylines, such as Soji and Narek's relationship, have also been quickly tossed away without any kind of satisfying resolution.

Picard himself appears refreshed by a newfound sense of hope –⁠ to be fair, he's quite literally a new man, synth body and all –⁠ but the show's abrupt attempt to recapture the idealism of the old Star Trek strikes me as rather contrived. When Picard issues his famous "Engage" in the closing scene, they're no longer on a desperate mission. Instead, it's just like the Star Trek of old, featuring a crew prepared to explore strange new worlds, and seek out new life, and new civilisations. I guess Starfleet is Starfleet again, after all?

I'm all for a second season of Star Trek: Picard, but I hope it figures out earlier on what kind of story it wants to tell. 

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