'Picard' offers a new kind of vision for Star Trek stories on TV
Picard has a message for the Star Trek series as most of us know it: "OK, boomer."
The opening three hours of CBS All Access' Star Trek: Picard make it clear that Starfleet, the peacekeeping and exploration force that was built around the basic idea of preserving life throughout the galaxy, is rotting from within. Even if there are outside influences at work, they're only chipping at the all-too-familiar cracks of fear-induced hatred and intolerance.
Does any of this sound familiar to you, people of 2020?
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Picard immediately gets to work on unraveling what has always been Star Trek's rosy view of humanity's future. Starfleet's idealistic mission is allowed to crash against a much more complex reality where good and bad people end up on the same side and even the greatest of heroes have their flaws.
Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) has been out of Starfleet for two decades when the show opens. It wasn't a happy separation for either party, and it's not long before we find out why. Faced with the prospect of a hated enemy's total annihilation, the assembled forces of Starfleet pretty much said: "Let 'em burn."
So the former Enterprise captain peaced out. And now, 20 years later, he's a press-shy veteran with a story to tell and no interest in telling it. Picard seems much more content to live out his remaining years running the French vineyard of his dreams. But there wouldn't be much of a "star trek" in that, and so once again, destiny comes a-calling for our old friend.
The first piece of the puzzle to draw him out is, fittingly, a memory from his past. There's a mystery surrounding Picard's old friend and crewmember Data, who sacrificed himself at the end of Star Trek: Nemesis (2002). It starts with the sudden arrival of a mysterious woman named Dahj (Isa Briones) and an account of the events she's witnessed. Data may be dead, but he's left behind an unlikely legacy.
This awakening for Picard plays out against the backdrop of a modern world that has shunned all forms of synthetic beings. It goes back to a terrible event that occurred 14 years earlier, when the synthetics stationed on Mars staged an inexplicable surprise attack that left thousands dead and the planet on fire.
The blanket ban that was imposed after the Mars incident is a product of the same fear-fueled intolerance that led to Picard's earlier exit from Starfleet. So when he turns to his old bosses for help in getting to the bottom of this new mystery, he's met with cold stares and a definitive "No." He'll need to find himself a crew and a ship somewhere else.
Picard's opening episodes set up the mystery and central plot points, but the momentum in this initial three-hour story arc builds almost entirely around getting Jean-Luc back into space. It's clear that a number of things happening during cutaway moments, including shady Romulan plotting and the Borg cube seen in the trailer, are going to matter in a big way before long. But the show has its own pace in mind for getting there.
It's an approach that works well. The Picard we're spending time with during these early hours is quite a bit different from the man who commanded the Enterprise. But we need that time to reacquaint ourselves with the character and who he's become.
It goes back to the idea I mentioned at the start, of Picard undoing Star Trek's rose-tinted view of our future. Jean-Luc is one piece of that. He's still the commanding presence he's always been, but it's been 20 years since he commanded a starship. He's aged. He's made mistakes. We're meant to understand and accept that he can be as frail and as fallible as any other person.
The ensemble of actors arrayed around Stewart will certainly come to matter more as the season drives forward. But in these opening episodes, Picard lives up to the promise of its title: It's a show about the man who commanded the U.S.S. Enterprise and what his life and perspective look like 20 years later.
It's clear right away though that Picard is also about so much more. It's a TV series with the narrative mindset of a movie, and a Star Trek story that's committed to shining a light into dark places that we haven't explored before. This is a world we all know, filled with familiar names and faces and references to lore. But it's also a new kind of vision for what a Star Trek story can look like.
For anyone who's got a problem with that, Picard's heavily implied response to the doubters is simple: OK, boomer.
Star Trek: Picard airs on CBS All Access.
Topics Star Trek
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
