At the end of the 24th Century, and 14 years after his retirement from Starfleet, Jean-Luc Picard is living a quiet life on his vineyard, Chateau Picard. When he is sought out by a mysterious young woman, Dahj, in need of his help, he soon realizes she may have personal connections to his own past.
While I’m a big fan of the Star Trek films, the same cannot be said about the TV shows. I grew up watching the original series when I was a kid but I never really found myself invested in it. The same could be said for “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and the shows that followed; “Deep Space Nine,” “Voyager,” and “Enterprise.” The more shows that materialized, the more I steered clear of them. I just found them uninteresting, and, in my opinion at the time, carbon copies of the original show. Years later though, I watched episodes from each series and actually had fun with them but still, I found myself dispassionate about them, overall. I loved the six films with the original crew, as well as the four Next Generation movies and I personally thought J.J. Abrams did a great job in modernizing the original crew with his remakes but “Star Trek: Picard” is the first time I actually sat down and watched an entire season of any Star Trek show and I have to say, I was blown away.
Everything about Picard works; the storyline, the characters, the narratives throughout every episode, the special effects, the emotions, they all work. Very seldom have I come across a TV show that encompasses all of these attributes, and achieved them successfully. Patrick Stewart is back in top form as our titular hero, Jean-Luc Picard, a man who has been through so much in his life and is still going strong well into his nineties. He is held in high esteem by colleagues and friends alike but as the show begins, he has retired from Starfleet to his own vineyard, Château Picard, in the south of France. When a young woman named Dahj (Isa Briones) turns up on his doorstep one day, claiming that she was attacked and almost killed, she states that his face came to her unexpectedly and that she tracked him down to his current location in the hopes that he might be able to help her. He does not know her but her face seems familiar. He takes her in and remembers a dream where he met his old friend Data (Brent Spiner), who was working on a painting of a woman in his vineyard but her face was not yet complete. While visiting the Starfleet archives, he unearths the very painting he saw in his dream and finally sees the woman’s face; Dahj. When he discovers that Data named the painting “Daughter,” he knows that she is somehow connected to him and sets out to help her but before he can ensure her safety, she is killed by a group of assassins, right in front of him.
Upon further investigation, he learns that Dahj has a twin sister named Soji, who works at the Borg Reclamation Project on a derelict Borg cube called the Artifact. He meets Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill), who resides at the Daystrom Institute in Okinawa in Japan and is a cyberneticist and the leading expert on synthetic life. She reveals that she worked with Bruce Maddox (John Ales), one of the Federation’s most prominent researchers of cybernetics until he disappeared a few weeks earlier. Picard learns that Maddox followed in Data’s footsteps by creating fractal neuronic cloning, where twin androids could be created in human-appearing bodies stemming from a parent android. Picard sets out for the Artifact, believing that whoever killed Dahj, will undoubtedly try to eliminate her sister Soji but there is only one problem; transportation. Now that Picard is retired from Starfleet, he has no access to a starship so he calls on his old friend Raffi (Michelle Hurd), a Starfleet lieutenant commander who served under him for many years. Although they had a falling out nearly fifteen years ago, she reluctantly agrees to accompany him on his trek, for old times’ sake. Before they depart, Agnes Jurati appears and wants to join them and along with their new captain, Cristóbal Rios (Santiago Cabrera), they set out for deep space, unaware of the adventure that lies ahead.
Granted, there is much more to “Picard” but to divulge any further information would be to give away some of the show’s biggest and greatest surprises. Picard meets with some of his old friends, including Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), who live together on the planet Nepenthe, along with their young daughter Kestra (Lulu Wilson). Picard also meets Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), a former Borg drone who saves Picard and his new crew on more than one occasion. “Star Trek: Picard” is cinematic in its visual and aesthetic approach, something most TV shows steer clear of but a component that “Picard” thoroughly embraces. The entire cast is engaging with Stewart leading the pack, as tenacious and heroic as Picard has ever been. The episodic storylines, character development, and special effects are first-class and if you are a Star Trek fan, I highly recommend watching “Star Trek: Picard,” but even if you’re not, it serves as its own individual story and even though it references characters and scenarios from earlier shows and movies, it stands on its own two feet as an autonomous entry into the Star Trek canon. The final episode of the season, titled “Et in Arcadia Ego,” is more exciting and enthralling than most theatrical sci-fi films, and with this sort of confidence and tenacity throughout the show, both in front of and behind the camera, I can hardly wait for season two.
Now available on Blu-ray and DVD
