Catching up with Picard Seasons 1 + 2

 

In all the Star Trek series since The Next Generation finished nearly thirty years ago there’s never been a character quite like Jean Luc Picard. His thoughtful demeanour, emphasis on talk rather than phaser blasting and fondness for Earl Grey tea (hot!) made Next Gen the Trek series for me. Bringing him back all this time later was a risky decision but in terms of audience interest seems to have paid off. It took me a while to watch it (typical) partly because I wasn’t sure. Television’s default treatment of former icons is to show them broken at the end other career before making some miraculous yet barely credible return to action. Instead what this series, limited from the start to three seasons, has done is to engineer a Next Gen reunion with enough panache and love to make it seem a believable addendum to the series. Best of all it’s still the same Picard we remember, older for sure but with the same values and beliefs he always had. He does take decaf Earl Grey now though! Well he’s ninety three according to one episode!

 

Not that the first season rushes to bring everyone back. Though Data is seen in the very first scene it’s in one of many troubled dreams the now retired Admiral is experiencing, perhaps linked to his traumatic experiences with the Borg in some of the parent series’ most absorbing episodes. Unlike most things in the Trek universe this has left its mark in subtle ways and it seems a fitting way to bring us back into Picard’s world. We find him growing grapes on a very expensive looking estate with Romulan helpers and as the initial episode plays out we learn of his reasons for leaving Star Fleet due to his bosses refusing to help Romulans escape a deadly cosmic disaster. The parallels with any number of real life refugee crises are palpable as this narrative unfurls. We also meet a girl pictured in one of Data’s old paintings who turns out to be the android’s daughter. Synthetics are now banned after an incident on Mars while in parallel we visit Soji the twin sister who is part of a team exploring an abandoned Borg cube. Its not difficult to see how these plotlines will come together and that Picard will assemble a new `crew` to try and find the girl who is said to be the Destroyer, with potentially enormous powers she is unaware of.

 Patrick Stewart can still command the screen whatever else is going on. There’s an honesty to his performance and a sense that people can trust this character even though, if I’m honest, some of the dialogue he’s given early on seems too often to veer towards cliché. Once Picard gets the bit between his teeth and become proactive, Stewart has several great scenes and interacts well with the mostly new cast members. Stand outs are Michelle Hurd as Raffi, a former fellow crew member from after Next Gen days who adds a rough edge to proceedings, Alison Pill as Agnes Jurati whose reactions to the events unfolding add some levity, Santiago Cabbrera who also amuses as both a tough pilot and a harassed hologram plus Harry Treadaway as a slimy Romumlan.

Some have said the season relies too much on former glories with very few brand new elements on hand and this is clearly a series for fans of a certain age. I’m not sure if younger viewers or those with no knowledge of Next Gen find it engaging but for those of us who were there it’s a delightful coda to a great series.

It doesn’t take too long for the guest appearances to sprinkle some nostalgia on this series even if Seven of Nine was never part of the Next Generation series. Forgive my ignorance but I’ve not seen a lot of Trek since about season 4 of Voyager. If her appearance seems rather too deliberately designed to find a way to unlock the secrets of the Borg cube, the subsequent return of Will Riker and Deanna Troi is a more homespun reunion. Their initial encounter, after Picard and Soji turn up on the lovely looking planet of Nepenthe is warmer than anything that passed between them in the old series almost as if we’ve broken away from the narrative and these are just old friends. This scenario in which nothing much happens except for some lessons on life and getting old is more reminiscent of the gentle pace that Next Gen could do very well.

Probably the best episode of this batch is the tense and imaginative `Stardust City Rag` which has its share of double crossings, stand offs and climaxes with the seemingly  innocent Jurati killing Maddox no sooner than he’s been found. It’s a great development we didn’t see coming. The plot also explores corruption all the way to the top of Star Fleet and that certainly fits in with contemporary politics too.

Remarkably the new `crew` enjoy more development in ten episodes than most of the Next Gen bunch did across seven seasons! That’s how television has changed in the decades between the two series. With Next Gen it was always required to go back to square one; here we see developments that are not forgotten.  I’m still getting used to the swearing – even by senior Star Fleet personnel- which I am sure old Spock would raise a critical eyebrow at!  

The ending of the first season is a mixture of colourful space battles and some less enthralling banter with the synthetics. I can see the moral dilemma being played out but something about it doesn’r quite click. It probably doesn’t help that the budget has clearly gone on the space stuff so the synthetic’s home seems like something from an inexpensive Seventies show.

The overall feeling of the first season is of a lot of ingredients that, despite being linked narratively  don’t necessarily fit aesthetically. I don’t really buy Picard’s backstory of walking away from the Federation and doing nothing for fourteen years when he is so easily persuaded to go back now, it doesn’t ring true. Yet what holds it together is Patrick Stewart’s sometimes brittle, occasionally biting but always human performance which adds that touch of class he always brings.

If the first season’s storyline tended to be a little slow and uninvolving then the second season leaps out of the box right away. Set eighteen months later it swiftly tunes into a time travel story. Provided you get behind the idea of the returning prankster Q who engineers a temporal conundrum for Picard to solve then it works a treat. If you don’t- and he was always something of a plot device back in the day - it doesn’t really matter because you’ll soon be absorbed in a story that seems to echo the more cerebral Trek of yore. While there is plenty of action and more dazzling effects the heart of this season comes from stories that are easily identifiable- how childhood affects you, the loss of someone you looked after, the pressure of expectation, choices drawn from the darker side of our psyche. All of this and more is lavished on some scintillating episodes.

We’re initially in an alternative future where our regulars have fun finding their characters out of their comfort zone in a scenario where Earth is a dictatorship and each of them have a role to play. These are essentially lighter episodes albeit with a real threat and though we’ve seen these tropes before the cast, who have really gelled now, make it enjoyable. There is an emotional wrench at the end of this segment though and a new passenger in the form of the Borg Queen whom they found imprisoned in the alternative Earth. She is their only source of information and after their ship is disabled by some advanced tech their only escape. Played with menacing charm by Annie Werschig she is a far more compelling character than Q and with more screen time becomes an interesting addition to the cast. Despite her physical helplessness the Queen plays on the niggles between the crew, and , ultimately on the weaknesses of Agnes Jurati.

Agnes is an incredibly detailed character for this franchise which has often seemed determined not to rock the boat too much. Far less controlled and efficient than the usual Star Fleet persona she could almost  be the main character if it were not for the name at the top. Where the Borg Queen really uses her comes after a jump into more or less present day- 2024-– which if course is their past- as they search for a `Watcher` who holds vital information. The crew are gradually separated and the series goes even deeper into contemporary culture as Rios finds himself caught by nothing more down to earth than a difficult immigration system. Meanwhile Seven and Raffi, who have become quite a duo with some great scenes, are teamed up and it could be a police series.

As you’d expect Picard’s story strand is more cerebral and reflective as he is haunted by memories of his childhood and when he finds the mysterious watcher it turns out to be a young(er) Guinan.  Her presence is one of several nostalgic markers even including a somewhat older punk on a bus who is the same actor from The Voyage Home film.  In many ways that is the Trek which this storyline most resembles albeit with stronger language! I was a little less engaged by the eventual person they have to protect – a pioneering astronaut- being a relative of Picard, though it is his series! I don’t feel this element was as tightly written as those involving the other scenarios. However the urgency of the crew’s predicament is very well conveyed.

Like the first season the plot is stretched rather thinly across some episodes and here the conclusion of Picard’s childhood memories is rather melodramatically steered towards an obvious conclusion. I think it would have had more impact had it been truncated into a couple of episodes with some of the running time more rewardingly spent on other characters. Nonetheless the ending is more interesting than you might expect. The message here is that a sense of yourself must eventually rescue you from any past issues weighing you down. I’m still not clear why Q went to all this trouble – even when Picard himself asks “why?” the answer is as elliptical as usual from this most vague character.

What does work superbly is Juarati’s storyline which brings to the fore the comparisons between humans and Borg. Stopping their plan more with words than deeds is a very satisfying Trek sort of solution and lifts this series above many others. It’s also a platform for Alison Pill who switches effectively between the quirky and the menacing in a second.

Time travel stories will always throw up anomalies so its best not to think too deeply about the detail and focus on whether the end result works and in this case it does. The win is hard earned and well plotted ending up where we began with the Borg Queen trying to take over the Federations ships only now Picard has a better understanding of why. It’s a fun way of using the same scenario but altering the purpose and is as neat a sewing up of temporal experiences as you’re likely to get in a fantasy show.
(John- Will be doing season 3 shortly!)