When I heard that there was going to be a new Star Trek television series being produced, I was over the moon and when I heard that it was going to be based around Jean Luc Picard I was ecstatic. I waited to see when it was going to be released and I didn’t read into anything about the series because I wanted to go into the series not knowing much and the only other thing that I knew about it was that there was going to be alum cast members as well.
There are several things that I do like about this show, the first thing that I like is that the feeling that I got from the first episode. I felt so glad and happy when I saw the scenes that had Picard and Data in it was very nostalgic as well as the scene where Picard heads to a storage place in which we see a load of Easter Egg’s with a nice one being the Captain Picard Day banner. Another scene that I liked about the first episode was when Picard was trying to help Dahj dealing with her problems and we see the empathy that he is showing that he wants to do right even if she doesn’t want to ruin his life with what has happened.
One of the things that helped me enjoy the nostalgia for the show was the episode where Picard and Soji have escaped the Borg Cube and travelled across space to arrive at the planet where Riker and Troi now live. Not only was this a great episode, but it also built up a lot of good elements for the rest of the show, the first being Soji learning to deal with being a synthetic since that she is still trying to wrap her processers around it, which she does and in that she also discovers where her home planet is. The second thing that I like about this episode the dynamic between Picard and Riker, it seems like that it hasn’t changed since the last time they were together and we see Picard getting help on how to open up more to Soji and also the revelation that Picard is starting to breakdown physically.
The enemies of the show for this season are the Romulans, but this time it is more of a select group of them than the entire race that is against them and they are out to take out Synthetics because they believe that they will be the downfall of the universe and all races so if they take them all out it would be one less threat for them to also deal with. The main villains are rather interesting as they are brother and sister, Narik and Narissa and they also have rather key roles in both Star Fleet as well as in the Borg Cube which gives them a lot of access to different places. Out of the two of them Narek is the one that does seem to be the lesser of two evils as he does seem to be a rather nice villain, if that makes any sense, as he does start to have feeling for Soji. Narissa on the other hand I really didn’t like that much, but I can’t really say why I don’t like her, the actress that plays her does play her well, but I really just didn’t care that much about her. Another character that I found that I really didn’t like was Oh, a higher ranked member of Starfleet and one of the people behind the Zhat Vash and boy does she really does suck, I found her to be rather boring. The biggest things that she does is she brainwashes Dr Jurati to assassinate Bruce Maddox then reveal to them the home world of the synths, then she commences an attack on said planet with a fleet of Romulan forces to a loosing effort when help arrives.
The last three episodes of the series however is where I do have the most mixed feeling about since there is a lot to go over by. I do on the other hand have a few good bits to say about it, first it is really well directed since there is a lot of emotion that goes on with the scenes. The first being the crew arriving on Coppelius since they don’t know what to expect when they get there, there is a lot of tension, they got attacked by giant flowers when they arrived out of the wormhole. The next is the shock, in a way, for Picard when they arrive at the settlement since he pretty much sees a ghost, as we are introduced to Altan Inigo Soong, who was the son of the creator of Data. Everything seems to be going rather well until Sutra melds with Jurati and learns about the message that Oh had shared to her, but Sutra thinks that this is a message that synthetic life is going to destroy the organic life and plans on calling them to help them deal with the attacking Romulans and this creates a lot of dread for the second part of the finale.
One thing that I did find rather interesting though is that the series also introduced a rather unique McGuffin into the show that was revealed by Altan and that being he and Bruce had been working on a golem that was still needing work and Jurati decided to finish the project as a way to make sure that Bruce’s legacy would be able to continue. I originally thought that this was going to be a way that they would have brought Data or a form of Data back into the show since that in the books that I have been reading, that are completely non-canon from the shows, is what happened to Data, but with his father deleting his own conscious so that Data could live anew. This wasn’t the case in hand, but they do end up building something more amazing from the start of the series, with Picard health condition that has been causing more problems for him and he also knows it. The sacrifice that Picard makes in the show, knowing that he is going to die and he need to make sure that they have enough time to hope that help is going to arrive and that the Romulans wont be able to advance any further. But with them transferring his consciousness into the golem, it did feel a bit of a let-down, but since that there was going to be a second series there was no way that they were going to kill off the title character.
Overall, I think that Star Trek Picard is an alright series to watch. It is Patrick Stewart at his best, for at least me, a few years with this being up there with his performance in Logan being in the top five performances for me. There are a few problems with it from writing, there is a lot of times where there is a bit of profanity this is mainly because you usually don’t see much when it comes to Star Trek. The other problem is that I thought that having the Romulans being so deep when it comes to power be rather strange, for instance Oh was the was a commodore in Starfleet and she was told by the Admiral to look into Picard’s claim of a covert Romulan attacks. I am looking forward to see what they do with series two and I am hoping that we do get to see a few more returning characters from TNG, even for a few scenes, just because it would be nice to see what had happened to them after the events of Nemesis and if they are still alive.
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