Star Trek: Picard 1-01: Remembrance (Quick Review)

Episode:

1

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Writer:

Akiva Goldsman and James Duff

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Air Date:

23-Feb-2020

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's a surprise review of Star Trek: Picard's first episode! Only a short one though. And rushed!

When Star Trek's 50th anniversary went by a few years ago I was a bit disappointed with how little fanfare there was, especially after all the love that Doctor Who got. They could've at least promoted Star Trek Beyond! But it's turned out that the 50th anniversary was the explosion that's created a million new TV series: Discovery, the Lower Decks cartoon, the Section 31 series, another cartoon, possible Pike and Starfleet Academy shows... and Picard. It's just been kind of a slow explosion.

Anyway, it's been two years, and we've finally got the second full-length Trek show of this era! The Deep Space Nine of its time, with any luck. Though it's been considerably longer than that since Picard himself made his first appearance back in Encounter at Farpoint, so I had to check if Patrick Stewart has broken any records here. Turns out he's played his character for a longer span than Shatner and Doohan now, despite their appearances in Star Trek: Generations, but he's 15 years short of beating that cameo in Star Trek Into Darkness.

What do I want from this episode? Well being better than Batman & Robin would be nice, but you never know with Akiva Goldsman writing. I also want it to continue the story of 24th century Trek without being all 'everything you know is wrong' or fan filmy about it. I'm pretty sure it's going to look slick at least, with Discovery director Hanelle Culpepper coming over to kick things off and establish the show's style, and I know for a fact there's at least one person in the writer's room who's actually seen Next Gen.

This is going to be one of those spoilery reviews so expect huge SPOILERS for this episode and maybe a couple of relevant Trek episodes that came before it. No recap this time though I'm afraid, as that takes ages and I'm in a hurry.

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Yeah, that was definitely better than Batman & Robin. It's been a while since I've seen the other Trek pilots, but I feel like it's somewhere up near the top, next to Emissary. It's definitely the most cinematic, and it gives us a better look at 24th century Earth than we've ever really gotten before, in a better way than before. It seems that they even went to the trouble of making new models for Paris and San Francisco, as Paris especially looks nothing like it did in Discovery. They apparently remembered that you're not supposed to build skyscrapers there and knocked most of them down in the 140 years since.

The episode had to win over two audiences: new-ish viewers who've maybe seen Discovery or the Kelvin movies at best, and Berman-era Trek fans who already know all about Romulans and Borgs and Bruce Maddox, and want Picard to get out of his dune buggy and start being morally outraged about things again. I'm 100% part of group B, so it's hard for me to know what a new viewer would think of this, but there's a lot of information dropped on everyone here. You have to really pay attention to that interview at the start to catch up with the backstory even if you already know what a Romulan and a Picard is.

Fortunately I found it hard not to pay attention, as that interview was the worst torture Picard's suffered since Gul Madred and Patrick Stewart sold it. The episode really went out of its way to make the interviewer seem like basically the worst person alive in this enlightened era of humanity, as she continually pushed Picard and basically said that the Romulans weren't worth the effort of saving. I'd get it if he was a cagey politician or had escaped consequences for a shady past but all he did was organise a rescue fleet!

Their conversation reminded me of Star Trek 6, specifically the scene where the characters debated whether they should let the Klingons die due to their planet-threatening disaster, except it seems that things didn't go well for the Romulans in this case.

Meanwhile the old school fans got a lot of familiar references dropped on them, like Ten Forward, the Stargazer, Earl Grey tea, poker games with Data, B-4, the vineyard, FNN, even Captain Picard day (no Irumodic Syndrome thankfully), but it was done in a clever way. The past is all in Picard's mind or preserved in storage, exactly where you'd want it to be, and his sentimental dreams serve the purpose of setting up who Data is, which you have to do before 'Data's daughter(s)' can mean anything.

Though if that's his Kurlan naiskos back there between the four lights, that should probably be in a museum. At least he bothered to go back and recover it from the wreck of the Enterprise D where he dumped it in Generations.

I was worried that the series was going to really dwell on how terrible it is to be an old man with regrets in an increasingly imperfect world, and it does a bit, but the mystery of who Dahj is, who's after her, and how this involves Picard keeps things moving forward at the right pace. I got some of those Star Trek 6 vibes here as well, with how the episode balances self-reflection, investigation and action scenes in a way that makes it seems thoughtful without being lifeless. It's slow, but not 'Netflix Marvel series' slow.

Star Trek: The Next Generation was a series about discussing issues and thinking through problems, and this seems like it could be a worthy successor to that, as it's apparently going to be about how we treat synthetic life, Romulan life and life in general. They'll be some Borg life showing up as well soon enough; they're really weaving all those threads from Picard's past together with this one. But it feels like it's been written by people who watched Next Gen and get it, like how Nicholas Meyer watched the Original Series and chose an unresolved story to continue in Wrath of Khan, and when you pick up a thread other things are going to get tangled with it.

Like the conversation about creating new androids like Data had me thinking about Bruce Maddox and what happened to him, seeing as he was the one who tried to get Data transferred off the Enterprise so he could taken him apart (In A Measure of a Man). Right after I had the thought, they characters started discussing his involvement, because why wouldn't they?

That's how you use canon! Continuity doesn't have to be an anchor holding you back or a box of references for cheap nostalgia, it's built-in emotional investment and a foundation to construct new stories on top of. Picard gets what I'm saying, he'll tell you the importance of history.

In fact it seems that Maddox is going to be an important part of the plot, which is pretty amazing. Though to be honest I didn't really catch all of that conversation with Dr Jurati as I was thrown off by the 'replicate their entire brain with one neuron' line. I think that whole chat could've used another draft actually, though that's a step up from Discovery which has often felt like the whole script still needed a final pass.

The idea of Data's secret daughters could've been terrible, but the story's hanging together so far. It's a bit of a shame that I was spoiled on Dahj's death, because that would've been a huge surprise otherwise, but I wasn't spoiled on how good her fight scenes were (staircase jump aside). The trailer didn't do them justice! In fact I liked the character a lot in general, even if she was a bit of a trope, so I'm glad they've got a spare.

Her plot confused me though, as everything about it seems like a sinister scheme, on both sides. Someone set her up with that fake life, with fake memories and a fake mother, someone's going after her, and Earth's authorities seem to either be completely unaware of the Romulan secret robot police beaming everywhere and getting murdered, or they're covering it up for some reason. Even when Picard gets blown up he ends up back at the vineyard instead of in a hospital and no one speaks to him about it, it's very strange.

I feel like I should be whining about all the times that something was reimagined or retconned for no good reason, but I've got nothing right now. The Enterprise D, Enterprise E and Stargazer look exactly like they always did, and Ten Forward seems fine to me (even though they flew into it through the wrong window). Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner were back in character, and we even saw a picture of Michael Dorn in the original Next Gen Klingon makeup! It's not changing anything, just adding to it, and that is a real relief to me. It makes it feel authentic. It's legit.

The series has the production values of Discovery, but it's less strange and stylised, and more comfortable and familiar. Not because it looks like Next Gen, but because it looks like reality. Though it really does feel to me like it's following on from the Berman-era, and it's nice to finally get a continuation of that story, along with a definitive confirmation that the Prime Universe as we knew it still exists after Spock's trip through time and Discovery's reimagining. For the first time since 2002 we're getting to see what happens next, and it feels like the production team are as hyped about it as I am. All the holograms and weird fold-out gadgets they love throwing in feel entirely at home in this new time period in a way they never did in the pre-Kirk era, and now they're free to write about Datas and Borgs as well. The Cylons have been done before and will be done again, but they're pretty new to Star Trek and I'm curious to see how things work out here.

Anyway it might just be part 1 of chapter 1, but this this was a pretty great start and I was hooked the whole way through. Well, except for when it got to that scene with the creepy Romulan on the Borg cube Romulan Reclamation Site at the end, but whatever, it was short.

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COMING SOON

I won't be doing any more Picard reviews, at least not for a long while, as Sci-Fi Adventures will be taking February and March off, but you're still going to get that Babylon 5: Walkabout review I promised in a couple of days.

Thanks for reading by the way. It means a lot to me that out of all the words on the internet you chose to read mine. Now you can leave some of your own in the box below.