Everybody got that?
Today we're catching up on Star Trek: Picard.
About two week back, we got our first real Next Generation reunion when Jean-Luc arrives with Soji on the planet of Nepenthe that Will Riker and Deanna Troi call home. Will and Deanna with their daughter Kestra live in a large cabin in a beautiful valley. But don’t let the rustic appearance fool you; this cabin is tricked out with all sorts of defensive capabilities including shields and cloaking.
Jean-Luc Picard’s plans since leaving Earth have taken a hard left turn into a ditch. Picard’s arrival on Nepenthe was a desperate gambit to save Soji from the Romulans on the Artifact, the Borg cube. It is an act of desperation that Picard regrets as it puts his old friends from the Enterprise in danger.
The appearance of Will and Deanna is not just fanservice to TNG fans who want to see some of the old crew. Soji, mere moments earlier was on a Borg cube light years away, believing she was a young woman specializing in exobiology. Now she knows she’s an android who’s only maybe three years old, everything she knows is a lie and the only person who can help her is this Jean-Luc Picard who she knows nothing about and isn’t sure she can trust. Will, Deanna and Kestra provide a safe haven, a bridge to give Soji time to try to accept not only who she is but to advocate for the man who is trying to save her.
First of all, the feels was just so overwhelming when Will and Deanna welcome Picard into their home. Will’s interactions with Jean-Luc have a familiar warmth, laced with Will Riker’s trademark good humor. Deanna is still insightful and compassionate but coupled with a “taking no bullshit” attitude that she began to express near the end of TNG’s run. We find that the married life for Will and Deanna is not completely idyllic. In addition to their daughter (who is immediately charming), they also had a son named Thad. Yes, “had”. Seems the young boy with an active imagination and predilection for making up languages died some years ago of a rare disease. His memory lives on as Kestra likes to play games in the woods surrounding the cabin employing Thad's made up languages.
Will asks Jean-Luc about his new crew. . Picard tells Riker that this new crew has more baggage than anyone on the Enterprise and lordy, ain’t it the truth.
But it's part of the charm as we watch these broken people on board the La Sirena try to push past their darkness, their grief and their loss to help this damn fool Admiral Picard on his quixotic quest.
Picard's new crew are are the perfect people of a Federation utopia. They are flawed and damaged. But they are not beyond redemption.
Raffi Musiker still struggles with the pain of her estrangement from her son, of her substance abuse and of her anger and guilt over the failure of her last mission with Picard in the aborted effort to save the Romulans from a super nova. But her abilities to piece together scraps of information in pursuit of a mystery demonstrates her considerable skills as a former Starfleet intelligence officer and how she secured the trusted position as Picard's first officer.
Cristóbal "Chris" Rios is a former Starfleet officer who appears to live the life of a ne're do well rogue living on the edge of a lawful and polite society. Chris Rios' facade hides a bitter darkness of a broken man. Rios watched his former Captain, Alonzo Vandemeer, execute two aliens they met in a first contact situation. Then Rios watched Captain Vandemeer kill himself.
Months later in a descent into madness and despair, Rios has a mental breakdown and leaves Starfleet. Today he is a loner with a ship and services to sell. Rios has a staff of 5 emergency holograms to handle functions around the ship. All the holograms look like Rios but each speak with a different accent. The engineering hologram, appropriately enough, speaks with a Scottish accent.
Vandemeer's executed the aliens on secret orders from Starfleet Security. The two aliens were synthetic life forms and the order originated with Commander Oh who is a Romulan plant seeking to eradicate all synthetic life.
Commander Oh has turned the sweetest person on the La Sirena into a murderer.
When we first met Agnes Jurati, she was smart, funny and socially awkward. Not at all Starfleet material, she has an almost real world perspective on the space faring mission stuff that Picard and his crew for hire take for granted. Agnes is sweet and endearing.
Then Bruce Maddox, her mentor and her lover, is murdered by Agnes Jurati.
We have a flashback to when Commander Oh confronts Agnes, threatens her to work for Oh and does a mind meld thing that shows Agnes an apocalyptic hellscape of the world that’s coming if synthetic life is not stopped.
Commander Oh has corrupted Agnes Jurati's dreams of artificial life researcha and her sweet innocence. She killed Bruce Maddox under that influence. What will she do to Soji when the two meet?
A lot of baggage, my dear Admiral Picard? A lot, yes, and then some.
Are they beyond redemption? If Picard has anything to say about, no, they are not beyond redemption.
Yes, Star Trek: Picard is a dark show. Hell, after watching Icheb from Voyager get tortured and killed, we had to see the first freed Borg get murdered. Hugh, who we met all those long years ago in the classic Next Generation episode “I, Borg”, the Borg who learned resistance is not futile and made a friend in Georgie La Forge, we had to watch him die.
That one really hurt.
No, this not the Next Generation you remember. This is not utopia. This is a utopia that has lost its way, giving in to the worst impulses of fear and hatred. But perhaps, if one man stands up, speaks up, if Jean-Luc Picard can rise up against one more threat, there may be hope for us yet.
Interesting thing about Star Trek: Picard. People can say “fuck”.
There’s a scene where Picard is speaking with a Starfleet admiral. Picard expects that the admiral (as admirals tend to do on Star Trek) isn’t going to do what he’s asking so he’s goes on a rant on why she’s wrong. The admiral actually agrees with Picard but can’t get a word in edgewise until she tells him to “shut the fuck up”.
So far Jean-Luc Picard hasn’t said “fuck” yet. I hope he does for the season finale.
Maybe if he is lucky, very lucky, Jean-Luc Picard will see the faith and ideals of the Federation shine once more and Picard can declare victory an old “fuck yeah, that's what I'm talking about!"
Well, a Trekker can dream.
No comments:
Post a Comment