Review: Star Trek Picard Season One

Picture from CBS.com

I really wanted to like Star Trek Picard. After Discovery's second season, it seemed like the producers had the opportunity to usher in a new, fantastic era of Star Trek, building upon the rich universe which had already been established over the years.

The trailers showed a lot of promise and Patrick Stewart returning as one of the fandom's favourite Captains seemed like an amazing idea. However, once I started watching, I found myself disappointed. A lot of this came down to the plot and the way the characters were treated as the first season went on, particularly the first several episodes. The series started with a bang, the first episode showcasing something that could have been great if it had kept up the same pace. However, the plot slowed right down in episode two, choosing to fill out the story with more information. This would have been fair enough, but it took the show until episode six to really pick up the pace again. In parts, the plot itself felt disjointed, as if it was stuck together with tape rather than woven together with a strong thread. I feel like part of this was because it was trying to do two different things at once. On the one hand, it really wanted to delve deep into the issue surrounding the Romulans and the synths, as well as how the Romulans' nature affected the whole scenario. It also wanted to show that not all Romulans are the same. This was an interesting direction to take. The problem lay in that it also wanted to include a key element that has been part of the Star Trek universe since it began; focusing on a crew. To do this, Picard could have easily set off with his two companions from his vineyard, with whom he already had a rapport. Instead, the show spent time tracking down a whole new crew, only half of whom Picard knew, and had disappointed at one point or another. The other half he barely knew and didn't spend much time with because he was focused on his mission. Instead of bonding with them, they appeared only to be there to make funny quips and get him from a to b. The crew themselves also had very little time to bond because they were busy making their own decisions, independently from each other, about stuff going on in their own lives. When something big did happen to one of them, it was often with little reaction from the rest of the crew, and consequences, if any, were usually delayed until another episode as a plot device. As a result of all this, the people that were considered the main characters by the credits were often relegated to side roles, with not enough development, together or apart. It was the clash of the two parts of the story that left me disappointed, because if they had settled for one over the other, or had chosen to take more time to bring the crew together as a unit before ploughing deeper into the Romulan/synth problem, it would have sat better with me. Instead, most episodes, I was left wondering what exactly they were trying to achieve in the long-term. This changed in episode eight, where the other parts of the story took a back seat for the moment in effort to try and bring the crew together, as well as the different threads of the plot some of the crew were keeping to themselves. Then the action picked up in episodes nine and ten as everything came to a climax; however, by then, the damage had already been done. What were supposed to be meaningful interactions between some of the crew fell flat and it didn't feel like the stakes were as high because of this. Overall, it was all right, a bit of a haphazard mess. I'm hoping that there will be big improvements in season two now that the characters have been established and they appear to have a singular focus; whatever story they come across next.