After an extremely long break, the Fenris Rangers make a triumphant return!
Since it’s been so long, let me hit the high points of the last installment: while aboard a wrecked Cardassian craft in what used to be the Romulan Neutral Zone, Tom Riker, the Doctor, and their Chalnoth crewmate found a Vidiian corpse, with clear signs of a relapsed Phage infection…
(as this is, thus far, the last installment of this story, the remnants of my Captain Picard Show blogs for all remaining episodes will be included below. If I ever get around to making more of these comics, I’ll do a better job of spacing the blog posts out, I promise…)
from March 2, 2020 (about episode 6):
(Returning to form here, I’m going to spend a lot of time discussing how I feel about an episode of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION before getting into the meat of this latest episode of THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW. I’ll actually use that context to explain how this latest episode has caused me to revise those feelings later on in the piece. Spoiler alerts for a decades-old episode of television, and another recent episode, apply.)
Moral crises are, from where I sit, the things Star Trek does best. When the crew of the Enterprise* shows up in the orbit of an alien world, and that foreign society is wrestling with a challenge that’s similar-to-but-distinct-enough-from-one-we-ourselves-are-facing-today-that-we-can-be-a-little-more-objective-about-it… man, that’s the kind of science fiction I like. A good idea, good actors, weird sets and costumes. That’s all Star Trek has ever needed to capture my imagination and attention (see the earlier piece in this series, where I recount TNG’s S2E9 ‘Measure of a Man’ with the kind of zeal that only real legacy franchise fanatics have).
As of the original writing of this piece (March, 2020), the Star Trek episode that’s gotten our morality twisted up best looks to have been an episode of VOYAGER, S2E24’s ‘Tuvix.’ Tuvok and Neelix get smashed together into a single new being in a transporter accident, who takes to calling himself Tuvix (his name’s the name of the episode!). At first, the Voyager crew figures they should just be glad their friends still exist, after a fashion, and work to integrate Tuvix into the crew. After a while, though, they figure out a way to undo the accident, and unzip Tuvix back into Tuvok and Neelix. Tuvix is understandably upset about this development, as he sees this “fixing” as his own murder (and a pretty callous one, at that). Captain Janeway has to make a decision, and she chooses to restore Tuvok and Neelix. We can wrestle about that one in the comments, if you want.
The episode of Star Trek that still keeps me on the morality teeter-totter isn’t ‘Tuvix,’ though.** It’s TNG’s S5E23 ‘I, Borg,’ where, until last Friday night, when we finished this latest episode of THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW, I used to trace the whole Borg “thing” going off the rails. In ‘I, Borg,’ the intrepid crew of the starship Enterprise rescues a teenage survivor of a crashed Borg ship, an assimilated human who can only refer to himself by his Borg designation, “Third of Five.” Thanks to the hard work and compassion of Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge and Dr. Beverly Crusher, Third of Five recovers from his injuries, and recovers well enough that he can start to be interrogated by his rescuers. He’s the only living Borg in the Federation, after all. He presents a unique opportunity to the Starfleet officers who signed up to seek out new life forms and new civilizations! He’s even taken a name. He’s not “Third of Five” anymore; he’s “Hugh.”
At least, the original thought is that he presents a learning opportunity. Lest we forget, the Borg have declared war on all intelligent life across the galaxy, seeking to assimilate it into their Collective at best, or straight-up obliterate it, at worst. Some of the senior staff push to find a way to weaponize Hugh against the Borg, and it’s not long before a plan is hatched. They’ll infect Hugh with a virus, a paradoxical image puzzle designed to spread like mad and result in total system failure of the Collective in no time flat. Picard, who harbors an understandable hatred for the Borg, and much of the Enterprise’s leadership would happily trade the lives of every assimilated being in the galaxy for all those unassimilated, but La Forge and Crusher harbor some misgivings. They didn’t sign up to commit genocide, no matter how terrible the threatening species. Picard’s set his mind to winning this war, and exacting some revenge for the personal toll he suffered at their hands, and will accept no disagreement.
Just like in ‘Measure of a Man,’ it’s not until Picard goes for a chat with Guinan in the Ten Forward lounge that he’s able to put his thoughts in order. He explains the plan to Guinan, figuring her to be a sympathetic ear. Her civilization was destroyed by the Borg, after all; they scattered her people throughout the galaxy. “If you are going to use this person as a weapon,” she challenges Picard, “you owe it to him to look him in the eye before you do it.” When Picard confronts Hugh directly, he sees past the cybernetic implants to the boy beneath them, the boy who’s relearned how to use singular personal pronouns, and separate himself from the Collective. Maybe people besides the uniquely single-minded Jean-Luc Picard can recover from assimilation! They elect to return him to the Borg, with his mind and memories intact, in the hopes that his experiences will be assimilated. Hugh is better off for his contact with the Enterprise. Perhaps the Borg, writ large, will be, as well…
To recount the rest of Star Trek’s history with the Borg ever since ‘I, Borg’ would eat up three times as many paragraphs as I’ve written already. The point of recounting this particular episode is that I’ve never been sure I’d have fallen on the same side of the ethical divide as the TNG principals. Principles are all well and good, yes, but when faced with the very real possibility of extinction, I don’t know how many hairs I would split to hold onto my ethics. The conflict with the Borg comes down to them, and literally everybody else in the galaxy. In the episode where they were first introduced (‘Q Who?’ S2E16), Q explicitly explains to Picard that they’re unfathomable. They don’t want material wealth, power, or diplomatic contact. They want to consume, and add to their Collective. Anything they can’t consume, they will destroy. They’ve said so. Against that kind of threat, I would see a very real virtue in taking them apart, without having to sacrifice another sentient life.
For whatever it’s worth, I’m not arguing that the story should’ve been changed; I’m explaining how I would’ve viewed the situation, and how I would’ve engaged with it. I’ve probably watched ‘I, Borg’ a dozen times or more since it originally aired, and I’ve always come down on the same side of the question: kill the Borg, save the rest of the intelligent life in the galaxy.***
A lot of the dialogue in the new JJ Abrams-spearheaded Star Trek movies**** doesn’t ring true for many folks who came to Star Trek before the new movies, but I will always appreciate how Captain Pike in STAR TREK (2009) described Starfleet: “a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada.” Starfleet had never really tried to reckon with its being heavily-armed diplomat explorers as directly as it had in that moment, and I feel that line of dialogue does it as well as anything could’ve. Embrace the contradiction, Starfleet! Maybe, once you finally reckon with your nature, you’ll stop being such a dysfunctional organization!
I’ve not felt it necessary to revise my opinion on Borg genocide for almost 28 years, until after watching this sixth episode of THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW. A lot of the irritation I felt at TNG and STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT’s exploration and deepening of the Borg has washed away while watching the show. It would be difficult to present even the vague post-reclaimed-Borg society as we’ve seen it if the Borg had remained the unstoppable, all-consuming evil alien force as they were initially presented. It certainly wouldn’t be as meaningful, seeing the traumatized “Ex-Bees” (Hugh’s shorthand for the former Borg drones, freed from their implants) work to reclaim their lives, physically and mentally, if we didn’t have a clear(-ish) idea of what assimilation does to the assimilated, and just how horrifying of an existence the Borg are made to suffer through.
The Borg Reclamation Project is probably my favorite concept, and location, in THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW thus far. I never much enjoyed the way the Borg set and costume design evolved, through Voyager and into FIRST CONTACT; I felt it lost a lot of the depth and the claustrophobia that so defined the Borg in their first appearances, as the stacks of hastily cobbled together spare parts and debris were replaced by more sleek, more easily replicated body suits and wall panels. The appearance of the Artifact (as the abandoned Borg cube is called) rather splits the difference for me, as its constant, unexpectedly shifting surfaces call back to mind what was unsettling about the Borg ship in the first place. Setting helps to build characterization in the Artifact, too. Claiming something that was once awful, and repurposing it for good, is a trait in people I’ve always admired, and for the Project to do the same with the structure that was once their prison shows just how much of their humanity the Ex-Bees retained, even after their assimilation.
A lot of the credit for my personal growth on the issue of the Borg, and the people the Collective enslaved to serve their ends, has got to go to Jonathan Del Arco, who played Hugh in ‘I, Borg,’ and has reprised the role in THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW. He was great under the full Borg makeup in 1992, injecting his voice with enough innocence and confusion to break the heart of absolutely anyone, but time and the freedom that comes from being under far fewer prosthetics have only improved his performance. The world-weariness he brings to the proceedings is similar to the cynicism that weigh down Picard and most of his crew, but Hugh has managed to hold onto his core self. He has a kindness, a basic goodness that shines even brighter when he reunites with Picard. His pride in the work done at the Project is evident, as is his sadness at the rejection of himself and all other Borg survivors from mainstream Federation society. Even though he’s not all that enthusiastic about relying on the dregs of the Romulan military to keep the Project operational, his ultimate concern is only with his people, with bettering their lives in any way he can, and freeing as many from the yoke of the Collective as he’s able. In a lot of ways, it’s Hugh who’s best living up to the ideals of the United Federation of Planets in THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW.
It’s fitting, then, in this society so rotting from the inside that it seems about to collapse in on itself, that the one person who’s found a way to do real good is the one who looks most likely to be the real collateral damage in Jean-Luc Picard’s quest to get his groove back. To see Hugh (and Elnor – or “Romulan Legolas,” as I’ve come to call him) left behind on the Artifact, buying time for Picard and Soji to escape, likely to meet death at the hands of the approaching Romulan guards, is positively heartbreaking. Tragic, still, is Hugh’s remark that the Ex-Bees are all but officially unwelcome within the Federation, refugees that no one wants. who are offered neither help nor sympathy. Hugh’s tried to do nothing but good, since being freed of the Borg’s influence. I guess we’ll have to wait until the end of the week, to see how much more wreckage Picard will leave behind. What won’t he sacrifice, in the name of Data’s memory?
*I know there have been more principal craft across the whole of Star Trek than just the Enterprise, but THE ORIGINAL SERIES and THE NEXT GENERATION are my favorites, and TNG the series that has most specifically informed my view of the world, so I’m using the Enterprise as my go-to example. Hooray for clarifications that take far longer to express than a more inclusive original statement probably would have been!
**For the record, if we’re keeping a record, I think I would’ve made the same call as Janeway. Tuvok and Neelix didn’t give up their existences freely, in an attempt to create a new life from their own. Tuvok, particularly, has a family back in the Federation, and Neelix has his own life, too. He has his cooking, anyway, and his legions of acquaintances in the Delta Quadrant. I think about this at length, whenever ‘Tuvix’ comes up in lists of significant Star Trek episodes, and I always come to the same conclusion as Janeway, although I don’t even think it would’ve taken me 20 minutes of compressed TV time to come to it. I’ve read A LOT of essays/pieces/tweets from people who have far more specific experience with issues of bodily autonomy and personal agency than I, and I’m at least sympathetic to their arguments. I still think Tuvok and Neelix deserved to get their lives back.
***I’m really good at living these values that the show I claim to love more than any other has sought to impart upon me, aren’t I? Starfleet’s been willing to ignore its own principles, whenever it’s been convenient, so we can blame this rather obvious moral failing on the lessons I’ve learned from the show.
****The “Kelvin Timeline,” named after the ship on which George Kirk, James Tiberius Kirk’s father died at the beginning of STAR TREK (2009), for those who care overmuch about these sorts of things, like me.
from March 9, 2020 (about episode 7):
Well, this was it! The moment for which I’d been waiting since the second trailer for THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW, where we got a glimpse of Sir Patrick Stewart reunited, in some gorgeous, pastoral place with two of the best co-stars I’ve ever known him to work, Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis. Picard, Riker, and Troi (or maybe now she’s Deanna Troi-Riker?*) together again! If I haven’t mentioned to you before that I’d gleefully watch an animated program about the adventures of the USS Titan (the ship Riker went off to command, along with Troi, after their wedding and the conclusion of STAR TREK: NEMESIS), well, I would.
Marina Sirtis is an actor I always felt deserved better from the material that endears her to me, through today, for reasons I’ve gone into in detail in the past. All the mediocre writing in the world wasn’t able to dim her light as a performer; Deanna Troi’s calm compassion made her approachable, and her empathic sense turned her into an invaluable colleague, even friend. It’s no wonder Picard thinks to turn to her, and her husband, when he’s desperate to escape from the Borg Artifact. Sirtis’ voice is her greatest gift as an actor, and her command of it has only improved over the years. Her perfect posture is clear in her words, and her stance.
Frakes, too, returns to his role with an ease that makes you think Will Riker hasn’t been far from his mind in the nearly eighteen years since NEMESIS’ release. There was a physicality to Frakes’ performance that was distinct in a way I’ve rarely seen from all the actors I’ve watched over the course of my life. Riker was a tall, physically powerful man** who lived in a society that had, ostensibly, grown beyond valuing primitive indicators of virility. Whether or not straight white human male privilege is a thing that has really been banished in the 24th century is a definitely a topic worth discussing, but one can’t accuse Will Riker of trading exclusively on that privilege. His kindness and fundamental decency radiated out from him when we first met him, and still does, today. Frakes himself remains a grizzly bear of a man, able to flip the switch between cuddly and imposing at a moment’s notice. To see Riker standing next to Picard, ready and willing to throw his body between his captain and danger, is a welcome, reassuring sight.***
For a man who so strongly proclaimed his dislike of children in the very first episode of TNG (‘Encounter at Farpoint’), Jean-Luc Picard certainly forged some strong bonds with young people. It’s truly heartbreaking that two of those children – his nephew Rene and, we learn in this episode, Will and Deanna’s first child, Thad – saw their lives cut tragically short. The loss of both children obviously weighs on Picard. To see the promise and hope of the future repeatedly snuffed out before his eyes, over and over again, a person could understand why Jean-Luc Picard would want to withdraw from the galaxy. Such a retreat would not have been what Thad,**** Rene, Dahj, Wesley Crusher, Data, Lal, or any of the now-grown children who celebrated ‘Captain Picard Day’ aboard the Enterprise-D would have wanted; each and every one of them would say to Picard what Riker said to him, that he never should have departed from Starfleet.
The tragedy of this latest episode of THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW doesn’t stop on the planet Nepenthe, though. Just as I feared, back on the Borg Artifact, Hugh is made to pay for his betrayal of his Romulan patrons, first with the lives of all his fellow Ex-Bees, and then his own. Whether or not Jean-Luc Picard has the wherewithal to plead the case of the recovering Borg to the Federation is now, largely, beside the point: the limited good that was being done in this tragedy-laden world has joined the rest of the wreckage Picard has left behind him, on his quest to save the young woman who might be Data’s daughter. Whether or not the same will be said of the warrior Elnor, that’s less certain. Romulan Legolas seems as skilled at taking apart Tal Shiar agents as Legolas Classic was in combat against orcs.
The ease with which so many of the crew of the Enterprise seem to have left the Federation behind, just as its structures seem to be at their most fragile, leaves me shaken (and, honestly, inspires me to draw a lot of parallels between my fictional childhood heroes and certain recent, real-life people I thought would remain heroes of mine, as well). It’s nice that Riker and Troi have been able to find peace on this planet that’s apparently for retired Starfleet officers, alongside their daughter, Kestra*, but the galaxy seems to be on the verge of falling apart. Starfleet can’t seem to get its act together, its leadership preoccupied with playing games of intrigue, rather than doing the hard work of patching frayed alliances back together, and reminding its people that there’s so much more uniting them than dividing. Perhaps a resurgent Borg threat is the kind of crisis that could inspire all these people to put aside their differences, once more? If even this utopia can decay, what kind of hope are we supposed to obtain for ourselves, in our own lives?
I think Jean-Luc Picard might say that we need to believe in each other, the way he believes in Will Riker and Deanna Troi. I certainly wish he would, in any case.
*Cursory internet research indicates that my memory for science fiction trivia hasn’t completely deserted me, and that it’s still an open question as to whether or not Deanna’s father took on her mother’s family name when they married. I can’t find any authoritative source on whether or not Lwaxana’s last name was Troi before the marriage. Betazoid culture is progressive to the point of being libertine; I doubt there’s any pressure one way or the other, as to the adopting of family names. This has nothing to do with anything related to plot, and I certainly don’t see Deanna Troi ever being anybody but Deanna Troi. My own upcoming wedding means that I have marriage convention on the brain.
**I will always wonder what FIRST CONTACT would have been like, if Stewart’s desire to make himself into an action star hadn’t prompted a revision of the script. What if Riker had stayed aboard the Enterprise, to fight the Borg invasion, and Picard had been the one to coach Zefram Cochrane into taking one of the most critical actions of human history, the test flight of his warp speed-capable ship? Putting Riker and Picard in situations with which each character was less obviously suited worked out just fine, but I’d love to find the universe where they stuck to the script. Also, where THAT THING YOU DO’s shooting schedule didn’t result in apparently lifelong Star Trek nerd Tom Hanks’ having to back out of playing Cochrane. I positively adore James Cromwell’s performance in FIRST CONTACT; I wouldn’t change it for anything. I just want to see what Hanks would’ve done.
***Actually, the reason I might have taken so strongly to Stewart and Hugh Jackman in the X-MEN movies might have to do with their physical dynamic, so similar to Stewart’s with Frakes. That’s probably a good topic for another day.
****It helps that the people in charge of THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW cast one of the most adorable babies I have ever seen as Thad Riker, for the fireplace mantle photo showing Jean-Luc Picard joyfully cradling his (I assume) godson.
*Kestra is played by Lulu Wilson, who manages to combine many of the best traits of her character’s parents. She’s adventurous and thoughtful, and very, very kind. A Kestra Riker tale could be something special, too.
from March 21, 2020 (about episode 8):
It’s taken nearly eight episodes of THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW for us to get even a glimpse of the man most of us remember when we think about Captain Jean-Luc Picard. It’s been nearly eighteen years since the release of STAR TREK: NEMESIS, and as we’ve seen, the intervening time hasn’t been kind to him. The disasters and setbacks have worn him down, as they would have anybody, leading him to resign his position in Starfleet and retreat all the way back to the Picard Family Estate in France.
Ever since the android girl Dahj appeared on his doorstep, he’s been trying to get his groove back, taking any excuse that presented itself to rush off on what Obi-Wan Kenobi probably would’ve called a “damn fool idealistic crusade.” But, Picard’s tackled his quest with all the focus of a man in the throes of a mid-life crisis. He’s recklessly antagonized his former friends in Starfleet, the remains of the secret Romulan intelligence apparatus, a slew of renegade space pirates, and maybe even the Borg. He’s never thought more than half a step ahead of where he currently finds himself, and in doing so, facilitated the slaughter of his old friend Hugh and dozens of other rehabilitated Borg drones. Picard’s allowed anger and desperation to rule his behavior for so long that it’s not certain if he’ll ever really recover himself.
It’s in the darkness of this eighth episode of THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW (“Broken Pieces”), when the equally-jaded, also-former-Starfleet officer Captain Cristobal Rios finds himself at his wits’ end and despairing, that Picard finally digs deep within himself, and reignites the fire of the man he used to be. Quietly, with less pomposity than he showed on the bridge of the Enterprise, but with the same inspirational conviction, Picard tells Rios:
“The past is written. But the future is left for us to write, and we have powerful tools, Rios: openness, optimism, and the spirit of curiosity. All they have is secrecy and fear, and fear is the great destroyer.”
CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW series composer Jeff Russo (who’s also the composer for STAR TREK: DISCOVERY) has done a masterful job weaving Star Trek’s iconic music into his original compositions, but perhaps never more than in this moment. Stretching out the notes from the Jerry Goldsmith tune that STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION used for its theme, the music under these lines shifts from atmospheric to instantly familiar. We recognize the notes, just as Picard recognizes himself.
from March 22, 2020 (about episode 9):
Well, it seems safe to say, now, with one more episode of THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW to go, that we’ve gone fully into Mass Effect territory here in the Star Trek universe. A ban on the development of artificial intelligence, ostracized androids plotting their revenge, otherworldly machine lifeforms bound for our galaxy, intent on wiping out all organic life… I know that every basic story has been told and retold so many times that an even-slightly-astute audience will recognize patterns where the creators didn’t intend for there to be, but sometimes, those patterns are jumping up and down, screaming their need to be acknowledged. At least Jean-Luc Picard himself is finally trending back into Paragon moral territory, after enabling so much Renegade behavior during his latest outer space adventure.
Given the nearly-casual pace at which the first few episodes of THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW moved, it shouldn’t come as much surprise that this penultimate episode (‘Et in Arcadia Ego, Part I’) feels like it’s sprinting to the conclusion of the season. It’s a shame we didn’t get to linger in the (apparently false) peace of the android homeworld, Coppelius, for which Picard and his new crew have been searching all season, but it was fun to be bombarded by surprise after surprise for much of the episode’s beginning, especially with the reveal of a heretofore unknown biological child of Dr. Noonien Soong’s (in contrast to his android children, Data/Lore/B-4). This revelation has the additional bonus of allowing Brent Spiner to return to the show again, in substantially less makeup! I suspect he appreciated that.
Dr. Altan Soong appears to have spent some time on the unnamed planet where the roguish con man/smuggler Harry Mudd temporarily ruled a society of androids from another galaxy (STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES S2E12, ‘I, Mudd’), as he styled his own android creations in much the same way as Mudd’s androids. They come in matching pairs and trios, and many wear the same kind of single-color outfits with unconventionally exposed patches of flesh that typify the costume style of TOS. Their golden skin gives away their Soong-type android heritage, but otherwise, they look like they could’ve been yanked out of the time stream from a century earlier. Could Coppelius be that same nameless world from ‘I, Mudd?’
After having to play deadpan for so many years as Lieutenant Commander Data, the glee in Brent Spiner’s eyes is palpable when he gets to cut loose, emote, and sometimes even chew scenery. Dr. Arik Soong* on STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE is probably the most fun he had on Star Trek, but I bet if he gets more opportunities to reprise Altan in the future, this other Soong might leap into the running. Perhaps we could find out where his design sense originated…
I have to admit that this hard pivot away from the Borg and into Romulans (as well as vengeful machines we’ve never seen before) wasn’t where I’d expected to see THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW take its story. Maybe this is the plan for the apparently-to-be-filmed-concurrently second and third seasons of the program, Jean-Luc Picard and his motley crew, hopefully filled out by a few beloved returning characters, setting out to save all life as we know it from homicidal alien forces? If it means Sir Patrick Stewart gets to deliver some more rousing speeches about the value of the open Federation society, freedom, and self-determination, then I’m all for it (see, STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION S3E26, ‘The Best of Both Worlds, Part I,’ as well as plenty of other episodes/movies).
from March 30, 2020 (for episode 10):
“Fear is an incompetent teacher. Yes, they have life, but no one is teaching them what it’s for. To be alive is a responsibility, as well as a right.”
We made it! We made it to the final episode of THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW, where all the thoughtful analysis of our hero, virtues and failings alike, should theoretically have been synthesized into some kind of a thesis. Where the show argues that, dammit, there’s still a place in this angry, unstable galaxy for a man who believes in resolving differences with words, rather than photon torpedoes. Where Picard gets one more chance to do what he does best: argue for his values with the passion that only a classically trained British actor can.
Except… he just sounds tired. His arguments are delivered not in a hot-blooded, full-throated defense of compassion, understanding, and liberty, but in barely more than a whisper. Where once he told sweeping stories, and wove tapestries with his words, now the best he can muster is, “I trust you,” as the pieces of an orbital conflict the likes of which Star Trek’s not seen since the DS9 days swirl into place around him.
Yes, Picard ultimately wins the android girl Soji to his side with his words, saving all the organic life in the Federation (for now), but those malicious mechanical tentacles were only half the threat orbiting Coppelius. Too, there was the matter of the hundreds of Romulan warships that arrived intent on obliterating the entire android world. They only, finally listened to Picard’s pleas because of the arrival of an equally dense fleet of Federation ships.* Diplomacy works, but apparently only if you have at your back hundreds of of the “toughest, fastest, most powerful ship[s] Starfleet has ever put into service” (to quote Acting Captain Will Riker,** as he arrives to provide Picard with the kind of support Picard needed all along). Then, as quickly as they arrived, all the exciting pieces get swept away.
My frustration doesn’t stem from missing out on Star Trek’s version of INFINITY WAR. Spaceship battles were never what endeared Star Trek to me in the first place. The incessant, relentless buildup to next-to-nothing took the wind out of my sails far worse than any perceived lack of photon torpedoes ever could. Every time it seemed like the show was going to spin up to really do something, or really say something, it sputtered out. Watching THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW often felt like playing a sci-fi RPG where the side quests were significantly more intriguing than the main story (hello, MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA). Maybe that was the point? Maybe it, like Lucille Bluth, got off on being withholding?
I wanted to love this show. Especially in the first few episodes, even if the main stories themselves weren’t as gripping as I’d hoped to find them, I could find nuggets of the future that fascinated me, and explore the parallels between our future and the one onscreen. But, as the world shrank, and we began to focus on the story the show really wanted to tell, I unearthed those nuggets with steadily less frequency, and found my imagination fired less and less by what was actually happening onscreen. Watching THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW became, in many ways, like watching SOLO, where the stories unfolding just out of the camera’s frame were more compelling than the one being told in front of me.
I don’t think it hit a point as low as some of those TNG hit in its first couple seasons;**** for all its flaws, THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW was, out of the gate, much more in tune with its moment in time. I know Star Trek misses far more often than it hits. In FUTURAMA’s episode ‘Where No Fan Has Gone Before’ (S4E12), when Star Trek super-fan Philip J. Fry describes THE ORIGINAL SERIES to Leonard Nimoy as a show that had, “Seventy-nine episodes? About thirty good ones?” I knew exactly which ones he meant. Particularly for people like me, who grew up watching TNG and internalized its morality and worldview more than we even knew, THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW is at least good enough Star Trek. Both seasons of DISCOVERY are substantially better. But, as I’ve mentioned before, seeing Star Trek finally press forward, into its own future, is, by itself, something for which I’m very grateful.
It’s unlikely, at least in my mind, that this is the first opportunity Stewart has been offered to reprise his signature role in the years since the release of STAR TREK: NEMESIS. I figured THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW would have to be a singularly special thing for him to want to put the combadge on, one more time. Hopefully, the second and third seasons of the show will deliver on the potential that the show offers. But, let’s be honest, too: I love Star Trek, Jean-Luc Picard, and Sir Patrick Stewart with so few conditions that I would probably watch an AI-engineered Picard show, with Stewart and the rest of the TNG cast reprising their roles via holograms and synthesized vocals.
To delve into wishful thinking for a minute, I hope Number One returns, in all his fuzzy glory. Season Two of THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW desperately needs more of the best pit bull in the whole Alpha Quadrant.
*Over the course of the show, as Picard and his rag-tag crew struck further and further out from Earth, the Federation’s military presence waned. Starfleet seemed unable to spare ships to keep the peace along its own borders. Miraculously, though, they have hundreds of ships more powerful than even the Enterprise-E ready to rush off on the word of a reserve officer. I know space is big, but maybe Starfleet could spare a few ships from its secret fleet to protect the lives of innocent people across the Alpha Quadrant, as well as, you know, seek out new life and new civilizations? No wonder seemingly everyone who actually believes in Starfleet’s mission wound up resigning.
It’s frustratingly predictable that, in the great grand tradition of Star Trek’s screwing over Marina Sirtis, that Troi apparently wasn’t able to suit up and join her husband as he cowboy’d up to save Picard. Or, maybe she was on the bridge of another ship, that we just never saw.*
***Wait, JJ Abrams isn’t in charge of Star Trek anymore. I don’t think we’ll have to navigate headcanon plot points getting dolled out in interviews for this franchise, anymore.
****Except maybe in forcing Brent Spiner to put on the Data makeup a couple more times. From where I sit, he made the right call in ending his time as the Federation’s favorite android back in 2002, both in terms of his physical presentation as the character, and in concluding Data’s story.