Note: There will be some spoilers for the first season of Star Trek: Picard in this review as well as some minor spoilers for the first two seasons of Star Trek: Discovery. If you're not caught up on either show, you might want to do so before you read it.
I've been a Star Trek fan ever since I can remember. Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted when I was only nine months old, reruns of the original series have been on my entire life and I grew up with DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise. I read the books, played with the toys, watched original Trek, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager on VHS and DVD, and I got to visit the set of Next Generation when I was six years old. 1987-2005 was my era for Star Trek. Because of this the Kelvin timeline movies, the first two seasons of Star Trek: Discovery and the first season of Star Trek: Picard have been sources of conflicted feelings for me. Mainly because they aren't really Star Trek, and each has been a mixed bag, with both Discovery and Picard having episodes that I just didn't care for.
Then something strange happened to me yesterday afternoon while I awaited the season finale of Picard to come on. I went on StarTrek.com and watched the first episode of The Ready Room, the aftershow hosted by Wil Wheaton. In the episode there's an interview with the show's producers, Alex Kurtzman, Akiva Goldsman, and Michael Chabon, and in it they said something very interesting. They said they weren't interested in fan service. They wanted to tell a story. Now I'm sure some of you are rolling your eyes at that statement because you probably feel that they're actually saying they don't respect Star Trek. Right? Here's the thing though. They are absolutely right. If Star Trek: Picard and even Star Trek: Discovery and the Kelvin timeline movies, were exactly the way classic Star Trek is then what would be the point? We could just watch the classic shows and movies again and save ourselves a lot of time. So when people say that the Kelvin timeline movies, Discovery and Picard aren't Star Trek, in a way they're right.
Star Trek has always been a progressive franchise. The movies starring the original cast from the '60s show are completely different from the original series, because they were made in the '70s and '80s instead of the '60s. Next Generation is completely different from the original show just like Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise are different from Next Generation. And that was done on purpose because if you just did the same thing each time, why bother making new shows or movies? Why tell new stories in that universe if you're just going to do the same thing again and again?
Star Trek: Picard season 1 has been a real roller coaster for me. While I felt that the F-bombs and the heavier violence were unnecessary and could've been toned down a little bit, since it's Star Trek, I enjoyed the overall story of the season. It feels like one ten hour movie split up into sections, and that's never really been done on Star Trek before. Both Deep Space Nine, Enterprise, and Discovery were all serialized, but you could watch an individual episode and not be completely lost. With Picard it was one continuous story and I really appreciated that. It was slow in the beginning, with them taking three episodes for Picard to get on the new ship, the La Sirena, and gather his new crew, who I will get around to talking about shortly, but the pacing is appropriate for the story they were telling and they gave me enough material that I was hooked even though it took forever to get onto the new ship.
It was difficult at the beginning to see Picard as a broken, old man. Especially since my grandfather was really sick at the time and passed away a week and a half after the series premiere of Picard aired. But to see him come out of that and get back to being the man he was when we last saw him at the end of Star Trek Nemesis in 2002 is what this show was about for the first season. It was also a redemption arc for Seven of Nine, who was wracked with guilt over the brutal murder of Icheb and, while I didn't appreciate them actually showing the brutal murder of Icheb on the show, seeing Seven grow for the first time ever was compelling and drew me into the show every time Jeri Ryan was on screen.
The show wasn't just about those two legacy characters though. It was also about Soji, the Android built by Dr. Bruce Maddox using Data's neural pathways learning to accept that while she isn't made of flesh and blood, she's as real as any organic being is, and then learning to maintain her Humanity despite her older sister's manipulation to wipe out all organic life in the universe. Her journey throughout this season has been one of the most compelling things about it for me. And to see her smash the beacon constucted by the Synths that would bring out the destruction of organic life was gratifying and worth waiting for. Isa Briones did such a fantastic job at playing Soji, as well as balancing the differences between Dahj, Soji and Sutra that they really felt like distinct characters. Which is harder to do in live action than it is in animation.
The rest of the cast is pretty great. I wasn't too sure about Raffi or Rios at first given they're rougher characters than we've had on Star Trek previously. But they grew on me as the season went on. Especially Raffi once she overcame her difficulties. Rios grew on me once we found out his tragic backstory and how it related to Soji and everything else going on in the season. So that was cool.
Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall the first season of Star Trek: Picard is pretty great and had an awesome ending. There are some rough spots in the season, mostly in episodes 5 and 6, and the constant use of F-bombs in dialogue, which I feel is completely unnecessary on a Star Trek series. But the story is compelling and the characters all develop in a way we've never seen in a Star Trek series before. And visually it is a gorgeous show. Like Discovery, Picard has a very cinematic look and feel to it that I love. I'm giving the first season of Star Trek: Picard an 8/10 stars simply because the harsher language does detract from the show slightly as it's in just about every episode of the season.
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8806524/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
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