Let’s try this again, shall we?
Obviously, I failed in my attempt to successfully blog even one season of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Anger is a potent fuel, but there were only so many ways to refer to Lieutenant Ash “prefers his racht at least half-dead” Tyler, and, at the point where he was outed as a Klingon sleeper, what was the point? Suffice it to say: I did not enjoy the experience of watching Discovery season 1 and have yet to even attempt to watch season 2. I will try to give a glib explanation later (by way of explaining my nascent skepticism of “Star Trek: Picard”). For now, let me just point out that, in the penultimate episode of Discovery season 1, the war between the Federation and the Klingons has gone so lopsidedly that the front lines are within a few parsecs of Earth. Cosmically speaking, a parsec is not that far. This strains my credulity because, while Captain Kirk’s Federation certainly doesn’t like the Klingon Empire (and vice-versa), nothing in the original series gives us any indication that, barely ten years prior, the Federation almost ceased to exist due to a war with the Klingons. That is a pretty dire reality to just sweep under the rug. Furthermore, the Klingons’ reason for not just finishing the Federation off is… strained. We see no evidence of any arcane ritual indicating that the soul of Kahless was reborn into a Starfleet officer (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you really should consider watching “Babylon 5”). The Federation seeds Q’onos’ mantle with planet-killing explosives and then gives the trigger mechanism to Klingon revolutionaries who negotiate the formation of Klingon unity government somehow less bent on wiping out the Federation that, as I mentioned, just threatened to destroy Q’onos. Needless to say, my respect for people whose favorite Star Trek is “Voyager” went up considerably after watching “Discovery.”
And so we come to “Picard.” I have always been skeptical of the idea of the idea of “Star Trek: Picard.” Creators coming back to long dormant projects and completely missing the mark is, after all, a thing that happens in science fiction all (Star Wars) the (Foundation) time (Handmaid’s Tale — I’m sorry; “Testaments” wasn’t great). That being said, I am also human, and when I saw the trailer featuring a sextegenarian Will Riker yelling at his kid to use her inside voice, I decided to adopt an attitude of cautious optimism, the alternative being too terrible for me to contemplate.
There were actually other reasons to be optimistic, as well. It did not take long for us to learn from the trailers that the Borg (or remnants thereof; I distinctly remember Captain Janeway killing all of the Borg upon her triumphant return to the Alpha Quadrant) and Seven-of-Nine were going to play central roles in this series. I was originally skeptical of these choices. In my opinion, the “Next Generation” became a little too obsessed with the Borg in its later years (the last Borg-themed story I actually enjoyed was “I, Borg;” “Descent” and “First Contact” felt too much like action movies, which is to say that they felt too much like Star Wars for me) and I have always been a “Voyager” skeptic. However, after reading the reactions at tomandlorenzo.com, I came to realize that these were probably necessary choices. The two defining traumas* of Captain Picard’s career are that a) he is one of only a few dozen people, presumably in the galaxy, to survive the Borg assimilation process and that b) for seven years, a demigod selected him as its personal chew toy (I know fanservice is a problem, but it will be really hard to swallow a post-Starfleet Picard series if Whoopi Goldberg and John de Lancie don’t either appear or get explained away). Seven-of-Nine is one of the other few survivors of Borg assimilation. It beggars belief that she and Picard don’t attend weekly meetings of some kind together. So: if I want a series that thoughtfully treats the aftermath of everything I know and love as “Star Trek,” then I’m probably going to have to swallow some Borg-themed stories. As my wife said: let’s rip this bandaid off.
*Quick aside: the fact that getting tortured by David Warner is a distant third indicates just how terrible Jean-Luc Picard’s life actually was.
The first episode takes place about two decades after the events of “Star Trek: Nemesis” (the only thing about which you need to know is that Data directly sacrifices his life to save Picard specifically and the Enterprise more generally). A lot has happened in that time. The Romulan sun has exploded (which events lead to the creation of the execrable alternate timeline depicted in the even more execrable Abrams Trek movies)*. Captain Picard has rallied Starfleet to go rescue the Romulan population (a measly 900 million spread over Romulus and Remus; apparently 24th century birth control works). A population of androids has gone rogue, “deactivated Mars’ planetary defense grid” (whatever that means), and attacked Utopia Planitia such that “Mars is still burning to this day” (whatever THAT means). As of this writing, I have no idea how we got from “Doctor Soong was an unprecedented genius; no one has ever been able to create another artificial intelligence” to “there are enough androids to SET MARS ON FIRE.” Starfleet has banned the research into and production of artificial life. Captain (Admiral?) Picard has resigned in protest of said decision. He is now living out his dotage on the family winery with two pointy eared companions whom, I am embarrassed to say, it took me until the second commercial break to identify as Romulans, rather than Vulcans.
*Another quick aside: I guess ecological catastrophe is the fate of all major astro-political rivals to the Federation. The events ultimately leading to the Federation-Klingon alliance began when the Klingon moon Praxis exploded, promising to render Q’onos’ air unbreathable within a generation. The Romulan sun goes supernova without warning (that’s not how it happens). I know that only Vulcans and Bajorans have religion in the 24th century, but apparently there is a God and He wants you to JOIN STARFLEET.
Meanwhile, in Boston, a Very Special Girl (I’m sorry, but her role in this story is a little Jenna Louise Coleman vis-a-vis Matt Smith; her actual name is Dahj) is celebrating with her boyfriend that she was just accepted as a research fellow by the Daystrom Institute. Four people in black jumpsuits and motorcycle helmets beam into her apartment, murder her boyfriend, and start yelling at her about “activation” and “the rest of you.” She “activates,” discovers that, much like Neo, she knows Kung Fu, and murders the people in black. She “deactivates,” starts crying over her boyfriend’s body, and then closes her eyes and sees a vision of Jean-Luc Picard. Don’t worry, Dahj, that last part happens to me all the time.
Dahj comes to Chateau Picard in search of refuge. She insists she feels safe around Jean-Luc, and he’s willing to go with that, even though he has no memory of ever meeting her. She stays the night, but is gone the next morning. On a dream-inspired hunch, Jean-Luc visits the Quantum Archives of his personal affects at Starfleet Command (honestly, I expect a more responsible use of the word “quantum” from Star Trek; though, I guess the Defiant did fire “quantum torpedos”…) and discovers that, thirty years prior (so, about ten years before Nemesis?) Data painted a picture of Dahj, which he entitled “Daughter” (no, I don’t think she’s Lal; that would be terrible). Dahj finds Jean-Luc at Starfleet Command. Jean-Luc explains to her that he thinks she is a “synthetic” (what I used to know as an “android”) even though she was obviously bleeding when he first met her. She denies it. More people in motorcycle helmets show up. We learn that they (or, at least two of them) are Romulans. Dahj murders them all, but the last one blows her up with an overloading phaser rifle. The blast hurls Jean-Luc to the pavement. He wakes up on his couch in La Barre, his Romulan companions hovering over him in deep concern (this will be important later).
Jean-Luc visits the Daystrom institute and learns that it is theoretically possible to make androids out of flesh and blood (because what you really want is an artificial intelligence that can still be killed by the Spanish Flu), but only in pairs, which means….there is another. Cut to a “Romulan Reclamation Center” (nope; don’t know what that means, either), where we meet a woman who looks exactly like the late great Dahj but is named Soji and is being hit on by a Romulan who is just cute enough that you wish he was cuter. As they flirt, the camera pulls away and we see that the “Romulan Reclamation Center” is really a partially assembled Borg Cube (which doesn’t seem possible, given that all of the Borg cubes that ever made it to the Alpha quadrant got blown up).
This is all fine. It is actually almost intriguing. There’s a lot of subtext which I glossed over indicating that the Federation has had second thoughts about its decision to rescue the Romulans from their rapidly dying homeworld. I support that decision. Late stage DS9 seriously started to question the Federation's devotion to its professed ideals (or, even, whether their ideals were worth devotion in the first place), and, given the way that the Western liberal consensus has unfolded (unraveled?) over the quarter century since the “Next Generation” went off the air, I think it was good decision to commit to exploring that, assuming that is the showrunners’ plan.
What is less fine is the puzzle-box nature of the story as presented thus far. A mysterious girl shows up at Chateau Picard in need of help, just as Data foretold in one of his paintings. There are two of them because there physically have to be (because of *course* there have to be). Don’t get me wrong, “Clues,” “Cause and Effect,” and “Remember Me” were all great episodes, but if that’s all the “Next Generation” had ever amounted to, I doubt we would be having this conversation.
I am probably overreacting. Except…
It is never adequately explained why Dahj left Chateau Picard in the middle of the night. There’s a weird scene in which she contacts her mother via space Skype and says that she felt it was “too dangerous” for Jean-Luc for her to stay there (her mother, eerily, responds “find Picard”). It seemed to me that Dahj was eliding something. One of Jean-Luc’s Romulan companions says that she looked over the feed from the Chateau’s security cameras and could find no evidence of Dahj leaving. That also doesn’t seem right. Recall, this is the world of “Computer, locate Commander Riker.” Which brings us to the aftermath of the attack at Starfleet Command. The phaser rifle blows up, Jean-Luc is hurled to the ground, and we cut to his living room in La Barre where his Romulan companions inform him that the official story is that he was alone on the roof (the attack was on a rooftop) and no one knows what happened. Jean-Luc immediately assumes that Dahj, being a synthetic, must have a cloaking device that gets triggered whenever she is in danger but that…. makes no sense. What does make sense is that Jean-Luc’s Romulan companions are somehow “in on it” (recall that the motorcycle helmet wearing assailants appear to be Romulan-affiliated). Dahj left Chateau Picard because she did not feel safe, either implicitly or because Jean-Luc’s companions tried to attack her. Jean-Luc’s companions know exactly what happened at Starfleet Command and are trying to put Jean-Luc off the scent. Data is the one who reset the ship’s chronometer and that is why Doctor Crusher’s pink moss is so advanced.
I disliked “Discovery” for many reasons. If I had to distill them all down into one sentence, though, it would be that I felt the show’s creative team was writing towards the twists. Character development and building a textured world were never as important as revealing a) that Captain Lorca was from the Mirror Universe b) that Ash Tyler *always* ate live racht and c) that the Mirror Universe was run by Emperor Michelle Yeoh who was also a cannibal. As long as those revelations landed with the appropriate emotional impact, nothing else mattered. Unfortunately, since we didn’t care about or necessarily respect the characters experiencing those revelations, they didn’t land with any emotional impact. Also, those revelations were stupid. I will keep watching “Picard.” I will try to remain cautiously optimistic, but I am worried that we are being led into yet another web of deception and conspiracy about which I ultimately do not care. As of this writing, I still want to be proven wrong.
Obviously, I failed in my attempt to successfully blog even one season of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Anger is a potent fuel, but there were only so many ways to refer to Lieutenant Ash “prefers his racht at least half-dead” Tyler, and, at the point where he was outed as a Klingon sleeper, what was the point? Suffice it to say: I did not enjoy the experience of watching Discovery season 1 and have yet to even attempt to watch season 2. I will try to give a glib explanation later (by way of explaining my nascent skepticism of “Star Trek: Picard”). For now, let me just point out that, in the penultimate episode of Discovery season 1, the war between the Federation and the Klingons has gone so lopsidedly that the front lines are within a few parsecs of Earth. Cosmically speaking, a parsec is not that far. This strains my credulity because, while Captain Kirk’s Federation certainly doesn’t like the Klingon Empire (and vice-versa), nothing in the original series gives us any indication that, barely ten years prior, the Federation almost ceased to exist due to a war with the Klingons. That is a pretty dire reality to just sweep under the rug. Furthermore, the Klingons’ reason for not just finishing the Federation off is… strained. We see no evidence of any arcane ritual indicating that the soul of Kahless was reborn into a Starfleet officer (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you really should consider watching “Babylon 5”). The Federation seeds Q’onos’ mantle with planet-killing explosives and then gives the trigger mechanism to Klingon revolutionaries who negotiate the formation of Klingon unity government somehow less bent on wiping out the Federation that, as I mentioned, just threatened to destroy Q’onos. Needless to say, my respect for people whose favorite Star Trek is “Voyager” went up considerably after watching “Discovery.”
And so we come to “Picard.” I have always been skeptical of the idea of the idea of “Star Trek: Picard.” Creators coming back to long dormant projects and completely missing the mark is, after all, a thing that happens in science fiction all (Star Wars) the (Foundation) time (Handmaid’s Tale — I’m sorry; “Testaments” wasn’t great). That being said, I am also human, and when I saw the trailer featuring a sextegenarian Will Riker yelling at his kid to use her inside voice, I decided to adopt an attitude of cautious optimism, the alternative being too terrible for me to contemplate.
There were actually other reasons to be optimistic, as well. It did not take long for us to learn from the trailers that the Borg (or remnants thereof; I distinctly remember Captain Janeway killing all of the Borg upon her triumphant return to the Alpha Quadrant) and Seven-of-Nine were going to play central roles in this series. I was originally skeptical of these choices. In my opinion, the “Next Generation” became a little too obsessed with the Borg in its later years (the last Borg-themed story I actually enjoyed was “I, Borg;” “Descent” and “First Contact” felt too much like action movies, which is to say that they felt too much like Star Wars for me) and I have always been a “Voyager” skeptic. However, after reading the reactions at tomandlorenzo.com, I came to realize that these were probably necessary choices. The two defining traumas* of Captain Picard’s career are that a) he is one of only a few dozen people, presumably in the galaxy, to survive the Borg assimilation process and that b) for seven years, a demigod selected him as its personal chew toy (I know fanservice is a problem, but it will be really hard to swallow a post-Starfleet Picard series if Whoopi Goldberg and John de Lancie don’t either appear or get explained away). Seven-of-Nine is one of the other few survivors of Borg assimilation. It beggars belief that she and Picard don’t attend weekly meetings of some kind together. So: if I want a series that thoughtfully treats the aftermath of everything I know and love as “Star Trek,” then I’m probably going to have to swallow some Borg-themed stories. As my wife said: let’s rip this bandaid off.
*Quick aside: the fact that getting tortured by David Warner is a distant third indicates just how terrible Jean-Luc Picard’s life actually was.
The first episode takes place about two decades after the events of “Star Trek: Nemesis” (the only thing about which you need to know is that Data directly sacrifices his life to save Picard specifically and the Enterprise more generally). A lot has happened in that time. The Romulan sun has exploded (which events lead to the creation of the execrable alternate timeline depicted in the even more execrable Abrams Trek movies)*. Captain Picard has rallied Starfleet to go rescue the Romulan population (a measly 900 million spread over Romulus and Remus; apparently 24th century birth control works). A population of androids has gone rogue, “deactivated Mars’ planetary defense grid” (whatever that means), and attacked Utopia Planitia such that “Mars is still burning to this day” (whatever THAT means). As of this writing, I have no idea how we got from “Doctor Soong was an unprecedented genius; no one has ever been able to create another artificial intelligence” to “there are enough androids to SET MARS ON FIRE.” Starfleet has banned the research into and production of artificial life. Captain (Admiral?) Picard has resigned in protest of said decision. He is now living out his dotage on the family winery with two pointy eared companions whom, I am embarrassed to say, it took me until the second commercial break to identify as Romulans, rather than Vulcans.
*Another quick aside: I guess ecological catastrophe is the fate of all major astro-political rivals to the Federation. The events ultimately leading to the Federation-Klingon alliance began when the Klingon moon Praxis exploded, promising to render Q’onos’ air unbreathable within a generation. The Romulan sun goes supernova without warning (that’s not how it happens). I know that only Vulcans and Bajorans have religion in the 24th century, but apparently there is a God and He wants you to JOIN STARFLEET.
Meanwhile, in Boston, a Very Special Girl (I’m sorry, but her role in this story is a little Jenna Louise Coleman vis-a-vis Matt Smith; her actual name is Dahj) is celebrating with her boyfriend that she was just accepted as a research fellow by the Daystrom Institute. Four people in black jumpsuits and motorcycle helmets beam into her apartment, murder her boyfriend, and start yelling at her about “activation” and “the rest of you.” She “activates,” discovers that, much like Neo, she knows Kung Fu, and murders the people in black. She “deactivates,” starts crying over her boyfriend’s body, and then closes her eyes and sees a vision of Jean-Luc Picard. Don’t worry, Dahj, that last part happens to me all the time.
Dahj comes to Chateau Picard in search of refuge. She insists she feels safe around Jean-Luc, and he’s willing to go with that, even though he has no memory of ever meeting her. She stays the night, but is gone the next morning. On a dream-inspired hunch, Jean-Luc visits the Quantum Archives of his personal affects at Starfleet Command (honestly, I expect a more responsible use of the word “quantum” from Star Trek; though, I guess the Defiant did fire “quantum torpedos”…) and discovers that, thirty years prior (so, about ten years before Nemesis?) Data painted a picture of Dahj, which he entitled “Daughter” (no, I don’t think she’s Lal; that would be terrible). Dahj finds Jean-Luc at Starfleet Command. Jean-Luc explains to her that he thinks she is a “synthetic” (what I used to know as an “android”) even though she was obviously bleeding when he first met her. She denies it. More people in motorcycle helmets show up. We learn that they (or, at least two of them) are Romulans. Dahj murders them all, but the last one blows her up with an overloading phaser rifle. The blast hurls Jean-Luc to the pavement. He wakes up on his couch in La Barre, his Romulan companions hovering over him in deep concern (this will be important later).
Jean-Luc visits the Daystrom institute and learns that it is theoretically possible to make androids out of flesh and blood (because what you really want is an artificial intelligence that can still be killed by the Spanish Flu), but only in pairs, which means….there is another. Cut to a “Romulan Reclamation Center” (nope; don’t know what that means, either), where we meet a woman who looks exactly like the late great Dahj but is named Soji and is being hit on by a Romulan who is just cute enough that you wish he was cuter. As they flirt, the camera pulls away and we see that the “Romulan Reclamation Center” is really a partially assembled Borg Cube (which doesn’t seem possible, given that all of the Borg cubes that ever made it to the Alpha quadrant got blown up).
This is all fine. It is actually almost intriguing. There’s a lot of subtext which I glossed over indicating that the Federation has had second thoughts about its decision to rescue the Romulans from their rapidly dying homeworld. I support that decision. Late stage DS9 seriously started to question the Federation's devotion to its professed ideals (or, even, whether their ideals were worth devotion in the first place), and, given the way that the Western liberal consensus has unfolded (unraveled?) over the quarter century since the “Next Generation” went off the air, I think it was good decision to commit to exploring that, assuming that is the showrunners’ plan.
What is less fine is the puzzle-box nature of the story as presented thus far. A mysterious girl shows up at Chateau Picard in need of help, just as Data foretold in one of his paintings. There are two of them because there physically have to be (because of *course* there have to be). Don’t get me wrong, “Clues,” “Cause and Effect,” and “Remember Me” were all great episodes, but if that’s all the “Next Generation” had ever amounted to, I doubt we would be having this conversation.
I am probably overreacting. Except…
It is never adequately explained why Dahj left Chateau Picard in the middle of the night. There’s a weird scene in which she contacts her mother via space Skype and says that she felt it was “too dangerous” for Jean-Luc for her to stay there (her mother, eerily, responds “find Picard”). It seemed to me that Dahj was eliding something. One of Jean-Luc’s Romulan companions says that she looked over the feed from the Chateau’s security cameras and could find no evidence of Dahj leaving. That also doesn’t seem right. Recall, this is the world of “Computer, locate Commander Riker.” Which brings us to the aftermath of the attack at Starfleet Command. The phaser rifle blows up, Jean-Luc is hurled to the ground, and we cut to his living room in La Barre where his Romulan companions inform him that the official story is that he was alone on the roof (the attack was on a rooftop) and no one knows what happened. Jean-Luc immediately assumes that Dahj, being a synthetic, must have a cloaking device that gets triggered whenever she is in danger but that…. makes no sense. What does make sense is that Jean-Luc’s Romulan companions are somehow “in on it” (recall that the motorcycle helmet wearing assailants appear to be Romulan-affiliated). Dahj left Chateau Picard because she did not feel safe, either implicitly or because Jean-Luc’s companions tried to attack her. Jean-Luc’s companions know exactly what happened at Starfleet Command and are trying to put Jean-Luc off the scent. Data is the one who reset the ship’s chronometer and that is why Doctor Crusher’s pink moss is so advanced.
I disliked “Discovery” for many reasons. If I had to distill them all down into one sentence, though, it would be that I felt the show’s creative team was writing towards the twists. Character development and building a textured world were never as important as revealing a) that Captain Lorca was from the Mirror Universe b) that Ash Tyler *always* ate live racht and c) that the Mirror Universe was run by Emperor Michelle Yeoh who was also a cannibal. As long as those revelations landed with the appropriate emotional impact, nothing else mattered. Unfortunately, since we didn’t care about or necessarily respect the characters experiencing those revelations, they didn’t land with any emotional impact. Also, those revelations were stupid. I will keep watching “Picard.” I will try to remain cautiously optimistic, but I am worried that we are being led into yet another web of deception and conspiracy about which I ultimately do not care. As of this writing, I still want to be proven wrong.
