Going into this week, there was exactly one way that I could imagine Picard saving itself from the dustbin of mediocrity: Seven-of-Nine and Elnor patch up the Artifact and leave the planet of the Synths to star in their own spin-off-spin-off series
Star Trek: Rangers of the Neutral Zone
"Decapitating people and fighting crime"
Alas, it was not to be, and once again I find myself holed up in the dark of night hate-blogging about my favorite deep space franchise.
I am going to go ahead and assume that much will be written about this season finale's abject failure to execute on the most basic elements of story telling. "Abusive Romulan Boyfriend" (that's what Raffi actually calls him, because he has no name) shows up at La Sirena, explaining to Captain Rios and Raffi, who left the city of the Synths long before the apocalyptic nature of Commodore Oh's vision was explained to anyone, that they have to work together to prevent Romulan Ragnarok. Captain Rios and Raffi, of course, believe him, because he has such penetrating blue eyes. Commodore Oh, possessed of a deep religious conviction that the Synths must die for the good of all life, when presented with a choice between carrying out her mission and defending her fleet of 200 warbirds against a holographic projection of 100 ships, each less than a third the size of a single warbird, chooses to take defensive action rather than carry out "planetary sterilization procedure 5" (because, of course the Romulans have more than 4 ways to wipe out all life on a planet). Captain Picard dies of an acute Irumodic attack, mourned by people who are not named Riker, Troi, LaForge, Worf, or Crusher, but it's alright because Doctor Jurati knows how to download brains into synthetic bodies. Apparently, you build synthetic life forms out of flesh and blood so that you don't have to deal with the mass opprobrium that would result from recasting one of the most beloved roles in all of science fiction simply because the actor who originated the role is too old to play an android. None of these moments make any sense or have any meaning and yet, without them, the story Picard was always trying to tell us would, I guess, not have been impossible. Perhaps this story should never have been told.
Star Trek has always been problematic -- it wasn't until mid-Deep Space Nine that its treatment of race got any more nuanced than "imagine a colorblind society," and I similarly doubt that anything pre-Kira and Dax could remotely be considered "feminist" -- but it has somehow managed to always remain simultaneously aspirational. Human society was perfectible, but only if we lived into our ideals better than we ever had before. At the intellectual fulcrum of this episode, as Jean-Luc and Doctor Jurati are strapping themselves into La Sirena, preparing to face down the Romulan fleet alone, Jean-Luc explains that the problem with the Synths, the reason that they are even contemplating wiping out all sex-based life in the galaxy, is that "no one has taught them what it means to be alive; what life is for...they're just children. They are going to have to learn the way all children do: by example." By Jean-Luc's example. Put another way, "we already had the key to our perfectible human society, but you doofuses lost it under the couch." This is more backward looking than I think Star Trek has ever been. The Synths are not children. They are not incapable of making their own moral choices in the universe. They are refugees from an attempted genocide. The Federation has outlawed their existence. The Romulans want to blow them up right now. Absent any sign of good faith from powers which have already attempted mass murder, the Synths are going to have to defend themselves. Admiral Picard wants them to run away and trust in his own beneficence ("I will be your advocated before the Federation; I will protect you") without any evidence beyond his own self-confidence in the face of past failures that his beneficence can turn the tide. He leans into the 24th century liberal humanism which has guided his entire life thus far without once stopping to consider that a Federation organized around that very liberal humanism brought about this mess by banning synthetic life. Admiral Picard is white America, wagging his finger as Baltimore takes to the streets without bothering to count in his head exactly how many unarmed black men have died at the hands of the police in the past... ever. Whatever happened to "She tried it Bruce Maddux's way; she tried it my way; let's try it her way, now"? That was two episodes ago.
I don't consume a lot of media about media. However, my understanding is that Patrick Stewart warmed to the idea of Picard because he thought it was an appropriate response to how the Anglo-Saxon world has unfolded in the quarter century since he sat down to a hand of poker with the crew of the Enterprise. The fragment of an interview I heard on NPR, Sir Patrick said something about the shame of Brexit. I cannot imagine that he is terribly pleased with how his adopted homeland has comported itself, either. I understand the impulse. Most well-meaning liberal reactions to the events of 2016 start somewhere in the vicinity of "but, we're better than this" (I suspect that is going to be the overarching theme of Joe Biden's general election campaign). Honest assessments of what happened, however, inevitably must turn that complaint into a question: "aren't we?" Large swaths of our well meaning liberal society stand ready too look deep into our eyes and whisper: "no." America did not accidentally arrive in the middle of a serious debate about whether or not we want to become a white ethnostate. We arrived here by allowing our faith in the meritorious individual to blind us to all the ways, large and small, that we had allowed our society to remain stratified by race long after we "knew" that it was wrong to do so. We did not accidentally become a society in which the chorus of misogynist trolls can exile women artists from digital communities. We became that society by assuming that all feminism demanded of us was to allow women to participate in our highly questionable model of masculinity without seriously examining whether or not that model weren't predicated on domination and the will to power. And then we invented social media. We have been living into our ideals just fine, Jean-Luc. The problem is that they were the wrong ideals. For a brief moment, I thought that maybe Star Trek was going to confront this terrifying reality at the same time that we are being forced to live through it. I'm sorry I was wrong. As I said: I need a Starfleet captain to scold me into shape every now and then. Jean-Luc Picard is no longer that captain.
Star Trek: Rangers of the Neutral Zone
"Decapitating people and fighting crime"
Alas, it was not to be, and once again I find myself holed up in the dark of night hate-blogging about my favorite deep space franchise.
I am going to go ahead and assume that much will be written about this season finale's abject failure to execute on the most basic elements of story telling. "Abusive Romulan Boyfriend" (that's what Raffi actually calls him, because he has no name) shows up at La Sirena, explaining to Captain Rios and Raffi, who left the city of the Synths long before the apocalyptic nature of Commodore Oh's vision was explained to anyone, that they have to work together to prevent Romulan Ragnarok. Captain Rios and Raffi, of course, believe him, because he has such penetrating blue eyes. Commodore Oh, possessed of a deep religious conviction that the Synths must die for the good of all life, when presented with a choice between carrying out her mission and defending her fleet of 200 warbirds against a holographic projection of 100 ships, each less than a third the size of a single warbird, chooses to take defensive action rather than carry out "planetary sterilization procedure 5" (because, of course the Romulans have more than 4 ways to wipe out all life on a planet). Captain Picard dies of an acute Irumodic attack, mourned by people who are not named Riker, Troi, LaForge, Worf, or Crusher, but it's alright because Doctor Jurati knows how to download brains into synthetic bodies. Apparently, you build synthetic life forms out of flesh and blood so that you don't have to deal with the mass opprobrium that would result from recasting one of the most beloved roles in all of science fiction simply because the actor who originated the role is too old to play an android. None of these moments make any sense or have any meaning and yet, without them, the story Picard was always trying to tell us would, I guess, not have been impossible. Perhaps this story should never have been told.
Star Trek has always been problematic -- it wasn't until mid-Deep Space Nine that its treatment of race got any more nuanced than "imagine a colorblind society," and I similarly doubt that anything pre-Kira and Dax could remotely be considered "feminist" -- but it has somehow managed to always remain simultaneously aspirational. Human society was perfectible, but only if we lived into our ideals better than we ever had before. At the intellectual fulcrum of this episode, as Jean-Luc and Doctor Jurati are strapping themselves into La Sirena, preparing to face down the Romulan fleet alone, Jean-Luc explains that the problem with the Synths, the reason that they are even contemplating wiping out all sex-based life in the galaxy, is that "no one has taught them what it means to be alive; what life is for...they're just children. They are going to have to learn the way all children do: by example." By Jean-Luc's example. Put another way, "we already had the key to our perfectible human society, but you doofuses lost it under the couch." This is more backward looking than I think Star Trek has ever been. The Synths are not children. They are not incapable of making their own moral choices in the universe. They are refugees from an attempted genocide. The Federation has outlawed their existence. The Romulans want to blow them up right now. Absent any sign of good faith from powers which have already attempted mass murder, the Synths are going to have to defend themselves. Admiral Picard wants them to run away and trust in his own beneficence ("I will be your advocated before the Federation; I will protect you") without any evidence beyond his own self-confidence in the face of past failures that his beneficence can turn the tide. He leans into the 24th century liberal humanism which has guided his entire life thus far without once stopping to consider that a Federation organized around that very liberal humanism brought about this mess by banning synthetic life. Admiral Picard is white America, wagging his finger as Baltimore takes to the streets without bothering to count in his head exactly how many unarmed black men have died at the hands of the police in the past... ever. Whatever happened to "She tried it Bruce Maddux's way; she tried it my way; let's try it her way, now"? That was two episodes ago.
I don't consume a lot of media about media. However, my understanding is that Patrick Stewart warmed to the idea of Picard because he thought it was an appropriate response to how the Anglo-Saxon world has unfolded in the quarter century since he sat down to a hand of poker with the crew of the Enterprise. The fragment of an interview I heard on NPR, Sir Patrick said something about the shame of Brexit. I cannot imagine that he is terribly pleased with how his adopted homeland has comported itself, either. I understand the impulse. Most well-meaning liberal reactions to the events of 2016 start somewhere in the vicinity of "but, we're better than this" (I suspect that is going to be the overarching theme of Joe Biden's general election campaign). Honest assessments of what happened, however, inevitably must turn that complaint into a question: "aren't we?" Large swaths of our well meaning liberal society stand ready too look deep into our eyes and whisper: "no." America did not accidentally arrive in the middle of a serious debate about whether or not we want to become a white ethnostate. We arrived here by allowing our faith in the meritorious individual to blind us to all the ways, large and small, that we had allowed our society to remain stratified by race long after we "knew" that it was wrong to do so. We did not accidentally become a society in which the chorus of misogynist trolls can exile women artists from digital communities. We became that society by assuming that all feminism demanded of us was to allow women to participate in our highly questionable model of masculinity without seriously examining whether or not that model weren't predicated on domination and the will to power. And then we invented social media. We have been living into our ideals just fine, Jean-Luc. The problem is that they were the wrong ideals. For a brief moment, I thought that maybe Star Trek was going to confront this terrifying reality at the same time that we are being forced to live through it. I'm sorry I was wrong. As I said: I need a Starfleet captain to scold me into shape every now and then. Jean-Luc Picard is no longer that captain.
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