I kind of don’t get why people are thinking this season of Picard is a triumphant return to form for Star Trek, what with the One Last Ride for our space cowboys hitting the nostalgia treat bar in our streaming hamster cage that artifice and circumstance have trapped us all in so hard, and often. Of course it’s great to see One! Last! Mission! from our heroes but I can’t help but have it be top-of-mind that these first six episodes Paramount sent out were supposed to be the best thing ever and the honest truth is there’s about two-and-a-half episodes of actual story and one or two actual Star Trek moments and… that’s about it. This is just so spectacularly average TV now that it’s starting to get embarrassing although I fully admit they’ve pulled the football away from us so many times they could do Star Trek: Black Sails and it would take me halfway into season two to recognize how awesome that would be.
Everything cool is immediately shown and forgotten like drunk girls flashing for beads at Mardi Gras. I mean, that’s great, and everything, and who doesn’t like boobs, but why is it Patrick Stewart’s mammaries and why is he pulling up his shirt at 82? Come on. But then Worf beams in and there’s that Klingon battle music cue from TMP. Who doesn’t want to beam into a room followed by Klingon battle music? That’s great. Very Star Trek. But then, they immediately say “we retaliated with a Starfleet-made virus.”
No. No, no, no, no. That is a very not-Federation thing to do. Very un-Star Trek. But, it’s apparently OK, because then, “Oh, but we delivered the cure.” Well, no wonder the Changelings are mad. And, really, in a world where half the planet thinks the Rona was a plot by sinister agents for realsies, is that really the best “real world” event to use your speculative fiction show to comment on? Oh, wait; that’s right. The current stewards just know Star Trek phonetically. A Xerox of a Xerox; that’s why it’s so hollow and soulless.
And speaking of “very un-Star Trek,” how do you like those leather jackets and gun holsters just to sell you on the fact they are all space cowboys now if you didn’t see that in the narrative? How do you like the writers just coming out and admitting how tenuous this all is by giving dialogue to characters like, “Starfleet installed an insane AI to defend its darkest secrets?” Yes, they are apparently that stupid. And it wasn’t some part of a conspiracy plot; B4LalDataLore has been there since What’shisSoong died. And how do you like Seven making it a fucking plot point that Captain Shaw is a full-on dickhead by deadnaming her and then two episodes later, Seven taps her own communicator and says, “This is Commander Hansen…” and then I didn’t even hear the rest of the line because I couldn’t fucking believe she deadnamed herSELF after the big point they made about it. I mean, they have continuity people on set to stop nonsense like this; who is in the writers room keeping watch?
Anyway, Worf was great. I loved “We will not be prey; we will be… ‘friendly energy.’” Finally somebody lets Riker be Riker (fifteen years too late), and they use Worf as the mouthpiece to hide better in the teleplay where they’re taking their therapy bills off their taxes by writing in some good progress made in their sessions; good work, everybody. Great progress, today.
I really thought Bo Katan was going to ask the Armorer for a mudhorn sigil and Johnny Favs and Dave F. were just going to make her Grogu’s mom. Oh, wait; that’s the good show.