Saturday, February 08, 2020

Star Trek: Picard -- Season 1 Episode 1 (Remembrance)


I know that one show alone isn’t enough for me to subscribe to CBS All Access.  Yes, the second season of Discovery was pretty good.  And yes, I know that they have other series.  However, I can get The Twilight Zone and the first five Star Trek series on Netflix and DVD, at least for the time being.

So, the addition of Star Trek: Picard isn’t going to get me to sign up.  I’m reviewing the pilot episode, but I’ll be waiting for the rest of the first season on DVD.  (For those that are wondering, I was able to get the first episode through YouTube.)

I’ve been curious about the show.  I know that it centers on Jean-Luc Picard, now a retired admiral.  It’s been years since the events of Nemesis.  (In fact, it’s now roughly in the future time frame of All Good Things….)

Picard meets a mysterious woman who feels compelled to find him after she’s attacked and her boyfriend is killed.  Picard is living with two Romulans after he led an aborted evacuation of Romulus.  (It’s not the kind of thing he likes to talk about, though.)

The scenes you see of Picard and Data are Picard’s dreams.  It’s been a while since synthetic life forms, such as Androids, have been banned.  How does Data figure into all of this?  He holds a key to the mysterious woman’s identity.  Also holding a key may be Bruce Maddox, who has gone into hiding.  (There’s no mention of the Holographic Doctor from Voyager…Yet.)

It would seem that Picard misses days gone by.  We get that he has his reasons, and they would seem to be valid ones, but this episode doesn’t go into all the details.  It would seem to be a bridge between Nemesis and the rest of the series.  We learn at the very end that a Borg cube is being studied, but it’s not yet clear who has claimed it or to what end.

The series credits have the show as being based on The Next Generation, rather than the original Star Trek.  There are a lot of references, notably the Captain Picard Day banner you may have seen in the coming attractions.  There will also be appearances from Troi, Riker, 7 of 9 and Hugh.

I was torn as to whether to review this now or to wait for the rest of the season.  I decided to review it now because I wanted to offer a perspective of someone who has decided to wait to continue.  It’s going to be a long wait.

Not much is offered in terms of the overall story line and I know that there’s more to it.  I don’t blame anyone for this.  I’d rather have things spread out so that I have something to look forward to.  I’d rather have it spread out than to have details come out unevenly.

I don’t think any of us wanted the game to end.  It had to.  It looks like this is going to be a whole new game.


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