“Star Trek” series always have growing pains, most finding themselves and their identities in their second or third season. That’s why it comes as little shock that in the first few episodes made available for review, the second run of “Star Trek: Picard” offers a vast improvement on the first. New showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Terry Matalas have seemingly taken on board much of the feedback from the initial run and haven’t been afraid to make changes – almost all of which are for the better.
Looking back, the first season of ‘Picard’ seems mostly defined by its desire to avoid being anything like its progenitor “Star Trek: The Next Generation”. That in itself is not a bad thing if done right, putting a familiar character in an unfamiliar situation and letting things fly. Unfortunately over its ten-episode run it never seemed to figure out what it wanted to be or what it wanted to say.
Tonally it was all over the shop, at times racking up a body count that seemed more in line with a darker version of the second J.J. Abrams film than anything from pre-Kurtzman era “Star Trek”. Gone was Trek’s defining optimism, the Federation having turned inward to become an isolationist bureaucracy and Picard himself seemingly hiding in his vineyard and plagued by regret.
It was a plot-driven, slow-paced, morally bleak and ultimately an overwrought thriller that haphazardly brought together multiple elements from a Romulan hardline sect, to a planet of synthetics, Borg cube wreckage, and conspiracy within Starfleet.
That’s not to say there weren’t commendable elements. The casting was mostly strong with standout performances in particular from Santiago Cabrera as Chris Rios, Michelle Hurd as Rafi and Orla Brady as savvy Romulan housekeeper Laris. Alison Pill and Evan Evagora had promise but were stuck with characters that didn’t seem as well thought out, while the reliable Jeri Ryan had seemingly forgotten whole aspects of her Seven of Nine character.
All are back for the new run and in the case of Pill and Ryan, both have seen marked improvements. Dr. Jurati is now a lovable eccentric with Pill enjoyably hamming it up where she can, while Seven is once again dealing with issues surrounding her humanity and identity. This lets Ryan, a wonderfully empathetic performer, demonstrate her skill at expressing vulnerability and resolve through her physicality and mannerisms.
More interesting is how the new run resets the board from the get-go and goes out of its way not to require a first season rewatch. Picard’s android ‘Golem’ body? Not even mentioned bar some deliberately vague allusions in the premiere. Isa Briones’ character? Pops up in a cameo to say farewell. Rios and Rafi? They’ve left their personal issues behind and are now Starfleet officers with Rios captaining Picard’s old ship the U.S.S. Stargazer no less.
While the first season didn’t even really seem to get going until the end of the third episode, this new run sees things moving at a brisk pace. A lot more happens this time out, and yet because this is a more concise character-driven story it runs more smoothly. It’s also clear each of the first few episodes is distinct and slightly more episodic in nature than the first season.
The heart of this season is driven by Picard himself, though this time not by regret but rather a reflection on the life choices he has made – specifically in regards to intimacy. Unlike Riker or Kirk who would basically hump anything with an access hatch, Picard’s love life was always more measured and minor part of his overall life – an aspect of himself kept alive mostly by the occasional quality liaison.
Here was a thoughtful man driven by his sense of duty and exploration, and in a position that didn’t welcome companionship. Even so, he still managed to rack up a long string of ex-girlfriends from Jennifer Hetrick’s fun archaeologist/thief Vash, to Amanda McBroom’s sizzling Starfleet judge Phillipa Louvois. Rarely though did he indulge in romance or the idea of settling down to a more ordinary domestic life. That is partly why episodes like “The Inner Light,” “Tapestry” and “Family,” which tackled Picard’s life choices to become the man he was, remain fan favorites.
Now finally accepting he is in his twilight years and is the very end of the Picard family line, the former Enterprise captain is dealing with the question of whether spending a life looking outward has been in fear of looking inward. There’s fertile ground to explore there, even if a flashback hinting at childhood trauma feels like a half-hearted retcon – albeit one that could work considering the relationship he had with his late brother.
This personal question drives the story forward, first with Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) appearing for one of her trademark drinks-meets-therapy sessions, and then Q (John DeLancie) arriving to shake things up with a blend of well-worn Trek tropes – a change in our 21st-century present has turned the Federation into a totalitarian nightmare and thus requires time travel back to our time to fix.
The visible aging of those two essentially immortal characters is explained away – one with a piece of throwaway dialogue, the other more successfully with a brief visual effect and a joke. Both however are welcome presences, DeLancie in particular relishing getting to not just play this part again but the darkest interpretation of him yet. “Bosch” and “24” alum Annie Wersching also offers a strong and sinister take on a familiar character which I won’t spoil here.
That said with three episodes down it’s still stuck to re-treading familiar material as opposed to going somewhere new. It also retains some of the over-utilitarian visual aesthetic that has come to define Trek for the past ten years or so and lacks the occasionally inventive visual flourishes that “Discovery” has been showing off since its second season.
Two key characters also feel somewhat shortchanged this year. Cabrera got to have such fun in the first season with his scene-stealing multi-accented holograms. Bar one cameo though, they’re as absent as the sweaty shirtless workouts that sent space DILF lovers into a tizzy. Instead, both he and Rafi are mostly sidelined and have lost their rogueish edge.
Laris, such a cunning go-getter the first time around and the life of the show’s first few episodes, is even more egregiously reduced to a mere plot device in the season premiere. Hopefully all these characters get more fleshed out later in the run.
Has the start of the second season of “Star Trek: Picard” solved all the problems of the first? No, but it’s a very welcome start. It’s tonally more consistent, more fun, offers a better and more streamlined story, vastly improved pacing, a more welcome shift to a focus on character, and an overall feeling of a steadier hand behind the wheel.
In many ways, this feels more like what the show was aiming to be in the first place and a better continuation of where the pre-Abrams Jean-Luc Picard was when we last left him. I’m not sure the series has hit its stride yet, but at least this time it hits the ground running.
