Star Trek: Picard Doesn’t Have a Pulse

I was willing to give Star Trek: Picard a chance.

I thought it was great that some of the old characters were coming back. I had hoped that CBS and the producers would have learned their lesson from Star Trek: Discovery. Above all else, it was a relief to finally be done with the Dawson’s Creek Trek movies and to be back in the Prime timeline after almost twenty years of prequels which should have ended with Enterprise.

I wasn’t really bothered by the plot of Picard even though Patrick Stewart was doing interviews about how the new show was a response to BREXIT and Trump. The destruction of Romulus in the Prime timeline was established by the J.J. Abrams movie in 2009. The death of Data and the introduction of B-4 was established in Nemesis. Bruce Maddox wanting to use Data to create androids was established in TNG. Star Trek has also always had progressive storylines. Voyager had episodes about interspecies miscegenation. The final two episodes of Enterprise were about how the Terra Prime isolationist movement on Earth which had to be defeated to create the Federation. Captain Janeway in Voyager was virtually a parody of a Yankee school marm in space.

I’ve also seen plenty of bad Star Trek episodes. There were whole seasons of classic Star Trek series which were unwatchable garbage. There is also nothing new about terrible Star Trek characters. TNG famously had Wil Wheaton’s character Wesley Crusher. Voyager had Harry Kim and B’Elanna Torres. Enterprise had Travis Mayweather. Star Trek has always created affirmative action roles for women and minorities. Tuvok in Voyager was introduced as a black Vulcan because obviously the most rational man on the ship had to be black in order to challenge racist stereotypes. Chakotay in Voyager had some of the most cringe episodes in the history of Star Trek which were about exploring his Native American heritage in the Delta Quadrant. Captain Janeway once met her heroine Amelia Earhart on the other side of the galaxy. It will suffice to say that I expected a certain amount of this nonsense to be baked into Picard.

After watching the first four episodes of Picard, the biggest problem with this show is Admiral Jean-Luc Picard. I feel like I am watching the Joe Biden campaign in space. It is true that Picard has changed since we last saw him in Nemesis. The lead character in the show is nearly 80-years-old now and is out of gas and should have remained retired on his château. I’m not sure where Picard goes from here or how it can recover. It just lacks a pulse.