It’s probably fair to say that the first season of Star Trek: Picard didn’t live up to expectations. Yes, we got to catch up with one of the franchise’s greatest characters and find out what he’d been up to in the 20 years since we last saw him in 2002’s Nemesis. There was plenty of Picard hanging out in his vineyard (way more satisfying than it sounds) catching up with old friends, and a selection of fun new characters. However, there was also a half-baked plot featuring moustache-twirling Romulans and Patrick Stewart wearing a beret, eye patch and putting on a hammy French accent (Picard is supposed to be, lest we forget, French). Not to mention a briefly glimpsed, life-as-we-know-it ending big bad that both seemed like an afterthought and looked like it had got lost on its way to the set of The Matrix. ‘Mixed bag’ is probably a fair assessment.
Add to the fun-but-patchy Season One, there’s been a two-year, pandemic-enforced gap, and showrunner/co-creator/Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon has been replaced by Terry Matalas (12 Monkeys), a Trek veteran who got his TV break working as an assistant on Voyager. So it’s understandable that fans would be feeling a slight amount of trepidation about Season Two.
Fortunately, these changes and delays seem to have worked to the show’s benefit, giving it a chance to reflect on the first season and course correct. In what feels like a soft reboot, the series leaps on roughly 18 months from where we left off with the crew all in a different place to where we left them (slight spoilers follow, but nothing beyond what CBS has already announced). Picard has returned to Earth and dividing his time between his vineyard and running Starfleet Academy (a position he was first offered way back in Season One of The Next Generation), assisted by Raffi (Michelle Hurd), and where Elnor (Evan Evagora) is now a cadet. Most importantly, his ill-advised death and resurrection in a synthetic body is largely ignored – relegated to a single sentence.
Also back in Starfleet is Rios (Santiago Cabrera), now captain of the U.S.S. Stargazer – named for Picard’s first command – who is escorting Soji (Isa Briones) and Jurati (Alison Pill) on a “synthetics aren’t evil, honestly” tour of the galaxy, which mainly seems to involve hanging out with Deltans (can you blame them?) and spouting clunky exposition. Seven (Jeri Ryan) meanwhile is still with the Fenris Rangers, and captaining Rios’ old ship, La Sirena.
Needless to say, things don’t stay calm long. In fact, the series opens with a full-on action scene before flashing back 48 hours to provide us with some context. Let’s just say it starts with that old Trek favourite, a spatial anomaly and leave it there. Where the first season of Picard took its time (it was three episodes before Picard even got off Earth), the new season both zips along and feels, well, way more like Star Trek. It’s a welcome change and one that leaves you wanting more.
CBS has heavily touted some of the surprises to come. We get the return of Q (John De Lancie, excellent as always) facing off against Picard for the first time since the series finale All Good Things, Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg), a new Borg Queen, time travel, and dystopian alternate realities – some, but not all before the end of the first episode.
It’s not perfect. As previously mentioned, there’s some clunky exposition, some of the references approach Lower Decks levels of on-the-nose (there’s one scene that manages to namedrop Spock, Sulu, The Excelsior, The Grissom and The Kobayashi Maru within the space of two minutes), and Isa Briones is so under-used that you start to wonder if she’s still part of the show. But it’s a strong start to the season (one that – from what we’ve seen – it maintains). As Q might say, “Welcome back, Mon Capitain.”
Star Trek: Picard is available to stream on Prime Video. New episodes every Friday.
