CONTAINS SPOILERS
Star Trek's latest series, "Star Trek Picard" is an Amazon Prime exclusive - for the UK, this is a long way from the BBC2 once-a-week episode on Thursday evenings (which I eagerly watched) - and shows how far Star Trek has travelled from its syndicated roots. I watched the first half of this episode on my mobile phone, then finished off the episode on following day at home on TV.
Star Trek Picard is also a considerable distance from its predecessors. For the first time since Star Trek Voyager, we have a series which is set after the Voyager/TNG/DS9 era - Enterprise and Discovery were both prequels. This is a real blast of fresh air - this series is not saddled with all the issues of making its continuity fit with already-known events, and having to fit everything in to a huge narrative. And the best part of this is that STP sets up its own universe very quickly: the Romulan sun (or, more accurately, star) has gone supernova and there's been a forced relocation of the Romulan population. Admiral Picard now lives in a chateau in France, with a sizeable vineyard (as suggested in the TNG episode All Good Things), with a Romulan family. The exact relationship here, and the personal story of how the Romulans came to live with Picard aren't clear - yet.
Much of the backstory is related during a media interview between a journalist and Picard, as he explains how Starfleet abandoned their mission to rescue the Romulans when they were needed most. Events took a turn for the worse when the Romulan rescue mission was sabotaged - mortally - by synthetics who hacked into the Mars defence network and blew up the colony on Mars. This has led to a galaxy-wide ban on the development of synthetics, and leads to bad blood between the Romulans and any remaining synths.
There's a parallel plot concerning a young lady called Dahj. As she learns that her application to the Daystrom institute has been accepted, mysterious ninja assassins beam into her apartment, kill her boyfriend and attempt to either kill or kidnap her. In a surprise development, she's able to defeat them in hand-to-hand combat (despite having a bag over her head) and realises that she isn't all that she thought. Further developments follow as she starts having visions of Picard, and determines to track him down when she sees his broadcast interview with the journalist.
Picard is having bad dreams involving Data (who sacrificed himself at the end of Nemesis), and in one interesting dream, sees Data painting a picture - which Picard later realises is a painting that Data completed while he was alive and which now hangs on the walls of Picard's chateau.
The story develops at a measured pace - there are the high-energy phaser fire and hand-to-hand combat scenes, but there are also lengthy dialogue scenes, but these do serve to unpack this new world, and to further the plot in a sensible and plausible way. Dahj meets Picard, and the two of them attempt to work out how they are actually connected. There's a bit of the mysterious (which is a new twist for the generally straightforward science-and-logic format of Star Trek), but Picard realises that Dahj is the woman in Data's paintings - and, in a twist that I'm pleased to have spotted - Data painted two identical pictures (one in Chateau Picard, one in the Starfleet Archive).
As Picard and Dahj start to come to terms with Dahj's true nature - she is a synthetic (android) - Dahj is caught and killed by the Romulan ninja assassins who have been chasing her down. Picard has a lengthy and revealing conversation with an AI professor at the Daystrom institute, in which he asks about producing an android from flesh and blood, and gets a long but informative 'no'. Bruce Maddox (TNG Measure of a Man) has been working on this idea, but has not made any progress. However, it transpires that Dahj was one of a pair - twins - in the same way as there are two identical paintings of her (painted by Data, and titled "Daughter").
There are some overtones of Blade Runner here (I've never seen it), especially as we discover that Dahj's twin is living and working on a Romulan colony which - in the episode's final reveal - is built inside the remnants of a Borg cube. The final scene, starting with two dangerous-looking spacecraft (the latest version of the Romulan warbird) moving through a cloaking field and entering a large, dark space station is filled with tension and the slow, steady reveal of the cube is shot in the style of the opening of First Contact, with a musical score that is very reminiscent of the Borg theme. It's a dramatic conclusion to a great opening episode, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.
For those who were expecting to see more of the characters from previous Star Trek series - Seven of Nine, for example - you'll be disappointed. This is very much the start of a long series (Star Trek has had mixed form with series-long arcs) and the trailer is for the whole series, not for episode one. There's plenty in this first episode, though, and there is much to be hopeful about.
Star Trek's latest series, "Star Trek Picard" is an Amazon Prime exclusive - for the UK, this is a long way from the BBC2 once-a-week episode on Thursday evenings (which I eagerly watched) - and shows how far Star Trek has travelled from its syndicated roots. I watched the first half of this episode on my mobile phone, then finished off the episode on following day at home on TV.Star Trek Picard is also a considerable distance from its predecessors. For the first time since Star Trek Voyager, we have a series which is set after the Voyager/TNG/DS9 era - Enterprise and Discovery were both prequels. This is a real blast of fresh air - this series is not saddled with all the issues of making its continuity fit with already-known events, and having to fit everything in to a huge narrative. And the best part of this is that STP sets up its own universe very quickly: the Romulan sun (or, more accurately, star) has gone supernova and there's been a forced relocation of the Romulan population. Admiral Picard now lives in a chateau in France, with a sizeable vineyard (as suggested in the TNG episode All Good Things), with a Romulan family. The exact relationship here, and the personal story of how the Romulans came to live with Picard aren't clear - yet.
Much of the backstory is related during a media interview between a journalist and Picard, as he explains how Starfleet abandoned their mission to rescue the Romulans when they were needed most. Events took a turn for the worse when the Romulan rescue mission was sabotaged - mortally - by synthetics who hacked into the Mars defence network and blew up the colony on Mars. This has led to a galaxy-wide ban on the development of synthetics, and leads to bad blood between the Romulans and any remaining synths.
There's a parallel plot concerning a young lady called Dahj. As she learns that her application to the Daystrom institute has been accepted, mysterious ninja assassins beam into her apartment, kill her boyfriend and attempt to either kill or kidnap her. In a surprise development, she's able to defeat them in hand-to-hand combat (despite having a bag over her head) and realises that she isn't all that she thought. Further developments follow as she starts having visions of Picard, and determines to track him down when she sees his broadcast interview with the journalist.
Picard is having bad dreams involving Data (who sacrificed himself at the end of Nemesis), and in one interesting dream, sees Data painting a picture - which Picard later realises is a painting that Data completed while he was alive and which now hangs on the walls of Picard's chateau.
The story develops at a measured pace - there are the high-energy phaser fire and hand-to-hand combat scenes, but there are also lengthy dialogue scenes, but these do serve to unpack this new world, and to further the plot in a sensible and plausible way. Dahj meets Picard, and the two of them attempt to work out how they are actually connected. There's a bit of the mysterious (which is a new twist for the generally straightforward science-and-logic format of Star Trek), but Picard realises that Dahj is the woman in Data's paintings - and, in a twist that I'm pleased to have spotted - Data painted two identical pictures (one in Chateau Picard, one in the Starfleet Archive).
As Picard and Dahj start to come to terms with Dahj's true nature - she is a synthetic (android) - Dahj is caught and killed by the Romulan ninja assassins who have been chasing her down. Picard has a lengthy and revealing conversation with an AI professor at the Daystrom institute, in which he asks about producing an android from flesh and blood, and gets a long but informative 'no'. Bruce Maddox (TNG Measure of a Man) has been working on this idea, but has not made any progress. However, it transpires that Dahj was one of a pair - twins - in the same way as there are two identical paintings of her (painted by Data, and titled "Daughter").
There are some overtones of Blade Runner here (I've never seen it), especially as we discover that Dahj's twin is living and working on a Romulan colony which - in the episode's final reveal - is built inside the remnants of a Borg cube. The final scene, starting with two dangerous-looking spacecraft (the latest version of the Romulan warbird) moving through a cloaking field and entering a large, dark space station is filled with tension and the slow, steady reveal of the cube is shot in the style of the opening of First Contact, with a musical score that is very reminiscent of the Borg theme. It's a dramatic conclusion to a great opening episode, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.
For those who were expecting to see more of the characters from previous Star Trek series - Seven of Nine, for example - you'll be disappointed. This is very much the start of a long series (Star Trek has had mixed form with series-long arcs) and the trailer is for the whole series, not for episode one. There's plenty in this first episode, though, and there is much to be hopeful about.
