Pop Culture Care Package: Picard
A Q&A With Dame Sophie
I would never!
Star Trek: Picard premiered on CBS All Access back in January. I watched with my family last month and although it has some wobbly moments, overall, it’s rock-solid tv: it’s got a strong season-long arc with a bunch of satisfying B-plots, shored up by a cast who are clearly thrilled to be there. It’s also enormously appealing to me as someone hungry for stories about what we all need from and owe each other to not just survive but maybe, hopefully, thrive right now.
If you’re skeptical, or more neutrally curious, here are some questions you might be asking, and for good measure, my answers. Enjoy!
Ok, do we really. need a new Star Trek show?
I mean…do we need any show? Besides Babylon Berlin, that is? Probably not. But Star Trek: Picard is well-suited to viewing in an election year, a pandemic year, a year where we’re facing our own mortality a little more full in the face than we’d prefer to. It’s about a restless in retirement Jean-Luc Picard righting past wrongs before a long-dormant pre-existing condition ends his life. It’s about being a disappointment and hating to leave your work un-done, about making amends where you can and accepting where you can’t, showing up for who needs you, and telling the people you love that you love them before it’s too late. Also, it’s a lot of fun! As Star Trek so often is! The action sequences are great, the speeches are appropriately stirring, and the plot twists increasingly wild.
Don’t you worry, I’ll be writing a Guide To Babylon Berlin with beloved DamesPal, novelist, and TBD Guest Editrix Kate Racculia in the next couple of weeks!
Will I enjoy this show if I’ve never seen Star Trek: The Next Generation?
Past viewers of TNG will get something out of Picard that non-viewers (or long, long ago viewers like me) won’t, but prior Star Trek knowledge is not at all a pre-requisite to enjoyment!
I think you will enjoy Picard if you enjoy mashups of storytelling tropes across genres such as noir (flawed, yet noble protagonist stumbles his way into a plot that embroils players at the highest levers of power), scifi (space stuff! technology! a quantity of lens flare that JJ Abrams himself might describe as “just a bit too much”!), and heists (putting the team together! planning & pulling off a caper! friends along the way!).
If you love a found family narrative, this show is also for you. How do you feel about redemption arcs? Picard has several of them!
If you consider the moral of Battlestar Galactica to be Robots Are People, Too, I’d advise giving Picard a try. If you think Raoul Wallenberg deserves the contemporary Schindler’s List treatment (by someone other than Spielberg, thank you), I think you’ll dig Picard.
Star Trek: Picard is not a show for people allergic to corniness or lightly nostalgic trips down memory lane. If bad accent work yields an unbridgeable enjoyment chasm for you, I am sorry to say you might need to take a pass (with apologies to Santiago Cabrera, whose performance is otherwise very delightful and who should not have been obliged to attempt Irish, Scottish, and English accents in roles as holograms of himself). However, if you’re a big fan of the will they or won’t they, but SIBLINGS vibe of the infamous Folgers Christmas ad, you are in luck, as there’s a Big Creepy Siblings Who Might Bang Energy between the main antagonists of the show. It made me profoundly uncomfortable, actually, so let’s call this a content warning, too.
Are you recommending this show because your imaginary literary boyfriend Michael Chabon is a co-executive producer?
I’m not not doing that. Chabonbon is, famously, a pretty decent purveyor of stories that people like, and one of his partners in storytelling on this project is Ayelet Waldman, herself no slouch in the narrative crafting department, so. I feel pretty good about it.
I hope that if you give Star Trek: Picard a shot, you enjoy it! And if you do, please let me know your favorite thing about it! Hearing about the things you like and why they’re meaningful to you is one of my favorite things!
xo
Dame S.