Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Star Trek: Picard’ On CBS All Access, Where Jean-Luc Picard Goes Back In Space To Fix His Biggest Mistake

Jean-Luc Picard might be the second-most-beloved Star Trek character, behind James Tiberius Kirk. OK, maybe third, behind Spock. But he’s right up there, and that’s because of the considered, thoughtful portrayal of Picard that Sir Patrick Stewart has given the character over the past three-plus decades. Of course fans were excited to hear that Sir Patrick was going to reprise the character in a new CBS All Access series. But most of what the show is about has been kept under wraps. Will Star Trek: Picard be a worthy continuation of Picard’s story?

STAR TREK: PICARD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We see various nebula as Bing Crosby croons “Blue Skies.” Then the Starship Enterprise comes into view; when we zoom in to a couple of its windows, Adm. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), in civillian clothes, is playing poker with his friend, Commander Data (Brent Spiner).

The Gist: Picard tells Data he has a “tell,” which is actually when the android forces a tell to throw Picard off the trail. Data forces Picard to go “all in,” then shows a hand of five queens, the first indication that this is a dream. All of a sudden, Picard sees that the Enterprise is hurling towards Mars. When Picard wakes up, we see that he’s at home at his vineyard, Chateau Picard, in France.

We then see a young woman with her boyfriend in Boston. They’re drinking wine and talking about her research fellowship. Suddenly, masked intruders appear out of nowhere, kill her boyfriend, and try to grab her, saying she hasn’t “activated” yet. That’s when her instincts kick in and she kills all of the intruders. Suddenly she has a vision: The face of Jean-Luc Picard.

Picard has been retired from Starfleet for 14 years, and his departure was rough to say the least. After the events close to 20 years prior, when Data sacrificed himself to save Picard from a Romulan warlord, he’s felt guilty about losing his friend ever since. But since then, he led a rescue armada to save Romulan refugees when their sun went supernova; at the same time, “synths” created on Earth went rogue, destroying Mars’ atmosphere and killing tens of thousands. Since then synths have been made illegal.

When a reporter (Merrin Dungey) asks him why he left Starfleet, he angrily replies that, after the Mars disaster, they abandoned the Romulans in their time of need. Two of those Romulans, Laris (Orla Brady) and Zhaban (Jamie McShane), work for him at the vineyard.

The next day, the woman from Boston, Dahj (Isa Briones) comes to the vineyard, looking to find answers from Picard. She runs off the next morning, though, feeling that she’ll put him in danger. But, after a strange call with her mother, she tracks Picard down to San Francisco, where Picard has gone to visit the Starfleet archives. He goes there after he has a dream about Data painting a picture of a girl, something he did 20 years prior. He has a copy in his chateau and he notices that the girl’s face sounds familiar. At the archives, he sees the other painting, and the computer, Index (Maya Eshet), tells Picard the painting is named “Daughter.”

Could Dahj be Data’s daughter? When she finds Picard in San Francisco, he broaches the idea to her, which would explain how she can defend against intruders the way she did. She thinks she’s human; she has human memories. More masked intruders chase them, and Dahj seemingly sacrifices herself to make sure Picard is safe. Those intruders turn out to be Romulan.

Picard needs answers, so he goes to Japan to the research institute that used to create synths. There he meets with Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill), who studied under the inventor of the synths. She doesn’t think that a flesh-and-blood, sentient synth was possible, but the way Data downloaded his neural net to B-4, the simulation created by the Romulan general, might have made that possible. Which is when Picard learns that these synths were created in pairs, so Dahj has a twin sister out there somewhere.

Our Take: The latest era of Star Trek series, starting with Discovery and continuing now with Picard, are supposed to be more down-to-earth explorations of personal stories rather than the cold, adventures-in-space format of the original series or the ’80s-’90s iterations (TNG, DS9, Voyager). Picard is exactly that, but enhanced by the presence of Stewart, playing a character whose shoes he’s been in for 33 years, and Michael Chabon, the novelist-turned-showrunner who instills a level of humanity in Picard (and Picard) we’ve never seen before.

We’ve always known that Stewart introduced Trek fans to a more thoughtful version of a Starfleet captain, one that felt the consequences of his orders and actions. And, as the TNG series and films wore on, we saw more of that. But Picard really brings home just how deeply he felt about his crew and the people he was sworn to protect, no matter whether they were friend or foe.

Stewart is certainly up for the task of playing an older, more regretful Picard who admits he hasn’t really been living since his retirement, “just waiting to die.” But that’s expected. What we were pleasantly surprised is that the story that Chabon, creator Alex Kurtzman and their writers have created is worthy of seeing an 80-year-old Picard return to space.

They’re not trying to recreate TNG; yes, we see Spiner, and later Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis as guest stars. Jeri Ryan will reprise Seven of Nine, and it will be interesting to watch her and Stewart share scenes together. But Data is still dead (which Spiner made sure would happen), and the story is most definitely about how Picard tries to rectify the mistakes that led to synths like Dahj to have to go into hiding. And he’ll be doing it with mostly a new crew to help him; so far, Pill and Briones have been fine scene partners for Sir Patrick, and we haven’t even seen the rest of the crew yet.

Sex and Skin: Nothing yet, and we’ll likely not see anything more than innocent romance this season.

Parting Shot: Dahj’s twin sister Soji is seen on what is labeled a “Romulan Reclamation Project,” providing counsel to a Romulan named Narek (Harry Treadway). When the camera pans back, we see what the reclamation project is: A Borg cube. My, my, my….

Sleeper Star: Let’s give this to Picard’s pit bull, Number One. Stewart has mentioned that he wanted Picard’s best pal to be a pit bull, and it’s great to see the unfairly maligned breed represented so well on a major series.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Picard confirms with Index that no one else has access to the Enterprise archives, she replies, “Yes, unless you prefer to sell tickets.” “Is that humor?” he asks. “I’m trying something new,” she replies. “Don’t quit your day job,” he says. There’s a lot of that kind of stuff in the first episode, which is fine; we always thought TNG took itself too seriously. But this one felt like more of a throw-in.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Remember: Trek wasn’t created to sustain heavy story arcs; yes, the more modern iterations had story arcs in the background, but they were still subordinate to adventure-of-the-week stories. That’s changed with Discovery and Picard, and if there’s any character in the Trek universe that can carry a season-long story arc, it’s Jean-Luc Picard. We’re excited to see what’s next.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Star Trek: Picard On CBS All Access