Picard Season 3 Episode 01 Brings the Band Back Together!

A coded distress call from Dr. Beverly Crusher leads Admiral Picard and Captain Riker to attempt to steal a starship, while Raffi tries to prevent a terrorist attack. Picard and Riker meet “The Next Generation” in Picard Season 3 Episode 01 written by Terry Matalas, directed by Doug Aarniokoski.

Mark Turetsky: Hey Will! It’s been so long since we parted ways at the end of Picard season 2, each vowing never to see the other unless the galaxy were in danger. 

Will Nevin: So our Strange New Worlds coverage is non-canon. Got it. 

Mark: No, that took place before our Picard reviews. Hundreds of years before. Anyway, Picard has brought the whole gang back together, and I’m so excited to see what’s going to happen to everyone. Soji, Elnor, Captain Rios, Doctor Jurati…  

Will: So…about those folks. Gone! And replaced or soon to be replaced by our old Next Generation friends, a bold play that will do nothing to help the feeling that there is no connective tissue whatsoever between the three seasons of an incredibly uneven series. But that’s some analysis best left for our wrap up in nine weeks.

We’re starting fresh, Mark. Or as fresh as we can be already having done twenty episodes of Picard. This seems like a promising beginning — we’re back to a big space action/drama feel and our embarrassing cheap productions tricks seem like they’re behind us. Parts of the writing, though? Still waiting for that to catch up.

A Cry For Help

Mark: Our teaser starts with a chyron that reads “IN THE 25TH CENTURY…” Which… is a choice? I guess? It seems stylistically out of joint with a Trek TV series (though I suppose Deep Space 9 starts with a whole Star Wars-style text-planation of the background you’d need to know).

Will: That’s the first bit of what Engadget’s review would label as “callbacks and continuity porn.” Because, as we all know, Mark, Wrath of Khan opens with “IN THE 23RD CENTURY…”

Mark: As I was saying, it’s a weird choice for a Trek series, but fits in with the aesthetic of the Trek movies. Even giving us a title screen that says, “Part 1” with the episode’s title, as opposed to calling it an “episode”, sets this apart. The producers have been very open about this season being more akin to a fifth TNG-era movie that we never got. Heck, even using the main title theme from First Contact (the best/only good TNG movie, depending on whom you ask) as its credits music sets this season within that stylistic space.

Will: But here’s the question that’s going to preoccupy a lot of our time this season: Do the nods toward First Contact and Khan — and subsequent callbacks to come — have some purpose? Or is the production team making references for references’ sake? After this first episode, I don’t know that we can properly begin to answer that question, but it’s an important one. Any old idiot (like J.J. Abrams in Into Darkness) can make references to Trek lore, but it takes a real storyteller to actually invoke these things with a clear purpose.

Mark: That will remain an open question for the whole season, as you say.

The episode proper opens with some Ink Spots music and a tour of a messy starship, coming under attack by unknown assailants. The individual bits of mess give us a tiny bit of insight into the ship’s owner, Dr. Beverly Crusher, and what she may have been up to in the twenty or so years since Nemesis. I like the little touch that she’s evidently been consulting an old JLP captain’s log (from “The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1”) for advice on hiding in a nebula.

We don’t learn a whole lot from this sequence though, beyond Dr. Crusher’s willingness to utterly vaporize her assailants (including one who’s already been put out of commission). We also learn about another, mysterious person whom Dr. Crusher locks up during the attack. I don’t know about you, but my first guess about this was that he must be what the mystery attackers are after.

Will: That’s a plausible reading of that scene — the closing moments of the episode certainly give us another possible idea in that Dr. Crusher is simply protecting…well, we’ll get to that in a bit, won’t we?

What did you think of the scenes back at Chateau Picard? We needed a reason to get the admiral back into space one more time (for the last time, maybe) and I think we got through them as quickly as possible, even if Laris did get a little exposition-y at times.

Mark: It’s also the most frank we’ve ever heard Picard talk about his relationship to Dr. Crusher. 

Will: Please, dear Laris, never refer to them as “lovers” again.

Mark: It’s nice to see Laris again, but it also seems like a way to get her out of the story as efficiently as possible. Still, with the discussions in this scene of Picard’s “first love,” (or at least, not the first, but certainly the favorite) it’s thematically tied into whatever unstated love triangle is happening here between Crusher, Picard and Laris. It seems a shame that Laris has to leave for some vague important job, when it might be useful to have a former Tal Shiar agent by Picard’s side in whatever covert op he’s up to. 

Will: That would have been an interesting tension to explore, wouldn’t it? Alas. But you know at least one thing that worked in this episode? Riker. The new, “shit”-filled era of Trek has opened up the writing, and I think this is the way Riker should have always been. Loose. Funny. Irreverent. Frakes does a good job with great material and has the range to get serious when the moment calls for it.

Mark: Yes, the duo of Frakes and Stewart is pretty great in this episode. Riker’s seat-of-your-pants non-planning style interacting with Picard’s much more reserved and not at all used-to-subterfuge style made for a ton of fun. Their plan has elements of The Search for Spock. They need to steal a starship to save their friend, and they announce themselves as the surprise inspectors of the absolute unit U.S.S. Titan-A, captained by Liam Shaw, with first officer Seven of Nine. In the pantheon of antagonistic Starfleet officers, how great was Todd Stashwick as Shaw?

Will: The man came off as a real asshole, bordering on psychopathic. Like, I don’t know if the story really called for those beats — and Seven to be so beaten down by him in particular — but that’s a quibble with the writing and not with his performance. Stashwick really got in there and had some fun. And speaking of the Titan, this is a fun place to get real, real in the weeds — it’s the ship that Riker got twenty years ago, but it’s been refitted and given what amounts to a new name and a new class. I bet some nerds are super angry about that.

Mark: It’s right in line with this being styled like a movie, though, isn’t it? The Enterprise got a total refit in The Motion Picture (though it didn’t get an “-A: appended to it) and yet somehow was considered the same ship. A real Theseus-style head scratcher. But Shaw seems to be a captain in the tradition of Styles, the uptight captain of the Excelsior in Search for Spock. Look, he’s a complete dick to them, and not calling Seven by her preferred name is inexcusable, but… he does see through their ploy immediately, right? How would you feel about a retired admiral and a shipless captain just coming aboard and trying to take your ship for a joyride? 

Will: Maybe he thinks they’re harmless? I know if I felt threatened or alarmed, I’d be at the conn and not in my quarters. I both liked and disliked Shaw’s attitude toward Seven’s preferred name — while it’s a solid allegory for someone’s stated pronouns (good), having Shaw be so openly hostile is not great storytelling. It’s the equivalent of having the bad space man kick the poor space puppy. Lazy character development.

Mark: Granted. Also, the dig at her being loyal to a fellow ex-Borg is pretty low. 

Will: What an ass.

Raffi the Spy

Mark: While Picard and Riker try ineptly to steal the Titan, we meet back up with Raffi. She’s on the planet “M’Talas” (har har) and seems to be back on her addiction after getting dumped by Seven and evidently losing her job at Starfleet Academy. Her plan is to get back into Starfleet’s good graces by informing them of an upcoming terrorist attack. It’s addict logic, which she uses on her dealer (along with a large sum of cash) to get a possible lead on someone or something called “The Red Lady” (not to be confused with the mysterious “Red Angel” who turned out to be a lady from Discovery season 2). How long did she have you going before she revealed herself to the audience as a spy for Starfleet Intelligence, or did you not fall for it at all?

Will: I wouldn’t say I was super surprised when she ducked around that corner and whipped out the TOS-style communicator (which was another one of those weird lore nods). Also, does she have the La Sirena now and I forgot that, or is the team reusing the set and it’s supposed to be a generic ship?

Mark: It’s the La Sirena, all right, as far as I can tell. It’d be fun to still have it crewed by the holographic Rios personalities, but that’s probably too much to ask, and would likely subvert the gritty spy aesthetic they’re going for here. We’re also introduced to a big mystery here: who is Raffi’s handler, shown here only through text-to-speech communication on the ship? I’ve got a few theories about it, none of which have any reason beyond “wouldn’t it be fun?”

Raffi also seems to be struggling with her assigned undercover role as an addict and seems to be on the edge of relapse. It’s such a trope of undercover stories that operatives get too far in, that they cross lines they shouldn’t. But her handler is well aware of her substance abuse issues and sent her into this situation anyway.

Will: When Star Trek is getting into 24 plots from 20 years ago, maybe that’s a sign it’s trying too hard. The thing that bothered me to no end — and has bothered me from the beginning with this series — is that we had one more lazy and unbelievably-contrived moment in which Raffi shows up to “District 7” (whatever the hell that is) just as the terror attack happens. Really? Really? That precise moment? Ugh. Also, I’m not entirely sure why you’d want to build a statue of the captain of the Enterprise-C and make it red, but that one I can shrug off. It’s a rare space mineral…or something.

Mark: Captain Garrett wore a red, movie-era uniform?

The attack itself is pretty big on spectacle: the terrorists stole a quantum tunneling device, which evidently made for a Portal-style, well, portal under the Starfleet base, teleporting it a few hundred yards away into the sky, at which point it falls. I don’t know why you’d need something so complicated if your goal is to destroy a building, other than it looked cool.

Will: Let’s assume for the moment the terrorists have political goals. Let’s also assume they tie into “Frontier Day,” which seems a bit like a fascist celebration of military power. (Riker himself called it a “parade in space.”) If the terrorists have a goal — again, let’s say it’s the mothballing of Starfleet — then stating that end point and engaging in violence to scare the people and their officials into submission is the classic definition of terrorism. If this is going to make any sense, their goals have to be more than one building — it’s “do what we want or this will happen again.”

Mark: Fair. The spectacle is part of the point of the act.

Will: I just got tl; dr’d. Nice work, Mark.

Mutiny on the Titan

Mark: While Captain Shaw sleeps, Seven covertly summons Picard and Riker while Ensign La Forge (Geordi’s daughter) lays in a course for the Ryton system, where Beverly has summoned them. It’s a pretty bold act, which would effectively end Seven’s career and probably get her court-martialed. But then again, if it were Kirk doing it, he’d end up with a promotion and a brand new ship, so who knows. Picard and Riker get away on a shuttlecraft and rendezvous with Dr. Crusher’s ship, the Eleos.

Will: It would have been nice to see a bit more of Shaw’s impotent rage. “What do you mean, ‘We can’t get them back’?” or some such. But those initial moments on the ship, with Picard and Riker walking through and surmising the events we saw in the cold open, are good — particularly when Riker observes that one of the hostiles was basically executed.

Mark: It’s hard to get a sense of scale in space, but I definitely thought Dr. Crusher’s ship was bigger than it was until we saw the shuttle dock with it. But then again, on the inside it seemed like it was crewed by only two people with not a lot of room. It’s not exactly the U.S.S. Pasteur, which she captained in the alternate future of “All Good Things.” And we get to meet Dr. Crusher’s other crewmate, her son. But wait, I hear you say, that’s not Wesley at all!

Will: Indeed it is not! And given those knowing glances between Picard and Riker, I’d say this is Picard’s son. Mark, it’s Carol Marcus and Jim Kirk all over again.

Mark: How could it not be Picard’s son? He’s got the English accent and everything! Interestingly, Ed Speleers, who plays said son, is one of the main castmembers for the season (along with Jeri Ryan, Michelle Hurd and Patrick Stewart, natch). The character’s name has been leaked in press materials, but it’s not in the episode, so I won’t comment on it. 

Will: I looked it up, and all I’ll say is that if we’re right on his parentage, it’s certainly an interesting choice. I came into this season believing that Wesley would be retconned as Picard’s son, and I think that could still be a possibility.

Mark: It was certainly implied back in “Encounter At Farpoint” and quickly abandoned. What with his appearance at the end of last season, it’s possible we may get more Wesley, but it’s just as likely that was setup for something else, like a Marvel movie post-credits scene. As you say, it puts us in Kirk and Carol Marcus territory again, but also back in Picard and Shinzon territory (Shinzon was Picard’s clone in Nemesis, played by a boyish Tom Hardy). This episode is so redolent of the world of Trek feature films, it’s hard to keep up. 

Lower Decks just this season did the excellent “Crisis Point 2: Paradoxus” which played with the wild swings in tone between Trek movies. But where Lower Decks did it with tongue firmly in cheek, Picard is treading these same waters with a straight face (extra points for mixing metaphors?). I really hope it’s up to the task, because, well, I’ve got a lot of nostalgia around TNG. 

Will: As do I. And this third season has a lot of sins to make up for, including the fact that Picard is an android. That’s going to be a fun conversation with Beverly and the rest of the ol’ gang.

Mark: If he has a health problem, would he go to her or to La Forge? Aw, who am I kidding, he’d keep it to himself.

Will: Just like the galaxy had a speed limit for about five episodes and then it didn’t.

Overall, I’d say I’m interested and optimistic after this first episode. But still doubtful as to whether this creative team can really turn this series around.

Mark: Speaking of the galactic speed limit, wouldn’t Captain Shaw be utterly right to be horrified at Riker wanting to take the Titan to full warp as a show of power? Okay, okay, I’m done.

Will: That was…just weird all around. We’ve always seen warp 9+ as an emergency thing, but here, it’s a casual joke. Again, I have my doubts, Mark.

Make It So On and So Forth

• Chopin’s “Nocturne in E Flat Major” doesn’t deserve the villain styling. 
• From Wikipedia: “In ancient Athens, Eleos or Elea was the personification of mercy, clemency, compassion and pity.”
• The Enterprise-F and the Voyager-B make appearances on Raffi’s viewscreen. Computer: enhance.  

• ”Enterprise F: Slated for early decommission”
• Voyager-B:

• Right from Star Trek Online, both of ‘em.
• “It’s not really a plan, it’s a ruse.” Never change, Will Riker.
• The “For Annie” dedication is in memory of Annie Wersching, the Borg Queen actress in season 2 of Picard, who passed away scant weeks ago.