Contains Spoilers
The crew is coming together in the third episode of Star Trek: Picard, an episode that once again deepens the mystery at the centre of this series, but at least finally starts to gain a bit of momentum.
The second episode ended with seeing Picard in need of a ship, turned away by the federation when he came forward with his plan to find scientist Bruce Maddox, the man responsible for creating the daughters of Data. He seeks assistance from an old friend, Raffi (Michelle Hurd), an aide he left behind years ago after resigning from Starfleet in the wake of the Federation rejecting his Romulan rescue efforts, itself a result of the synthetic attack on Mars.
Much of the episode is dedicated to contextualising the fissures within Starfleet, reinforcing the idea that a level of prejudice has come to drive the decision making behind the Federation’s use of their space force dealing with a refugee crisis. That combined with a group of extremist Romulans working in secret against the existence of synthetics, and you’ve got parables that are easy enough to track.
These are certainly interesting areas to explore in the Star Trek universe, as the show has always been at its most interesting when diving into morally murky depths in the otherwise pristine utopia of the world under the Federation. The issue so far with Picard is how much this information and character motivation is written through quite heavy-handed exposition, it often gets stuck in it. Rather than allow these new characters that are introduced to breathe a little and form more over the course of the adventure, the likes of Raffi and Santiago Cabrera’s Chris deliver so much of their internalised trauma and backstory that the drama ends up being so exposition driven that it’s hard for it to be all that engrossing or interesting.
Where things are more interesting are with Soji (Isa Briones) on board the abandoned Borg cube, reclaiming those assimilated inside. Onboard, unknowingly being observed by Romulan spies in the form of her lover, Narek (Harry Treadaway), Soji begins to get a sense of the advanced power that her as yet unknown lineage has granted her. The action in this episode is also much stronger and with a good level of threat, particularly in the final moments when Picard is attacked at his once peaceful Chateau.
I haven’t talked much yet about the aesthetic of this show, so I’ll go into it a bit here. Very much borrowing from the JJ Abrams reboots, there’s an awful lot of lens flare, and everything is very clean in its futuristic design. Seeing how some tech has developed is fun, particularly with much of the ship’s commands relying on hologram controls rather than physical levers and buttons. There’s a bit of grit to the action, and it certainly feels like its own show rather than a spin on TNG or even Discovery, it just perhaps need to reign in some of the more Hollywood blockbusters flourishes that it’s a little guilty of over-indulging in.
The episode ends with Picard finally aboard a spaceship and saying his customary ‘engage’ to shoot off to the stars in order to pursue Maddox and find Soji. the crew, as it stands consists of Raffi, Chris and Alison Pill’s charming Dr. Jurati. Beyond Pill’s great performance, there’s little that is all that intriguing about this crew so far, and this episode seems a little too eager to give Chris and Raffi exposition-heavy introductions. So far, Star Trek: Picard still seems busy with a lot of moving parts, but little of it is proving to generate much full-hearted excitement or momentum at this time. I am hoping it gets there, and this is probably the most exciting episode yet, but it still feels a little far from reaching its potential.
