Review: ‘Star Trek: Picard’ – The Threads Begin Weaving Together in “Broken Pieces”

Great review Kayla. Is it wrong that I might be enjoying the Shuttle Pod weekly reviews slightly more than the actual episodes of Picard? Regardless, both are providing great entertainment.

The Zhat Vash is now Trek’s second worst villain, after Control from S2Disco. Suicide Squad initiation not withstanding, they just don’t make a lot of sense. Neither does The Destroyer. I don’t see this paying off well.

To me, it was a good episode, and more importantly, the first episode since the premiere worthy of the name “Star Trek”. (last week’s failed as a nostalgia trip, being soured by the gratuitous killing of Hugh and flat-out making the Federation responsible for Riker’s son’s death) Good news, but sadly still not a good track record at all so far for season 1. If I generously presume the last two episodes will live up to the potential of this one, I get only a 40% success rate this season of episodes I enjoyed as good Trek. I looked at a list of the much reviled TNG season 1 and counted; I enjoyed 14/26 episodes on there which is higher both in relative and more importantly, absolute numbers. I think the concept of “Peak TV” with short seasons, only one storyline and tight serialization has disproven itself, at least for Trek. Yes, previously Trek had a lot of filler and clunkers but somehow the writers managed to churn out more better written, more memorable and worthy episodes every single year, despite writing two and a half as many on a very tight schedule! Or maybe they were just better writers?

The narrative problems in THIS episode (despite its Trek value) seem to hint at that. Even after 20 years of serialization in TV, and three seasons of Trek on their watch, Kurtzman & Co. have not managed to reach the level of DS9’s last seasons or even Enterprise season 3 in competently writing an arc that is well-paced and believable from start to finish. Even this episode is not exempt from that. There was the mother of all infodumps in the middle of the episode where characters literally sat down to advance the plot for the viewer in telling each other (and the audience) what actually happened. How they knew some of these things (such as Raffi about Commodore Oh) is beyond me. It’s not a natural evolution of the plot. As many predicted, the series is now rushing through to the solution due to the extremely slow plotting and pacing at the beginning, at the expense of plot logic, taking some extreme short cuts. Clancy’s change of heart (if it’s not a red herring) was another such shortcut. Shouldn’t we have seen this pivotal moment just HOW Picard convinced her that he’s not just spinning conspiracy theories again?

Nevertheless, I could forgive some bumpy writing if the heart is at the right (Trek) place and the story NOT intentionally mean-spirited and dystopian, as in this episode. However, there was one letdown: the weakest link of the series (and all of Kurtzman/Abrams Trek) continue to be the villains, even if Narissa got some much needed motivation in this episode. Unfortunately it is too little, too late, and she was already seen mass-murdering again later on (fortunately not graphically this time), to destroy any relatability or credibility she could have. It’s like they *must* convince us that the other side can only be the worst kind of evil, mass-murderers, which mostly discredits the writing as having any relevance (including real-world).

Just imagine for a second: wouldn’t it be so much more amazing if Narissa and Narek were written like Garak, ruthless secret agents who only kill when they absolutely have to but otherwise act in a measured and logical way stemming from their radically different world view, one that can be understood and related to once you understand their motivations and different life experiences?

I thought it was clear that Clancy was reporting Picard to Oh because Oh is head of Starfleet Security, not that Clancy is in on the conspiracy. Her involvement is unwitting. I’m curious if Picard told Clancy that Oh is involved (wouldn’t he know that bc of Jurati?)

Failing some unlikely revelation that they were being manipulated, the coincidence of Rios happening to have met another of Soji’s twins is utterly absurd and hard to get over.

Seven is wasted here – she has legitimate intriguing fears about rejoining the Borg… which are dispensed with in a flash.

The scene between Narissa and her aunt was a tepid attempt to give her depth – far too little and far too late. Compound that with the flashback scene revealing that the Zhat Vash, who hate Synths and have acted evil this whole time, were also responsible for the evil Synth attack. Thrilling.

Picard, Raffi and Jurati have some lovely scenes and the Rios holograms are fun, but there are some fundamental broken pieces in this show that just don’t hang together at all.

It was the first episode that remotely deserves the name “Star Trek”, but it fails to reconcile me with this show. ST: Picard is what you get when you let the show be run by someone who resents the very vision of Gene Roddenberry. I’m talking about you, Kurtzman.

But the even bigger problem is that Sir Patrick thought he needed to get involved with the writing. He’s one of the most brilliant actors this planet has ever seen, but as a writer he’s spectacularly untalented. This show has what? 10, 12 executive producers? What happened to “too many cooks spoil the broth”?

Then there’s the “Game Of Thrones” rip-off elements. Why is it that there has to be a cold blooded murder in pretty much every episode? Preferably a character the fans care about. And why does it need to be shown in so graphic a detail, it makes a crime scene investigator puke?

And what happened to gender equality in the future? In the TNG era it was the most normal thing in the world to see both female and male captains, both female and male admirals. In this timeline the universe seems to be a matriarchy. The highest ranking (active) male Starfleet member we’ve seen is the receptionist in Maps and Legends. Heck, even the villains are an all-female group. And every woman that happens to meet Picard is giving him a right ol’ bollocking or drops the f-bomb on him? Seriously?

But the biggest insult to any Star Trek fan is making the Federation into something that makes the Trump administration look like the last liberal stand. It was established in TNG that material needs, greed and money no longer existed, yet Ruffi parks her slum shed right next to the Vasquez Rocks (another grave insult) and ostensibly lives in poverty? Oh, and everybody seems to hit the bottle at the drop of a hat, too?

The whole point of Star Trek has always been to show what a bright future may look like if we get our stuff together. Now it apparently shows that things in 400 years time are exactly the same as now. Well, sorry, for that I don’t need to watch Star Trek, I get the same from the 6 o’clock news.

Wondering if they’ll introduce a new alien race or try to tie the ancient apocalypse into one of the old empires mentioned over the years?

-Iconians – an advanced civilization which was destroyed 200,000 years before the TNG-era
-The Tkon Empire – Mentioned in season 1 of TNG as a massive technologically advanced empire
-The Preservers – An alien race that went about the galaxy preserving primitive cultures
-Ancient Humanoids – Progenitors of humanoid life throughout the Milky Way
-Sphere – Whatever culture built the “Sphere” from Star Trek: Discovery

I’ve only seen about 20 minutes of this episode. I’ve tried twice to watch it, but keep getting distracted by more exciting things like emptying the garbage and rearranging my sock drawer. This show is so f*cking BORING!

For a while now I’ve been saying that one thing I hope ST: Picard does is reveal that the Romulans acted as a sort of guards that held back a threat to the entire galaxy that eclipsed the Borg, the Dominion, and even themselves.

The most recent developments in ST: Picard show I was not that far off. One such guard does in fact exist, the Zhat Vash, which has been protecting the galaxy from a terrible threat, the Seb-Cheneb, a synthetic being.

Now, is it wholly original? No, not really. Battlestar Galactica and countless others have done the whole “machines are evil” trope, but it is what I wanted to see.

That coupled with showing Borg portrayed through modern production values results in ST: Picard giving him what I wanted to see.

Entertaining episode and good summary but like so much of NuTrek it does not bear close scrutiny:

If the Admonition was so horrible (it killed 80% of those Dhat Vash in the PTS) why would Commodore Oh show it to an untrained, unprepared person like Jurati, who was her only potential mole?

If Narissa is to be believed, “despair” is the key to breaking a Borg ship from the collective? Really?

I’m not clear on just what 7 of 9 accomplished by taking over the Borg cube. Nearly all the dormant Borg were spaced and Narissa apparently escaped. It felt more like a setup for a future story with 7 (“Annika has more work to do”). The fact that her “Where is Hugh?” question was never actually answered was interesting.

The notion that Picard would end up on the La Sirena, piloted by the one other person in the entire galaxy who would recognize Soji for what she was bends the concept of coincidence to absurd levels. If this were Star Wars, I would have said the Force brought them together, but this is Star Trek and it just feels incredibly contrived

Once Picard finds out that Oh is a half Vulcan/half Romulan mole, you’d think he would immediately make a follow up transmission to Clancy to tell her that fact, especially as Oh is the head of Starfleet security. Maybe he did and it was not shown to keep the tension up but if he didn’t it’s a pretty egregious mistake for someone as experienced as he is.

After 7 episodes of leisurely wandering around from planet to planet, this felt like a bit too much of an exposition dump. It’s also telling that just about everyone already knew their piece of the puzzle; they just needed to sit together to connect the dots. As such, the aha! moment where they learn what’s going to happen didn’t feel particularly earned.

The scene of Picard briefly sitting in Rios’ chair before admitting he doesn’t have a clue was probably meant to be funny but came across to me as sad, borderline pathetic and Picard really looked like a clueless old man for a few moments there.

I did enjoy Raffi’s sit-down with the holograms and her and Picard’s scenes with Rios, which were all nice character moments.

As this is supposed to be a more character oriented show I will be curious to see how the crisis is resolved and if TPTB go for a thoughtful solution or if they go for another space battle. I’m inclined to think Chabon will want the former while Kurtzmann and Goldsman will push for the latter.

Love the review, Kayla! And, yes, I look forward to my weekly Shuttlepod as much as the new episodes. Thank you guys for modeling how we can disagree without tearing each other apart.

Yes, I thought the admiral’s F-bomb was strange. However, I didn’t even notice when Rios said it.

I am really enjoying the show but this last episode I had one small issue with. The Borg. Remembering Star Trek First Contact we got to see that the Borg can be out in space with no issues, but in this episode they can just be blown out in to space and kill them? I just don’t get it. I mean am I wrong on this? Did the Borg all die or are then just floating around space now??

I’m wondering if the theories about the Romulans creating the Borg were half right. The Romulans didn’t create the Borg, but the Admonition told them some of the details of their creation 200,000 years ago.