“I feel surprisingly moved.”
In storytelling of any kind, you put your best foot forward and tell the story with the strengths you’ve outlined. This episode I will title, “Attack of the Space Orchids,” because there are quite literal space orchids. They emerge from the atmosphere of a planet Soji calls home. Did I miss something? They engulf and envelope Captain Studly’s ship during a fierce fire-fight with a Romulan ship as the Borg cube intercedes. This may be the strongest opening the series has achieved thus far, but it’s also episode nine, and we know the story has to start tying up the very loose ends. So much could have been avoided to bring us to this point.
I envision one story conference with about twenty writers and five of those writers shouting plot points and narrative hooks at each other. A secretary with very shaky hands is trying to transcribe all of this madness and getting only half the epithets and sentiments necessary to construct the overall story. The secretary puts all of her index cards into her overpriced messenger bag, but she forgot to number the cards. As a result, we have this William Burroughs-esque cut-up prose*.
What are the most important elements of the story? Picard is old, sick, and dying. Maddox fulfilled his desire to create a race of sentient androids. A doomsday cult has infiltrated Starfleet. These are all that should matter to Star Trek: Picard. Instead, the show is rife with idiosyncrasies, quirky mannerisms, fetishes, and graphic violence. I don’t get as angry about the language. As Kirk once said, “Nobody pays any attention to you if you don’t swear every other word.” Soji’s world is filled with smiling, ethnically diverse (huh?) synthetic faces (mostly women, which is a bit creepy) with yellow eyes and spray-tans. This is the Planet of the Overacting But Dead-Inside Androids, or something like that.
Soji tells them Romulans are on their way to destroy this wonderful synthetic paradise. Brent Spiner pops up as a descendant of Soong. So Soong had real children, but he made android versions of himself? Being a father myself, I kind of understand this. And where does Maddox fit into this? He lived here. He made this world his home and his private laboratory. The editing in this episode is making me crazy, but at least things are actually happening. The androids look like they belong in a New Age sex cult somewhere in California, but that’s okay. So far, they’re the only characters that make any sense (even though the notion of androids being able to conduct mind-melds on flesh-and-blood humans makes no sense). They’re convinced the Romulans have gone mad. So am I.
In her discussions with a doppelgänger, Soji determines the synthetics want to match the evil of the Romulans. They’ve captured Soji’s psycho boyfriend, and, more troubling, the doppelgänger has an air of smug condescension about her. Think Admiral Holdo from Last Jedi, and her insulting baby-talk to Poe. She feels the need to baby-talk Soji about her harmful, altruistic ways. Perhaps the show has not clearly demonstrated to me the awesome hatred the Romulans have for androids. There’s only a handful of them. They don’t seem to be bugging anyone.
The androids decide to destroy humanity. Picard, understandably, has a problem with that. He’s not immune to the irony that a prophecy of destruction will be fulfilled should the androids get their way. Picard offers sanctuary to the androids. Stewart shines in his moment when he swears he will make Starfleet listen to him and end the ban of synthetics in the galaxy. Soong and his android babes decide to put Picard under house arrest. There’s an awful lot of standing around and talking with tense music playing in the background. Astonishingly enough, this is the best episode of Star Trek: Picard I’ve yet seen. That’s not exactly high praise.
*You could make something manageable of this story as it exists. Let’s say you start with the problem, as a whole, expansive. The problem is the conspiracy. Then you reduce the broth over a medium-high heat. We get into the spiritual, the non-linear, intangible element: the Romulans. Then we go down further – to the characters. Let’s also avoid current hot-button political problems in our own world. Perhaps we can create problems without reaction or response to current political events. This is all achievable. It was achievable in season five of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. which was also replete with prophecies and “destroyers of worlds.” Yes, you read it! Star Trek: Picard ripped off an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. storyline from 2017!
Star Trek Rewind explores the Star Trek universe. From Archer to Janeway, Kirk to Picard, and Georgiou to Sisko — boldly read what no one has read before!
