“I can never see past the orchids.”

Man, everybody lies on this show! The characters are as insanely dishonest with each other as they are with us. There is also the contradictory nature of Picard. He rails against the presumed “evil” of the Borg Collective, but in the same breath praises Seven of Nine, even though she is (and always will be) of Borg.

Last week’s episode spared us the perils of Soji, so that means we have to spend a little more time falling asleep as her arc plays out this week. There’s plenty more uninteresting run-off: the Leslie Bibb/Kristen Bell clone gets sexy with Captain Rios, Soji’s duplicitous sneaky-weasel-creepy boyfriend has a disturbing incestuous lust for his traitorous Starfleet sister, and Soji has absolutely no clue. Soji’s a frustrating bundle of sunshine and puppies. While everyone else schemes and plots around her, SHE HAS NO IDEA.

Picard has a plan to receive “envoy status” so he can visit the artifact (the Borg cube) and conduct meetings with the administrators of the Borg Reclamation Project. I know this has no purpose in the story except to give Raffi something to do other than drink, get angry, and engage in passive-aggressive shouting matches. A couple of episodes back, somebody got their head cut off just for arguing with Picard. They could’ve gone in there guns-a-blazing, but they chose the more boring approach, and the audience is required to suffer yet another boring scene.

Boring. Hard to believe, but boring is the only word I can conjure to describe Star Trek: Picard. There was an episode from Next Generation’s season seven, titled “Force of Nature.” Nothing happens in that episode for twenty minutes. The episode’s first twenty minutes are devoted to Data’s cat, Spot, and Data’s attempts to train him (Spot was a boy until four months later when he suddenly became a girl and had kittens in “Genesis”). See? There were truly embarrassing, cringe-worthy episodes of the original Next Generation series. I feel like you run out of ideas when you start plumbing the emotional depths of cat-training.

Back to Picard. Soji is having doubts. She doesn’t understand why she conks out and has bizarre dreams. She doesn’t understand why her mother doesn’t behave like a mother. There’s a lot of hand-wringing between the Romulan brother/sister incest combo about being careful not to trigger her. Otherwise, she’ll go full Rutger Hauer on them, and we can’t have that happen for another couple of hours, I’m guessing.

Meanwhile, Picard is getting strange flashes. He is remembering when he was assimilated into the Collective. Didn’t we already do this in First Contact? Picard visits the Borg cube and reunites with Hugh (Jonathan Del Arco); one of the better scenes of the series, because it is just the two of them, and as usual, it’s over all too quickly. This is not a show about Jean-Luc Picard. Star Trek: Picard is the show that will kill off the older iteration of the franchise. It is not a show for the fans. The chief purpose of the show is to bring in newer, younger, sexier fans.

I can’t help but think of another episode from the franchise in its seventh year: Voyager’s “The Void”. Jonathan Del Arco makes a guest appearance in that episode, but not as Hugh. He plays Fantome, a “vermin” creature befriended by Robert Picardo’s Doctor. In that episode, Janeway decides to pool Voyager’s resources with other ships caught in a galactic “sand-trap” and work together, forming an alliance, to escape the void. Janeway uses the Federation as a model for her alliance, and it works! “The Void” was a perfect model of what the show (and franchise) could be. It would never work on this show. When Voyager worked, it was absolutely brilliant. When something works on Star Trek: Picard, it’s almost accidental.

There’s just too much hate, too much distrust, too much violence, and too many variations on themes we’ve seen in other movies and television shows. There’s nothing original here. Picard asks Hugh to find Soji, while her creepy Romulan boyfriend conducts an impromptu encounter session with her, pushing her to analyze her dreams. I don’t understand his motivation. Is he evil, or isn’t he? All she sees is a mannequin with her face attached to it. It’s weird how we get a perfect visual representation of her acting style. Thank you! I’m here all week! But seriously, folks, I kid the bad actors. I kid them because they’re terrible, yet they’re being paid for their performances. They’re being paid more than you. Way more. Think about that.

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!