Jack of Harts

I’ve watched the first episode of Picard and enjoyed it. It is streaming for free right now on youtube and is well worth the time to watch it if you are Star Trek fan. That is my really tiny review.

The slightly longer one is to describe it briefly. It takes place two decades after Star Trek The Next Generation and the Movies that followed it. Picard has retired, gotten himself a dog, and grows himself some wine. And he dreams about playing poker with Data. On the fourteenth anniversary of the terrorist attack that sets the founding stage of the new series, Picard agrees to do an interview about it. It does not go as he planned, and he does something he has not done in over a decade. He let’s the captain everybody remembers out and says what he really thinks about it, and that kicks the story into action. He gets a visitor who needs help, and being the man he is, he helps her.

I would actually describe this as more of a prequel than a proper first episode of a new series. We see Picard, and we see two or maybe four other people who will be main actors in the series. But we don’t see the ship. We don’t see the crew. We don’t see the team working together or coming together to do the mission that the series will be about. We don’t even really see the beginning of that mission. It’s a prequel that gives us the building blocks of the universe, two decades after the last of the movies we’ve seen. It shows us something Star Trek has rarely ever shown us. How life on Earth goes on. And if I recognize the hints accurately, it gives us a view into what life is like for the Romulans over a decade after their sun exploded in a supernova that fundamentally changed the balance of power in the Alpha Quadrant.

This is not a bad episode. It is actually a very good episode. I simply don’t have a clue what the rest of the cast will be like because we did not see them. I don’t know what the series will be. But if the rest of the series matches this episode in quality, it will be an amazing series to watch.