Some Thoughts on Star Trek: Picard
Tue 27 January 2026
Warning: (obviously) spoilers abound!
I just finished watching Star Trek: Picard last night, and while this won't be a thorough analysis (I'd probably have to watch it five times to accomplish that), I did want to briefly write down my thoughts on it.
Like many older Trek fans, I'm not particularly fond of the LENS FLARE era of Trek. I thought Star Trek (2009) was an utter travesty, and I feel quite justified in referring to J.J. Abrams as "The Destroyer of Worlds." That movie (2009) was a betrayal of all that Star Trek meant and stood for, reverting a series that stood on social commentary and mind-expanding premises to mindless pandering fisticuffs, cheesecake, and slapstick in space.
I had also watched the first three or so seasons of Star Trek: Discovery, and my reception of it was lukewarm, but not overly negative.
I do, however, feel the need to say that I am not one of those people who constantly lambast "Kurtzman Trek." The essays and videos I've seen that have taken that tack all had a particular political smell to them, and I have nothing to do with that persuasion. Nevertheless, there is no lack of credible criticism of this era of Star Trek, and I don't think it really carries the torch all that well, from what I have seen. But neither did Enterprise. Neither did Voyager. Those two series were plagued with questionable decisions from the beginning, and overall poor and honestly lazy writing, respectively.
I think I started watching Picard with my sister in 2020. I got as far as S1E05, "Stardust City Rag," as that's the time we had to watch it together, and I had intended to continue watching it on my own when I got back home. But I didn't. Why? If you've seen the episode, you know why. Icheb's bloody and gory torture scene was absolutely chilling, and not in a good way. Season 1 seemed to start off trying to be as dramatic and edgy as possible, and honestly, I'm not here for it.
Between Icheb, Ro, and Shelby, Picard has a habit of bringing back beloved characters just to kill them off right away, and that seriously sucks. At the same time, the series loves re-using faces (namely Spiner's and Briones') beyond what's remotely plausible, particularly in the second season. I can accept that Noonien Soong had a son, and maybe even that he looked identical to him (?!). I can also accept that there were other androids that looked just like Dahj and Soji. But the idea that Soong had a 20th century ancestor that looked identical to him, and that his genetically-constructed "daughter" would look identical to Dahj/Soji? That's a bit much, even for a long-time fan of the franchise. Speaking of 21st century Soongs, The tie-in between Soong and Khan came very close to my own headcanon for the character, namely that Khan Noonien Singh somehow survived his last fight with Kirk, settled down on a remote planet, amended his savage ways, and used his genius towards bettering the galaxy: by getting into positronics! That's right, Khan Noonien Singh became Noonien Soong. Now you can't unsee it! 😄
My other problem with the Picard series is something I alluded to earlier: I think I'd have to watch it no less than three times to really understand all of the details of what happened in it. Each season felt like its own series, both in terms of how much detail (and loose ends) were packed in it, and how much they differed from each other, and really didn't do much to resolve the previous seasons' questions.
- What happened with the Romulans? Did Picard finally muster Starfleet to help relocate all of them?
- What happened with Laris? Did Picard go back to her, or did he rekindle his relationship with Beverley?
- Is (Anton) Chekov ok?
- What happened to all of the androids?
- What happened to Kestra when Vadic kidnapped Troi?
- Is anyone going to address the insane breaches and war crimes of Starfleet Intel/Section 31?
- Where was the real Tuvok when the shapeshifter was posing as him? Why didn't the shapeshifter kill him outright?
- What the heck did Seven say before the Titan's warp engines engage at the end??? 😅
But what I will say the series did right is in bringing back one of the most important characters of all: the Enterprise D! I do wish they had managed to do the Captain's Ready Room as well, but I'm thankful for the Bridge, and they did an absolutely beautiful job of it. With modern display tech, the consoles looked even better than the originals, without looking different or out-of-place. The startup and shutdown animations in particular were magnificent.
To me, it wasn't truly a Star Trek series until we see the Enterprise D. That is the exact moment when the series clicked for me. Even though it had some serious flaws, and the overall writing quality seemed to be about on par with Voyager, they really captured the tone of true Star Trek at the end, and pulled out a winner, without a moment to spare.
We can wish the show's writers and creators had "gotten it" in Season 1, rather than the last quarter of Season 3, but at least they finally got it. With all of the pieces finally put together, the band of wonderful friends we'd missed for over two decades unified and all sitting around the same table, I finally realized just how much I had missed them all. It was a real reunion: not merely for the characters and cast, but for the fans as well. After so many years of missing them, my heart opened to recall and enjoy once more everything those characters, no, those dear friends meant to me in my youth, and it made me want to get a bunch of Star Trek novels to explore their adventures in the years in between Nemesis and Picard.
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