Jean-Luc Picard is back for a new adventure in Star Trek: Picard, once again boldly going
where no one has gone before.
The CBS All-Access show is filled with callbacks to Star Trek past, including some that might
elude even the most dedicated of fans.
The first episode of Star Trek: Picard opens to the music of Irving Berlin, as Bing Crosby
croons the lyrics to "Blue Skies."
It's a curious song choice for a show set in the distant future, but the nearly century-old
song holds a surprising amount of significance for Jean-Luc Picard.
Early on in Star Trek: Nemesis, the final film in the Next Generation movie series,
Lieutenant Commander Data channels the classic crooners of the past by performing "Blue Skies"
at the wedding of Will Riker and Deanna Troi.
Toward the end of the film, before Data is destroyed sacrificing himself along with the
Reman ship Scimitar, Data attempts to transfer his memories to B-4, an earlier prototype
of the android made by his creator, Dr. Noonian Soong.
Unfortunately, B-4 is not nearly as advanced as Data, and it appears the transfer was a
failure until B-4 begins softly singing "Blue Skies" to himself at the end of the movie.
Picard's reaction in Nemesis indicates that he suspects there may be some of Data still
alive after all, a thread that is carried forward into the first episode of Picard,
in which the former captain not only visits with Data in his dreams, but speculates that
the "essence" of Data now lives on in a new form.
Since The Next Generation ended with a poker game, it's only fitting that Picard should
begin with one.
The first episode sees Jean-Luc and Data playing cards aboard the Enterprise, engaged in the
same sort of conversation we've seen them participate in countless times before: analyzing
yet another of Data's attempts to appear more human.
This time, Picard is sizing up Data's humanity in the form of a poker tell.
Data is dilating one pupil in order to fool the Captain into believing he has a good hand,
while Picard deduces that his real tell is when he does nothing at all.
The scene helps viewers feel immediately at home in the new show, bringing back settings,
themes, and characters that have already been familiar for decades, but it also calls back
to the final episode of The Next Generation, "All Good Things..."
After skipping through time and saving all life in the universe, the final scene finds
the crew of the Enterprise engaged in their regular poker game.
They're surprised when Picard arrives and asks to join, but welcome him to the table,
and the series ends with the Captain dealing the cards while saying, "The sky's the limit."
In Picard, the poker game makes it clear that we're picking up where the previous show left
off, and setting it to "Blue Skies" could even be calling back to Picard's final line.
A poker game also opens the Next Generation episode "The Measure of a Man," in which Data's
humanity is put on trial.
In that episode, Data also uses poker as an analogy to try to illustrate the difference
between knowledge and memories.
The themes of that episode feel relevant to Picard a sad future in which synthetics like
Data have been deemed too dangerous to exist, and have been outlawed entirely.
When Jean-Luc is getting ready for his interview, evaluating his appearance in the mirror, we
get a brief glimpse of a cream-colored fedora with a black band hanging on a coat rack behind
him.
From the perspective of the camera, the hat almost appears to be sitting on Picard's head
at a jaunty angle.
What at first glance could be mistaken for just a random piece of set dressing actually
hearkens back to one of Picard's favorite holodeck characters the 20th century detective,
Dixon Hill.
The gumshoe was one of young Jean-Luc's childhood heroes, and Picard donned the private investigator's
characteristic trench coat and fedora on numerous occasions during The Next Generation's run,
most notably during the season one episode "The Big Goodbye."
In that episode, the simulated mystery Picard is trying to solve on the holodeck involves
the death of a young woman, foreshadowing the real-life puzzle he finds himself caught
up in as Picard begins.
During Picard's fateful interview about the Romulan supernova and his retirement from
Starfleet, the interviewer mentions that the Utopia Planitia shipyards on Mars were completely
destroyed in the synthetic attacks during the supernova.
It's a passing comment in a laundry list of the catastrophic events that brought Picard
and the Federation to their now-opposing positions.
But "Utopia Planitia" isn't just some random futuristic words thrown in for emphasis the
shipyard has a lot of significance in Star Trek lore.
The Utopia Planitia shipyards served as one of the primary Starfleet ship construction
sites across several Star Trek series.
Among the many ships that were constructed there were the USS Voyager, the USS Defiant
which featured prominently in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and of course, the flagship herself,
the USS Enterprise 1701-D.
Further, Commander Benjamin Sisko served for several years at Utopia Planitia before taking
command of the Deep Space Nine space station.
"I would have thought that after three years spent at the Utopia Planitia yards, that you
would be ready for a change."
Jean-Luc has several dreams of Data during the first episode of Star Trek: Picard, but
one of the most pivotal moments occurs when he dreams of Data painting a woman in white
robes gazing out over a turbulent sea.
This dream cues Picard to go find a painting the real Data gifted to him 30 years earlier,
which to Picard's extreme surprise depicts the same young woman who showed up in Picard's
vineyard earlier in the episode.
While Data explored a lot of artistic pursuits over the course of The Next Generation, his
painting in Picard seems to call back specifically to the sixth-season episode "Birthright, Part
1," in which Data experiences a confusing vision and asks Captain Picard how he should
go about interpreting it.
Picard urges him to explore what he saw in a way that feels meaningful to him, and Data
decides to use painting to explore the images in his head.
Ultimately, after painting dozens of pictures, Data determines that he has accessed a new
level of his programming and can now dream, which he resolves to continue doing henceforth.
It seems only fitting that Data's painting pursuits would come full circle in Picard,
with Jean-Luc using the image of Data painting in his dreams to find meaning in what's happening
in his real life.
Even in death, it seems, his old Lieutenant Commander is still able to help him out.
When Picard goes to visit his vault in the Starfleet Archives, we get a brief glimpse
of two prominently displayed model ships, neither of which is the Enterprise.
The first is the USS Stargazer, the first starship Picard ever commanded.
This was the ship on which he would first perform the battle tactic that eventually
came to be called the "Picard Maneuver," using a brief burst from the ship's warp drive to
confuse the sensors of the opposing ship, making it appear as though the Stargazer was
in two places at the same time.
While Picard sometimes spoke disparagingly of the Stargazer, a ramshackle ship with an
overworked crew, he did confess to occasionally longing for the way things used to be.
"There are times when I would give almost anything to command the Stargazer again."
The second model is the captain's yacht from the Enterprise-E, christened the Cousteau.
The Cousteau was featured in the third TNG movie, Star Trek: Insurrection, in which Picard
and the crew of the Enterprise stood against the Federation to keep them from forcibly
relocating a peaceful species so that they could plunder their planet's resources.
In Insurrection, Picard temporarily resigns from Starfleet, disgusted by their abandoning
of the Prime Directive and their dismissal of innocent lives in the name of their own
self-interest which is exactly the same issue that ultimately led to his permanent resignation
following the Romulan supernova.
There is also a Klingon weapon in Picard's vault in the Starfleet Archives, a curved
blade called a bat'leth.
The Next Generation often featured Lieutenant Commander Worf training and fighting with
a bat'leth that had been in his family for generations.
It's unclear exactly where Picard's bat'leth came from; while it's possible it's Worf's,
it could also be one that Picard came by through his other dealings with the Klingons.
Picard notably served as Arbiter of Succession at the request of the Klingon leader K'mpec
during the Next Generation episodes "Reunion" and "Redemption," and it's possible his high
standing with the Klingon Empire led at some point to him receiving his own bat'leth.
Regardless of where Picard's bat'leth came from, the weapon's presence in his vault serves
as a reminder that Picard is highly respected among the Klingons, who used to be the Federation's
fiercest enemies.
That theme feels significant to Star Trek: Picard, which reveals that the former officer
resigned from Starfleet over their treatment of the Romulans, who stepped into the role
of primary Trek villains after the Federation finally made peace with the Klingons.
One of the final treasured items that Jean-Luc Picard has kept stored away in his vault all
these years is the banner that the children of the Enterprise made for him to celebrate
"Captain Picard Day," an annual event in which the children of the starship honor its captain
through original artwork.
While Picard was reluctant to participate in Captain Picard Day while aboard the Enterprise,
it would seem that he may have appreciated it more than he let on, if he kept the banner
for decades after leaving his post.
We witness Picard receiving the banner in The Next Generation's season 7 episode "The
Pegasus," which sees the crew of the Enterprise facing off against the Romulans to recover
a Starfleet ship near the neutral zone.
During the course of the episode, it becomes clear that Starfleet violated their peace
treaty with the Romulans and tried to cover it up, but Picard refuses to go along with
the deception, revealing the truth to the Romulans and siding against his Starfleet
colleagues.
In short, this is yet another Easter egg in Picard's first episode that calls back to
a time when our hero took a stand against the Federation, possibly foreshadowing that
the one-time captain and Starfleet are about to find themselves at odds once more.
When Picard travels to the Daystrom Institute in Okinawa in order to dig into the possibility
that Dahj may be a flesh and blood synthetic, he meets with Dr. Agnes Jurati, who assures
him that sentient flesh and blood synthetics are nothing more than a forgotten pipe dream.
Jurati then mentions that she was recruited by Dr. Bruce Maddox, and that the two of them
had worked together to create a sentient android similar to Data.
She says they'd been close until the synthetic ban, after which Maddox disappeared.
If the name of the missing scientist sounds familiar, there's a good reason for that.
Bruce Maddox first appeared in the Next Generation season 2 episode "The Measure of a Man," in
which he argued against Data's sentience in the hopes of being able to override his free
will and study him.
Opposing Maddox was none other than Captain Jean-Luc Picard, who presented a moving and
ultimately, victorious case for Data's personhood.
Mentioning Maddox in an episode already rife with themes of sentience, identity, free will,
and individuality feels like a very deliberate nod to one of The Next Generation's most fascinating
core debates, and hints that we haven't heard the last of either side of this argument.
When Picard is telling Dahj his theory about her origins, she tells Picard about a hybrid
orchid that her father engineered, splicing two genuses and naming "the offspring" after
her.
Later, Picard mentions to Dr. Jurati that Data always wanted a daughter.
Both lines together seem to be a direct reference to "The Offspring," a season 3 episode of
The Next Generation in which Data constructs an android daughter named Lal from his own
design.
In "The Offspring," Lal evolves quickly, surpassing even Data's abilities in a short amount of
time and revealing that she can feel emotion, but ultimately her experiences wind up overloading
her positronic brain.
Despite Data's best efforts, he is unable to save her.
Data then downloads Lal's memories into his own neural net, so that in a way, she can
live on through him.
"The Offspring" also sees Picard side against the Federation once again, when a Starfleet
Admiral attempts to claim Lal for scientific research, and Picard refuses to let her go.
Dahj's journey in Picard's first episode mirrors Lal's in many ways in how Picard tried to
protect her, and ultimately, in how she died after only being truly awake for a brief time.
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