- We're breaking down Star Trek: Picard episode one
and where it goes from here.
It's been 18 years, 18 long years
since the last time we saw Jean Luc Picard
in 2002's Star Trek Nemesis
and even longer since Star Trek: The Next Generation
finished it's television run,
but the drought is finally over
because the first episode of Star Trek: Picard
premiered this Thursday on CBS All Access
and it's safe to say that fans are on board.
- Engage.
- They set their phasers to
(beep)
Yeah.
And while the episode did a good job
at reintroducing us to 24th century life
two decades after we last saw it,
there were a ton on lingering questions
that all but the most die hard fans
were scratching their heads over
trying to figure out what exactly was going on.
So let's break down the episode
and it's ominous ending right now.
- Engage.
- Now of course there's going to be
spoilers a plenty for episode one of Picard in this episode.
So if you haven't seen it yet,
crank up som Klingon opera so you can't hear my voice,
but if you are sticking around
help us live long and prosper
by giving us a like and subscribing.
- Engage.
- So what exactly happened here?
Well the episode begins with Picard and Data
playing poker in Ten-Forward on the Enterprise-D.
Now obviously we knew something was up
since the D is destroyed in Star Trek Generations
and Data sacrificed his life to save the Enterprise-E
during the events of Star Trek Nemesis.
Now many fans were worried this was Picard
recreating great moments of his life
and his friends on the Holodeck,
which just sounds like the sadist
old man thing to do of all time,
but thankfully, turns out it was just a dream,
but it's a dream where we watch
Mars get blown the ever loving hell up in the background,
which is another surprise,
because in all the trailers we assumed
the planet being blown up would be Romulus,
which Spock confirms happened in this timeline,
in the 2009 Star Trek Kelvin timeline.
Picard awakens at his family vineyard Chateau Picard
with his dog Number One, and his two Romulan friends
who survived the destruction of Romulus.
They were treated to a bit of an exposition dump
in the form of a hostile interview on the anniversary
of the destruction of the Romulus
and we learned that Picard convinced the Federation
to send a rescue fleet to save the Romulans
who actually asked for help.
So if they asked for help you know things were pretty bad.
This was basically like space Dunkirk
as Picard so aptly mentions,
but you also learn there was another tragedy.
Synthetic beings, aka, androids were helping
build the Flotilla at the Utopia Planitia at Mars
and then launched a terrorist attack
that killed 90,000 living beings
and ignited fires in the atmosphere
that are still burning to this day.
In this interview we also learn why
Picard resigned from/quit Star Fleet
since they used the attack as an excuse
to not save these desperate Romulans
there by breaking their promise
and Picard wasn't willing to sit by
and watch so many innocent lives be lost by inaction.
- There were millions of lives at stake.
- Romulan lives.
- No, lives.
- Now to Picard this betrayed the entire Utopian creed
of the Federation and Star Fleet
and the fact that the Federation also used the attack
to outlaw synthetic beings,
that was just icing on this deeply crappy cake.
While all this is happening
we meet a young woman named Dahj.
She's celebrating her acceptance as a research fellow
in the famed Daystrom Institute,
the Federation's premier research and technology center
when all of a sudden masked assassins kill her boyfriend
and attempt to kidnap her.
She then activates
and hands them their own asses on a silver platter.
It's honestly awesome.
Afterward she has a vision of Picard's face
and when she sees Jean Luc's interview on TV
she knows she has to go to him.
While Picard doesn't recognize her
they both admit there's something going on there
so he invites her to stay,
but she runs off in the middle of the night
afraid to bring danger to his doorstep.
Meanwhile Picard has another dream with Data
doing another one of his favorite pastimes, painting.
When Picard awakens he sees Data's painting
hanging on his wall and awakens to the news
that Dahj has fled in the night.
Picard goes to his personal archives
in Star Fleet Headquarters in San Francisco, Aka,
the Convention Center in Anaheim.
See you there at Wondercon.
It's a room that's filled with a ton of awesome,
next gen Easter eggs, like a Picard Day banner,
and models of the USS Stargazer and his captain's yacht.
There he learns that Data painted
two versions of this painting
and the woman in the painting is actually
the spitting image of Dahj.
What's more, the painting is called Daughter.
Now this brings to mind the Next Gen season three episode,
The Offspring in which Data attempts
to create an android daughter
based on his own neural network
who tragically dies by the end of the episode.
Dahj uses hacking skills she didn't even realize
that she had to track down Picard once more,
who gives her news that she wasn't ready for,
that she is some how a Cylon.
Sorry I mean a flesh and blood synthetic
and also probably Commander Data's daughter.
Of course they're attacked once more
and it's revealed that their assailant are Romulan.
Now if we're to wager
I guess we'd say they're Tal Shiar, the feared
and brutal intelligence agency of the Romulan Empire
and though Dahj fights valiantly,
she's ultimately killed by some weird mix of poison acid
and an exploding weapon.
Now here death kicks Picard into action
and he pays a visit to the Daystrom Institute
and it's there that he meets
Allison Pill as Dr. Agnes Jurati
and also what's left of
the Federation's decimated android division.
He learns that if indeed Dahj was a synth,
the technology needed to create her
is still 1,000 years off.
In this second massive exposition scene
we get to other Next Gen deep cuts.
Now the first is the android before
who is introduced as Data's stupider brother in Nemesis
and while Data tried to download himself into B4.
Before his death we learned here it was not successful
because before it was just too damn stupid.
This is why I'm an only child.
Now the other piece of information
is that the former head of that research department
and creator of the synths that ended up going rogue on Mars,
Bruce Maddox, went missing.
Now if that name sounds familiar
that's because Bruce Maddox is first introduced
in the season two episode of Next Generation,
Measure of a Man.
He wants to study Data without Data's consent
because he believes androids are not truly living beings.
Data and Picard however, prove Data's personhood
to Star Fleet and then Maddox ends the episode
as much less of a dick
and with a newfound respect for Data.
It's honestly one of the best episodes
of the first two seasons
and you should absolutely re watch it
if you haven't seen it in a while.
In the Nex Gen fourth season episode, Data's Day,
we know that Maddox
continued his android research with Data's blessing
and according to Dr. Jurati, he was getting very close
to creating Data level synthetics until the ban
on synth development came down from Star Fleet.
This lead to Maddox disappearing,
but we also learned that he had a theory
that Data's essence and memories could be recreated
from just one of his positronic brain neurons.
Now this means that if Dahj was Data's daughter
a piece of him might still be out there
that could recreate Data.
Now Dr. Jurati also dropped
another truth bomb on the audience
that Maddox's androids were created in pairs as twins,
meaning that Data has another daughter out there.
Damn, he was busy.
This is also confirmed at the end of the episode
when we see the new Romulan war birds
at a Romulan reclamation site
where Dahj's twin, Soji works as a scientist.
What she knows about her own past in unclear,
but she is most certainly in grave danger,
especially when the ending reveals
that this Romulan reclamation site
is a Borg cube that's being dismantled by the Romulans
to some unknown end.
So where do things go from here?
Well Picard's continuing mission seams twofold.
He needs to A, track down Soji and save her
and B, bring back Data's essence.
He also want's to find Bruce Maddox
who definitely knows more
about what's actually going on here
and it's important to note that in this episode,
we haven't even met most of the new characters
teased in Picard's trailers
and we also haven't seen cameos from returning characters
like Riker, Troi, Hugh, and Seven of Nine,
but we'll be waiting with baited breath
for each new episode of Picard to drop
on Thursdays, on CBS All Access,
but in the meantime tell me,
what did you folks think?
Did you enjoy Picard's premiere?
Did you enjoy all of these mysteries being teased out
and who was the better number one, Riker, or the pit bull?
Be honest, let's discuss.
Thank you so much for watching.
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