44 Minutes Of Women Yelling At An Increasingly Senile Old Man

Spoilers for Star Trek: Picard “Maps and Legends” ahead

Following on last week’s episode, Star Trek: Picard continues to boldly go… to places I find personally infuriating. And because of that, I’m the one tackling episode 2 instead of George. I personally get the implication that Kirsten Beyer is routinely outvoted in the writer’s room, or at the very least, doesn’t speak up for reasons I can only imagine. Because this episode managed to make me far more upset than the previous one.

One of the major problems with Picard and, by extension, Discovery, is that they don’t really seem to have anyone running continuity. Or, indeed, anyone consulting on science, other than a single 2018 episode of ST:D where they got someone who consulted on few episodes of Stargate: Atlantis and Stargate Universe. And I’m pretty certain I can prove this simply enough, with a single question to you, dear reader:

Do you know what a positron is?

Don’t feel too bad if not, because apparently the writers for Star Trek: Picard don’t either. They seem to be treating it like robot brain DNA, or something. But less than 1 minute in Google will tell you that it is a subatomic particle of the same mass as an electron, and is an antimatter counterpart of the same. When I can look up the thing you’re throwing around and immediately call bullshit, you’ve made a massive mistake.

And that’s really the thing here, with both this and the previous episode. Terrible excuses for science in a science fiction show, and a complete failure to run proper continuity. The latter being particularly galling, as I’m sure you’d find a long, long list of people willing to do that for you. But continuity is not the Bad Robot/Secret Hideout way of writing genre fiction in a long-standing franchise, as you may or may not have noticed.

But I digress.

This one had several moments that made me want to put my head through a wall. The first being front and center: the flashback scene at the Utopia Planitia Shipyards on Mars. You’ve got a bunch of people working there acting more like 21st century blue collar workers, casually throwing around profanities. Now, I, myself, curse like a longshoreman; I’m not making this point out of hypocrisy. This isn’t something that should be in Star Trek. The entire basis of the setting is that a lot of that shit got left behind once humanity gained warp capability post-World War 3. But props on making your “synths” look suitably offputting. Too bad all the ships looked terrible.

The problem is that this is the “Fuck” episode. You might remember this shit from Discovery. Normally, Star Trek keeps the swearing to a minimum for the reasons (I’d actually forgot that Captain Louvois called Picard a pompous ass in The Measure of a Man, but still). This, however, is at a level of strength that I’d argue is inconsistent with the series. Double dumbass on you, ST:P writers. Please stop using colorful metaphors; you don’t have the knack of it.

And I haven’t even gotten more than 2 minutes into this mess.

So let’s continue on in this vein. You have multiple instances of technology working just because they say it works that way… which isn’t Star Trek. You’ve got things that typically wouldn’t see military use in a paramilitary setting. There’s a reason modern subs use a lot of tactile physical controls; they’re not only more reliable, they’re also more easily fixable. But everybody seems to have a holographic screen in Picard.

But once again, continuity is the failing. Remember the Tal Shiar, the Romulan secret police/special agents/whatever black ops the want to run that week? Did you know there was an even more secret branch of them called the Zhat Vash that are basically like Baba Yaga-level boogiemen that no one has ever heard of or seen? Because they’re super important to this ploline.

Well, those “cheeky fuckers” overwrote whatever molecular reconstruction bullshit the writers tossed in to make this feel like sci-fi. So Picard’s Romulan buddies can’t give a clear answer to what happened in Dahj’s apartment

Also, did you ever notice how Romulans have no artificial life in their culture, no androids or AI’s, they don’t study cybernetics, their computers are super bare-bones, only capable of numerical functions?

Aw, shit, you know where I’m headed with this:

It doesn’t get better, just worse and worse. Picard goes to Starfleet to requisition a ship and small crew to go find and save Dahj’s sister. Which is where the spicyness gets turned up. Because instead of the usual evil admiral you’d expect, she’s just awful. She also utters the second “fuck” variant in the episode (“Sheer fucking hubris!”) in reference to Jean-Luc’s audacity in coming there asking for that.

Coincidentally, Picard’s convictions on the Romulans are routinely proven to the viewer to be wrong. While he was absolutely right to offer aid and all, the Tal- I mean, the Zhat Vash are working at some little underhanded Romulan shit that isn’t totally clear yet.

Picard also has some sort of pareital lobe abnormality that, according to the former doctor from the Stargazer (hi David Paymer!) will probably kill him, so hopefully he dies on his mission before that happens, because the alternative is super unpleasant. This is a nasty trick to up drama levels in fiction, and I don’t like it. Mostly because, like certain dishes, it has to be done right, and no one does it right.

I haven’t even touched the Borg cube harvesting shit. Well, “hot Romulan guy” is banging Dahj’s sister, Soji. Oh, and also he’s part of the Tal Shi- I mean Zhat Vash, plan that’s being run by undercover agents in the Federation under the evil Admiral Commodore, who is also a Romulan undercover agent.

Honestly, I’m just done. There were so many moments that made me want to put my head through a wall out of cringe. When you get down to it, Star Trek: Picard is a series that’s trying to draw in new fans alongside the old. They try to get the old fans with nostalgia bait, to mixed results. They try to get new fans with edgy, incongruous shit that belongs in other, softer sci-fi franchises, to mixed results and the likely alienation of older fans. I suppose the shame is that everyone is acting their asses off, here (especially Sir Patrick Stewart), but the material they’re working with just doesn’t hold up to that. As for positives, uh, Jeff Russo?

Star Trek: Picard’s second episode aims for nostalgia, but frequently misses.

Grade: D

“Star Trek: Picard” airs Thursdays on CBS All Access.“

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