That was great. I think it might be the best season premier of any Trek series (barring maybe Way of the Warrior). It was not quite a perfect episode, but it was so "next level" compared to Season 1's slow start.
As expected, this is largely a "soft reboot" of Picard with the new showrunner. We get all of the cast back (with Laris apparently jumped up to a main character). There were a handful of references to things that happened last season (like Picard's synth body, the end of the synth ban, what happened with La Sirena, etc) but none of it really mattered that much, as this is is a new story which happens to (for contrived but understandable reasons) involve the same characters. The decision to let a year plus of real time pass was a good one...though I was a bit confused about how much time passed. Laris said Zhaban died a year and a half ago, while Soji seemed to indicate the synth ban ended just a year prior. I guess the ban wasn't lifted immediately after the events of Picard Season 1? Maybe two full years have passed?
I really, really loved the use of the themes of time in this episode. One thing modern Trek has been lacking IMHO is strong thematic cores - the episodes and season arcs tend to be sloppy and all over the place. But so much of what Picard is talking about in particular revolves around issues of time, regret, and second chances - something which I am guessing will be reinforced across the season. While the decision of the writers to give Picard an outright abusive childhood is a bit cliched, it does make so much of Picard's own onscreen history make more sense - his lack of long-term relationships, discomfort around children (and choice never to have them himself), his leaving home and never looking back, his frosty relationship with his brother, and even the general distance he attempts to hold everyone to.
I was less a fan of the scenes which involved everyone other than Picard, because they seemed to be perfunctory "let's check in with everyone and see where they are." I was disappointed they chose to have Rios/Jurati and Seven/Raffi have zero development offscreen in the 1-2 years that passed, though I know it's often a conceit of television that nothing of import happens in relationships when we can't see it. While most of the main cast were reunited in the area right around the anomaly by the end of the episode, I note Soji and Laris were not. We know from trailers that they will be involved this season - which leads me to wonder if we'll be spending time with the "prime" versions of them, or their alt-universe duplicates.
The use of the Borg Queen was also intriguing, because neither her nor her ship looked like anything we had seen before. I suspect that this is the Borg from the other universe (where we know Earth defeated them) and they were reaching out to this Picard in an attempt to...cross universes?
And then of course there's the entrance of Q himself, which was done in a picture-perfect manner. It was of course spoiled already by trailers, but it was still a great moment to end nonetheless, leaving me already hungry for next week.
