Well, I’m currently sat on a train home, and won’t get through my front door for about 3 more hours. Was it worth it, for one episode of Star Trek?
YES!
I’ve decided that, quite frankly, I don’t want to ruin this for people. So, I’m not going to go into deep detail, especially as we were asked not to post spoilers or reviews online until 6pm next Thursday, so I’ll feel a bit guilty if I go spoiler mad. Enough people are putting all the information out there, so I don’t really need to!
With that said, if you want to be kept completely in the dark, don’t read any more of this post...
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You’ve been warned.
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- This is a fantastic hour of television. After about 20 minutes, I knew I’d just seen the best opening 20 minutes of a Star Trek series, ever.
- Whilst this show is very clearly a 10-part single story, rather than a 10 episode season (so to speak), I feel that this hour of TV worked absolutely perfectly on its own, too.
- We see the exterior of only one Starfleet starship in this episode, and I doubt there’s a single Trekkie on the planet who won’t be happy with it.
- We do see models of three previously established Starfleet vessels. Can confirm that there has been no redesign of them.
- People who are used to Picard being the way he used to be, are going to be in for a shock. He’s an old man here, and it’s played that way, too. It becomes a particular issue during an action sequence in this episode.
- For all the social media shitstorm that has erupted over Patrick Stewart’s comments about the political nature of things this show is tackling, there is only one scene where the dialogue is clearly being very referential to issues in our own world today. And you know what? It’s one of the best dialogue driven scenes I’ve seen in Star Trek, and is Star Trek to its absolute core. It’s some of Stewart’s best work in Trek too, I think, and reminds me of how he floored me with his acting in the FC scene where he broke his “little ship.”
- That same scene is almost tragic, seeing how Picard’s now perceived by the wider world.
- Visually, I felt they did a good job of making this feel like it takes place about 150 years after Discovery. For as modern as Discovery’s tech can look, the tech in Picard felt like it was even fancier.
- Holograms feel different here. Works great.
- The fate of B4 is rather sad, and takes away that hope from the end of NEM.
- Very few of the main cast are in this episode, which is clear immediately from the opening credits cast list.
- Speaking of the opening credits, they’re visually stunning. Very similar to Discovery’s, in the sense of lots of imagery being created before our eyes, etc. Much like how Discovery’s music ends with the TOS bit, Picard’s ends with a few notes from the TNG music - works much better than Discovery’s, for me. The main theme for this show is great, can’t wait to listen to it properly.
- the TNG era Klingon appearance is still canon.
- Some brilliant one liners in this that Trek fans will laugh out loud at.
- I loved how Earth looked and felt in this. Dahj’s first scene, in particular, looked great.
- Data’s scenes are brilliant. They’re almost a completely different vibe to everything else going on in the episode, and I think that makes them stand out a bit more.
- The death toll of the attack on Mars is MUCH greater than the 3000 shown on screens in Children of Mars. Throw in the impact it had on other things going on in the galaxy, and you could argue it was in the millions/billions. This attack isn’t just a historical event - a few lines of dialogue leave me feeling that it’s going to become a significant plot point as this season develops.
- Isa Briones is now currently my favourite thing about this new era of Star Trek.
- There was a trailer still the end (a “this season on Picard” deal) that contained a LOT of new footage I hadn’t seen. The show looks great.
Honestly, I loved it. I knew I would, anyway, but this still blew me away. The opening sequence was jaw dropping and not at ALL how I thought the show would open, and everything in this episode felt like a love letter to Trek and TNG in particular.
People will have different opinions, of course. But I loved it, my father loved it (took him, as my partner couldn’t make it - no babysitter for us!), and everyone around us was using the word “excellent.”
Big shoutout to Amazon, too. This whole evening was superb, from top to bottom.
