'Star Trek: Picard' season 2 continues to deliver

So much of the 10-episode first season of "Star Trek: Picard" in 2020, on what's now Paramount+, was devoted to cleaning up the collateral damage of 2002's "Star Trek: Nemesis" and J.J. Abrams' 2009 "Star Trek" reboot that it left me wondering what a second season of "Picard" might look like.

I shouldn't have been surprised, because even without those loose ends that were demanding to be addressed, the second season of "Picard" (which premiered March 3) is still much like the first.

It offers a wildly uneven balance of unabashed nostalgia for Patrick Stewart's Jean-Luc Picard (from "Star Trek: The Next Generation") as Dramatic Space Dad and Jeri Ryan's Seven of Nine (from "Star Trek: Voyager") as Cool Borg Mom, versus a vision of the future that struggles to reconcile Gene Roddenberry's stubborn utopianism with the historically significant trends toward authoritarianism, bigotry and environmental decline that we feel in the real world.

For the first season, Picard assembled an Island of Misfit Toys to serve as his post-Enterprise crew, but as he's reunited with them by the events of the second season, it merely underscores that they were never really a "crew" in the conventional Starfleet sense, but more of a crack commando unit, like "The A-Team," that came together out of mercenary necessity, each focused on their own objectives.

Santiago Cabrera's rugged Chris Rios and Evan Evagora's earnest Elnor make welcome returns as this show's Latin Han Solo and Romulan Legolas, respectively, while Alison Pill's Dr. Agnes Jurati, who arguably weighed down much of the first season, has leveled up as a character in the second season, with her portrayal leaning hard into depicting her as a hilariously all-compassing disaster area of unresolved emotional damage.

Pill's socially awkward, frantically scrambling monologue as Jurati in this season's second episode, as she tries to talk her way out of trouble, earns her MVP status, even on a cast full of MVPs.

Not that the cast of "Picard" is hurting for competent, well-played female characters, from Michelle Hurd as Picard's fellow Starfleet officer and platonic best friend, Raffi Musiker, to Orla Brady as Laris, Picard's Alfred Pennyworth-esque Romulan housekeeper, whose loyalty has turned into romantic feelings for him.

Even if it winds up not having any broader bearing on this show's plot, I adored seeing Whoopi Goldberg come back as Guinan, to catch up on old times with Picard at her bar on Earth, since the actors' genuine affection for each other shines through their meandering chat.

But the biggest treat (and threat) has been the return of John de Lancie as Q, the nigh-omnipotent cosmic being who was so fond of testing the fitness of humanity to explore the universe, via the unwilling proxies of Picard and his crew.

Even in his most humane moments, Q has always been excessively patronizing and needlessly cruel, but as Q confronts Picard with a nightmarish divergent timeline, in which the largely ideal future of the mostly inclusive, peace-seeking Federation has been supplanted by a xenophobic, conquest-based Confederation, we see a Q who is not only furious at Picard, for reasons he has yet to reveal, but also existentially terrified - of what, he won't say.

For all the character's incalculable power, rarely has Q been so frightening as when he backhands Picard, hard enough to draw blood, and Picard, in spite of his seething contempt for Q, quickly discerns that the godlike being is fundamentally not well.

To undo a reality in which Seven of Nine is the dictatorial president of the Confederation, and Picard is its most ruthless, bloodthirsty general, with a room full of skulls of his slain enemies serving as trophies in his French estate, Picard and his post-Enterprise noncrew (all of whom have conveniently retained their memories of the original timeline) must travel back to 2024, with a captured Borg Queen steering their way there, as a pitch-black comic sidekick.

As with the first season of "Picard," mysteries abound, and with overrated screenwriter Akiva Goldsman returning to the show, I don't doubt that many of the resolutions to those mysteries will prove disappointing. But this show's first season also gave Stewart, Ryan and other returning "Star Trek" actors the opportunity to deliver some of the best acting of their careers, and with Goldberg, de Lancie and Brent Spiner (again) all on tap, I can't wait to see what they come up with.

At the same time, Picard's noncrew of Misfit Toys have earned my fannish affections as well (by now, Raffi calling Jean-Luc "JL" is as iconic as Picard calling Riker "Number One"), so I'm along for wherever their ride takes us.

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
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