"...The Needs Of The
Many Are Met By The Talents Of A Few..."
Star Trek: PICARD Season 1
Classy, well-written, quality effects that work
and don't just intrude - the Star Trek franchise returns in January 2020 with a
genuinely likeable re-boot.
Effectively retired but restless in idyllic
French countryside where the sunny vineyards are managed by automated
sprinklers – it’s 20 years since Picard helmed the Starship Enterprise. We open
with a tantalising flashback conversation embedded in a card game - Brent
Spiner doing a guest appearance as the sentient android Operations Officer Data
who gave his life for humanity in the painful past.
It’s a smart move on the part of the writers
who know what Trekkies love and want - but the introduction of the hugely
watchable (and ethereally gorgeous) Isa Briones as Dahj is a masterstroke.
She is a young intelligent and deeply sensitive
woman having a loving relationship with a male creature of another species,
when her seemingly ordinary world is shattered by three assassins catapulting
into her New Boston apartment – an action that activates some Jason Bourne type
moves inside her she clearly had no idea were there. Alone on the streets of a
holograph-saturated city at night - Dahj is now hunted but also haunted by the
face of Jean-Luc Picard who she sees being interviewed on TV by a smiling but
wily host determined to get to her version of the truth and possibly make
herself look good with her galactic viewers into the bargain (a clever way of
introducing backstory). Finding him in France - and although they don't know
each other at all – Dahj and Jean-Luc begin a journey to find out who or what
she is and why their connection is so physically and mentally deep.
Orla Brady and Jamie McShane play Romulan
housekeepers in France to our Star Fleet curmudgeon and the lovely Alison Pill
(one of my heroes from the Aaron Sorkin TV Series "The Newsroom")
turns up as a Synthetic Research boffin in Okinawa, Japan who hints to an
animated Picard as to the possible true nature of Dahj. But it is of course
Patrick Stewart reprising his most famous TV role that keeps you watching,
infusing his Starship Captain with a humanity and dignity that few other actors
could provide. Stewart's gravitas is extraordinary and as an actor he knows his
character so well - his bruised Picard vegetating in retirement with his
faithful hound by his side when his every sinew longs to be back in the thick
of it – making at difference from the inside instead of giving interviews about
what its like to be banished to the outside.
Telling y’all more would spoil the fun. I'm 62
this year and one of those people who waded through all 10 or 120 or whatever
of the original Star Trek films with my brothers in the cinema - wearily
trekking through the ups and down and have been baldly going to new frontiers
(or multiplexes) ever since.
Episode 1 of Season 1 of Star Trek: Picard
isn't genius or even groundbreaking for sure, but it is damn good, exudes class
and feels like the start of something that could bring the flame back to life.
Our beloved Star Trek seems to be back in the hands of those that love it as
much as we have and will do this extraordinary space adventure proud – a wholly
positive entity in our lives since the swinging 60ts.
So it seems that for now the needs of the many
have indeed been met by the talents of the few, so we mere humanoids can go
forth and boldly enjoy a galaxy just at the end of my remote and not in the
least bit far away. Hell, I even want to kiss a communications officer in a
first-time multi-racial clincher down at the Margate Universal Credit Office (I
do hope she opens all channels if you know what I'm saying).
I'd better finish now because in my advanced
dotage I can feel a set-my-phaser-to-stun joke coming on (I cannay control it
Captain – oh do be quiet)...
