Star Trek: Picard – No Win Scenario Review

Is it bad that Captain Shaw might be my favorite character on Star Trek: Picard this season? Ok, fine, I suppose he isn’t my favorite character, but he’s a symptom of the larger element of what is making the series feel so different this time around: fun. Everyone, from Patrick Stewart on down, is clearly having fun this season. The writers are having fun* – as evidenced by the jokes in the writing and the liberal use of salty language that would never have happened back in the old days of following Jean-Luc Picard’s journey – and as a result, that joy and mirth is trickling down to the characters themselves. Sure, they’re in terrifying and deadly straits at various points throughout this episode – and there was more than enough technobabble to spin the head of even the most ardent Trek fan – but for the first time in the three seasons of this series, every single character felt real, lived in, and easy to connect with.

*Shout out to the writers for once again addressing one of my key questions regarding Jack – his name. I guess I’ll just take it as read that it’s a perfectly fine name (even if the man himself was wary of the choice) since both Beverly and Jean-Luc approved of it. Although I agree with Jack that’s it’s a bit strange. Less successful on the Jack front was the apparent lesson that this lone wolf needs to find himself a pack in order to survive. Cliche? 100%. And, for all the great character work thus far, Jack remains a bit of a cypher asking for that one moment that will help him accept his past, his parents, and fight for his future. Much less exciting than a sarcastic kid who doesn’t really feel a need to connect with dear old dad, but I guess some Trek has to stay the same.

Some of that stems from the familiarity we, as an audience, now have with the Legacy characters deployed for this particular arc, but circling back to my thoughts on Shaw, this strong character development is also a part of the new group of characters we’ve just met. Take Shaw’s speech about his continued trauma stemming from Wolf 359 – that reveal (which was teased with his coldness toward Seven early in the season) only hits emotionally when we’ve come to begrudgingly care about who Shaw is. And Todd Stashwick has managed to inject just enough gruff humanity into Shaw throughout the previous three episodes that we have come to appreciate what that dipshit from Chicago addsto the mix in this series, thereby allowing that the emotional downbeat for the character to hit the way it was meant to. Or, take Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut’s work as Sidney La Forge. In four episodes, she’s crafted a compelling young Ensign who fits in perfectly with the feel of the series, and who is funny, smart, and more than just the link to the old guard that her name suggests. For the first time, Picard has given us characters and it is willing to take the time to build them from the ground up, allowing us to relate to them slowly over time. I honestly didn’t think the writers were capable of this level of structure and character development, but it turns out all they needed to have were enough established characters to allow them to build new ones around.

“No Win Scenario” also benefits from being an episode in the traditional, episodic nature of The Next Generation. Yes, it is a piece in a larger narrative arc, but the immediate threat posed by the gravity well was one that needed to be solved in the course of a single episode. While I’m a big fan of serialized storytelling, and I think Trek can absolutely pull it off, it is something that requires a deep focus on character to make believable. Past seasons of the show didn’t work because the writing emphasized story over character, rushing headlong into the main arc without taking the time to establish who we were watching and who we should care about and why. Here, the opposite is happening. But the great thing about a refocus on character is that it means standalone episodic adventures like this one pop more when we care more about the characters involved. When La Forge turns out to be the Changeling, it hurts just a bit to see the body of a character we care about killed. When Shaw helps save the day, we get excited because we’ve seen the journey it took him to get to this point where he trusts Seven and Picard. And it’s reassuring to know that our heroes are going to figure out a way to save the day before the closing credits.* It was a tight, impactful hour of television.

*Speaking of saving the day, those interludes with Picard explaining his various exploits to the cadets were fascinating, if only for what they revealed about what happened in the Alpha Quadrant post-Voyager. The Hirogen somehow showed up from the Delta Quadrant?!? And did Admiral Janeway offer any assistance, since she would have been Starfleet’s foremost expert? Also, that’s the second time Janeway has been name checked this season. Is this a Beetlejuice or Candyman situation where if someone mentions her a third time, she has to appear?

As for the serialization of it all, we now know that Vadic (who I can’t wait to see again, because Amanda Plummer is also clearly having the time of her life on this show) is a Changeling, reporting to a higher, much scarier power that is demanding Jack Crusher’s capture no matter the consequences. (Speaking of Changelings, Deep Space Nine never let us know what happened to that Female Changeling who was overseeing the Dominion War. Anyone know what she’s been up to in the last 25 years?) And Jack is suffering from some psychological impact from his time with the Changeling when he was nearly killed, so that can’t be a good thing. Just why Jack is needed by the Changelings remains an open question, as is when Worf’s investigation will get him reconnected with his old friends. But, with the fun restored to this series, I’m excited to see just what’s next for us on this adventure.