Star Trek: Picard – Penance Review

Ok, Picard. I’m officially hooked on this season’s premise – albeit with the caveat that should the group make their journey to the past, trips back to the “modern” day in Star Trek tend to be a bit of a mixed bag. But I’ll save that discussion for another episode. This time around, I want to take the opportunity to praise Picard for what turned out to be an entertaining and complex set-up to a season arc that might actually have legs.

As I mentioned in last week’s review, any scene between John de Lancie’s Q and Patrick Stewart’s Picard is a winner, and the continuation of their tete-a-tete from the premiere was no different. You could feel the years of their relationship in their dialogue – and catch the subtle shadings in de Lancie’s performance that something wasn’t right with Q this time around. While I would have liked Picard to just, for once, agree to go along with one of Q’s games to see how that might change things (like, perhaps, not getting stranded in an alternate present without any clue of how to escape), I suppose he wouldn’t be our Jean-Luc without his principled refusal to take the easy way out. I was a bit surprised Seven didn’t chime in with her own past Q encounter – although they didn’t really interact all that much, she is well aware of who he is and what type of games he likes to play.

So, we have our heroes stuck in an alternative version of their present – wherein Earth became a galactic power through the subjugation and genocide of countless species.* But fear not! Picard has come up with a plan – head back to 2024 and reset the moment Q changed to set the planet on this path – that will restore the universe to its correct future and save the day.** Hopefully, there will be additional appearances by Q as the team begins to unravel his plan – and if there really is some sort of psychosis happening with his character, he’ll presumably get more and more unpredictable as things continue, which also presents some fun opportunities for story and performance (so long as they don’t push it into the realm of farce – Q still needs that air of menace that grounds the character as a villain and not a clown).

*I enjoyed several of the fun Trek character shout-outs in the episode: General Martok, Gul Dukat, Sarek – even Captain (here, General) Sisko. I would have loved to see what a xenophobic Sisko was like – no doubt utterly terrifying. Avery Brooks would have absolutely crushed the assignment there. Also, if Picard managed to kill – or order the deaths of – both Martok and Dukat, well, that’s pretty impressive.

**With how often Voyager found itself dealing with the Temporal Prime Directive and the Temporal ships from the 31^st century – not to mention that Seven was allowed to keep her memories of their encounter with the Relativity – I find it hard to imagine that the Temporal police ships wouldn’t be all over this. But, as with all time travel tales, you have to suspend some level of disbelief. Perhaps a Q trumps the future time cops?

However, the highlight of the episode was how much better the writing was this week than last – and particularly how much stronger the characterization of Raffi is this season than in the first. Perhaps the most disappointing element of season one was how little the writers cared about establishing complex and layered characters to surround Picard with. This time, that’s not the case. Sure, there’s absolutely work to be done in getting the characters to a level where we feel anything for them when they aren’t linked with Picard or Seven, but I’m finding I actually want to spend time with this new Raffi (Michelle Hurd is finally getting a chance to show her abilities, which is great to see) and Rios (who absolutely never should have been given a captaincy in Starfleet – seriously, that makes zero sense – but Santiago Cabrera is thriving now that his character has a direction in which to grow). Yes, this was meant to be a vehicle for Stewart and Ryan, but there’s a solid cast of actors surrounding them. It’s time the writers made the decision to write for them as well.

So, what is my hope moving forward? Well, my main hope is that this potential trip to the “modern” day is more in line with Deep Space Nine’s great “Past Tense” two-parter (which, coincidentally – or perhaps not – included a trip back in time to 2024 San Francisco and was also about a key moment in history that set Earth on its path to reach the future promised in Star Trek), complete with some heavy commentary on modern life and its impact on our potential future. Sci-fi is at its best when it dares to hold a mirror to our current world and comment on it (see the great Battlestar Galactica of the early 2000s). This could be a chance for both a story with real stakes for our heroes and one that comments on our own lives. It’s a fine line to tread (you don’t want to veer into the preachy side of things, but you also don’t want to be too subtle and let the chance slip away), and this isn’t a writing staff that has inspired much confidence in their ability to craft a coherent and layered storyline over a season. But they have the chance to really do something interesting here. I’m eager to see what comes next.