Picard Season 2: Preamble

The thing about Star Trek: Picard season one was that I could describe it to friends--without embellishment--and entertain the room for an hour with just one episode. It was clearly in "so bad it's good" territory. I--

Let me start at the beginning--2015. When CBS Television Studios and Paramount Pictures decided to put Star Trek at the helm of their new TV service. You may remember this from such events as Star Trek: Voyager helming the UPN network. The planned TOS sequel series, Star Trek: Phase II being placed at the helm of the aborted Paramount TV Network of the 70's. 

[As mentioned in the 17 to 01 episode for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, true believers!]

So: Star Trek: Discovery helmed what is now Paramount Plus...Paramount Puss? I'll work on it.

Discovery was fine. I watched some and didn't care. It was like the idea of a Star Trek episode ramped up to 75 RPM and with an action dial turned up to 11. There were a series of things happening that seemed to use acting and music and telling us to create a staccato series of action and emotional beats. Not bad, actually, but not that smart and not for me.

Then they drove a dump truck of money up to Patrick Stewart's house and started making TNG's 30-year-later-sequel, Star Trek: Picard. I may be mistaken, but I recall being promised a show that was slower and more contemplative than Star Trek: Discovery. I was interested.

Now, you--like me--might be in possession of the idea that Jean-Luc Picard is not just a character played by Patrick Stewart. Gurney Halleck is not Jean-Luc Picard. Professor Charles Xavier is not Jean-Luc Picard. Avery Bullock is not Jean-Luc Picard. That racist, backwoods drug dealer with an inexplicably posh accent in The Green Room is not Jean-Luc Picard. 

Even if--if--you were to put those characters into a Starfleet captain uniform of an era consistent with Jean-Luc Picard's age, they don't become Jean-Luc Picard by dint of adopting the iconography, the *ahem* idol-like qualities of that character. A character is a character because of their...character.

They're defined by the qualities of their personality which distinguish them from other characters in their story and which connect to the qualities--in contrast to or in accordance with--those qualities of the real people around us.

"Hey VanVelding, when you start writing these blogs again, don't construct fancy sentences just because that's how you like the sound-that-isn't-sound when the sentences are in your head. Revise for simplicity and you're not listening to me at all and you're going to write some shit like 'qualities of their personality which distinguish them from other characters in their story and which connect to the qualities--in contrast to or in accordance with--those qualities of the people around us', aren't you?"

We see something of other real people in them, or that's different from them.

You, reader, are thinking, "So you're saying this character isn't Picard. The same thing every middle-aged loser larping autism with more ring lights than physical features that film well has been saying since the first femtosecond the series was online."

I was recording The Beige and The Bold when Picard's first season came out and got to see that Picard's Picard was consistent with the character of Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Fight me nerds. 

And when you fight me...go for the head. Make it painless.

Let me go on about character. In a show's pilot, you measure out one or two dimensions and cut them clean into a big plank of a person. In an episodic show, each character begins the series--and each episode--as a broad archetype. What's Worf's cut? He's a surly, strong guy. But how surly? How strong? When he emotionally distances his son Alexander, we see the depth of his surliness. When we see him soften to understand his son, it cuts across that grain and creates detail. Every line, with or against the grain plays off of that core and every line not drawn, or not crossing those lines adds to that characterization.

In this awkward analogy, crossing those lines is the kind of contradiction that shows growth, corruption, or characterization that's inconsistent with what came before. Let's not pretend the difference between those things is always objective. Some folks still argue to this day that the corruption of Walter White in Breaking Bad is some kind of character growth.

Picard's contradiction of Picard's character is corruption, but usually it's in the form of new, consistent lines. The problem is that it's a consistency that undercuts what it is about that character we like.

The thought that Picard's out-of-universe esteem finally came into universe and that it was part of a paper-thin facade of intelligent, moral behavior is consistent with the guy we know. It's consistent in that all of that stuff was merely an act. The episode "The Perfect Mate" was all about this. The empath glommed onto every guy looking for a quick tryst, but Picard's tryst was a brain tryst, an appreciation of his performance of morality and integrity.

Sure, Picard could have used a Picard that was still what that character appeared to be, one whose wisdom regarding hardship and principled, pragmatic morality weren't just quotes from a wise book of sayings he found once. Picard was such an earnest attempt by someone to create a novel twist on something they barely understood, it was such a stupid trainwreck full of facile decisions that you couldn't help but love it in the same way you love stupid movie full of heart Solo (1996).

But if season one was bumbling incompetence that you had to love, then season two did all of the same missteps with a deliberation I could only, reluctantly, describe as "malicious."