here's my first attempt at drawing my sweet angel sword boy <3
colouring is a little bit off, but you know what I'm still proud of my first attempt at drawing elnor.
remember that post made about tumblr disliking this picture? that's because I accidentally made the file MASSIVE. I had to compress the everloving shit out of Elnor.png. Here he is! finally!!
btw: I think there's accidentally a green overlay over him somewhere? I was trying the "vulcanoids=green" and uh it flopped. I think I forgot to remove it tho- sorry-
Four episodes into rewatching Season One of Picard: some general thoughts.
As I’ve laid out, this season so far challenges our assumptions about Picard, the character, and the world building of the setting in ways that are discomforting but I am not inclined to dismiss them as invalid or “CW edge” - a sort of snarl word to stand in for angst and oppressive bleakness that mimic the complexities of dark, introspective works such as Breaking Bad or the Ur prestige drama: The Sopranos.
This is part of a series of essays reevaluating Star Trek Picard and interrogating the widely held fandom criticism that Picard made the Federation into a Dystopia.
Definitely on a rewatch, I am struck by how well suited Picard the character is for this sort of meta-dialogue. And it very much is a meta-dialogue. Picard is a legacy character, a hero from another era where the contrasts between good and bad were sharper and to some extent, the lines of social conflict were drawn in such a way that people who thought they were heroes are now the villains in someone else’s story.
Picard is a great character to represent this because unlike so many other people, when he is put in the position of villain, Picard’s first instinct is to reason and erudite his way out of it, but his second instinct is to listen empathetically. Picard doesn’t begin and end with doubling down.
Picard is in some sense programmed to seek solutions from within the norms and institutions he is familiar with and comfortable with but season one in particular and to some extent, season three, are teaching him to approach the universe more holistically. Picard is learning to appreciate the limits of power and to recognize that Starfleet is not the right instrument for every problem. More discussion here and here.
I think this is a worthwhile conversation for Star Trek to have. Star Trek is THE science fiction franchise about the virtues of a virtuous institution, an armada of stellar individuals virtuously riding in week after week to save the day upon chrome steeds. Contrast this to Star Wars which has always held institutions, even the Jedi Order itself, in contempt. At best institutions in Star Wars are well intentioned but myopic and prone to being outmaneuvered by opponents who figure out how to weaponize the virtues and proceduralism of the good guys against them. More typically institutions in Star Wars are incompetent and malignant.
That isn’t to say that Star Trek doesn’t question power or is incapable of critiquing its own heroes. A thread from the Star Trek Subreddit catalogs NINE admirals who are villains in just TNG and Insurrection. The list balloons to almost two dozen when TOS, DS9, and the Kelvin timeline are added. Note that this is from 2019 so Discovery and Picard are not included. This also doesn’t include lower ranked villains like Captains, such as Captain Maxwell.
Of course this list does include some explicit subversion of people’s autonomy: alien parasites and such. Others are acting according to their own understanding of what “the good of the many” means. Twice in a hundred years the Federation experiences attempted military coups by those who believe the Federation is too soft to capably deal with its enemies. Admiral Satie was a ferocious defender of the Federation’s ideals as she saw them but in the same way that Senator Joseph MacCarthy was a ferocious defender of American ideals.
Seeing Picard spend four episodes getting dressed down for various oversights is challenging if you’re a longtime fan like me for whom TNG hit at an extremely impressionable time. Yet he consistently models something that I think matters a lot: Picard is defensive but ultimately he is willing to listen and to question his own judgments in good faith.
That more than anything else answers the anxious question at the heart of every crotchety elder millennial, gen xer, and boomer watching Picard: “is this Star Trek?”
Yes.
You have to be willing to question your own assumptions about how well you remember TNG or whether you, the audience member, made the characters into superhumans in your memory, but if you can do this, then this is Star Trek.
As to my other research question of “Did Picard make the Federation into a dystopia?” by now I feel like that too is well answered.
No.
The Federation has always had limitations and been far less than omnipotent or omniscient. I think there are specific situations and contexts in which these limitations are being exposed and interrogated that are making some members of the audience extremely touchy because they are more emotionally invested in the idea of a purified, post-material society free of “sin” as it were. A secular Kingdom of God, ruled over by democratically elected, perfectly wise Philosopher Starship Captains.
It's still a pretty awesome place, it's just that everyone is subjectively instead of objectively moral and are merely doing their best rather than having perfect knowledge. Picard’s season one “apology tour” illustrates this nicely. That season three’s Captain Shaw has made some of the best consequentialist arguments of all time while Picard, Riker, Seven etc. take turns arguing for a sense of ethics rooted in the morality of actions themselves also beautifully illustrates that these are not bad people, they’re just people and they are authentically trying to do the right thing.
The Mystery Plot Evolves
If sinking your teeth into the emotional and moral depth is the first reason to rewatch Picard’s first season, grappling with the metaplot is the second. I too fell victim to finding it confusing and irritating the first time through. What I’m seeing now seems to show that it was laid out with more care and just generally less convoluted than I remember. Maybe it's just because I already know the answer now.
The Disordered are an interesting way to introduce the concept of the Admonition and the origins of Zhat Vash’s intense hatred of AI.
Narek starting to show his dark side in prodding Soji about the inconsistencies in her cover story moves the plot along but also illustrates another reason I’ve just not had much to say about this side of the plot, even though whether or not the mystery makes sense in the end is kind of critical.
The fact of the matter is I hated the romance subplot the first time through and I hate it more knowing that Narek is not a “complex” character, a Romulan protagonist playing the part of antagonist because of corrupting influences. No, he’s a manipulator who is trying to maneuver Soji into putting herself unknowingly in danger. His interest in her secrets is entirely selfish even if raw curiosity is warring with his view of her as a harbinger of doom.
I’ve also been the rebound partner a couple times with people who have come out of relationships defined by nesting dolls of deceit and manipulation. As a consequence, I detest seeing these things on the screen. I can’t do “Reylo” ships or long for the “sad boy” to be fixed. I hate these characters because they inserted poison pills into relationships I found deeply meaningful before those relationships ever began.
So if the next time I address the Romulan snake in the grass, it’s an extended rant don’t be surprised.
Carrying on my Wayward Sons
I’ll close out by saying that I have no idea how much of the season’s script and its developments the actors already had access to or in what order scenes were shot, but the interactions between Raffi and Picard are phenomenal. With the benefit of hindsight and knowing the dark turn of events looming when it's Raffi’s turn to try to reunite with her son, well her trying to talk JL out of going to Vashti just shines all the more.
I think you could read it in a few ways. She clearly already knows why Picard is going to Vashti. On how many levels she knows, it's hard to say. Elnor is the obvious one since she’s only coming along for a ride to Free Cloud to try to talk her own estranged son into letting her back into his life.
The second is that as much as she’s tried to prepare Picard for the realities of life outside the Federation in a post-Hobus star universe, I suspect deep down she is worried that after having just gotten the old JL back, seeing the poverty and seething resentment will break him all over again.
Finally, recruiting a Sister of Absolute Candor would simply confirm for Raffi that Picard is prepared for saving Soji and confronting Zhat Vash to be a suicide mission. He will not be deterred by danger or reason, and that too represents the high likelihood of losing JL again and in a more final way.
