Commander Know-It-All reporting for duty.
I once held the rank of commander in Starfleet, the international Star Trek fan club. That’s why I can’t express to you how happy I am to be doing Star Trek. This is Star Trek: Picard, season 2, episode 1, “The Star Gazer,” and this is the Mr. Know-It-All show, Star Quest edition. I say Star Quest edition because we’re going on a quest to explore all the various Star Treks we can.
When I was 14 years old I was walking through the Coastland Center mall in Naples, Florida, and I came across some folks in nice colorful outfits. That was the local USS Starquest out of Naples, the chapter of Starfleet, the international fan club. They were inviting me to their club, but specifically they were going to the premiere of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and that’s where I first got the opportunity to join.
When I did, I was introduced to Star Trek: The Next Generation. I had a uniform and I had a rank. I started as an ensign, went to lieutenant, and eventually became chief engineer as a lieutenant commander. So I’m a huge fan. I would dare say Star Trek’s my fandom. I’ll probably do a special talking a little more about what Star Trek means to me and what the culture is.
When Star Trek Was the Only Game
You have to remember, when I was first into Star Trek, sci-fi wasn’t as big as it is now. Shortly after The Next Generation you got some other iterations, and eventually you got the Sci-Fi Channel, which played a lot of older things. But when you were talking about sci-fi, Star Trek was the only game. You had a little Babylon 5, Sliders and some other things, but those didn’t last very long.
Then, believe it or not, there was an overwhelming glut of good science fiction at one point, and Star Trek became sort of the red-headed stepchild. It became less and less a thing. Conventions got less frequent. They never went away, but they weren’t as popular, and pretty soon you saw the fandom homogenize into just sci-fi fans. Back in the day there were conventions that were exclusively Star Trek.
So this resurgence is wonderfully exciting for me. Discovery’s doing some things, and of course there’s Prodigy and Lower Decks, and by the way, all fantastic. I’m not one of those fans who sits here and says that’s not Star Trek, Star Trek is this, that and the other. Look, man. Star Trek is Star Trek.
Red Alert
The episode starts with a red alert sign and drops you right into the middle of the action, which is so very Star Trek. You get all these cool Dutch angles. You can very much tell that this, like a lot of the more current iterations of the franchise, is informed by cinematic storytelling.
Three crewmen are running through the halls with explosions going off around them. It’s a security detail, and eventually they get to the bridge, where something is attacking. Everybody’s there. You see Seven, you see Agnes, you see Raffi, you see Rios. There are all these little arm things, very Doc Ock, shooting around and latching onto the bridge, and all the LCARS screens, the little control panels, are shaking and glitching.
Then you finally see Picard. He calls for the self-destruct, he stands up, he turns around at the sound of his name, and he’s facing what looks like somebody in a black helmet. Then we get the title sequence. Same song, modified a little, with a bit of a drum line in there that wasn’t there before. The imagery has changed as well. Still very cool. I love it. I think it’s very good and inspiring.
Harvest Day at Chateau Picard
After the titles we cut to Earth and push in to Chateau Picard. It’s harvest day, and I kind of love that they’re using transporter technology to grab the grapes. I’m not sure if they’re being tagged or what’s going on, but even back when I was watching The Next Generation, I always felt like they weren’t using this technology to its fullest. The one thing from last season I really thought worked was that you can walk through a door and you’re gone, you’re transported somewhere. Similar to how I showed up here.
You get the sense that something has changed in their lives, and you don’t really know what. Other than the workers, all you see is a close-up of Jean-Luc and a close-up of Laris, the Romulan woman who’s in his service. You don’t see any sign of the male Romulan from last season, so you start to get an idea.
A little later the two of them sit down over a bottle of wine, and Laris makes some overtures toward Picard. Picard rebuffs that, as he does. That’s the point of contention for this episode and, dare I say, the season. Picard has trouble loving.
You’re going to see people argue about that. What about this episode, what about that episode? Every one of the episodes you’re thinking of was a unique storytelling point in his life. That doesn’t make it a defining point in his life. Something may have happened with Crusher in the past. There’s the episode with the probe, where he lived an entire life with an alien species, but it wasn’t his life. At the end of the day Picard has lived through relationships, and they’ve all been transient at best.
My Little Star Gazer
That night he has a dream. We see a young Picard in what eventually becomes the atrium, the botanical room, and we get a picture of his mom. They’re retconning some things for his story, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. You can’t tell every single story when you’re telling a space odyssey.
You find out his parents had some issues, and his mom was the one who told him to look up at the stars, my little star gazer. So even though his first starship was called the USS Stargazer, you understand that he is the star gazer. That’s the name of the episode, with a space in it. You’re talking about a person, though the double entendre gets used very well later.
In the dream he’s suddenly an adult again, and he picks up a piece of broken glass with a teeny piece of painted rose on it. We saw similar imagery in the opening, so I’m assuming this is going to be important later. He looks up at the sky through the broken glass, and then we push out into space, past the planets, very Carl Sagan.
And as will happen, because it’s Star Trek, there’s a spatial anomaly. Bro, give me them spatial anomalies. And of course it’s green, so we know it’s the Borg. The minute I saw the green I said, oh, it’s got to be, I don’t care what’s going on. Green in certain movies is The Matrix. In Star Trek, it’s the Borg.
Everybody Gets a Moment
Picard’s got to do a ceremony, so that morning he goes to Starfleet Academy in San Francisco. They’re honoring the graduates, who are all about to be assigned to their ships. Elnor is the first fully Romulan graduating cadet, which is awesome. I’m super excited. Picard gives him a gift, a book Spock wrote when he was the first Vulcan going through the Academy by himself. It’s very relevant, and it’s a nice little callback. Love me some Spock references.
Then we cut to a very familiar little ship. I assumed we were going to see Captain Cristóbal, and then boom, it’s Jeri Ryan. Seven of Nine is being ambushed by folks trying to steal medical supplies off her ship. She’s still part of the Fenris Rangers, and apparently it’s her ship now and she’s put it to work.
Funny thing: she merged all the holograms. You don’t have all the different ones anymore. You’ve got one guy now, and it’s the one who speaks Spanish, and of course there are subtitles. I’m Puerto Rican, and I really love this guy. He’s super Cuban. Cubans are our cousins. Then Seven catches the opening of this anomaly, and you see her face lit up green.
Each character gets a moment to shine as you touch base with them. Soji is on the Deltan homeworld in the Beta Quadrant, acting as an emissary for the synthetics. Agnes is with her, and apparently she’s going through an on-again, off-again thing with Rios. Eventually Rios calls them and they get transported up to the Stargazer.
Oh, that’s right. The USS Stargazer is back in commission. I love it. But why are you guys so afraid of the Enterprise? Where’s the Enterprise, baby? Come on, man. Tell me Admiral Riker’s flying around in that thing. Anyway, it’s a beautiful callback, and very personal for Picard. There was an episode of The Next Generation that did that too, and you got to see a side of him you never knew was there. Rios is the captain of the Stargazer, which is dope, and they immediately head for the anomaly.
Back at the Academy, you find out Raffi is a commander, lieutenant commander, whatever, on the Excelsior, and she’s there watching out for Elnor. I don’t want to say everybody’s getting a happy ending, but everyone’s definitely getting their shot to shine. There’s also a brief conversation of note where Raffi talks about what she wants from Seven of Nine, so they’re apparently in a relationship of some kind. All of these little points of story are marrying up along one through line of relationships and changes. It’s interesting. I like where they’re going with it.
Help Us, Picard
On the Stargazer you get to see the rift, and all of a sudden they start getting a communication the science officer can’t figure out. So of course Agnes, because she’s brilliant, Daystrom Institute, come on, opens the thing up. It’s very hologram-like, and she’s pulling things out of it. I love the interactive hologram. What she ends up deciphering is the first few words: help us, Picard.
Then we go to Los Angeles. Jean-Luc transports into an alley in the Forward Avenue historic district, and there’s a great little sign, a City of Greater Los Angeles historical site. Forward Avenue, which leads to the bar at number 10. Ten Forward. Shut up.
For those of you playing at home, Ten Forward was the name of the lounge on the Galaxy-class starship. It was actually its reference number, so they just called it Ten Forward, and it’s where you relaxed.
You walk in and sure enough, it’s Guinan, man. It’s Guinan. And they do this really cool thing. He tells her he knows El-Aurians are long-lived, and she says they can control how they age, the speed at which they reflect their age. She’s learned that humans are very fragile and don’t like being reminded of that fragility, so she tries to keep up with us. It’s a nice little way of explaining that she’s clearly older.
Picard’s telling her he doesn’t know what’s going on, he can’t love. She tries to tell him, listen, man, you’re not broken. You just haven’t faced whatever happened in the past. He can’t really face it yet, so they just decide to drink. A little Saurian brandy. It’s pretty awesome.
So Star Trek
A Starfleet admiral comes to his house and tells him they only want to talk to one person. He’s like, come on. She hits her combadge, and you’re thinking, you can’t get away, bro. It’s very reminiscent of an old Kirk scene from one of the movies, I can’t remember which one, where they only want to talk to Jim Kirk and he’s like, whatever.
Sure enough, he goes. He gets on the Stargazer and all the officers are in the hallways going, oh my goodness. Seven’s there too. Come to find out the ship is the first of a new wave that uses Borg technology, the stuff that was experimented with from the Borg cube. These are very resilient ships designed for hardcore space adversities, and she’s somewhat uncomfortable with it.
They get to the bridge, Rios is there, and Picard says that along with “help us, Picard” there’s an entire Article 15. In Star Trek, Article 15 is the application for entrance into the Federation. They don’t know what this is yet. I know it’s the Borg, you know it’s the Borg, Seven knows it’s the Borg. But if there’s even a possibility that this is a real thing, they have to take it seriously.
Then this ginormo ship pops its head through the rift, and they say there’s no more time. You cut to a view of space and the entire fleet is dropping out of warp. Okay, hi, guys.
And then you get something I love, something that is so Star Trek, especially Star Trek: The Next Generation. You get a mission briefing. All the department heads sit around a table and talk about what’s going down. That’s how it was back in the day. You’d see Crusher, Worf, Data, Riker, Troi, Geordi, everybody right around the table, and Picard sitting there trying to figure out what’s going on. It’s brilliant, it’s wonderful, it’s chef’s kiss, and I was really excited to see it.
The Queen Comes Aboard
They get called back to the bridge. The Borg say there’s no time to wait. They have to commence negotiations, and they’re sending over one person, and it’s their queen. They fire a transporter signal like a phaser at the shields, the shields eventually give, and the signal weaves its way through.
Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, we circle back to the top of the episode, with the person in the helmet and the suit. First off, it’s very different from anything we’ve ever seen from the Borg. There are aesthetics to this look, and the Borg normally don’t care about aesthetics. They clearly need something, and nobody’s going to tell us what.
And what else is going to happen on the bridge when a Borg Queen shows up? Weapons fire. Then these little mechanical things on her helmet fire a bunch of shots all at once and knock everybody down. Seven finds out they are, in fact, stunning, not killing. The security detail shows up, Picard issues the self-destruct, the Borg Queen is saying something to him, and poof. The ship is destroyed.
The Road Not Taken
We cut to white, and we’re back in that same little rose atrium. Picard wakes up with a different combadge. It’s still reminiscent of the Starfleet symbol, but very different. He walks through the house and all the paintings have changed. The one that was the Galaxy-class ship is now some sort of tiger. Then we get to the picture of him, and he’s wearing a black version of the old red uniforms. Remember the old red ones from the movies, with the little flap over the front?
And then we get the greatest scene ever, the one thing I’ve said I wanted. Show me de-aged John de Lancie as Q. And they do, and it’s brilliant, and because it’s so short it looks amazing. He tells Picard he’s gotten older than he thought he’d be, he doesn’t want him to feel left out, and he becomes an older version of himself. Jean-Luc wants to know what he’s done, because he immediately has to assume it’s Q’s fault. And Q tells him the trial never ends, and that they’re at the end of the road not taken.
Then we get a preview of the rest of the season, and it’s exciting, man. It’s going to be time travel, which we all kind of knew. They’re coming back to 2024. They’re coming back here, to the past, to the good old time frame we’ve got. It’s fun, it’s good, it’s interesting, and I’m here for it. I want to see what they’re going to do.
The Verdict
Star Trek: Picard season 2, episode 1, “The Star Gazer,” is a 9 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
It’s a good starter, man. It’s a 9 because they established a lot of really good things, they answered a lot of quick questions, they told us where everybody was, and they set the stage nicely. Everything is wonderful, and it feels to me like Star Trek. Your mileage may vary, and that’s totally okay.
You’ve got to remember I’m a Star Trek fan. This is my happy place. I still love me some Star Wars, I love me some Boba Fett and the Mandalorian and all those things, and I’m a huge Marvel fan. But if I had to say I have a fandom in my heart, it’s Star Trek. I fully intend to immerse myself in it a lot more.
There you go, now you know, and if knowing is half the battle, you’re on your way to being a know-it-all. And remember, everyone loves a know-it-all.
Your mileage may vary on this one, so let’s have a conversation about it. Tell me where the premiere landed for you in the comments on the video above.
