We (by ‘we’ I mean, my wife and I) have been rewatching Star Trek: the Next Generation—we’re up to season 3 now. I watched these shows when they were first broadcast, back in the 1980s and 1990s, although I’m realising now that my viewing of seasons 1 and 2 was quite spotty, actually: some of these episodes I remember and others I don’t. I didn’t settle into a properly regular TNG-watching habit until season 3, with ‘The Best of Both Worlds’ being the moment when I properly became a fan. After that I watched the whole run of TNG, all of Deep Space Nine and Voyager, all the movies (some of which are, we have to be honest, very bad), read tie-in novelisations and so on. My interest waned a little with Enterprise and has gone back to being spotty thereafter: I watched Discovery with less pleasure than I thought I would, and though Strange New Worlds was smoothly made it felt facile to me. (I've never watched Lower Decks, though I know folk who speak highly of it). The problem, as several people have noted, is that nowadays Trek as franchise is caught on the andorian-horns of a dilemma: do something new and alienate older fans who want everything to call-back to ‘classic’ Trek, or provide fan-service to that older demographic and leave newer audiences unengaged and nonplussed.
I (by ‘I’ I mean, myself but not my wife, who isn’t interested) am also watching Picard series 3. I was extremely, rather embarrassingly excited at the prospect of Picard series 1 back in 2020, although in the event it was rubbish. But its robo-bobbins wasn’t enough to discourage me from getting equally excited at the prospect of Picard series 2 (2022). That, though, was also rubbish, a stew of thinly-stirred timey-wimey nonsense that lead nowhere very exciting. In both series, there was some attempt to do something new, or at least new-ish, with the franchise: new characters, new vibe. But Picard series 3 has entirely jettisoned all that for Plan A: fanservice, egregious and fulsome fanservice, all callbacks all the time. This is ‘greatest hits of TNG’, all your favourite characters brought back, in some cases literally from-the-dead, with a few sprinklings of stuff from other franchises—shapeshifters from DS9, the odd Voyager character, like Tuvok, popping up. But even these revert to TNG, because it turns out Tuvok is a shapeshifter and that the shapeshifters are actually (why? I’m not sure) fronting for the Borg, who are back. Or back again.
Borg-y Porg-y, pudding and pie,… although I noticed when the line itself occurs in Picard series 3, ep 9, they do pronounce the operant word properly, ‘futile’. So that’s something.
Assimilating all they find,
Wheresoe’er through space they pootle
They call out: ‘resistance is futil’
Now, were you to ask me ‘but are you enjoying this series Adam?’ I would have to concede—yes. Yes I am. I’m as susceptible to fanservice as the next ugly bag of mostly water, and there have been moments of this series that have made me cry-out in delight. It’s not just the specific cameos, of actors and spaceships; it’s the way these cameos are disposed into the text, positioned as rabbit-from-hat reveals, surprises. Who’s this coming up the corridor to meet Jean-Luc? Why, it’s Ensign Ro (no longer an ensign, of course)—I wasn’t expecting that! Data and Lore, back from their respective deaths? Hubbah-hubbah. Enterprise-D? That can’t make an appearance, since it was destroyed in the (execrable) Star Trek: Generations movie. But wait! It seems Geordie LaForge, without telling anyone else, has salvaged the old ship and has been, singlehandedly, restoring it to its original settings, using I don’t know, sticky-tape, cotton-buds dipped in rubbing alcohol and so on. And so, with a self-conscious flourish, the show pulls back the spacedock doors and: there she is! Hurrah!
None of it makes any sense, of course. Indeed the longer the show has gone on, the less sense it is making (I have yet to watch the series finale, which will be shown on UK TV this coming Friday). The plot is incoherent, mayfly memoried, daft. The changelings go to extraordinary lengths in the first half of the show to capture Jack Crusher, Picard's son, and the TNG crew go to extraordinary lengths to prevent Jack falling into the aliens' shifty hands. Why do the shapey-wapeys want him? Ah, well, that's the mystery, and it strings the viewer along. Until in a rush we discover: they want him so as to be able to turn him over to the Borg, who are back (did I mention that? the Borg are back)—you see, Picard has inadvertently passed on Borgified DNA to his son, and the Borg Queen needs the lad for something something—and no sooner has this been revealed, and the changeling pursuit-ship Shrike is destroyed such that Jack is now safe, Jack steals a shuttle and delivers himself to the Borg Queen anyway, just for the hell of it. Why? Who can plumb the mysteries of the human heart, or the inactivity of Star Fleet's tractor beam technology. It makes a nonsense of the plotting of the whole first half of the series though.
Rewatching TNG reminds me what it was about the show that made it work in the first place: the ensemble, the mix of characters, coming together into a ‘family’. It took the writers a while to get this right, and elements from s1 and s2 jar strangely on the rewatch (s2 TNG-Picard is, it seems, mad for fine-breed horses and equestrian exercise, which will surely be a surprise to later seasons TNG-Picard whose lifelong passions have always been archaeology and viticulture), but by TNG's third season the balance of character-types and their interactions are consistently wonderful, involving, the perfect ground against which to rehearse the specific SF storylines—some of which are good, some bad. But even the bad storylines matter less when the whole ensemble is firing on its many cylinders.
These are people we can recognise: we ‘know who they are’. And as they appear in Picard series 3 none of them make sense any more. They act in ways that belong to completely different characters than the ones with which we are familiar. Beverley Crusher, we discover, has given birth to Picard’s son, without telling Picard that she was even pregnant and then zapped away to some far-corner of the galaxy to hide. Why? There’s some half-hearted explanation that she wanted to ‘keep him safe’, but the Crusher of TNG would never do something as immoral as depriving her lover of the chance to be involved with upbringing of his son, or hiding from him the knowledge that he even was a father. She acts this way to enable a tacky-tacky soap-opera-esque ‘but who is this strange young fellow who also speaks with a posh-o English accent—why Jean-Luc, it’s the SON YOU NEVER KNEW YOU HAD!’ reveal. Likewise Geordie reconstructing the Enterprise-D. He could hardly do this without Star Fleet knowing (and indeed does it in a Star Fleet facility) and there’s no reason why they would keep the fact of it secret. Why would they? Why wouldn’t Picard, admiral of the fleet, not be the first person to know it was going on with his old command? This is so only so that the show can whisk-away the conjurer’s handkerchief and reveal the rabbit sitting on the table.
I have to admit there’s another major problem with this series: Patrick Stewart—the sublime Patrick Stewart, the marvellous Patrick Stewart—is too old to play this role. He's much too old now. He can’t do it justice. The others are also older, of course (Jonathan Frakes, a rudimentary actor in TNG, does a pretty good job here, I feel: he has certainly improved, thespianically, in the intervening years), and in the case of Brent Spiner (who was, with Stewart, the other actually competent actor amongst the TNG cast) the scriptwriters don’t even try to pretend to explain why an ageless android suddenly looks like an old codger. But that matters less than Stewart, who is saggy, slow, who can no longer put any oompf into his delivery, who reacts a fraction late on every cue, who just comes over as exhausted and frail and underpowered.
But then perhaps that’s the point. I await the fan-theory that the whole of this series is not what it seems—that Stewart’s dotage is a feature, not a bug. Perhaps none of the things that seem to be happening are really happening. Perhaps it’s all a dementia-dream of Picard’s, like Anthony Hopkins’ character in The Father. All these folk from his youth, all his greatest hits, none of them acting the way they should, none of it making any sense. And the ultimate enemy a mind-virus that only affects the young (the Borg DNA infestation cannot affect people aged over 25, for handwavey reasons) turning them into intolerant conformist monsters. Picard series 3: Old Man Yells At Oort Cloud.
These are people we can recognise: we ‘know who they are’. And as they appear in Picard series 3 none of them make sense any more. They act in ways that belong to completely different characters than the ones with which we are familiar. Beverley Crusher, we discover, has given birth to Picard’s son, without telling Picard that she was even pregnant and then zapped away to some far-corner of the galaxy to hide. Why? There’s some half-hearted explanation that she wanted to ‘keep him safe’, but the Crusher of TNG would never do something as immoral as depriving her lover of the chance to be involved with upbringing of his son, or hiding from him the knowledge that he even was a father. She acts this way to enable a tacky-tacky soap-opera-esque ‘but who is this strange young fellow who also speaks with a posh-o English accent—why Jean-Luc, it’s the SON YOU NEVER KNEW YOU HAD!’ reveal. Likewise Geordie reconstructing the Enterprise-D. He could hardly do this without Star Fleet knowing (and indeed does it in a Star Fleet facility) and there’s no reason why they would keep the fact of it secret. Why would they? Why wouldn’t Picard, admiral of the fleet, not be the first person to know it was going on with his old command? This is so only so that the show can whisk-away the conjurer’s handkerchief and reveal the rabbit sitting on the table.
I have to admit there’s another major problem with this series: Patrick Stewart—the sublime Patrick Stewart, the marvellous Patrick Stewart—is too old to play this role. He's much too old now. He can’t do it justice. The others are also older, of course (Jonathan Frakes, a rudimentary actor in TNG, does a pretty good job here, I feel: he has certainly improved, thespianically, in the intervening years), and in the case of Brent Spiner (who was, with Stewart, the other actually competent actor amongst the TNG cast) the scriptwriters don’t even try to pretend to explain why an ageless android suddenly looks like an old codger. But that matters less than Stewart, who is saggy, slow, who can no longer put any oompf into his delivery, who reacts a fraction late on every cue, who just comes over as exhausted and frail and underpowered.
But then perhaps that’s the point. I await the fan-theory that the whole of this series is not what it seems—that Stewart’s dotage is a feature, not a bug. Perhaps none of the things that seem to be happening are really happening. Perhaps it’s all a dementia-dream of Picard’s, like Anthony Hopkins’ character in The Father. All these folk from his youth, all his greatest hits, none of them acting the way they should, none of it making any sense. And the ultimate enemy a mind-virus that only affects the young (the Borg DNA infestation cannot affect people aged over 25, for handwavey reasons) turning them into intolerant conformist monsters. Picard series 3: Old Man Yells At Oort Cloud.
Last episode was only missing the ghosts of Obi Wan and Anakin (or a chorus of dead red shirts) smiling benevolently from the wings.
ReplyDeleteI suppose the hint of a direct sequel at least reduces the threat of a Young Jean Luc production