Picard3: Many Happy Returns

The final season of Star Trek: Picard has been widely and deservedly praised as a triumph.  It certainly seemed to be the most self-assured of the three seasons.  Producer, writer and director Terry Matalas infused this new form of the 10 episode series with elements of the old movie serials, complete with cliffhanger endings.  But he also provided a couple of episodes that ended in temporary resolution, so the audience could catch its breath. This series had some pacing—difficult in a (roughly) ten hour movie chopped up into ten pieces a week apart.  Matalas pulls together all the strands of the story in a finale that is complete and satisfying.  (It is described beautifully, for example, by Jim Moorhouse at Trekcore.)

 I still maintain that despite intentions to aim this series towards adults, it’s inevitably going to get younger viewers, f-bombs and all.  Still, while several moments of violence were shocking, they were within conventional bounds and unlikely to be traumatic.

 Matalas said his goal was to provide the Next Generation characters with the send-off that their last feature didn’t give them—partly because they didn’t know it was their last feature.  That was Star Trek Nemesis in 2002, written by John Logan, who impressed the cast with his fanboy knowledge of Star Trek, and directed by Stuart Baird who impressed them with his willful ignorance.  Logan apparently had a thing for Counselor Troi, with unfortunate results.  This time, Matalas focused on Doctor Crusher, in a very different way and with much better effect.

 Gates McFadden has been a real soldier for Star Trek, gamely decorating the movies with little to do, while thoughtfully articulating the Star Trek ethos whenever asked. If you believe a little scene in Jeff Greenwald’s book Future Perfect in which Brannon Braga dismisses her phone message suggestion for First Contact, she didn’t get a lot of respect from the higher ups.  Yet elsewhere in that book she’s very articulate about the core—the soul—of Star Trek.  She seems to have been an underused resource, and it’s great to see her character given so much substance and power in this series.

 All the acting is outstanding in this third series, in general and within this context: actors who haven’t played the character in 20 years finding the differences they can play that still work within the characters they established, and first-time actors, especially Ed Speelers, creating convincing characters that fit.  Jonathan Frakes, who hasn’t acted much in recent years, comes across relaxed and genuine as a seasoned, sassier Riker.

  

 Brent Spiner has tour de force moments as the new Data, while Patrick Stewart, Jeri Ryan and Michelle Hurd of the Picard cast from prior seasons have exceptional moments as well. Scenes between Patrick Stewart and Gates McFadden, and between Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis, are rightly lauded for their economy and power. 

It was great to hear the voices of Majel Roddenberry and Walter Koenig in Star Trek again, as well as classic Star Trek musical themes, and—well, there’s a YouTube video that shows emotional fan response to the bridge crew on the Enterprise-D—the (next to) final big reveal that the series managed to keep a surprise. 

Much has been made of the “conflict” between these familiar characters as they were introduced in this series, as different from the past when they didn’t conflict.  It’s worth going a little deeper into that.

 For not all “conflict” is the same. In a drama (especially melodrama), conflict among characters usually means real opposition and intent to do harm, with at least one character driven by suspicion, ambition, envy, jealousy, vengeance, desire, fear etc.; racial/ethnic/gender/class hostility or just personal animosity.  These characters often engage in deceit, intimidation, subterfuge and scheming against others, if not overt violence. Characters actively or passively do harm through manipulation, bullying, subversion, or any number of other destructive behaviors, often driven by unexamined and unconscious forces.

  None of that applies to the TNG characters in these episodes, even though they made different choices responding to different experiences over the years of their separation, and even if during the episodes they engage in disagreements that they may not have actively pursued before (or then again, they may have). 

The kinds of conflict seen in Picard were seen in the TNG series, including marital or other relationship troubles (though perhaps not so often among the senior officers.)  Wherever conflicts at the level of problems occurred, they were solved the same way: through recognizing them and talking them out.  That happens again in this year of Picard.

 The Roddenberry-mandated lack of the first kinds of conflict among the main characters in Star Trek was meaningful: it said that in the future, a diverse group of individuals will have achieved the degree of self-awareness to step back from their own emotions and see their actions or feelings from a different perspective, and they will have the concepts and vocabulary to engage in solving these problems.  And by the 24^th century, they will have a ship’s counselor to help them through these processes. (If there was no conflict between or within members of the crew, the counselor would be unnecessary.)

 For example, one of the major conflicts of Star Trek: First Contact was Captain Picard’s obsession with hurting the Borg that distorted his judgment and behavior.  It was internal conflict, but it took a literary parallel to give him the perspective to see it. But he did see it, and changed.

 What’s necessary for these conflicts to be resolved is self-respect and respecting others.  From the original series onward, the evident fact that people on Star Trek treated each other with respect was one element that attracted fans who did not see people respecting them or each other in their real lives. As Dave Marinaccio discovered when he was researching his book All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Watching Star Trek, this revelation actually changed lives.

 The TNG characters had a long history of respecting each other so that they trusted each other absolutely, and that made it possible for problems arising from divergent choices to be resolved in Picard. (Parenthetically, had these characters not respected each other for seven years, I wonder if the actors playing them would have become as close for as long as they did?)

 There was another reason for Star Trek characters to treat each other with respect in the Roddenberry canon: they needed to work together in service of a larger whole: the ship, Starfleet, the Federation and ultimately all life in the galaxy.  Even aboard a ship of exploration and peace, the Enterprise crew had to guide their actions according to the integrity of others and the welfare of the whole.  That was their sworn priority.

 And this isn’t just a matter of math, of the needs of the many.  It’s about defining and then defending the whole and its integrity—that which ultimately we are part of.  In the fictional 23^rd and 24^th and 25^th centuries of starships and life among the stars, it is the galaxy.  For us in the 21^st century it is the Earth.  We have the power to help heal the Earth we have unknowingly been destroying.  But now we know, even though the harm still goes on, and we know it is self-destruction.  At the same time, we learn something new every day from science or other branches of knowledge that it is the integrity of the whole that supports us.  Addressing the global threat needs to be our priority.

 The final episode of Picard3 had moments of adventure movie ebullience: the reaction to Doctor Crusher’s sharpshooting, Data using the Force to find the Borg target.  But it was brilliant also in showing the price these characters were willing to pay to defend the whole.

 Ever since the filmmakers of the 70s became old enough to be parents (and to get divorced), defending the family became the unquestioned prime motivation in movies, including science fiction. Several major villains in Star Trek movies were avenging the deaths of their wives.  Yet Counselor Troi had to decide to sacrifice her husband, Doctor Crusher her son. Picard’s journey had taken him unexpectedly to find completion as a father, and he was willing to sacrifice himself for that, but not at the cost of the whole. 

Saving the galaxy may be a kind of Star Trek cliché (“I take it the odds are against us and the situation is grim,” said Nexus Kirk in Generations,) a kind of cosmic MacGuffin.  But slowing things down to suggest the real costs and consequences re-centers Star Trek on an element of what it is about and why it was different. 

 At the same time, the story in this third series suggests consequences of the Federation’s questionable past decisions, specifically from the DS9 and Voyager eras.  This series confirmed that (as portrayed in post-9/11 Star Trek novels) the Federation engaged in torture. I was glad to hear Picard say that the Dominion War was a "travesty." The consequences depicted here have their real world counterparts in the modern history of terrorism and war, as elsewhere in history.  Even in the 90s, as the Star Trek saga started to sprawl, its stories driven not by those who had seen war but who had seen a lot of war movies, it began to lose focus.  The overwhelmingly positive response to this season suggests that the TOS and particularly the TNG era are still the heart and soul of Star Trek.

That Star Trek deals with our contemporary issues doesn't mean it replicates the contemporary world in one-to-one correspondences.  Quite the opposite: it shows consequences, and it offers alternatives.  Star Trek similarly can comment on war and conflict by illustrating the skills of peace and conflict resolution.

(However, a little sly commentary on our society is also part of the Trek tradition--and I wonder if there wasn't some of that in the ability of the Borg to turn the young into zombies by connecting them to a central control--maybe like a viral technology we already know, via the phones everyone bows to and holds up to their faces all the time?  And that they needed the old people with their skepticism, individuality and old technology?  Nothing that blatant, of course.)

 Critics (including some writers for Trek) complained that the Roddenberry rules concerning conflict and human nature aren’t realistic, perhaps forgetting that Star Trek posits faster than light travel to meet up with dozens of alien civilizations comprised of people who look like us with some added facial appliances, and are so similar that we can exchange recipes and interbreed. 

 Is all that more realistic than people using skills, heart and consciousness to solve problems? This is science fiction—a believable branch of fantasy, wonder tales, allegory and myth that operates on a different level to open minds to new possibilities—such as what a more hopeful future might necessarily look like. 

 At this, no Star Trek has done better than The Next Generation.  Picard3 was less conceptual than character-driven, but it supported the Star Trek vision through these characters, and especially through the continuity as well as the changes in the characters with history enacted over scores of stories and hundreds of hours.  Revisiting these characters as they are decades later, with their history, was unique.  So far...