So let me tell you a little of what it’s been like living in the epicenter of the epicenter (sic) of a global pandemic: We’ve been getting phone calls every day from people, often the same people, checking in on us to ask how we are, how we’re feeling, are we breathing regularly, when we washed our hands last, and so forth. Meanwhile we have to remind ourselves to use gloves when we push the elevator button because we don’t have enough hand sanitizer to place on each floor of our building; and in those relatively quick interludes outdoors we remember to give every dog walker and jogger a wide berth, even though we’re noticing clusters of people in Prospect Park not keeping their distance from each other as they should.
In the absence of available testing, we find ourselves wondering with every involuntary twinge of one’s joints, every clearing of one’s throat, every dull wave of fatigue whether we’re in trouble no matter how quickly such moments pass. And we seem more aware than usual of the sirens blaring through our apartment windows at regular intervals, night and day. That is what life is like these days in the Promised Land of Brooklyn, New York, USA and I don’t think I can bear getting more specific than that.
What I also can’t get specific about right now is how Star Trek: Picard comes to an end. The tenth and final episode of what they’re insisting is its first season plopped into CBS All Access’s streams the day before I’m writing this. I’m betting that there are a lot of housebound people, Trekkers or not, who haven’t even seen the first episode yet, but have held off on watching the series so they can dig deep into their quarantined cocoons at some point this weekend or afterwards to binge-watch the whole thing from beginning to end.
If that’s the case, this is all they need to know: the climactic episode of Picard is balm to sensibilities battered by dread and upheaval; so much so that it’s worth going through the previous nine episodes to get there. Star Trek: Picard justifies the existence of pop entertainment in our lives, especially (I can’t emphasize this enough) now. Yes, it may strike some as ridiculous whether they’re people with no use whatsoever for science fiction in any form or longtime fans so deep into the mythos of the Trek franchise as to hold every attempt to build on it to an implausibly higher standard. I am no hard-core Trekker, but paraphrasing what a friend of mine said after watching the Picard finale, this was what made us keep faith with Trek from its beginnings more than a half-century ago.
Even I wasn’t sure would this would happen back in January, when the threat of Covid-19 seemed so remote as to be inconceivable. Back then, in the immediate wake of the phenomenal success of The Mandalorian on Disney’s streaming service, Picard began its run with a general sense among science fiction buffs of “show me” as soon as it brought the legendary starship captain Jean Luc Picard (the legendary Sir Patrick Stewart) out of a bucolic retirement making wine in the South of France. Twenty years have passed since “J-L”, a stalwart, paternal compound of warrior and statesman, was last caught up in intergalactic conflict and his universe is sadder, more constricted and compromised than it was in his years at the Enterprise helm. His best friend, the wise, winsome android Data (Brent Spiner), sacrificed himself in a conflict involving the Federation of Planets and the Romulan Empire during which Data’s fellow androids – here labeled “synthetics” or “synths” for short – were blamed for mass slaughter on Mars and have been demonized by humans and extraterrestrials ever since. Trek completists may deem it necessary to see the 2002 movie, Star Trek: Nemesis for further enlightenment. But I never saw it, was in fact encouraged not to and I had no trouble following what happened here. Another point, I think, in Picard’s favor.
In fact, I wont bother explaining what Romulans are or why some Romulans are nicer than others or the uneasy, even threadbare alliances between interplanetary beings, whether “synthetic” or not. If you can’t ride this vehicle without a scorecard, you wont be able to ride it at all. So what you need to know going in is that Picard finds out that Data had a “daughter”, twins in fact (Isa Briones) , who don’t know they’re artificial but find themselves targets of militant Romulans intent on exterminating all “synths.” Picard can’t save one of them from assassination, so he and a motley assortment of misfits and cast-offs go boldly back into the Final Frontier to save her sister and take her “home” to a planet of artificial beings; her “family”.
Throughout the series’ run, I admit to being skeptical, even with Michael Chabon (The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Summerland, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union et al) as a showrunner, that Picard would pull this off, even when I got all perked up with Jeri Ryan’s both-guns-blazing return as Seven-of-Nine. I peeked at what the trolls and grumps were saying on-line and their complaints ran along the general lines of “Too slow” or “Too dark.” I wasn’t persuaded much either way. Even at its most bombastic, Star Trek was never about blowing stuff up ; more like talking things through and working them out. (Do you know, or care that there’s a big difference between Star Wars and Star Trek? If not, what are you doing here?) As for the “too dark” complaints? Hell, you guys were all in on Deep Space Nine, right? I called that show Trek Noir and nobody I know who’s seen it disputes the point. Besides which, if you weren’t even mildly amused at some point by some of the more outlandish bits of self-referential humor in Picard then someone should check to see whether you came from a factory.
I’m still withholding specifics here and elsewhere because you need to see it all before seeing the end. You will have your quarrels, I’m sure, with the content and especially with how it all turns out for the title character. But that’s not my concern here, so I will leave it at this:
Somebody somewhere once labeled Gene Roddenberry’s vision as a hymn to human possibility. At its best, in all its varied iterations, Star Trek ‘s mission wasn’t so much to “seek out new life,” but to grapple with what “life” actually entails, what it means, in short, to be human. The most recent big-screen renderings of Trek tended to neglect this in favor of, you know, Blowing Stuff Up. On the small screen, Trek calms down, scales back. It remembers to take its time, take your hand and encourage you to remember that it’s all about imagining your way beyond your mundane prejudices and worst terrors.
“Fear,” as Picard says at some point in Episode 10, “is an incompetent teacher.” This is something I need to hear right now and I bet you do, too. Take the ride.
