A lovelorn Admiral Picard’s day is interrupted by a rift in space and time, leading to an encounter with The Borg. Picard gives in to his self-destructive tendencies, leading to the arrival of an old frenemy. Written by Akiva Goldsman and Terry Matalas, directed by Doug Aarniokoski.
Andrea Ayres: Mark, Will, it is an honor and privilege to be writing with you. I must admit that I was hesitant to watch the first episode of Picard S2E1 because the previous season left an acrid taste in my mouth. However, “The Star Gazer” made me believe this season will be different. I find myself with a bit of tepid hope.
Mark Turetsky: I share your hope. There’s a lot going on in this episode. And I think it’s partly because “The Star Gazer” has to serve as something of a reboot for the series. Everyone’s in a very different place since the end of season one, so we have to see what everyone is up to (very briefly, in some cases), we have to catch up with Guinan, we have to establish the new major threat, and then upend the entire thing by the end.
Will Nevin: Andrea, Mark, it’s a pleasure to serve. *salutes* We had some great things in this episode — namely a marked increase in the production budget that gave this first episode a real sense of scope and gravitas. But I’m afraid the same writing problems that plagued the first season are still right there, and I get the sense that the piecemeal parts of the story they’re setting up may have been done better elsewhere.
But I want to believe.
(Sorry, wrong show, I know.)
Look Up
Mark: So the episode starts with one of those in media res crises, with Picard, Seven, Rios and Jurati all on the bridge of an unfamiliar starship, with a weird tentacle-and-phaser monster going nuts on everyone, and Picard ordering a self-destruct, followed by a “48 Hours Earlier” chiron. It gives me pause any time a show starts with one of these. It usually means the early bit of the show was too boring and they re-edited it to have something exciting come up at the start.
Will: We’ll get to when and why the shooting starts at some point, but I want to say here that Rios appears to be a terrible captain — or at least a bad one at getting his crew to follow orders. How many times does a guy have to shout “Cease fire!” before people listen? But Picard giving the self-destruct order has to speak to that point, right? Then again, I guess it doesn’t matter since all of that is *snaps fingers* blinked away.
But to your point, Mark, the last season started slow, and it may have been one of the few things I actually liked about it; Picard going back into space felt like a serious deal, a lion in winter’s last great adventure. This time around…he broke his housekeeper’s heart and got a spooky page on the interspace house phone?
Andrea: Will, I thought the same about Rios. Also, how long did it take for Rios to speak those words? That doesn’t seem very Federation-like. But Will, don’t you get it? Rios is a loose cannon. He smokes on the bridge. He’s not like other captains. He’s a cool captain. The beginning, to do my own time jump here, the beginning didn’t particularly bother me one way or the other. I’ll tell you what did, the speech to cadets. I really don’t know why we need these. They make my organs shrivel.
Mark: This early part of the episode really feels like one of the Shatner-crew films. The crew is all split up, and he’s the old man trotted out to give nonsense speeches to many cadets and talk about symbolism: it’s the end of the wine season at his vineyard (as “Time Is On My Side” plays!).
Will: Speaking of Picard’s commencement speech, the decision to have Elnor stand up for a round of applause for being the first Romulan to graduate from Starfleet Academy was fucking cringey.
Mark: With his belief in absolute candor, I’m shocked he didn’t turn and shout to his classmates, “This is super-weird and I haaaaate this!”
Andrea: Like, honestly. Isn’t the idea behind Starfleet that no one is more special than the other? It’s why having Elnor stand up feels particularly odd. I don’t care how great his eyebrows are.
Mark: The content of the speech, about regretting the road not taken instead of the choices that we do make, is an interesting topic for Picard, namely because of his relationship with Q in “Tapestry” (TNG:S6, EP15) and “All Good Things…”(TNG:S7 EP25-26). “Tapestry,” especially, showed Picard that he was in precisely the right place in his life. But of course, Picard is more likely thinking about his interpersonal relationships rather than command decisions, in light of his romantic frisson with Laris the previous night. It’s kind of wild that they just quietly killed off Zhaban between seasons when he was very much alive at the end of season 1. It puts the lie to the fanon theory that the three of them were a romantic triad last season.
Andrea: It’s hard for me to parse how I feel about the contents of the speech. Picard enjoyed various relationships on the Enterprise, the “will they won’t they” of Dr. Beverly Crusher being perhaps the most obvious (TNG: S06E19). Picard often appeared fairly resolute in his decision to remain without a partner or children. Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Picard contemplating other paths. It’s something writers have often toyed with, thinking particularly of “The Perfect Mate” (TNG: S05E21) and “Inner Light” (TNG: S05E25). I guess I’m bringing this up because Picard seems like the kind of brah to compartmentalize the personal from the professional. I get it. This series is about a different Picard. I still don’t know if I buy the idea that he will wax poetic about his personal life during a commencement speech.
Will: Mark, I did not have that particular triad head canon, but I like it and support those fans who did. Remember, Trek nerds started slash fiction — that’s a proud tradition to uphold, people.
Mark: And just a quick note: I loved having an Irish Romulan on the show since last season, and I’m thrilled that Orla Brady has been promoted to series regular. So, hopefully, she’ll have more to do than to pine after Picard. Getting back to Picard’s romantic regrets, it seems like it all stems from trauma related to his mother, Yvette. We get a flashback of Yvette and young Jean-Luc, showing them to be very close. It’s intercut with a montage implying that something terrible happened to her. Some kind of monster attack? In French wine country? I dunno. And Picard visits Guinan at her new bar in LA. Any thoughts on these two sequences?
Will: The Guinan scene read like a thing they could have chopped or included, depending on whether Goldberg was available (or available for the right price). And Yvette? I’m crazy nervous that given the Borg Queen’s shroud and her use of the “Look up” line that there might be some connection there.
Mark: The Borg Queen will be played by Annie Wersching this season, and Picard’s mother is played by Madeline Wise, but it’s possible Yvette is under there, somehow, I guess.
Will: Picard’s an android. Anything is possible on this show.
Mark: Picard’s mother is herself a callback to the very early TNG episode “Where No One Has Gone Before,” (TNG: S01E6) where the crew has visions from their past, and Picard sees Yvette drinking tea in the corridor. It’s a pretty touching scene, and shows a great love that Picard has for his late mother, so it’s nice to see that explored some more here, 35 years later.
But that Guinan scene. I love Whoopi Goldberg, I love Guinan, but I thought the writing in this scene was atrocious. It just seemed like a character establishment scene from a simplistic 80s action movie. “You’re not scared of anything in the universe, Jean-Luc, except your own heart!” (this is my own paraphrasing).
The Rest of the Ol’ Gang
Will: We’ve talked a lot about Jean-Luc and a little about Rios (apparently, you can go from Starfleet commander, to washout freighter captain to captain of one of the Federation’s newest ships — who knew?), so how about some bits about everyone else? I’m glad they didn’t *totally* drop the fact that Jurati murdered Bruce Maddox in cold blood, but “temporary insanity due to alien influence” must be one of the most common defenses in Federation criminal courts.
The only thing that bugged me — aside from that moment with Elnor — with the returning characters was how they used the “I’m aging myself intentionally to keep up with humans” for both Guinan and Q. If I read that in an English 101 short story assignment, I’m automatically taking off 10 points for going to that space well twice.
Mark: They could have done what they did with Data last year! Or no. No, really, they shouldn’t do that again. No.
Will: They really had me for a second there — I thought they were going to go with the de-aging tech for de Lancie. Definitely would not have been the worst thing this series has done.
Mark: I saw so many fans write that exact scene of Young Q showing up and saying, “You’ve gotten old!” and then flashing into Old Q that I have really mixed feelings on the producers actually going through and doing the thing.
The Queen’s Gambit
Mark: So, Picard boards the new Stargazer and The Borg send over an emissary. It’s the Borg Queen, but she’s completely veiled. She declares that they want peace, but that first they need power, and she immediately turns all Doc Ock and begins drawing power through her mechano-tentacles. Seven doesn’t like it one bit and begins shooting, and the rest of the Stargazer crew joins in. This provokes the Queen into stunning anyone shooting at her, with the notable exception of Seven herself. Now, folks, there’s clearly more going on with this Borg situation than we’ve been told, right?
Will: This oddly reminds me of a Trek comic that probably no one else remembers, Star Trek: Hive. In that mini, the Borg feign some kind of helplessness/peace initiative only to then begin a conquest of the Federation that sees Picard reassimilated and Seven turned into some funky Borg spider thing. (Oh, the magic of comics and Brannon Braga’s mind.) It too all began with a bridge takeover — although the comic likely didn’t have such a tidy and nonsensical percentage-based countdown.
But I think there’s something to your observation that the Queen was only stunning Stargazer crew members. Maybe they were serious — and Rios’s inability to control his crew fucked everything up.
Mark: Notably, it’s not his crew that starts the shooting; it’s Seven. But yeah, everything from the crew not standing down to Picard being the one to turn on the self-destruct doesn’t speak kindly to Rios’ abilities as a captain. We also get the moment, as we discussed above, of the Borg Queen speaking to Picard as his mother once had. There’s a temptation to read into this that she’s under that veil, but I’d like to consider that, The Borg once assimilated Picard and therefore have access to his memories, and it’s the Queen’s way of telling him to get his head out of his ass and start living up to his Federation ideals. We also get Édith Piaf’s “Non, je ne regrette rien” [note to editors, French titles don’t get capitalized in French beyond the first letter. Not sure what the rule is for a French language title being written in an English article] playing over the PA system. I feel like, while it plays on the episode’s theme of regret, it also seems to be the only French song anyone knows about these days. Inception was 12 years ago. Find another French song, I beg you.
Will: There’s some episode of Family Guy I’m too lazy to look up that makes a meta joke with a similar dream sequence/thing we know that will get undone — at some point, you’re testing the goodwill of the audience by blowing up the Stargazer and killing off everyone on the damn show. As a device, did that seem stale to you?
Mark: The thing that gets me the most about it is that they just spent the episode establishing where everyone has moved on to, and they undid it all in the final minutes.
ConQuest
Will: We’ve already mentioned “Tapestry” and that certainly seems the most blueprint-iest for this season, but the idea of going back into the past to fix the timeline certainly speaks to First Contact as well. Are either of you confident that this story is going to be better than those? Or at least substantively different?
Mark: It’s funny: time travel in Trek is usually to the present (of when the show was produced, at least) or to far enough in the future that there’s some deniability (I’m thinking DS9’s “Past Tense” or Star Trek: First Contact particularly), but here they’re going back to 2024, only two years from now. It’s the era that “Past Tense” was set, but that’s our era now. I’m wondering how they’re going to thread that needle between showing the world as it is now and showing the world as it was portrayed on DS9. Of course, “Past Tense” has proven to be somewhat accurate as a prediction of life in the 2020s, so the jump isn’t that great.
Will: I was going to say the alternate timeline stuff was a chance to resolve the contradictory future history going back to TOS’s “Space Seed” and its Eugenics Wars, but I guess that’s not really an option here, is it? Some quick googling leads me to another important moment in the Trek timeline with the start of World War III in 2026 — maybe we get into that somehow?
Make It So and So Forth
- Nods to Trek from the past include the U.S.S. Excelsior (“The great experiment”) and a meeting with Deltans, the race that gave us Star Trek: The Motion Picture’s Ilia. Also the USS Hikaru Sulu.
- I know Picard is pushing 100 at this point, but “Picard-zero-zero-zero-destruct-zero” as the self-destruct code? Old age is no excuse for insecure passwords.
- If the Stargazer makes an appearance here in S2, does that mean we’ll see the Enterprise in S3?
- I really need someone to resolve Picard’s various thoughts on the Borg between “I, Borg” (TNG: S05E23), “First Contact” and the episode at hand — I think the bigger issue is with the gap between the first two (he’s unwilling to commit genocide, sure, but then he wants to literally fight Worf over the Borg in the film) but he seems super open to the idea of the Borg joining the Federation over Seven’s objections.
Andrea Ayres is a freelance writer and pop culture journalist.
Mark Turetsky
Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.
