Star Trek: Picard Episode 1 Remembrance Reivew

Before I start, let me just say. I am not a fan of Alex Kurtzman, I don’t like anything he written as he is not a very intelligent writer and can not write anything with logic or make you think. On a Production side he is fine which police procedural shows like Hawaii Five-0 and Scorpion, but anything that is Sci-Fi or Fantasy he should just stay well away, because of this I don’t think he is the right person to be in charge of Star Trek.
So it will come as no surprise that I hate Star Trek 09 and Into Darkness, both of which Kurtzman wrote and I hate Star Trek: Discovery with a passion.

With Kurtzman either writing or at the helm of Star Trek for the last 10 years, we have not had anything that has come close to the quality of stories and writing that we got before Star Trek 09. So when it was announced that Sir Patrick Stewart was coming back for a new Show, I was hyped just like ever other fan. That was until I realised that the show was going to be made by Kurtzman and some of the people working on Discovery. Also throw in Akiva Goldsman, the man who gave us Bat-Nipples and another person who should stay away from Sci-Fi or Fantasy.
That hope for good Trek started to slip away, with all the news and rumours coming out, I expected Picard to be just as bad as Discovery or even worse.

I am going to break this review into to Non-Spoiler and then Spoiler and will give warning when I start the Spoiler part.

Star Trek: Picard is set 15 years after the Supernova that destroyed Romulan homeward, which was seen in JJ Abrams film Star Trek 09 and about 20 years after the events of Star Trek Nemesis.
Jean-Luc Picard has retired from Starfleet and living on his family vineyard in France. The episode opens in space flying though a nebula and you see a formulary ship flying though it.
The next shoot is a close up of this ship and it the Galaxy Class Enterprise D, the camera zooms into the windows of Ten Forward and we see Picard in civilian cloths playing a game of Poker with Data who is dressed in the Uniform from the First Contact films onwards. The Chat between Picard and Data has been seen before as it was in the trailer form Comic-Con, this all turn out to be a dream with Picard waking back in his bed in the family home Chateau Picard. We are then introduced to Dahj played by Isa Briones. Three men dressed in black with their heads covered beam into her apartment in Boston, killing her boyfriend and starts attacking her. One keeps asking “Has she been activated yet?” When the answer is no the one that ask the question tells the other to knock her out. They put a black bag over her head and she “Activates” and kills all three and makes her escape. But before she leave she has a vision of Picard.
We learn more about why Picard has left Starfleet and this is linked to the Short Trek “Children of Mars” (Something I have not yet seen as it is not available in the UK yet.)
Dhaj finds Picard and tell him what has happened and that she feel safe with him. She spends the night at Picard home, but in the morning she has gone. During the night Picard has another dream of Data who ask Picard if he wants to finish off a painting. (again seen in the trailers) When Picard wakes in his study and looks above the fire place to see the painting Data was painting. Picard goes of to San Francisco, Starfleet Archives where he has a storage locker with his personal things. He find another painting there that look the same as the one in his home and that Data was painting, but the woman in the painting has Dhaj face, Picard learns that the painted in 2369 by Data and is called “Daughter”.
Dhaj meets back up with Picard and he informs her that he thinks he knows who she is. Before they can carry on talking Dhaj say “They are coming!” and drags Picard to a rooftop. Where the men in black beam in and start attacking. Dhaj is able to beat most of them, but is killed in an Explosion that knocks Picard out.

This episode is mostly set on Earth and with the exception of the beginning and End and there are no space scenes.
Remembrance, is mostly setting up the scene about what this show is about and there are a lot of information dumps and what looks like three plot points that will run though the season or the show; Dahj, Synthetics (android that are now banned thought out the Galaxy) and the Brog. These could be JJ Abrams favourite thing in story telling “Mystery Boxes” so we many never get full answers to what they are setting up. But it only the first episode so only time will tell.
On the acting side Sir Patrick Stewart has brought his A games and running rings around the rest of the cast. The cinematography is on the same level as you would expect from a motion picture, but another thing that JJ love is the lenses flair and it is used heavily in some scene. I wish they would stop doing that as it add nothing to the show, but at least so far it not as bad as in Discovery. Most of what we seen in the trailers have been taken straight from this episode.

Did I hate the first episode of Picard? Surprisingly no. Did I love it? No. It was just okay.
There have been far better pilots form Star Trek and I said it only the first episode, so time will tell if I come to love it or hate or just keep my current option of it.
Though Kurtzman did not write of direct this episode you can clearly see his finger prints all over it.
On a hole I give the first episode a 5.5 out of 10.

With that done onto the Spoilers and Nick-Picks.

As states in the main review, Star Trek 09 is now part of the canon timeline, however the prequel comic for that film (Countdown) is not as that features Captain Data, in command of the Enterprise and I will come back to this later.
When the events of the Romulan Star goes supernova, (a retcon as in the film it is stated that it is the Howbus Star.) Jean-Luc Picard is an Admiral and he get Starfleet command to build a fleet of new ships to evacuate Romulus. However Mars is attacked by rouge Synthetics who take down Mars defence grid and destroy the fleet being constructed at Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards. Thousand are killed in this attack (Star Trek: Short Trek, The Children of Mars) and Federation Member world state that don’t have the materials needed to start again. Starfleet command are unable to build anymore ship decides not to take part in the evacuation of Romulus. In discuss Admiral Picard resigns from Starfleet and returns to Chateau Picard.
Because of the attacks by Synthetics, they are banned under a galactic treaty. In another words, only Alpha and Beta Quadrant races that we know of have signed up to this.
All of this is done in a information dump in the episode, as Picard is being interviews due to it being the anniversary of the attack. some of the information here leaves you asking question like what is a Synthetics? But it get explained latter in the episode.

A Synthetics is basically a Android, however they are no where near as advanced as Data. Once again Kurtzman and co seem to be going down the bad A.I road that they did in Season 2 of Star Trek Discovery and something we have seen a thousand time already in other films, shows and books and done much better.
The other issue I have with this information is that Starfleet is building a fleet of ship to do this rescue effort. But it take years to build a ship. The largest ship that Starfleet has is the Galaxy Class and that takes five years to build, let alone they still in the process of rebuilding fleet from the loses suffered during the Dominion War which only ended six years prier. The Galaxy class can only evacuate something like five thousand people so you would need thousand of Galaxy class ship to evacuate a whole planet. That is assuming that only the Federation is taking in this rescue effort. Also Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards is not Starfleet only ship building facility in the Federation, it just the main one in the Sol System. I am sure that Vulcan and Andor have their own along with other Members of the Federation. You also have the question, Romulus is also the home world of the Romulan Star Empire, which is just as big as the Federation.
Where are their ship to do this evacuation. They should not just have their own warship, but civilian and cargo ships that can take part in the Evacuation.
It is also stated that Romulus only has 900 million people on it that needed rescuing, as I said before it is the home world of an empire, why is the number of people living on it so small? It should have been in the billion for it to be more believable. That also not including the people living on Remus.
It is also mention that the Romulans are old enemies of the Federation, which seem the writer forgot or did not know that they fought along side the Federation and Klingons during the Dominion War. Even after the events of Star Trek Nemesis, relations between the Federation and Romulan Star Empire had been better than it ever has been.
Finally why has Picard gone back to his family home, he hated it there (As Stated in the TNG episode Family and with his brother dead *Generation* there is no reason for him to go back.). If he was no longer in Starfleet he would have left Earth and started pursuing his other interest archaeology.

The whole attack on Dahj is just bad writing. If you can transport into her apartment when can’t you beam her out? It does not make any scene, but for arguments sack let say you can’t beam her out. When you have the upper hand and want to knock her out, why are they putting a black bag over her head, just sedate her. Like I said it just bad writing.
Me personally, I would have had her abducted and the boyfriend who really knows who and what Dahj is gets Picard to help.

Something that is not a major issue but had me asking why was Picard Storage Locker at Starfleet archives. Frist is Starfleet archives some sort of Museum, it is hinted at. But no one has been has had access to Picard Storage locker except for him, which is full of personal items. Second once he quite Starfleet that should have been moved to a non Starfleet owned locker.
There is also a moment George Orwell 1984, when the archive hologram tell Picard the other painting his hanging above his Fireplace in the Study at his home.
How the hell is the hologram meant to know where it hanging. I don’t tell people where I hung painting at home.

From the painting that was made by Data in 2369 (at some point between the second half of Season 7 of TNG and just before Generations) Picard believes that Dahj is the daughter of Data.
When did Data start work on another daughter that his friends never knew he was working on?
Then you got the second attack on Dahj, but this time she is super human and able to just up three flights of stair and a few feet in one bound and also have superhuman strength.
Just before she is killed the Men in Black turn out to be Romulan. one of them is bleeding from the mouth and spits at her. Some of the blood lands on her and some lands on his disruptor.
The Blood start to eat away at her cloth and her, it also does the same thing to the disruptor causing it to explode.
When did Romulan blood become acidic like the Xenomorph?

After Dahj death, Picard goes to the Daystrom Institute in Japan. Here we learn of the ban on Synthetics and that any work on android’s can only be theoretical.
we also lean that no one has yet come close to creating a posotronic Brain like the one Dr Soong created for his Android. We are told that Data is the most advance posotronic Brain to created.
Hello have you forgotten about Data brother Lore, who was more advanced than Data? Data was created after as Lore was mentally unstable?
As for B4, after Data transferred his memory to his death, B4 never took the memories was and taken apart. This make the Star Trek 09 Comic Countdown not part of Canon.
Even though commander Bruce Maddox was trying to recreate the posotronic Brain at some point he decided to stop and start work on creating Android that are made out of flesh a blood and very hard tell the difference between them and human or any race they are model on. This is very much like a Replicate from Blade Runner or a Cylon from Ronald D Moore Battlestar Galactica.
After the attack on Mars and the Ban Maddox disappeared never to be heard from again.
It is also implied that Maddox was successful in what he was trying to create, and made Dahj from a single posotronic proton from Data brain. I am sorry but it does not work like that, that like taking a single megabyte from windows 98 and using it to build windows 10 in a human body.
We also learn that from this “cloning” Process you get two model. one was Dahj and the other is her twin Sister Soji who is currently working on a Borg cube with Romulans.

Like I said I don’t hate the episode but I don’t love it.
There is a lot of story elements that is badly written and could be done so much better, without have to go over thing we have seen 100 time before and done better.

Will I continue to review each episode? At this point I am not sure.
If I like it sure I will. But if it turns out to be like season 2 of Discovery it more likely I will be pulling out what left of my hair, then the answer is no.