‘Star Trek: Picard’ Suffers Underneath the Weight of History

The CBS All Access’ show ‘Star Trek: Picard’ fails to be its own thing.

Picard is a show that should work. The CBS All Access exclusive takes place thirty years after the beloved 90s show Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994). It is centered around captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) of the original TNG series. You can tell that the network has spared no expense in its production: the cinematography and visual effects are breathtaking, the musical score is one of the best on television, and the acting is genuinely good.

These pieces should make a good show, and yet they don’t. Picard suffers from the weight of almost thirty years of expectations, as it scrambles to satisfy everything fans loved about the original franchise in one dazzlingly swoop. We see the return of old favorites, quintessential villains, and those classic moral puzzles that made the franchise a favorite among science fiction nerds. Everything from the Borg to the J.J. Abrams Kelvin timeline is thrown in, all while adding one or two modern anxieties for good measure.

This problem of “attempting to please everyone, and satisfying no one” is common in modern television and film. The continuation (and its lesser cousin, the reboot) demand that certain elements return again and again for a franchise to be “genuine.”