Picard Season Two Review
[From the picture above: “Borgie, Shmorgie, Lorgie, Borg! Meep! Meep! Meep!" The Swedish Chef making more sense of the Borg than Picard does.]
Oh, no. No, no, no no, no.
But I hear you saying to yourself, yes, yes, yes.
This is like torture. So many alarm bells are going off in my brain. Danger Will Robinson! Danger! <with the waving arms and the exaggerated, electronic voice of the robot> And of course, the response of Dr. Zachary Smith replying slowly “Oh yes, indeed,” with a sly, villainous, squint. Why? Because I am actually going to have to relive every regrettable moment as I proceed through this review. Every annoying, poor choice of the writers and characters. Every bad line of dialog, every knee-jerking, tradition-breaking, arc-negating moment is going to be lived again in technicolor and surround sound with this review, and I am asking you to go along with me.
Where do I start? I believe I know how they got Patrick Stewart to go along with this idea. They gave him partial creative control and took a swipe at… Trump. Yes, in the future, Picard wakes up and everything is changed around. All the bright, colorful Star Fleet uniforms have been swapped for black ones. They are EXPUNGING aliens from planet Earth under the guise of keeping the population undiluted, or some such nonsense. IT’S THE AUTOCRATS! You can add the hints together.
Entering stage left… I knew my sanity and good luck could not last forever… is Guinan, played by Whoopie Goldberg. Oh my goodness NOOOO please go back to The View! Guinan tells Picard that something in the universe is not right (you think?) and that he will have to go back into the past to fix it. They can’t get a computer to do the calculations for time warp around the sun, nor can they ask the nearest Vulcan for assistance, because they need a plot complication. So, they decide to do the unthinkable, breaking the FREAKING BORG QUEEN out of her immobilized prison to help them make the calculations. Oh, yeah, that’s a great idea. The Green Burger Queen (that is my new name for the Borg Queen) plots the computations for time warp just in time because Star Fleet is breathing down their necks. Why? They have broken out the one being who is capable of destroying all of civilization. Across the galaxy. Good job Picard!
Then enter another familiar face. Q. Only Q is going out of his mind as he ages towards death, whatever that means for his race of omnipotent beings. Q reveals that he is the source of what has changed in the past to bring about the AUTOCRATS. So, he gives Picard little hints about what to do to solve his time paradox quandary, then takes off.
After they travel in time back to the year 2024, Picard does something so intensely against his nature and background, I had to blink. Twice. He hooks up Scientist Assistant MURDER GURRL in an intravenous link to the Green Burger Queen to “get an understanding of what she, the Green Burger Queen, was thinking.” Now, if you are familiar with Star Trek: The Next Generation at all, Picard was for a while “assimilated” into the Borg where his thoughts were no longer his own. He was owned, body, mind, soul and being by the hive mind of the Borg. In one movie, he shot a crewman on the Enterprise and disintegrated him because he had been stung by a Borg Drone and was transforming. When asked why, he replied “I did him a favor.” That is the Picard we know.
Now, instead, Picard is willingly injecting someone with nanobots from the Borg on a stupid, poorly considered, inconceivable lark that has the possibility of enslaving her mind and being to the hive mind of the Borg. Imagine being possessed and no longer having control of your thoughts. Imagine forcible subjection of every part of your will to that of another. That is what Picard fought to break free from and now he is subjugating MURDER GURRL to the possibility of that torment for eternity.
He pulls the plug at 90% though, so everything is good. Right? We shall see.
We catch up with the creator of Data, Noonian Soong, who is as evil as the day is long. He is messing around with a created android “daughter," named Kore, who is a precursor of Data. It is discovered that it is he, Soong, who plans on keeping Picard’s ancestor, RenĂ©e Picard, from a trip to Jupiter. This is what changes the timeline. Meanwhile, the crew is trying to find “The Watcher,” which is not a cat peering through a hole in the ceiling, to try to figure out what to do.
While all this is going on, MURDER GURRL is left alone on board the ship alone to watch over the Borg Queen. What could possibly go wrong? Borg Queen snakes some IV tubes over to her while she is sleeping and injects her with the last ten percent of the nanobot juice.
“Holy Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Batman!”
“Indeed, old chum!”
Borgified MURDER GURRL then leaves the ship and goes around saying “Resistance is futile” while recruiting a small army of hapless humans. “It will only sting for a minute.” After that, they become proverbial red shirts to be expended in a personal war against Picard. Also, since when does the Green Burger Queen give humans the ability to entertain on a human level in nightclubs? The Borg care NOTHING for human recreation. It’s all assimilation, no play.
There is more exposition, which is also futile. Green Burger Queen (who is now inside MURDER GURRL) captures the ship since no one is there to watch the store and takes off into space, leaving Picard and company behind. Great.
Then, we have the unfortunate appearance of Wesley Crusher, who has now joined “The Travelers,” which is not an insurance company with an umbrella. Instead, they are supposed to be the time police, kind of ripping off Dr. Who, without the British Police Call Box. Once again, Wesley is not doing a very good job. There are numerous instances of time violations in the original show, as well as in the movies. Hitler conquering the world, whales needing to sing but they are extinct, First Contact to prevent a Borgified world (again,) etc. Like a massive yellow galactic school bus with no vision, hearing or any form of cognition, Wesley Crusher is somehow responsible for keeping the universe a mess. Wesley recruits Dr. Soong's daughter Lore, and they teleport to the time dimension, or some such nonsense. To quote Mr. T., "I pity da fool."
I am relieved as soon as Wesley disappears. Picard saves his ancestor, Renée Picard, and the time line is fixed. But they are still trapped in the past with the Green Burger Queen on the loose, looking to assimilate and blah, blah, blah.
But wait! Q reappears and tells Picard that he has solved the riddle! Q tells Picard that he will bequeath him one last present before he dies. He then snaps himself out of existence.
Now, dear reader, comes the most upsetting part of the entire season. A horrible, distasteful trope which if used by my middle grades students, I would have warned them about ahead of time and granted them an F. In thick red writing. And deservedly so.
When Q snaps his fingers and disappears, EVERYONE WHO HAD DIED IN THIS SEASON COMES BACK TO LIFE. AS IF IT HAD NEVER HAPPENED. Yes, it is the IT WAS ALL A BAD DREAM outcome. The crew gets teleported to the future (their own present) and there is much rejoicing. But not from me.
This is incredibly insulting to the audience and unquestionably wrong. It says that the difficulties the audience went through, the emotional and time investment made into the series does not matter. It is to put it a certain way, flipping the bird at the audience. The ultimate put down.
“No, no, no,” I said as I left my seat for the bathroom in utter disgust. Just like I wrote at the top of the article. This is nearly Manos: Hand of Fate bad writing. And yes, of course, they had to put Whoopie in at the end, complete with the floppy purple pancake she wears as a hat.
At least this season, and this review are done. I am cashing in my emotional baggage chips. It makes Lost in Space: The Great Vegetable Rebellion look Shakespearean in comparison. Next up, Picard: Season Three. If I can stand another second.
Borgie, Shmorgie, Lorgie, Borg! Meep! Meep! Meep!
