First look UK TV review: Star Trek: Picard: Season 2
Review Overview
Character
6Tension
8Plot
7Chris Bryant | On 12, Mar 2022
This review is based on the first two episodes of Season 2.
After an imbalanced first season, Picard returns and wastes no time upping the ante for Season 2. Feeling his age, and pondering what his adventures in the stars cost him personally, Picard’s introspection is rudely interrupted by his two most formidable enemies – the robotically-enhanced hive-mind The Borg, and the mischievous, omnipotent Q.
Episode 1 focuses on Picard’s continued, confused feelings for Orla Brady’s Laris before placing him aboard The Stargazer, a new class of ship staffed by Season 1’s usual suspects. Confronted by a upgraded Borg presence that demands peace (by any means) the crew have just enough time to reintroduce their misfit style of friendship before being thrown into an adventure they aren’t remotely prepared for, as Q sets Picard a final trial, casting him into the world that could’ve been.
Not unlike Star Trek’s previous ventures into the Mirror Dimension, some of the proceedings wear thin quickly – even new fans have served their time there, thanks to Discovery’s adventures – and even if Picard is boldly going, he is certainly treading familiar ground where audiences are concerned.
However the show manages to wrangle the attention span well enough to keep the entertainment value front and centre – thrilling escapes, surprise additions to the crew, and more of the action scenes that differentiated Star Trek: Picard from his previous appearances. Improving on Season 1 by better weaving the nostalgia into the proceedings, Season 2’s story arc focuses on Picard’s past, giving him and the viewers no choice but to confront it – resulting in an organic start to this adventure.
Still a little hampered by the modernisation of this particular Star Trek world – ill-fitting humour, the hyper focus on character rather than world-building, etc – Picard’s second season is off to an intriguing start, with the crew facing a difficult challenge heading into Episode 3, and that’s before the upgraded Borg and Q become the focus. Overall, the personal angle of Picard’s oversimplified first episode may receive sighs, but the thrills and old faces in Episode 2 ensure that the show can still “make it so” when commanded.