Star Trek: Picard - On Heroes

Currently I'm in the middle of watching the first Star Trek series to both dazzle me and get under my skin in this particular way. Star Trek: Picard is breathtaking in its visuals. It is every single thing I ever wanted to see out of Star Trek tech which we only now have the ability to pull off. Something as simple as a dermal regenerator now has a subtle weaving/suturing motion to its light beam. When Picard steps onto a crippled Borg cube for the first time since he was assimilated, the very walls shift and reassemble as if whispering, and though there are no words, you can see the structure itself welcoming back "Locutus". The Borg Queen is even more chilling to meet in this iteration.

A wide range of cast members have returned both from Star Trek: Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager. One's emotional reaction to several things in Picard is highly dependent on having seen both of those series in full. I was, in fact, surprised that they permanently killed a few deeply beloved characters in the first season.

I cannot NOT finish this series. The lore has been lovingly and beautifully brought to full and vibrant HD.

At the same time, the messages flying at me almost non-stop from the screen feel like I'm being backhanded over and over. And it isn't any one thing, it's several things all jumbled together into a salad of issues. I have not finished yet, I am only halfway through season 2, however I need to start talking about this.

Why do I need to start talking about this? Because I have spent too long keeping such thoughts to myself. Because when I keep such thoughts to myself and drown them in a day of videogame playing, it burrows underground and becomes resentment. Because, whenever I see it and say nothing, depression drags me to the underworld for the rest of the day (cue drowning it in videogame playing).

Maybe I am wrong. Maybe I do not have all the information or all the facts or all the knowledge. But that doesn't seem to stop other people from speaking their minds, and I have more facts and knowledge and experience and reading than I did five years ago. Time to start putting my words together.

The first issue I would like to bring up is the treatment of Jean Luc Picard in Picard. Now, I have my issues with the man as a captain. In rankings of best to worst captains (only counting the shows I've watched) I would say it goes from Sisko to Picard to Janeway (you absolute guilt-riddled disaster). My issues with Picard mostly stem from the times he was too idealistic, and because of his idealism there were situations when many millions more people died than needed to. This happened on more than one occasion. However, the man had constancy. He stuck to his ideals as hard as he possibly could, and often rejected fatalistic binary decisions as "A failing of imagination." His idealism may have cost a lot of lives, but he threw himself and his crew into harm's way many times to push the boundaries of exploration or save people in danger. He spent his life in service to the Federation and carries deep mental scars for said service. His skin was always in the game. My favorite thing about him--and this is why I fault Janeway so much--is that he does not let his guilt drive his decision-making and he listens to his subordinates when they raise their voices in chorus that something isn't right with his decision.

The man permanently lost part of himself to the Borg while in service to Starfleet. He endured days of torture at the hands of a Cardassian interrogator until he barely knew his own reality, but never gave them what they wanted. He spearheaded a rescue attempt for Romulans (a hated enemy) when they were on the verge of complete annihilation and cried out for help, simply because to him that was the only right thing to do (and he fought for this, I might add, against strenuous Federation opposition). He invented a starship battle maneuver so unique they named it after him. He saved the Federation from internal collapse more than once. He allowed a deteriorating Vulcan to imbue him with his disintegrating emotional state so that Vulcan could mediate the most important peace treaty of his life. The list goes on.

So, in the first episode of Picard, we get a backlog of information that Picard resigned from the Federation in anger many years ago because they didn't have the resources to save the Romulans from an impending supernova that was about to wreck their home star system (and they didn't want to help). After many years, living at his chateau and tending his vineyards, He returns to the current Admiral, asking for a ship and a crew to pursue a mission that has landed in his lap.

Let's set aside the aspect of Star Trek flexing that it is grown-up enough to drop the F-bomb now... I get it when the traumatized and rough-around-the-edges ragtag pilot and crew swear like this, but one of the highest ranking ladies in Starfleet--a military force dedicated to excellence--does it twice (second time below) and it does not feel natural. It feels like somebody behind the scenes wanted to dress Picard down.

What Picard is asking for does not, on any level, strike me as hubris, given the sort of service he has given to the Federation in the past. What I see here is a chance for a woman in authority to diminish Picard for daring to criticize the Federation and then coming to ask for resources based on his record of service. It sounds like the voice of the writers to me, not the voice of the character.

Later, Picard returns with a more vehement and urgent missive for help in the middle of a crisis, and he's right and SHE KNOWS he's right, and still the writers can't resist dressing him down.

To me, she sounds glad that she's able to say this to him. "Finally." Why was this necessary?

This happens in subtler ways throughout the show. In the first season, Picard is dragged through what are perceived to be his failures of action. When he split with the Federation, he retired to his chateau. Now, he travels from regret to regret, each person getting a chance to slap him down for giving up and "hiding away" when he was needed.

This is a double edged sword, here. Yes, good people are needed endlessly and it is painful and disappointing when they get too tired or bitter and set their burdens down. But what I hear, over and over from each mouth that addresses him, is that he never did enough to begin with. That the good he did and effort he gave in the past is irrelevant. Whether it is the remnant of Romulans, angry that only a fraction of them were saved and then deposited as refugees with few resources on a foreign planet, a furious Romulan boy named Elnor who once looked up to Picard and now is happy to say, "You left me on my own, old man. I see no reason not to do the same," or his former colleague Raffi, who seems to lay every ill that happened to her after his resignation from Starfleet at his feet.

While there is truth in his regretful confession, "I let the perfect become the enemy of the good," the man simply got tired of fighting and sat down for fifteen years. The people thought him an unshakable hero, and when he showed his frailty, they were quick to turn on him as a symbol of all that went wrong in their lives when he didn't measure up to the legend. As if none of them had any ability to pick themselves up and do something without Picard at the helm.

There is a quote from a Harry Potter fanfiction I like, wherein Professor Quirrel speaks to a disheartened Hermione Granger and admonishes her,

"You were foolish," the Defense Professor said quietly, "to expect any lasting gratitude from those you tried to protect, once you named yourself a heroine. Just as you expected {the man I just spoke of} to go on being a hero, and called him horrible for stopping, when a thousand others never lifted a finger. It was only expected that you should fight bullies. It was a tax you owed, and they accepted it like princes, with a sneer for the lateness of your payment. And you have already witnessed, I wager, that their fondness vanished like dust in the wind once it was no longer in their interest to associate with you..."
--Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Chapter 84

Granted, the Defense Professor here is not on the side of the angels, but he makes a solid point about the nature of humanity. Captain Jean Luc Picard gave his all and stood as a symbol of idealism and all that was best about the Federation, and yet the Picard series slaps him about, calling his fifteen years a failure to act as if his action was owed. I don't see anyone encouraging Picard that yes, he can get up and slug it out one more time. Everything and everyone else in the story castigates him until he grovels and apologizes, and in that I see the hand of a writer trying to make a point and tear down an admirable figure.

What I end up absorbing through the screen is that the second a hero rests or dares set down their burdens, that hero is committing evil by omission. That any good they have done in the past is so yesterday, bruh. That they have no credit on file, and that it's cool to mock them and take them down a notch or two. That we shouldn't bother looking up to people or having ideals because people fail and nobody will ever meet the ideals anyway. There's a fine line between addressing a character's frailty and faults, and belittling actual greatness. As far as I can tell, this show hasn't even bothered trying to walk that line.

Picard in Picard is no hero. He is a loveable doddard who comes along to spin off plans, apologize to people, and give the pre-mission pep talk. I feel this is a disservice to the character and this portrayal saddens me.