As your friend, colleague, trusty guide in the niche world of pop culture that we both like, I cannot in good conscience assure you that you will come away from the Picard premiere with much satisfaction, let alone excitement. If your Trek fandom is anything like mine—like a beloved hard-ass teacher, you believe in its potential but refuse to inflate its grades—you might like it, but it probably ain’t gonna wow you, sorry to say.
Yet do not mistake me for some conjurer of cheap jabs! Patrick Stewart’s performance as our collective Space Dad Jean-Luc Picard—a moniker that the character would no doubt feel weird about—is indeed as transcendent as ever, flung 20 years down the road and into conscientious retirement from Starfleet. The story itself has the potential for excellence, too, hopefully bringing existing canon up to speed with this cultural moment. If it can figure its shit out (and remember, there are few, if any, Trek series that have successfully done so in the span of just one season), Picard could be equal parts essential ideological update and them good, good Starfleelings™.
That said, its reliance on previous series and films obviously makes Picard a tough cold-open for y’all whomst have not watched The Next Generation or its successors in a while. Where to start? you may be asking yourself. Before you received and opened this email (thanks for opening, by the way), you may even have typed the words “Picard primer” into Google. I forgive you for that — I’ve been a bit slow on the uptake with this; how could you have known I was in the process of writing one especially for you, dear reader?? But now I must implore you to close that lesser tab, baby, because this is the guide you’re looking for. (It’s also the one I was offered a ridiculously low rate to write for a big publication, but am now doing it in my newsletter, out of spite and a desire to retain my intellectual property and my dignity.)
What follows is a guide to the specific episodes, films and specific storylines you need to brush up on to fully “get” what’s going on with Picard. I’ve broken it down by theme for easy reference, understanding that you probably went ahead and watched it already and are now thinking to yourself, Welp, I don’t remember any of this shit, time to go back and do my homework after the fact. If you’re really hard-up for time, the titles to watch for a super-shortcut marathon are denoted by asterisks.
(All Next Generation and Voyager episodes are available to stream on Hulu and CBS All Access, the Short Treks are on All Access, and the movies all seem to be available for free on this rando app Tubi.)
The intergalactic political climate
* “Children of Mars” (Short Treks, No. 10): Welp, just watched this six-minute short, and given what we learn from Picard’s contentious Federation News Network interview in the premiere, I am like 95% certain this devastating little story is meant to forecast a whole lot about the faction behind the hooded guerilla attacks in the premiere.
Romulan Stuff
Literally just the furious cousins of the Vulcans, the Romulans have a long, long, adversarial history with the Federation. They’re constantly painted as treacherous backstabbers who will never stop treating the Neutral Zone like their private parking lot; plus they’re racists who employed slaves (see: Nemesis). Yet every race in the Federation is 100% guilty of each and every one of these things, which IMO makes the way the Romulans have been historically portrayed endlessly problematic.
Hopefully Picard’s newfound, deep ambivalence about how the Federation decided to abandon Romulan refugees after the destruction of their planet (a version of which, by the way, prime-universe Spock references in the 2009 Star Trek when he meets Kelvin-timeline Captain Kirk) means that we’re going to get a more humanized (ahem) look at the infamously shoulder-padded warmongers.
I’m not going to recommend particular episodes here, because there are approximately one billion of them and you don’t really need to review them to understand what’s going on in Picard, but if you want more context re: Romulan history and culture, click around their Memory Alpha pages to find a few on your own.
Borg Stuff
Also not necessary, but if you want to go back to the last appearance(s) of the Borg—on whose busted-ass cube ship the Picard premiere’s final scene takes place—try Star Trek: First Contact (1996) (for the last time Picard danced with ‘em) and the two-part Voyager series finale “Endgame” (for how they were ultimately, allegedly, defeated).
Picard’s whole deal
Okay, first of all, you gotta remember: Jean-Luc Picard has one traditionally “unlikeable” trait, and that’s the fact that he hates children. Or, more accurately, children make him profoundly uncomfortable, for a variety of reasons. To understand more about that, and why his dadly feelings toward Dahj (Isa Briones) are important beyond his Data-shaped regrets, you should watch:
“Disaster” (TNG Season 5, Episode 5): The classic Picard-vs-Kids episode. He gets stuck in a lift with three science-fair winners and has to interact with them on their level to get everyone to safety. Absolutely, delightfully cringeworthy.
“Rascals” (TNG Season 6, Episode 7): The one where Picard, Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg, who was just very publicly hired for Picard season 2), Ensign Ro, and Keiko O’Brien (a teacher and wife of Lt. Miles O’Brien) get in a transporter accident that reverts them to their 12-year-old selves (because…science?). This immediately becomes relevant, wouldn’t you know it, when the only way to save the Enterprise from Ferengi pirates is to be underestimated as children! Picard, the consummate Adult in the Room, has to remember how to be a whiny baby, which is weirdly hard for him and thus quite funny. (Fun bonus fact: Leonard Nimoy’s son Adam directed this episode. It was his first credit; he went on to make a documentary about his dad a few years back, about which I interviewed him for MEL.)
“The Pegasus” (TNG Season 7, Episode 12): Picard is once again mortified to be the center of children’s attention for Captain Picard Day, an extremely Dear Leader-esque holiday-slash-contest in which the Enterprise kids make art projects inspired by him and he has to judge the entries. Very creepy! Luckily it has little to do with the actual contents of the episode, wherein the team has to rescue Riker’s old ship the Pegasus before the Romulans find it. The banner the kids made for him in this episode—which in retrospect has a very FAMILY LOVE MICHAEL look to it—is seen hung in his archive/vault at Starfleet HQ in the Picard premiere. (Fun bonus fact: Terry O’Quinn, AKA John Locke, is in this one, playing Riker’s former captain.)
“Family” (TNG Season 4, Episode 2): Not the most necessary episode, but if you want to get a little bit of context around Picard’s somewhat fraught relationship with his family and their generations-old vineyard in France, this episode about his shore leave to visit his brother’s family at ye olde kinda-French farme. He was the first in his family to leave the solar system, and as this episode shows, the Picards back on earth are salty about it.
Extra Credit: Bonus Picardian damage
Star Trek: Generations (1994): The biggest crossover event in history! (The one with both the Original Series and Next Generation crews.) Watch if you want a little more background about Picard’s family and what became of his brother Robert and nephew René. (Spoiler: they’re dead.)
And of course, the TNG two-part series finale “All Good Things (Season 7, Episodes 25-26). This is where Picard got its initial premise: 25 years into the future, Jean-Luc has retired to the Picard vineyard and is basically wasting away (or “waiting to die,” as he puts it in the premiere). The notable difference in this alternate TNG timeline is that Data is still alive, living in the Sherlockian Cambridge brownstone of his dreams with an old-timey British maid and a shitload of cats. Truly tragic that he never got to experience this weirdo retirement.
Speaking of Data…
* “The Offspring” (Season 3, Episode 16): Look, folks, I’m concerned. The events of this Picard premiere suggest that we might be about to go about our business as though Lal—Data’s first child—just … never existed? I implore you to watch this episode, if not to get a handle on Data’s longtime desire to be a dad, and how his determination in this kinda changed Picard’s own beliefs about kids, then at least for Lal. “The Offspring” is unusually progressive for 1990, and Data is an unbelievably cool parent: he makes a child and then allows them to choose their own gender before presuming to assign them one. I’ll know you watched it (or at least read this far) if you tweet at me, “Flirting. Laughter. Painting. Family. Female. Human.”
* Star Trek: Nemesis (2002): The most obvious entry in the whole damn guide, this is the one where Data sacrifices himself to save Picard from his evil, impeccably ‘fitted Tom Hardy clone. It’s also the one where we meet B-4, the prototype created by the legendary roboticist Noonien Soong before he made Data (and his villainous predecessor/twin Lore), and that Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill) rolls out in pieces when Picard shows up at the Daystrom Institute looking for information about biological synthetics. It appears that 50% of Picard’s (apparently severely untreated) trauma at the outset of this new series stems from Data’s death in Nemesis; the other 50% stems from a massive atrocity we’ve thus far only seen in the aforementioned “Children of Mars.”
Additional comments, because it’s who I am as a person:
SPOILERS FOR THE PREMIERE FOLLOW. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.
Why did Alison Pill droidsplain B-4 to Picard, the guy who led the away team that found, and was subsequently almost killed thanks to, B-4? There were multiple other ways to include that exposition.
ARE WE REALLY GOING TO ACT LIKE LAL NEVER EXISTED?
I’m big mad about the double-fridging that happens in this episode, with Dahj’s boyfriend and then Dahj. Really cheapened the whole affair!
Also big mad that within seconds of meeting Dahj’s twin Soji, she’s offering to do free emotional labor for an obvious creep who has given her one (1) minute of obviously ulterior-motivated attention? Not a single therapist in the universe has ever reacted to such a neg in that way. Now I’m worried about whether Akiva Goldsman or James Duff have ever…met a therapist…?
Let’s keep an eye on the exceptionalism going on with the whole “Data wasn’t like other synthetics” bullshit. Data’s specialness was a big theme throughout TNG for purely technological reasons. But now that we’ve seen that people other than Dr. Soong have figured out how to create synthetic sentient life in a major way, what started as a micro-discourse about A.I. personhood is now being expanded into a full-blown collective identity/civil rights issue, which has serious implications in an era where those same rights are being savaged left and right, at this very second.
The use of “Blue Skies” in the Picard intro is a direct callback to the clip at the top of this email, from the beginning of Nemesis. The song, as you’ll recall from that movie, is now a theme that basically means “What is Data May Never Die.” I think I can speak for all of us when I say that, in that moment, we all are Worf groaning, “Irving Berliiiin.”
P.S. (Puppy Stuff):
Somehow I convinced myself that Number One the dog was actually Patrick Stewart’s own dog, but it turns out that’s not the case! The reality: P-Stew insisted the character (lol) be played by a pit bull, because he and his wife Sunny foster rescue pitties, and like Picard, he’s all about raising awareness about the causes he cares about.
Nevertheless, I’m now deeply invested in the well-being of Number One (whose real name is Dinero, god bless), if only because I still follow Carrie Fisher’s dog Gary on Instagram, and the dog-and-space-parent-shaped hole in my heart needs to be filled somehow. If Number One doesn’t get to go to space with Picard, I’m going to be absolutely bereft, not least of all because it means we’re going to have to watch Jean-Luc say goodbye to his giant, beefy baby to go chase down some John-Connor-wannabe bigots.