"Star Trek: Picard," Year One

The general rule for "Star Trek" series is that the first season is always something of a mess, trying to work out all the character dynamics and fix inevitable issues with a new format. This is true of "Star Trek: Picard," which is the first "Star Trek" series built around a specific character rather than a place or vessel. It's also very emphatically a sequel to "Star Trek: the Next Generation," bringing back many familiar characters who have been absent from our screens since the '90s. It takes a while, but retired Admiral Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) eventually ends up as the leader of a starship crew again, on an unlikely mission to help an old friend.

Largely written by Michael Chabon and Akiva Goldsmith, "Picard" starts out with our hero stewing in retirement at his family vineyard, when he's contacted by a young woman named Dahj (Isa Briones) with a mysterious past and origins. This leads Picard to becoming involved in the search and rescue of Dahj's sister Soji (also Briones), who is being targeted by the Romulan Tal Shiar for reasons unknown. Picard recruits Dr. Jurati (Alison Pill), former Starfleet officer Raffi Musiker (Michelle Hurd), a black market pilot, Chris Rios (Santiago Cabrera), and an old Romulan ally, Elnor (Evan Evagor), to aid in his cause. Opposing them are Narek (Harry Treadaway) and Narissa (Peyton List), Romulan spies who are pretending to work with Starfleet on a secret reclamation project.

The writing, frankly, is all over the place. The individual characters are pretty decent, but they're run through a very contrived series of events that jump from planet to planet, and crisis to crisis to untangle the kind of classic "Trek" conflict that could have been handled in a single episode, and without resorting to a whiz-bang, shoot-em-up ending. However, "Picard" isn't really interested in plot as much as it is with exploring how the familiar "Trek" universe has changed since we last saw it in 2002's "Star Trek: Nemesis," and what some of our old friends have been up to. It's also much less elegant in tone and approach. Like "Discovery," there's a moderate amount of cursing, the Federation is often engaging in morally compromised actions, and there are a lot more sketchy corners of the universe on display. Picard is operating outside of the Federation for most of this adventure, so he's working with a cast of more colorful fringe characters - wayward Raffi, charming ruffian Rios, and refugee Elnor.

And this is all very entertaining. Stewart is noticeably older and more frail, but his Picard is still wonderfully charismatic and easy to root for. The new characters are a motley bunch and don't initially come across very well, but once you get to spend time with them and get to know them, they emerge as a noble and good-hearted bunch. They're ultimately all familiar types, but very "Star Trek" - an eager doctor, a noble alien warrior, a scruffy pilot, and a lost android searching for identity. And some of the performances are excellent, notably Allison Pill as the complicated Jurati, and Santiago Cabrera as Rios - and multiple hologram versions of Rios, each with his own different accent and persona. If "Picard" had been a typical starship-based show, it likely would have avoided a lot of its messy narrative issues. Most of the trouble seems to come from trying to sustain a serialized story over ten installments. There's also a significant amount of screentime given over to Soji, whose story runs parallel to Picard's for several episodes. She gets better as the series rolls along, but the first few shows with her and the Romulans are pretty rough.

"Picard" strikes me as a good premise with wildly uneven execution, and a lot of potential for better down the road. Significant time and resources were spent making the world of "Picard" look impressive, which would have been better spent tightening up the scripting. There's an awful lot of reliance on spectacle over thoughtful problem solving, making "Picard" feel more like a "Trek" film than a series. I think it's absolutely worth a watch if you're a '90s "Trek" fan like I am, because all the callbacks and nostalgic bits are handled very nicely. The writers lay on the sentiment a little thick, but it feels earned and appropriate. And while the show has its share of dodgy dialogue, subpar performances, terrible cheats, and plot holes, it also delivers some memorable high points and a measure of emotional closure that "Nemesis" never gave us.

Oh, and minor spoiler, but "Voyager" fans should also definitely take a look.

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