Former starfleet officer Jean-Luc Picard finds himself in the middle of a conspiracy of Romulan assassins and secretive synthetic life experiments and learns the hard way that, not only is he on his own, but he’s also living on literal borrowed time.
I could honestly watch Patrick Stewart put on a Star Trek uniform and read cookie recipes and be completely satisfied, but to be honest, I am pleasantly surprised by just how focused and methodical that Star Trek: Picard is proving to be. This is a series where problems come about by decisions and they feel organic and earned, the solutions are hard and take effort, and the characters, even characters who only appear for a few minutes, feel real with real backstories and lives.
Folks… I want a series about Laris and Zhaban. I could totally get into a show about two ex-Tal Shiar Romulans tending a vineyard in France.
The second episode of Picard was very nicely paced considering that it literally throws everything at us from a new Romulan secret police that’s actually secret and uses the Tal Shiar as a mask to the Borg Cube reclaimation project and a conspiracy between the Romulans and Starfleet itself but, oddly enough, the second episode doesn’t feel like it’s throwing as much at us like the first episode did.
The story feels as though it is progressing logically and organically while, at the same time, twists and turns and surprises come about in unexpected ways.
And, of course, Patrick Stewart is amazing as usual. It feels so good to have him back.
If I had any negatives for this episode, it’s the lack of my new favorite good boy, Number One.
Jason Gaston 