Sir Patrick Stewart was done with the Starship Enterprise, the spandex uniforms, and the Earl Grey—hot. After 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis—a critical and commercial disappointment—Stewart declared he would not return to play Jean-Luc Picard, the role that made him an international icon. But writer-producer Alex Kurtzman, along with his friend and collaborator, novelist Michael Chabon, courted Stewart for what’s now the CBS All Access series Picard. They promised him they’d seek out new storylines, and new premises—that, together, they would boldly go where no Star Trek show has gone before.
So if Star Trek: Picard—which premiered the first installment of its ten-episode first season on Thursday—feels like a major departure from Star Trek, Chabon, Kurtzman, and Stewart, no doubt, would take that as a compliment. “In the first conversation that I ever had with Patrick Stewart, the main topic was: How are you going to do this in a way that is nothing I’ve ever done before?” Chabon, Picard’s eventual showrunner, told NPR this week. “How do I get to play Picard in a way I’ve never gotten to play him before? And what kind of story are you going to tell that feels like a Star Trek story that hasn’t ever been told before?”
Picard takes the beloved character and hurls him into the unfamiliar—outside the trim and tidy rules of Starfleet, and into the rough and tumble world of rogue operatives and a galaxy-spanning mystery. Picard feels less like a show dead-set on being the most Star Trek property it can be and more the product of a group of clever writers (and self-professed fans) who carefully watched Stewart’s iconic seven-year run on Next Generation, homed in on the episodes that best showcased Picard’s intellectual, steady leadership, and built a show that could highlight what both performer and character can do best.
So all the greatest thematic hits are here, in an admittedly crowded pilot. Picard showcases his brilliance and compassion, runs into his greatest nemesis (the Borg), rekindles his most important personal connection (the android Data), and confronts the greatest threat to the galaxy both then and now (the Romulans). But there are many new faces to come. Though the first episode doesn’t get us there, Picard will be launching into space with a whole new non-Federation-approved crew and not a shred of spandex to be seen, thank you very much. (Instead, Picard spends the series draped in a never-ending parade of effortlessly chic galactic knitwear that should be the envy of any retiree.) Though other familiar Next Generation faces will rotate in and out—for a dead android, Data (Brent Spiner) has a lot to do in the first episode—they are guest stars only, and will take a back seat to the new team played by Michelle Hurd, Santiago Cabrera, Alison Pill, and Evan Evagora.
The show opens with Picard ensconced in idyllic (if a little too sedate) retirement on his family’s vineyard in France. A convenient anniversary and on-air interview allows the show to provide some much needed context about the destruction of the planet Romulus at the hands of a supernova, Starfleet’s decision to abandon a Romulan evacuation effort, and a synthetic uprising on Mars. (Picard’s disastrous interview also allows the show to have a little fun with its reluctant star; the retired Starfleet officer expresses reservation after reservation about going on TV in the first place.) The events on both Romulus and Mars resulted in Picard resigning his post at Starfleet, and synthetics—like Picard’s old friend Data—being banned in the galaxy.