Star Trek Picard Season 2 Capsule Review

Roughly one year ago, I wrote this article on boiling the then 820 episodes down somewhat to give you a good ‘choice cuts’ selection of episodes and the films. Well, just as I did with the latest season of Star Trek Discovery, along comes Star Trek Picard with another ten entries. All of us here at Robot Republic feel with this, it would be remiss of me not to give this new season of Picard the same treatment.

Before I start, two things. One, this is very heavily serialised so I could just be lazy and say ‘do a binge’ and I won’t lie, I am somewhat tempted to. Well, I won’t, but my God the temptation is there. I am a huge Trek nerd and any excuse to be warmly ensconced in that franchise is one I will happily take.

Two. In all seriousness, episode nine really needed a trigger warning. I won’t say what it is (for spoiler reasons) and in my opinion, they do handle it well. However, by not including this warning (one which it needs quite badly), the episode and season leaves itself open to criticism.

I will try to avoid spoilers here (apart from to say the trigger warning should have been there), I really want you to watch the whole thing.

Like Star Trek Discovery seasons 4 and 3, and the previous Star Trek Picard season for that matter, I think the objective quality of this season is incredibly high.

However, this ‘one a week’ approach is fine for shows like Star Trek Lower Decks and Star Trek Strange New Worlds, but in heavy dramas it actually leaves even the greatest shows as overall worse than if you watch a few at a time or even a good binge session or two over a weekend.

Having said that, I was in general very impressed with this season. Particularly the fact that it wears it’s left wing on its sleeve. Something no doubt aided by Sir Patrick Stewart who is something of a hero to me based upon his legendary acting skill, general demeanour and how engaged (pun unintended but I’m happy with it) he is with activism for left wing causes.

I am very glad we got some references to Star Trek Voyager in. Well, quite a lot with Seven constantly threatening to steal the show. From someone knighted for acting skill honed over decades. No mean feat.

Speaking of outstanding acting, pick any actor (except that French police officer from episode five who even William Shatner would tell ‘a bit more realistic eh?’.) and you have a highlight.

I’ve been a huge fan of Alison Pill for years now. Scott Pilgrim vs The World and The Newsroom are outstanding and if I was booking the guestlist for Desinationation Star Trek in September, I’d be getting ancy to get as many Picard and Discovery guests as possible. Lower Decks too as they seem all great craic based on how they were at the recent Star Trek Mission Chicago. 2022 (sorry, that dates this somewhat).

Overall an imperfect season just like my favourite season of Star Trek, namely Voyager season 5 (although Deep Space Nine season 4 is near it in terms of quality) Its faults cannot all be negated by a binge session or two (although most of them are, no mean feat) and it will always bear the mark of being a very heavy season with content which needs a trigger warning but overall, I feel this deserves a strong recommendation and a binge of this season (with possibly one or two of the middle season episodes omitted) deserves a place in my previous article giving the choice cuts of Star Trek.

Enjoying our work? Give us a follow everywhere and tell a friend!

PLAY, OBEY, CONSUME.