Musings on Picard and the Star Trek Franchise
Picard failed to grab me.
It’s hard to say why. Jean-Luc Picard embodies – or embodied – the ethos of Star Trek, in both his strengths and weaknesses. Picard is both a highly-intelligent and highly-moral man, but – at the same time – he has a tendency towards both self-righteousness and a pollyannaish view of the universe that undermine his character. Picard may be a better man than Sisko, in my view, yet I would sooner have Sisko in the captain’s chair if hard decisions have to be made. Picard wanted to keep his hands clean. Sisko had fewer qualms about getting his hands dirty if necessary.
This alone, however, is not enough to kill a show. A series about a character who learned better – or reshaped the universe to suit himself – would have to start with a character in a poor position. The real problems, however, are deeper. To understand why, we must ask ourselves a simple question. Why did Star Trek go mainstream in the first place?
I think the answer is fairly obvious. The original series consisted of a number of individual episodes (there was only one two-part episode) that touched upon a wide range of themes, ranging from battles with hostile powers to humour, love stories and encounters with strange – and very inhuman – aliens. If you didn’t like one, you might like others. Star Trek itself embodied the IDIC principle, for better or worse. The Next Generation followed the same basic idea, with a new crew and a new ship that did … well, pretty much the same as the original series. There were a number of two-part episodes, but – by and large – you didn’t need to follow the series from the start to understand what was happening. By the time all good things – hah – came to an end, this formula had played itself out. The next series would have to be different.
Deep Space Nine was different – it was set on a space station, ensuring the crew could never drop into warp and outrun the consequences of their actions – but, for the first two seasons (and for some considerable distance afterwards) it remained bound to the episodic formula. There was a story arc, but that arc didn’t become all-consuming until the final two seasons. It worked, because of the arc; the arc had time to take root because of the episodic formula. In theory, Voyager could have gone the same way. There was no way the crew could drop in to a handy shipyard and patch the holes in the ship. In practice, it didn’t do so well. The writers seemed incapable of producing either a retreat to the Next Generation formula or striding boldly into the unknown. That is not to say Voyager was bad, but the rot was starting to set in. Enterprise failed for pretty much the same reason as Voyager, with a twist. The fans wanted something that was both completely different (because it was set in the pre-federation universe) and the same (because it had to live up to the carefully drawn out timeline the fans held in their hearts). It stumbled and fell.
At this point, it became clear the producers no longer understood their own show – or what made Star Trek great in the first place. The rebooted movies might have been spectacular, but they were not Star Trek. They were conventional action movies that alienated fans without drawing in any new fans. The producers themselves had reached the limits of the overall formula.
It isn’t easy to write stories set in utopia. Iain M. Banks wrote the Culture novels, set within a far more advanced universe, but most of his stories featured the Culture’s enemies, the Culture’s misfits, or the Culture’s immigrants. Only one novel can truly be said to feature mainstream Culture citizens. It isn’t a coincidence that this happens when the super-advanced Culture is facing an Outside Context Problem, an issue it can’t solve with super-technology. In some ways, Star Trek has the same problem. It’s not easy to write stories when there is relatively little at stake.
Discovery had all of Enterprise’s weaknesses, but added a few of its own. It was a series of interlocking episodes, each one telling part of an overall story. None of them were stand-alone. Viewers had to start at the beginning, or be hopelessly lost. This, combined with a flawed premise, badly weakened the show. It might have done better if it hadn’t been Star Trek. Again, like the movies, Discovery alienated fans without drawing in any new fans. This was, I think, quite predictable, even before the political BS started. It might have been wiser to set a story in the post-DS9 universe.
Picard should have been that story. However, it managed to copy most of Discovery’s mistakes. On one hand, it started another series of interlocking stories that locked out fans who didn’t get interested right from the start. On the other, it played political games and overrode common sense in a bid to make political points. It’s not unreasonable, for example, for the average Federation citizen to have qualms about providing a new home for members of a race that has been both an enemy and an ally over the last two hundred years (particularly as they had an empire themselves, with plenty of spare room). The logistics of shipping billions of people across interstellar space would have been daunting, even without the political concerns. And then we have the problem of feeding and caring for the refugees. In theory, the Federation could handle it. In practice, again, there would be issues. It is easy to reduce the real-like migration crisis to politically-correct soundbites, but such soundbites rarely acknowledge the problems caused by uncontrolled migration.
Jean-Luc Picard himself suffers from a degree of character assassination. It was in character for him to take a political stand, but unwise of him to stake his career on an all-or-nothing approach. (Really, Picard should have been dishonourably discharged for failing to destroy the Borg when he had a chance.) He should have realised this was a dangerous path to take, instead of being surprised when his superiors accepted his resignation. This is also true of the Federation itself. Why does it – now – discriminate against artificial life forms? Why does it discriminate against ex-Borg? Picard himself is an ex-Borg. It feels, very much, as though the Federation has fallen into darkness.
Perhaps it got better. But it wasn’t Star Trek.
It might have been better to develop a completely new show. It wasn’t as if there wasn’t room. A starship patrolling the post-war universe? Perhaps trying to sort out the mess caused by the war? Dealing with political factions, insurgents, terrorists … and other threats, trying to move into the former enemy space. Hell, why not just turn the New Frontier books into a movie? We could have had the grim awareness that life isn’t perfect, mingled with the dream of a rosy and idealistic future.
And, at the very least, it wouldn’t have alienated so many fans.
