Dirty Work Afoot—in Space!

Picard, Episodes 1 and 2.
TV Review by Michael Isenberg.

A young woman celebrating with her boyfriend: she got the job!

Side by side on the sofa, they toast her success to the strains of mellow tunes. It all seems perfectly normal.

Then assassins attack.

Three of them in black masks and body armor. They murder the boyfriend with a dagger hurled from across the room. Right in the center of the chest. But when they turn to the young woman, and try to kidnap her, she fights back. A few Kung Fu kicks and flips, some disrupter blasts, and all three attackers are disarmed and unconscious, perhaps dead, in a matter of seconds.

She has no idea how she knew how to do those things. Nor does she know why, finding herself in danger, she feels compelled to seek out Jean-Luc Picard, one time captain of the Starship Enterprise.

Picard, which premiered on CBS All Access last week, finds its title character retired from Starfleet—his departure wasn’t exactly amicable—and living out his golden years on the family vineyard. And while he’s in far better health than Patrick Stewart’s Professor X character in 2017’s Logan, he’s definitely slowing down and dealing with issues of old age. Not the least of which are disturbing nightmares about playing poker with his old colleague Commander Data.

But peaceful retirement is not in the cards for Jean-Luc. Dirty work is afoot. The mystery of the young woman who shows up at his doorstep is just the tip of the iceberg. Docile android workers suddenly snap for no apparent reason and destroy the Mars colony. A cybernetic engineer, who was apparently working on illegally building a copy of Commander Data, has disappeared. And a shady Romulan order, even more secretive than the Tal Shiar, and hitherto thought to be imaginary, has infiltrated the highest levels of Starfleet. Picard is determined to travel the galaxy once again, and get to the bottom of it all. If only he can get a ship.

I have a confession to make. There’s been very little I’ve wanted to see on the streaming services lately. So little that I’ve just been signing up for free trials, binge watching what interested me, and then cancelling before the subscription fees kick in. But I got to say, I’m liking this series. Patrick Stewart puts in a stellar performance as usual, the cinematography of space stations and French countryside is spectacular, and the various mysteries intrigue me. I’m eager to see how all the threads come together.

I may just let my subscription to CBS All Access ride for a while.

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com Please follow Mike on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to Nerds who Read via email. The subscription box is in the right hand column, near the top.