What I’m Watching: Star Trek: Picard (Season Premiere)

Star Trek: Picard: Season 2, Episode 1 “The Star Gazer” (B+)

It’s good to have this show back after a nearly two-year hiatus. I remember very much enjoying the end of the first season, and even though I wasn’t a faithful watcher of “The Next Generation,” it’s fun to see guest stars like Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan and John de Lancie as Q. It wasn’t clear what the framework for this season would be with Picard on his vineyard and away from everything, with Rios and Agnes on a ship together and Seven doing her own thing, but everything came together quickly as that Borg collective within the anomaly threatened to undo everything, leading Picard to initiate a self-destruct sequence. Confronting that highly insurmountable problem would have been exciting enough, but then we get the return of Q, who looks like he used to only to have him snap his fingers so that he can appear like the 73-year-old de Lancie, who I watched in an impactful role on “Breaking Bad” just over a decade ago, actually does now. I won’t begin to try understand how his character works from what little I remember, but I’m excited to see it. I’m equally intrigued about the Borg who want to join forces, though only after they usurp power from the ship without it being explicitly granted to them. I’m especially pleased that Seven is still a member of the cast, since her presence makes this Borg plotline all the more complex and layered, contrasted with Picard’s own experience of being assimilated and then extracted.