‘Star Trek: Picard’ Kicks Off Season 2 With Jean-Luc’s Reunions With Guinan & Q (RECAP)
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Star Trek: Picard Season 2 premiere “The Star Gazer.”]
Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) is in for quite the memorable reunions when the second season of his Paramount+ drama begins.
The Star Trek: Picard premiere picks up right in the middle of the action, as a ship — the Stargazer, now with Cristóbal Rios (Santiago Cabrera) its captain — is under attack. Picard is there, too, and as he comments to Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) earlier, before the episode catches up to that opening scene, “The Stargazer was my first command — not this Stargazer, of course — but being here, it feels like my life has come full circle. She is quite a ship.” He’ll go on to call it “sleeker” than his to Rios.
“There are actually two encounters with his past in terms of spaceships, and that’s all I can say,” Stewart teased to TV Insider. “But the bridge of the Enterprise was home for nearly 12 years. And that’s what it felt like. It had a familiarity and a security, too.”
Picard does have two reunions, with Whoopi Goldberg‘s Guinan and John de Lancie‘s Q, in the premiere. “We wanted to show Picard himself,” executive producer Akiva Goldsman said of these encounters. “In order to do that, we wanted the two people who would know him most deeply and also be uniquely capable of creating for us a kind of environment where we could see the past, because we’re not gonna be doing 10 hours of therapy sessions.”
Nicole Wilder/Paramount+
When Picard stops by the 10 Forward lounge, Guinan can immediately tell that he’s not there “to reminisce about the old days”; rather, “seems like the new ones are what’s troubling” him. What he doesn’t understand is that he’s loved before, but she points out, “always with those who would only be temporary.” He may be brave when it comes to risking his life and breaking bones, but he’s afraid when it comes to his heart, whether he’s flesh and blood or synthetic. “I think your answers are not in the stars and they never have been,” she advises. “Also, I suggest that we drink because I think there’s one final frontier yet to come.”
That conversation comes after Picard speaks at the Starfleet Academy. (As chancellor, he’s considering an update to the Kobayashi Maru.) “We often refer to space as the final frontier, but the older I get, the more I come to believe that the true final frontier is time. In command, as in life, what we do in crisis often weighs upon us less heavily than what we wish we had done, what could have been. Time offers many opportunities but it rarely offers second chances,” he remarks. “May you all go boldly into a future free of the shackles of the past.” And his final words to the cadets come from his time as a child with his mother: “When I was a boy, she would point to the night sky and say look up, Jean-Luc and let’s see what’s out there.”
Trae Patton/Paramount+
Among the cadets is Elnor (Evan Evagora), the first fully Romulan at Starfleet Academy. Picard gives him Spock’s memoir about the challenges he faced as one of the first Vulcan cadets in Starfleet. “‘Exhilaration enhances the absorption of knowledge,'” he reads. “In other words, live a little.” Raffi (Michelle Hurd) has assigned Elnor to her ship, the Excelsior. Later, they’ll be standing by to assist when everything goes horribly wrong on the Stargazer.
It’s what happens on that ship that leads to Picard’s reunion with the trickster. Rios brings Agnes (Alison Pill) on board his ship, and Seven reconvenes with them, following a subspace distortion, tachyon fluctuations, and a massive spike in Hawking radiation. Starfleet has ordered the Stargazer to investigate the anomaly. Doing so reveals a message: “Help us, Picard.” There’s an unknown entity that can open and close a hole in space-time that wants to join the Federation — and will only talk to the admiral.
When Picard joins the others on the Stargazer, he replies to the message, only for something to come through the anomaly: a Borg ship. Seven wants to take action immediately — she knows the risks — but she’s the only one. Then it’s too late, and the Queen transports onto the Stargazer. “We wish for peace,” the Borg Queen says. “But first we require … power.” She accesses the Borg modifications of the ship, giving complete access — to weapons, navigation, everything — and the possibility of assimilating the entire fleet and getting command codes for all ships, using theirs as a hub. And so Picard has no choice but to activate the auto-destruct sequence. “Look up,” the Queen tells him before the explosion.
But then somehow Picard finds himself at home, but it’s different. He wonders what’s happening — “an excellent question, Jean-Luc,” Q tells him. “How I’ve missed you.” And since Picard looks older, the trickster makes himself age, too. “Do you recall what I said to you when last we parted ways? The trial never ends,” he reminds Picard. “You’ve been talking a lot about second chances. Well, my friend, welcome to the very end of the road not taken.”
Star Trek: Picard, Thursdays, Paramount+
