Star Trek: Picard

The ninth Star Trek series, Star Trek: Picard, picks up 20 years after Star Trek Nemesis in 2399. A character study more than anything else, it focuses on the retired Admiral Jean-Luc Picard at the end of his life, examining the character's relationships and legacy as he's called out of retirement to save the world again.

The first season premiered on January 23rd 2020. While tending to his vineyard, Picard is approached by a young woman named Dahj who seeks his help. Meeting up with friends old and new, Picard heads back out into the galaxy to discover a new secret, one that his late friend Data is at the heart of.

A second season, commissioned before the first had even aired, aired from March 3rd to May 5th of 2022. Off in space, the new USS Stargazer has come across a mysterious new ship, one asking specifically for Picard. With the crew of La Sirena back together, the ship reveals itself as an atypical Borg craft, who beams over an atypical Borg Queen. Through the Stargazer, the Queen begins assimilating the Starfleet armada. As Picard activates the Self-Destruct Mechanism, the crew is whisked away by Q to a Bizarro Universe, setting them on the path to put history back on course.

The third and final season premiered on February 16th 2023 and finished on April 20th. With "Frontier Day" fast approaching, Picard is contacted by Beverly Crusher, whom he hasn't seen since Nemesis, warning him of a conspiracy within Starfleet. Accompanied by Riker, Picard flies out after her, reuniting with his old crew in the process and discovering just how deep the conspiracy, and his own legacy, runs.

Tropes used in Star Trek: Picard include:

• Actionized Sequel: The action scenes are more in line with the Kelvin timeline films than TNG.
• Advertised Extra: Number One (the dog not Riker), Laris, and Zhaban.
• All There in the Manual: The prequel comic shows how Laris and Zhaban came to live at Picard's vineyard.
• All There in the Script: Per Word of God, the Federation's isolationist attitude is partly influenced by lingering feelings about the Dominion War.
• Always Identical Twins: Dahj and Soji. Justified by the way they were born.
• And the Adventure Continues...: At the end of the first season, La Sirena, joined by Seven of Nine, heads off for new horizons.
• An Aesop:
  • It's not the length of your life that gives it meaning. It's what you do with the time you have.
  • For better or for worse, your past does not define you. It may never be forgotten but all that matters is what you do in the present.
• And This Is For: Seven punctuates both her Season 1 kills, Bjayzl and Narissa, this way, avenging Icheb and Hugh.
• Aw, Look -- They Really Do Love Each Other: The end of Season 2 seems to confirm that, yes, despite everything, Picard did consider Q to be a friend.
• Awesome but Impractical: The Orchids defending Coppelius. They can disable even a Borg cube but they're only good for one use.
• Back From the Dead: Having uploaded his memories into B-4, Data's neural net was able to reconstructed from a single neuron. That version of Data dies at Season 1's end but a composite of Lore and Data's memories animates Daystrom Android M-5-10.
• Backup Twin: Soji to Dahj.
• Bad Bad Acting: While Rios' smuggler persona is passable, Picard's French Jerk persona in "Stardust City Rag" is hilariously bad.
• Battle Butler: Laris and Zhaban to Picard.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: During Seven and Narissa's fight, the worst either of them get is a small trail of blood.
• Black Dude Dies First: Dahj's boyfriend is the first casualty of the series.
• Big Bad: Commodore Oh.
• Big Brother Is Watching: The Tal Shiar are everywhere in Romulan society.
• Bizarre Alien Senses: The Beta Annari have 1253 genes related to smell. This allows them to detect if someone is lying, what they last ate, and who they last had sex with.
• Body Horror: Borg implants are rather invasive.
• Book Ends: The first season opens and ends with "Blue Skies."
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Dr. Bruce Maddox, a one-off character from the TNG episode "Measure of a Man" returns as a major part of this show's background lore. Sadly he's Back for the Dead.
  • Hugh, the freed Borg drone from "I, Borg" also makes a return. He too is Back for the Dead.
• Brain Uploading: How Picard overcomes his Irumodic Syndrome.
• Break Out the Museum Piece:
  • In "Absolute Candor", the Bird-of-Prey that Kar Kantar sends to defend Vashti is the model that Kirk faced off against in TOS.
  • In "Võx", the fleet is taken over by the Borg's networking. Picard and co. head back to the fleet museum to steal a ship not linked to the fleet. The Enterprise-D.
• Broken Pedestal: Starfleet has become one to Picard after they gave up on evacuating the Romulan people. Picard ended up becoming one to the Romulan refugees that he'd befriended.
• Brutal Honesty: The Qowat Milat, in sharp contrast to the rest of the Romulan species. As a result, Elnor is a hilariously Bad Liar.
• Call Forward: Much of Season 2, set in 2024, has the looming shadow of the nationalism that is setting Star Trek‍'‍s World War III that will start in 2026. Adam Soong's research into illegal genetic engineering also sets up his descendent's Arik Soong's arc in Star Trek: Enterprise.
• Call to Agriculture: Riker and Deanna have retired to a simple life in the woods.
• Canon Immigrant: Star Trek Online‍'‍s Enterprise-F is visible on a Freeze-Frame Bonus in "The Next Generation". It properly debuts in "Võx".
• Canon Discontinuity: Several works in the Star Trek Expanded Universe post-2385, produced following the release of Nemesis, are firmly consigned to this fate by this series.
• The Cavalry:
  • In the Season 1 finale, Riker leads a massive fleet of top-of-the-line Starfleet ships to defend Coppelius from the Romulan armada.
  • In the Season 2 premiere, the new USS Stargazer is backed up by more Starfleet ships when an atypical Borg ship shows up.
• Cerebus Retcon:
  • TNG hinted that Picard's mother lived to a ripe old age. Season 2 reveals that she was deeply mentally ill and hung herself. The memory of the kind old woman seen in TNG was just how Picard chose to remember her.
  • Picard's Irumodic Syndrome. Turns out it was a genetic modification made to him by the Borg to turn him into an organic receiver for Borg signals.
• Character Tics: How Riker pegs a connection between Data and Soji. He'd know that head tilt anywhere.
• Chekov's Gun: Seven's Borg implants are still active.
• Cigar Chomper: Rios enjoys a fine Cuban every now and then.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Romulan technology has green running lights while Federation technology is blue.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The ENH, a big fan of Picard, lists off several of the man's more notable accomplishments; such as meeting Q or being the Arbiter of Succession for Gowron; in "The End is the Beginning." The Irumodic Syndrome established in "All Good Things" proves a looming shadow for Picard throughout the first season.
  • Kasseelian opera from Star Trek: Discovery makes a return.
  • Narek's wording suggests that he believes the theory that the Vulcans (and thereby the Romulans) are descended from the Arretans.
  • When facing off against the Romulan fleet, Agnes jokes that whatever plan Picard has might be dubbed the "Picard Maneuver" before she remembers that that's actually a thing. He has to correct her that he coined it while captaining the Stargazer, not the Enterprise.
  • The Treaty of Algeron is still being enforced.
  • Tallinn is a supervisor like Gary Seven from Star Trek: The Original Series. Her home base is styled in the same manner as his was in "Assignment Earth".
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • Of all the potential hiding spots on the Borg Cube, Elnor just happens to pick the one where Hugh left the Fenris Ranger distress beacon.
  • Of all the spacers that Picard could have hired, Rios just happens to have met Soji's people during his Starfleet career.
• Cool Gate: The queencell aboard Borg Cubes have spatial trajectors (assimilated from the Sikarians) with a range of 40,000 light years.
• Cool Starship: La Sirena.
• Crapsack World: The Earth of 2024. Much of Season 2 is the crew of La Sirena setting up the science and hope that will lead to a better world in 2053.
• Cyanide Pill: Zhat Vash agents have an acidic variant.
• Darker and Edgier: Beats out Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as the darkest Trek show.
• Dead Guy, Junior: Both Troi and Riker's children. The late Thaddeus Riker is named his ancestor from The American Civil War while Kestra is named after her late aunt who died as a child.
• Death From Above: What the Romulan fleet intends to do to Coppelius. They have at least five protocols for such an event.
• Decoy Protagonist: Dahj.
• Defector From Decadence: Both Picard and Rios left Starfleet because of their disgust at what it was becoming.
• The Dreaded:
  • The destructive potential of synthetic life makes all Mechanical Lifeforms this.
  • The Borg keep up their track record. Even the Romulans fully admit that you'd have to be idiot to not be scared of inactive drones.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: In Season 2, La Sirena‍'‍s transporters are glitching and their combadges are unreliable over long ranges, preventing the crew from having too easy a time in the 21st century.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Zhaban dies between the first and second seasons so Picard and Laris can have a romance.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Picard explicitly flags this as the reason that he won't call on the Enterprise-D crew for help. Riker and Deanna however jump at the chance to help their old friend.
• Evil Brit: Narek and Narissa speak with high class British accents.
• Famed in Story: Not that he wasn't already but Picard has now achieved Legendary in the Sequel status.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • As a result of a group of rogue synthetics attacking Mars, most of the Federation regards them with distrust.
  • The Romulan/Federation distrust is still as strong as ever.
  • Former Borg drones are perhaps the most discriminated lot in the galaxy.
• First-Name Basis: Picard and Riker are now Jean-Luc and Will.
• Five-Man Band: The crew of La Sirena.
  • The Leader: Jean-Luc Picard as the idealistic Magnetic Hero.
  • The Lancer: Rios, the jaded Anti-Hero foil to Picard.
  • The Smart Guy: Raffi, formerly of Starfleet Intelligence, being the most practical and analytical of the lot.
  • The Big Guy: Elnor, armed with Super Strength and Super Reflexes.
  • The Chick: Agnes, having no combat experience and being a Nervous Wreck for most of the series.
  • Sixth Ranger: Seven of Nine. She appears on and off during the first season before joining La Sirena in the finale.
• Foil:
  • Captain Shaw is revealed to be one to Sisko. Like Sisko, he was a Red Shirt during the Battle of Wolf 359 and came to resent Picard for Locutus' actions. Unlike Sisko, Shaw held onto his trauma for decades.
  • The alternate Borg Queen (the Big Bad of Season 2) to the main one (Season 3's Big Bad). While both were faced with the potential end of the Borg, the alternate Queen realized that the Collective couldn't survive if it went back to conquest and killing. The main timeline Queen refuses to budge from the Collective's goal of expansion, simply changing the way it goes about doing it.
• For Want of a Nail: The Europa Mission in 2024. Its successful launch led to Renée Picard discovering a microorganism on Io that helped undo Earth's Global Warming and bring out the best in humanity. When Q prevents her mission, it leads to a Crapsack World where global warming has led to a polluted and barely alive biosphere.
• Fusion Dance:
  • In the Season 2 finale, Jurati and the alternate Borg Queen merge into a single being, one who founds a benevolent sect of Borg.
  • Both Data and Lore's personality engrams were uploaded into the Daystrom Android M-5-10. Through a Batman Gambit on Data's behalf, the two merge into one being. Data's memories and morals are dominant but he retains many of Lore's quirks.
• Genre Refugee: Much of the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits sentiments in the first season is down to most of the crew being composed of this. Aside from Picard and Seven, the crew of La Sirena doesn't quite fit to the world of Star Trek. Rios, if anything, belongs in Star Wars, Raffi belongs in a detective drama about One Last Job, Elnor is a young warrior lead in a coming of age story who wants to prove himself, Soji is the hapless patsy of a conspiracy movie and Agnes is the quirky and introverted smart girl lead of a Slice of Life series.
• Go Mad From the Revelation: The Admonition. Because it was meant for mechanical minds, not organic ones. Even the Borg Cube that assimilated Ramdha was driven mad by it.
• Gratuitous French: Picard often sneaks a few phrases in.
• Gratuitous Spanish: As does Rios. He even drops an f-bomb through it.
• Happy Ending Override:
  • Data's neural net was not able to survive in B-4. Though his mind was able to be recreated in a massively complex simulation.
  • Seven didn't get Happily Ever After with Chakotay and Icheb, the Borg drone who was effectively Seven's adopted son, was brutally murdered by criminals for his Borg implants.
• Hate Sink:
  • Narissa in Season 1. It's steadily shown that, unlike her fellows, she has no Hidden Depths or humanizing traits. She's a Big Sister Bully who has a very pronounced case of Fantastic Racism and is in the Thal Shiar because it's a convenient outlet for her sadism.
  • Subverted with Captain Shaw. While "The Next Generation" wastes no time in establishing him as one, the rest of the season humanizes him greatly. Though he is still openly regarded as an asshole. Even he admits to being one.
• Have We Met Yet?:
  • In a non-time travel example, the crew of La Sirena question if Picard and Seven have actually met before "Absolute Candor". They think that their familiarity comes from their time in the Collective.
  • In Season 2, Q alters time to replace the utopian United Federation of Planets with the dystopian Confederation of Earth meaning that the events of the TNG episode "Time's Arrow" don't occur until Picard and co. fix the timeline. Nonetheless, when they travel back to 2024, the native Guinan feels some familiarity with Picard.
• Heroic Sacrifice: If it will stop the summoning of the Higher Synthetics, Picard would gladly give his life.
• Hive Mind: The Borg Collective of course. Former drones note familiarity with places and people that they've never seen before but that the Collective was aware of.
• Homeworld Evacuation: The Federation was trying to aid the Romulans in evacuating Romulus and its innermost colonies before the supernova hit.
• I Choose to Stay: At the end of Season 2, Rios chooses to stay in 2024 with Teresa and Ricardo, noting that he fits in better.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: What really aggravates Picard about the Confederation's timeline is not the Fantastic Racism, the totalitarianism or Gaia's Lament. It's that his counterpart drinks vile Columbian coffee rather than Early Grey Tea.
• Identical Grandson:
  • Once again, Brent Spiner is the sole face of the Soong dynasty, playing Dr. Altan Inigo Soong in Season 1 and Adam Soong in Season 2.
    • Isa Briones plays Soji, Data's "daughter", in Season 1 and Kore Soong, Adam Soong's daughter, in Season 2.
  • Orla Brady plays Laris and Tallinn, with the latter being suspected to be an ancestor of the former.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: In "Stardust City Rag", the security team hits everything but Seven. Generally averted for the Romulan troops.
• The Last Dance: Ultimately what Picard intended the first season to be.
• Last-Name Basis: Cristóbal is usually just referred to as Rios.
• Likes Older Men: Agnes Jurati's on-screen lovers have both had salt and pepper hair.
• Literal Split Personality: Rios' various holograms technically qualify. The five of them were created from a brain scan of him but he then did a sloppy job of deleting the things that he didn't want to remember. The result is that they're each a fragment of him. By speaking to them all, Raffi is able to piece together Rios' Dark and Troubled Past.
• Loophole Abuse: The Romulans may have known about Ghulion IV for longer, but Picard got there first. Federation protection.
• Karma Houdini: Agnes doesn't seem to have faced any serious consequences for killing Maddox. Then again, Starfleet has often overlooked the acts of those who were mind controlled.
• Killed Off for Real:
  • Q at the end of Season 2 turns out not be as immortal as everyone thought. Though as he clarifies in Season 3, that's only from a linear perspective. The galaxy is not free of him just yet.
  • The Borg Collective is finally destroyed in the Grand Finale.
• MacGuffin: La Sirena in Season 2. If its repaired, the Borg Queen can hijack it and get a four hundred year head start on galactic conquest.
• Meaningful Name: The man who builds Ridiculously-Human Robots is called Altan Inigo.
• Mechanical Lifeforms: Known as "synths" here. They're banned in the Federation after a group of them attacked Mars. Coppelius is inhabited by next-gen Soong androids and a group of "Higher Synthetics" live in a giant political alliance "beyond the boundaries of time and space."
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: In contrast to the usual Romulan attitudes, the Qowat Milat never lie.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Raffi is introduced living at Kirk's Rock.
  • The Emergency Engineering Hologram speaks, of course, with a Scottish accent.
  • Picard's ship in the prequel comic and novel, the USS Verity, is an Odyssey-class vessel, the same ship class as the Enterprise-F in Star Trek Online.
• Negated Moment of Awesome: Seven of Nine assumes control of the Artifact and nearly turns the Borg drones on the Romulans only for them to blow the airlock, sending the Borg into space.
• Not So Above It All: Everyone knows Picard wouldn't want to be immortal. He wouldn't have said no to extra decade or two though.
• Not So Different: Agnes notes that she's this to the Borg Queen. Both fear being lonely. It allows her to speak to the Queen as an equal.
• Not So Extinct: Future!Janeway's gambit in "Endgame" came close, extremely close, but it didn't wipe out of the Borg Collective completely.
• Not So Invincible After All: A Q can die of natural causes.
• Numbered Homeworld: The alternate name for Coppelius is "Ghulion IV".
• Obfuscating Stupidity:
  • According to Laris, Romulan tech gives off the impression of being less advanced than it actually is.
  • Riker's house looks like a typical woodland cabin but it has the tech to hold off Romulans.
• Outliving One's Offspring:
  • Seven was forced to pull a Mercy Kill on poor Icheb, her adopted son.
  • Riker and Troi outlived their son Thaddeus. He contracted a silicon based virus that could be cured with the use of an active positronic matrix which the ban on synthetics made sure wasn't around.
• Patrick Stewart Speech: Well in a series starring Patrick Stewart, this was to be expected.
• Police Are Useless:
  • The former Romulan Neutral Zone is now a lawless Wretched Hive with various warlords fighting for power.
  • Earth's shoddy security can at least be explained by the Mole in Charge of their security.
  • Annoyingly averted in Season 2. Law enforcement is always there to make the job that much harder.
• Precision F-Strike: Admiral Clancy drops one in both of her appearances.
• Rage Quit: Picard promptly handed his resignation when the Federation abandoned the Romulans to burn.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Picard's crew, whom he outright describes as "decidedly motley". They're led by a Retired Badass on a personal mission, Agnes is a scientist who has no business in space and is looking, so the audience is told for her old lover, Rios is a Defector From Decadence with what Starfleet has become, Raffi is a jaded ex-officer and Elnor is a Warrior Monk. And there's Seven of Nine, the ex-Borg Fenris Ranger.
• Reality Ensues:
  • Picard is in good shape for his age but he's 94. He tires out pretty quickly.
  • As Picard learns, you can't give a galaxy-wide speech condemning Starfleet one day then ask them for a ship the next.
  • Admiral Clancy spells out why they had to abandon the Romulans. 1) The Synthetics destroyed the fleet that would have been used to evacuate them. There was no realistic way to rebuild in time for the supernova. 2) The Romulans were their Arch Enemy. Just because a few people, like Spock and Picard, could look past their feud and be the bigger people doesn't mean everyone could. Spock's hail mary plan with the Jellyfish and the red matter was pushed through because it was the only viable one in that short a time.
  • Uploading Data's memories into B-4 caused a fatal systems crash. B-4 was a Flawed Prototype who was never meant to process software as sophisticated as Data's.
  • Picard was diagnosed with Irumodic Syndrome in the finale of TNG which was said to be fatal. It's said early on that he's still at risk of it and he dies because of it. Though there's always Brain Uploading.
  • As is mentioned several times in the series, Agnes is a civilian. Even without the Admonition that Oh uploaded into her head, she's never been trained to cope with the kind of stress and rigours that La Sirena faces daily and it shows.
  • When Picard tries to fly La Sirena, he's nowhere near as graceful as Rios. Not only has it been years since he's had to fly a ship, the control interface is one that he's never seen before.
  • When the crew travels back to 2024, they're careful to avoid interacting too much with government systems as they have no ID to back up their identities. When Rios is found by ICE, they quickly assume he's an undocumented immigrant.
  • After Khan and the Eugenics Wars, genetic engineering was banned. When a committee discovers that Adam Soong was doing just that, his license and funding are revoked.
• Realpolitik: A major reason that the Federation backed out of helping the Romulans was that the Romulans were their Arch Enemy (the threat of Romulan conquest was one of the reasons that the Federation formed in the first place) and fourteen member worlds threatened to leave the Federation if the support continued.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Ultimately Starfleet. When Picard provides irrefutable proof of the threat, they mobilize a massive fleet to back him up and turn over command of it to Riker. 
• Retcon: Spock's mindmeld in the 2009 film showed the Romulan supernova as a distant sun liable to destroy the whole galaxy. This series changes the supernova to the Romulan star and dials it down to a Type II supernova. Of course, a Type II supernova sun couldn't support an M-Class planet. 
• Ridiculously-Human Robots: A dream of Bruce Maddox. A realized one.
• Sherlock Scan: Long used to Picard, it takes minutes for Riker to piece together about 90% of what's going on when the meet up.
• Sore Loser: The ending of Season 2 implies that Adam Soong helped start World War III because he was outsmarted and didn't get praised as the world's smartest man.
• Status Quo Is God: Averted. Every episode shakes things up and the seasons have little connective tissue beyond the main characters.
• Super Strength: Seven's still active implants allow her to fight Narissa (who naturally has this) on equal footing.
• Technology Marches On: Holograms are now ubiquitous in Federation society.
• Took a Level In Jerkass: Old age and forced retirement have not agreed with Picard who's far more snarky and cynical than he was back in TNG.
• Unexplained Accent:
  • Despite Rios being Chilean, none of his holograms share the accent. Medical (Emil) is British, Navigation (Enoch) is Irish, Hospitality (Mr. Hospitality) is American, Engineering (Ian) is Scottish, and Tactical (Emmet) speaks exclusively Chilean Spanish.
  • Picard lampshades this about Jack, noting that there's no reason he should have a British Accent when his mother, Beverly, has a colourless American accent. She explains that Jack studied in London and never managed to shake the accent.
• Ungovernable Galaxy: The Romulan Star Empire collapsed without Romulus and the Federation, per Word of God not yet fully rebuilt from the Dominion War, didn't provide adequate support to prevent the Neutral Zone from collapsing. The Beta Quadrant is dominated by various wannabe Romulan warlords.
• Villain Has a Point:
  • Retroactively, Nero was right. The Federation did abandon Romulus.
  • The Zhat Vash's fears are justified in the first season finale. They just went about it in the wrong way.
• Villain Team-Up: The hobbled Borg Collective and the rogue Changelings in Season 3. Unable to win the Dominion War, the renegades set up the Federation to be assimilated.
• Voice of the Legion: "WE ARE BORG."
• Warrior Monk: The Qowat Milat. They're on the Tal Shiar's level.
• We Help the Helpless:
  • The Qowat Milat bind themselves to hopeless causes.
  • The Fenris Rangers try to keep the peace in the now lawless Neutral Zone.
  • The Borg Reclamation Project. xBs are the most hated people in the galaxy but that doesn't stop Hugh from offering his help.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist:
  • The Higher Synthetics might be this. They want to protect their less-evolved cousins but they're rather overzealous in their methods.
  • The Zhat Vash who oppose them. For all their murder and sabotage, they are trying to prevent the wholesale extinction of every organic species in the galaxy.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Both Troi and Riker call Picard out on treating everything about Soji like he's still the captain of the Enterprise and allowed to decide who knows what instead of talking to her directly and levelling with everyone. He concedes the point.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Arguably the Aesop of the series. As Data says, a life without end is equivalent to life without meaning.
• Whole-Plot Reference: Season 3 is essentially Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country starring the TNG crew.