Star Trek: Picard 2.1: Cameos and Time Travel

The debut episode of the second season of Star Trek: Picard was enjoyable, notwithstanding the annoying commercial breaks which lacerated the narrative on the paying service.  (Yes, I'm too cheap to pay more for Paramount+ with no commercials.)

As was the case with the first season, the most fun in this episode was the return of memorable characters from The Next Generation TV series.   In this case, that would be Guinan and Q.  Let's hope we see more of them. It was also good to Seven of Nine back in action, continuing her role from the first season.

As for the story, it was an interesting melange of Picard's personal turmoils and outright battles in space. Although Picard has loved women in the past, he's now unable to fully express his love to Laris.  Maybe what happened to him at the end of the first season has gotten in the way, not of his physical libido, but the capacity of his soul to fully love another.

We also learn in the first episode that the Borg will be at least one of the primary villains, and time travel will play a major role.  This is confirmed by Picard, who comments at some point that time is a more challenging vista to explore than space.  Give that "Yesterday's Enterprise" was one of the very best episodes of the The Next Generation television series, it makes sense that Picard would feel that way.

It was great to see Patrick Stewart in the title role, and also Alison Pill, back from the first season as the highly intelligent Agnes.  And I thought Santiago Cabrera as Chris, cigar in mouth and hand, in the Captain's chair, was an effectively dashing figure.

So ... I'll suffer through the commercials, watch every episode, and be back here with reviews.  More than enough in this start of the second season to keep me interested.

See also Star Trek: Picard (Season One): Non-Pareil 

 

Salvation: Plans A and B and more

Salvation was shown on CBS this summer - finale was just this past week - but binge-junkie that I am, I binge-watched the whole 13-episode run over the past few days on Amazon Prime. And this series is binge-watchable and excellent indeed.

The premise or starting point is actually the least original part of the story, one we've seen several times before: an MIT student discovers a deadly asteroid is heading towards the Earth, due to arrive and likely render us into extinction in less than a year.   But the series really takes off from there - figuratively and literally - and delivers all kinds of surprises and lessons, just what a good science fiction story should do, including -

• an Ethan Musk kind of billionaire, working on not one but two ways of countering the impending catastrophe - an "arc" (named Salvation) that can get 160 or some number like that of people off this planet, with a view towards setting up shop on Mars or anywhere the human species can continue; and a device, separately launched, which can pull the asteroid enough off-course that it avoids the Earth (crashing into the asteroid won't work because the resultant pieces will still take out a lot of the Earth's population)
• a Hillary Clinton type of President in office, who's beset by people high up in the government who want to kill her
• a Russia a lot like the one we have today, though more on the verge of attacking the U. S if provoked
• a top-notch mainframe computer - reminiscent of the one in Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - though not sentient
• all manner of loving and not-so-loving relationships, with characters who manage not to be cartoonish 

On the last point, Jennifer Finnigan does an excellent job as Grace, one of the central female characters (and it's good to see she got over Barry from Tyrant).  Ian Anthony Dale puts in a similarly strong performance as Harris - he's Grace's boss in the Department of Defense - and it's always good to see Tovah Feldshuh (this time as President) and long since time that we saw John Noble (Fringe) back on television again.  Charlie Rowe (the MIT student) and Jacqueline Byers make an appealing couple struggling with a relationship as they each struggle in different ways to prevent or do something about the end of the world.  But my favorite is Santiago Cabrera as Tanz, the billionaire computer-genius high-tech quick-witted space-engineering mastermind - so good I'm sorry he's not with us here on this Earth right now, even without an asteroid rapidly approaching.

Top notch science fiction on television, highly recommended, and I'd watch a second season right now if it existed.

a different kind of space travel