The first three episodes of the second season of Star Trek: Picard are not very different from what was seen in earlier trailers.
The first season of Picard was controversial. Many fans were happy to see old friends again, while others weren't so fond of the dark direction the Federation went in. We got a look at how technology evolved, met some intriguing new characters and in the finale, everything seems to have been put right.
It's that brighter world where the second season of Picard begins, with synthetic beings now legal, which is handy, given that at the end of last season Jean-Luc Picard was transferred into an android body. It left a lot of people wondering if this would affect future stories. Terry Matalas is at the helm of the second season. It doesn't matter. It's not clear who does and who doesn't know, but Jean-Luc Picard is still subject to the ravages of age while enjoying all the legal protections he would have had as a flesh-and-blood being. Q always treats Picard the same as he has always been.
The finale of last year's WandaVision brought up a thought experiment called the "Ship of Theseus". If you replace parts of a ship over time, and then reassemble them into another ship, which one is the original ship? The real Jean-Luc Picard is the synthetic being that is walking around on Earth right now, because they suggest that the essence of a human being is their intelligence. This hasn't always been how Star Trek worked. Riker was not given the same courtesy as characters like Miles O'Brien and Harry Kim were replaced by duplicate versions of themselves. It seems that they are only acceptable if they replace someone who has already been lost.
The synthetic body issue was admitted by Patrick Stewart during press interviews. It has been at least a year and a half since the events of the first season. Picard assumed the chancellorship of the academy. Elnor is the first full-blooded Romulan at the Academy, and Rios and Raffi have gone back to the fleet. It's the nice shiny future we've always loved to see on Star Trek, complete with some banging costume design and fun updated tech. It was nice to see the continuation of thesynthetic being storyline that ran through The Next Generation, and having all the characters settled into new positions leaves plenty of room to explore other aspects of 25th-century technology.
Picard hasn't become a happy show overnight. A rift in subspace demands Picard's attention and puts the entire fleet at risk. Q takes Picard and his friends over to an altered timeline whereConfederation rules the Alpha Quadrant with an iron fist. This isn't the mirror universe that we're familiar with from previous shows like Deep Space Nine and Discovery. Earth is still in charge, having wiped out multiple species with the Borg next on its list.
In the first three episodes, it's not clear how this alternate reality was created or why Q picked the La Sirena crew over Picard's friends. It's just a tool that allows the show to use time travel. The method of traversing through the centuries is the same as it was in the original series, and it's not new. The ship slingshots around the sun requires precise calculations that only Spock or the Borg Queen can provide. It is not necessarily scientifically accurate, but it is a nice callback for a franchise that has spanned over 60 years, and fans tend to try to square every inconsistency with their own theories instead of embracing the chaos.
The crew will be in the fair year of 2024, just a notch ahead of our own time, so there is very little difference in tech to worry about. The show's writers chose this year because it is the year of the Bell Riots, and the poverty on display in Los Angeles is aghast.
The poor and indigent residents of San Francisco struck back against the degrading conditions they were forced to live in, leading to higher level changes that would eventually lead to the Federation. The third episode hints at Rios getting some taste of injustice as an illegal Latino man, though he isn't because of time travel.
The beginning of Picard plays like a greatest hits reel, we are treated to the return of classic baddies like Q and the Borg, other characters are referenced in passing for some fun Easter eggs, and time travel episodes of Star Trek tend to be a blast. It is a warm blanket of nostalgia to calm the audience after the mess that was season one. If you were hoping to see more of the 25th century in season two, you're in for a disappointment.
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