Killing Picard
After the Golden Age
I grew up watching Star Trek: The Next Generation.
My oldest memory of the show is peering from behind the couch (I was barely taller than it was) as my dad watched. It captured my imagination. From then on, I was hooked.
In the time before Netflix, I could only watch Trek in periodic bursts. From an occasional marathon on SyFy to whichever episodes I managed to record, I watched most every episode out of order and with no background context.
Fortunately for me, Star Trek: TNG is perfectly watchable out of order. What few inter-episode plot arcs exist were easily summarized before the credits, and only one or two episodes in the entire series ended on a true cliff-hanger. For the most part, TNG led you into a conflict (as often philosophical as physical), played that conflict out, and concluded the episode. Few plot points, and even fewer traumas, survived an episode.
The crew of the USS Enterprise-D, from a blind engineer to an allegedly-unfeeling android, fit that format well. These were, the show told us, not only skilled people, but good people. When they disagreed it was because they stood on opposite sides of a tough moral question. When they acted badly, it was because they were under some kind of alien influence — and all was forgiven once they escaped.
The star of this dynamic was the morally-righteous, deeply-wise, and well-read Captain Jean-Luc Picard. A philosopher, explorer, soldier, farmer, and captain, Picard is the ultimate good man. He is not without flaws — a distaste for children and occasionally-visible ego among them — but he is ultimately the show’s primary moral force. In the series pilot, he literally defends humanity from the judgment of an angry god.
When the show is at its best, it places a moral quandary in front of the audience and asks what we would do. Most often, Picard answers that question — and, occasionally, his answer is unsatisfactory.
In the episode “Journey’s End,” Picard is ordered, unhappily, to relocate a colony of the American Indian diaspora from a disputed border zone. In many others, his attachment to the prime directive (the order never to interfere with any pre-warp civilization) seems obsessive and cruel. But Picard never acts without giving the audience a reason, and the spirited debates between his bridge officers as to the most correct course of action are, at least in my opinion, some of the best philosophical disagreements in any televised media.
However, as interesting as the crew is, what really makes TNG work is the relative utopianism of its setting. Star Trek imagines a post-scarcity humanity where people live free from currency, wage labor, or poverty. By Picard’s own admission, humanity has “evolved” morally from its past (our present). This evolution is so deep and broad that the humanity of today seems more alien than many of the actual alien species the crew encounters. In one episode (not coincidentally written during a writers strike) the crew resuscitates a group of cryogenically frozen 21st century Americans and is immediately struck by how greedy and power-obsessed some of them are. In one of the best exchanges in the show, Picard very patiently explains to a former businessman that accumulation of power and wealth is no longer humanity’s primary goal:
The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.” — Jean-Luc Picard, “The Neutral Zone”
This “evolved humanity” allows the show to place itself outside of our existing moral questions. It does not ask what is possible today, but what is right. By showing courtroom dramas where androids are given citizenship, conflicting with species which are deeply capitalistic, and presenting moral questions on the chains of command, TNG isn’t just asking how we would act today, it is asking how we would act if we managed to escape greed, poverty, and inequality.
In asking that question, Star Trek: The Next Generation quietly insists that those questions are important; it insists that we need to consider the moral implications of space-age tech, the obligations of post-scarcity civilizations, and wonder what could be out there because we will one day face it.
In other words, TNG argues that a better world is not just possible — it’s inevitable.
Among Trek fans, TNG is therefore regarded as the golden age of the Federation. Prior to war, terror, and the growing threat of the borg (a cybernetic hive-mind introduced in TNG and escalated across series), the Federation and its fleet were dedicated to diplomacy and exploration. Their captains were poets. Their crews played trombone and performed plays on deck. They taught androids to dance!
Star Trek: Picard is a very different kind of show.
From the first episode onwards, it is established unequivocally that the United Federation of Planets (the once-utopian government from the TNG era) is evil now. After a terror attack commited by android workers destroys a Federation ship yard and rescue fleet, the Federation not only abandons their plans to rescue a doomed world, but bans all synthetic life altogether. We find out shortly thereafter that StarFleet Security itself has been taken over by a xenphobic alien sect, and are left in a universe where the “good guys” are scattered refugees of TNG’s golden era.
The parallels to 9/11 are stark. A period of optimistic futurism (though not without its flaws) is shattered by a terror attack at the center of our universe. This attack causes a rightward lurch leading to a nativist inward turn internationally and an oppressive set of laws targeting a scapegoated minority domestically.
TNG was a show of the 90s. With the fall of the USSR and the belief that history had ended, it was easy to imagine things would only improve. The future was bright and humanity was destined for the stars. Just the same, Picard is a show of the 2020s. There is no utopianism in sight, and the high ideals of the golden era are relegated to a few scattered men and women fighting their own small fights throughout the galaxy.
This is not to say that TNG, or other shows of its era (Deep Space 9, Voyager) did not show problems with the Federation. From border disputes which forced the Federation into immoral waters, to alien conspiracies to take over StarFleet, and even to devastating war outright, it was clear that StarFleet and the Federation were imperfect. That said, the StarFleet of TNG and DS9 would never commit two genocides in its pilot episode. A ban on all synthetic life is a direct reversal of the events in TNG, in which androids were given full citizenship, and the abandonment of Romulus to death-by-supernova is a shocking moral turn.
With the end of TNG’s golden era, and the waning days that followed in DS9, we are left with a far less appealing future. If TNG insisted humanity could escape our vices and reach a stage where exploration, art, and philosophy were our chief concerns, Picard insists the opposite. The galaxy is a dark place. The powerful cannot be trusted. Humanity can still be overtaken by bigotry and fear no matter how advanced we become. The best we can do is form our own rag-tag teams and fight small battles.
Consequently, the questions Picard asks are far less interesting. TNG asks whether androids can have children, whether a martial culture of honor deserves our respect, and, from its very first episode, how men should stand before gods.
Picard, instead, asks if genocide is good.
To be more charitable, it also ponders what degree of violence by the oppressed is justified, and generally suggests we shouldn’t trust those in power. But it clearly isn’t a philosophically deep show; those questions don’t grip the brain like TNG’s do.
When I first conceived of this essay, I thought it would be much more critical of Picard. I thought the writers and producers had missed the spirit of Star Trek which had captured me from behind the couch years ago. But as I reflected more, I realized that Star Trek changed because we did. It would be difficult for any writer in 2022 to imagine a utopian future. We lived through 9/11 and watched our own facade of stability and optimism collapse into bigotry and fear. We saw years of “hope and change” amount to nothing, and watched our leadership abandon its stated principles in favor of impotence and apathy.
The thing about Star Trek is that it’s never really been about space or aliens. It’s always been about us. The crew plays out little dramas and asks the audience to judge them. And as much as I love TNG, I can’t help but imagine it would struggle to capture an audience if it first aired today. The dramas it performs, ones which assume a better future is possible, are harder to believe than the warp drives which power it.
I was born three years after TNG concluded. I have very few memories of the 90s, and the cultural context which informed the show is alien to me. My memories begin in a world already changed by 9/11, and, after living through failed promises of change, the Trump presidency, and now a horribly mismanaged pandemic, it is genuinely hard to imagine living in a world which at least appeared to be getting better.
Star Trek: The Next Generation is like a mug of hot chocolate on a cold, bitter day. Its plot arcs are never too complex and most any peril is resolved by episode’s end. Rather than engaging the audience with action, violence, and complex character developments, it engages us by asking interesting questions and demonstrating an incredible depth of soul. It feels like nostalgia for a hopefulness I’ve scarcely known, and a promise of better things to come.
