Wat ging er mis bij Star Trek Picard?

TNG Picard is a symbolic character standing for measured, differentiated, rational and patient but at the same time passionate and decisive behaviour. He and the other symbolic characters of classic Star Trek do not have to be complex or realistic because the allegorical and episodic classic Star Trek story structure doesn’t require it necessarily. This kind of heroes catalyze change or self revelation in the ones they meet on their journeys and only occasionally in themselves if the story requires it. That’s why the deduction of actual psychological patterns within them is misleading and desperate because they were by design only symbolic.

The kind of characters in the show “Picard” try to be complex by being setup with traumatic pasts. They get accordingly fitting and agreeable payoffs like self acceptance, love and purpose. The problem is that without the story about their struggle how they achieved that self revelation and consequently the capability of decisions- overcoming inner resistance- the solutions, as true they might be, feel unearned and shallow to the audience, at least to me.

There is nothing to learn from the show “Picard” because the “how” never became the element of interest only the “that follows that” . In a similar way all the ambitious themes, climate change, racism… never became the core of the story and instead just got meantioned and briefly illustrated.

The art of storytelling and especially the allegory is lost in the show “Picard”.