“The Star Gazer” is the first episode of the second season of the TV show “Star Trek: Picard”, which restarts after “Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2“. It’s available in the USA on the CBS All Access streaming platform and in many other countries on Amazon Prime Video.
Note. This article contains some spoilers about “The Star Gazer”.
The USS Stargazer, commanded by Captain Cristobal Rios (Santiago Cabrera), is sent to investigate a space-time anomaly discovered by 7 of 9 (Jeri Ryan). A signal from within the anomaly contains a message requesting the help of Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), who hoped he could spend his free time making wine. When Picard arrives to reply to the message, he discovers it was sent by the Borg.
The second season of “Star Trek: Picard” marks in many ways a new beginning for the protagonist. The show began with Jean-Luc Picard in many ways isolated due to a rift between him and Starfleet. Eighteen months after the events that ended the first season, once more, Picard looks like a Federation hero, and for this reason, he becomes involved in Starfleet activities again.
In this new beginning, introspection is about Jean-Luc Picard’s far more personal issues. In particular, the problems that emerged from his relationship with Laris (Orla Brady) lead him to seek advice from an old friend, Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg). That’s a way to include blatant fanservice, just one of a number featured in this episode. The whole show has strong roots in the saga and only fans who are familiar with the stories and characters taken from other shows can fully appreciate it.
The part of this episode centered around Jean-Luc Picard is pretty slow-paced. That’s okay because it offers the time necessary to understand what happened to the first season’s protagonists in the past eighteen months. There’s also the fact that watching Patrick Stewart act is always a pleasure with performances that add strength to any production.
There’s no lack of action to introduce the new story-arc. The reappearance of the Borg is a puzzle and 7 of 9 suspects it’s a trick to assimilate the Federation used because their power has been significantly reduced, so they can no longer try using brute force.
The end of the episode seems to introduce what was advertised as the key element of the story-arc that marks the second season. In the end, this episode served as a prologue to pick up the threads of the show after a two-year hiatus and it seems to me that it did it adequately.
Terry Matalas became showrunner joining Akiva Goldsman, and the two of them wrote the script for this episode. Matalas stated that he’s a Star Trek fan, so we can hope that he understands what elements make it special and he can bring them out. In short, fanservice can be good but it takes substance for a Star Trek show to be a significant part of the saga and not just exploit the name. “The Star Gazer” represents a promising start, we’ll see if the following episodes of this season will keep that promise.
