Star Trek Picard: 7 Ups & 3 Downs From Episode 1 'Remembrance'

Downs...

3. The Pacing

Ostensibly, Remembrance is less an opening episode of a series as much as it is a primer for the world the show wants to be set in. The real story looks like being an intergalactic heist of sorts where a rag-tag crew, led by a retired legend with a point to prove, battle shadowy political forces and their own demons. Remembrance, by contrast, was about an old man decided he needed to get out of the house more.

This in itself isn't a criticism (and obviously it was about a lot more than that) but given the decades-long gap the show needs us to get to grips with it absolutely rattled through the scene-setting. In the space of 45 minutes we've been shown precisely how the galaxy looks post-Supernova, how society looks post-Synths, how Picard looks post-Starfleet, and how Picard looks post-Picard. We've also said a frantic hello, and shocking goodbye to Dahj.

By rights, all of this would have been enough to inform a number of different episodes. Indeed a lot of the core themes - especially the Synth ban and attack on Mars - would have benefitted from a full episode to really let audiences get to with them. As it was, a number of major topics simply raced past like a starfield in Ten Forward's window.