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

6. Strange New Worlds

Every long-running franchise that successfully navigated the turn of the millennium has done one thing consistently. They've gone dark.

Christopher Nolan took Batman out of tights and rubber nipples to produce the greatest comic book movie of all time and, in the wake of that, "dark and gritty" has become the norm. Christ, even the Transformers now use a muted colour palette and make grandiose philosophical points about the human cost of warfare.

Picard's entire premise centers on the 900 million displaced Romulans who fled the Supernova, as well as the Synth attack on Mars that killed over 92,000 people and ended Starfleet's interest in helping the refugees. Comparisons have already been made to both the 9/11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina in the United States.

While these might be a little bit on the nose, the show is definitely trying to paint a picture of a damaged, suspicious and deeply secretive universe; a long-way removed from the utopian ideals the Federation had previously presented us with. Pulling this tone switch off might be Picard's greatest challenge, but the early signs are promising.