Star Trek Picard: Ranking All 10 Episodes From Season 1

"Absolute Candor" is the closest Star Trek: Picard comes to a standalone episode. The third in a row to open on events taking place 14 years prior, this episode is the most successful at using the flashback versus present day structure to dramatize how both Picard and the world around him have changed over the years.

One of the warmest, most visually sumptuous episodes of the season, "Absolute Candor" spends a great deal of its runtime on the planet Vashti, and the scenes of Picard reading to young Elnor and teaching him how to fence are the rare, very welcome glimpse of a truly happy time in Picard's life. These scenes also serve to properly deliver a compelling backstory for Elnor and provide him with motivation going forward.

Of course Vashti of 2399 isn't what it once was and Picard's reaction to the decay and ethnic strife on the planet, practically starting a race riot when he sits himself down in a "Romulans only" cafe is one of best scenes in season. Defying the offensive segregation is fully in line with the Picard we've known since Star Trek: The Next Generation, but illuminates the flaws in the man depicted in Star Trek: Picard who clearly doesn't realize gestures like this are less noble than they are stupid in the current climate of the universe. Picard isn't Captain Jean-Luc Picard strutting into the Romulan Social Club and making a statement, he's just an old human who clearly can't read a room.

And then there's the battle sequence at the episode's climax, mostly gratuitously throwing in an old TOS-style Romulan Bird-of-Prey, but it's a bit of energy and action that lead up to what we'd all been waiting for since the first trailers for the series dropped: Seven of Nine.