Note: Minor spoilers ahead (but there are still like 10 episodes worth of plot reveals and twists left in the season).
I thought the trailer I saw last year looked pretty compelling, but it's taken me a while to finally get around to watching the first episode of Star Trek: Picard. Now that I've seen episode one I'd say it's off to a good start. Patrick Stewart is as good as ever. It's kind of wild to see him play an elderly version of my favorite captain- he's the same Jean-Luc and yet time has taken its inevitable toll. His mind remains sharp, but his physical limitations are apparent. He's going to need a lot of help if he's going to start gallivanting around the galaxy again.
I think the premise of a synthetic life ban and Data having one or more daughters (possibly thanks to a missing radical superfan scientist who may be behind his outlawed offspring) is pretty compelling. I was kind of shocked that the Dahj character was killed off so soon after being introduced, but it turns out she has a twin and that one's still out there (apparently in some kind of Federation assimilated Borg cube!) for Picard to track down. And the dream sequence conversations between Picard and Data have been really good as well, it's awesome to see Brent Spiner reprise his role.
Other random things I liked in no particular order:
- Number One is a pretty solid dog even if he pretends to not know French.
- The Romulan refugee staff that help Picard run his vineyard are pretty great.
- The fight scenes were a lot better than at least one person I followed on social media described them as being.
- It seems like the synth hunters are some kind of Romulan special forces group, but there's got to be more to it.
- Data was really the only other STTNG character out of the gate and hopefully they'll dole out the old cast appearances slowly and they'll be more than mere cameos.
- Sounds like Patrick Stewart personally asked Whoopee Goldberg to reprise her role as Guinan- I'm particularly looking forward to that one.