rating: ****
the story: Picard finds himself drafted into a most unexpected scenario, and then, of course, things spiral out of control...
review: The focus of this review will be the window into the background of Jean-Luc Picard that "The Star Gazer" uses for its title, the relationship with his mother that we're allowed to see for the first time. This is an essential contribution to the character's lore.
Storytelling in the franchise originally focused only on the moment. Any information about biographical details surfaced in dialogue. There were never flashbacks. The first exception to this occurred in Deep Space Nine's pilot, "Emissary," in which the Prophets grant Sisko, and the viewer, a vision allowing him to revisit how he met his wife Jennifer, and of course the first moments of the episode, in which we see how she died, during the Battle of Wolf 359. Later, in Voyager, Tuvok's past is glimpsed in "Gravity," and "Flashback" provides a visit into his early Starfleet career. The precedent to all this was The Animated Series' "Yesteryear," in which Spock visits himself when he was a child. It wasn't until Star Trek, though, that the storytelling was allowed to be a truly organic element, where the narrative was able to jump from one time period to another, from the moment of Kirk's birth to Spock's formative years as he struggles to reconcile his Vulcan and human halves.
In "The Star Gazer" we see our first-ever look back at Picard in a similar manner. Through the rivalry with his brother, explored in "Family" from Next Generation, we knew something of his origins, and we had even seen both his mother and his father in various visions. In this episode, however, we see Picard as a child, interacting with his mother. Interestingly, this sequence even evokes the Picard we hear about in Nemesis, whose conversations with Shinzon explore how he became interested in space. The rest of the episode, as has the series itself, is steeped in more of his career than the mere fact that he was once in command of a starship that was lost in battle with a mysterious foe (that turned out to be the Ferengi!).
So yes, this is not Next Generation Part 2, but very much its own story, very much centered on Picard, for anyone still confused about this. And this is the episode some of us have been really clamoring for, a visit with Guinan! It happens to delve into the nature of Picard's romantic aloofness, as he happens to be falling in love with the nice Romulan lady who assists him at the vineyard and still trying desperately to deny such a thing could be happening...
The cast of the first season returns and they're all off on new adventures of one variety or another...until the final moments of the episode, in which the Borg are once again rearing their technological and biological distinctiveness and...Q! Even more than Guinan, true aficionados have been craving for another clash between Picard and Q ever since 1994. So it is very much cause for celebration.
criteria analysis:
- franchise - A relatively new tradition of allowing a character's full history to be seen and entered into canon is embraced.
- series - Picard, for all intents and purposes, fulfills several long-held desires by welcoming both Guinan and Q into the fold.
- character - Picard, as never before, blossoms as a fully-dimensional character free from the typical constraints of franchise storytelling.
- essential - Perhaps more so than Kirk and Spock's arcs in Star Trek, seeing this come about at the end of a long life is if anything even more rewarding. This is historic in all the right ways.
