Waking up in the middle of some hard Trekking — my review of Star Trek: Picard

(Number One, go to Yellow Alert — there are spoilers throughout this review)

Well, it only took 20 years since the conclusion of Deep Space Nine, but finally, FINALLY, we’ve got a worthy successor to the Star Trek line.

Ok, maybe you could count Voyager (which ran until 2001), which was decent Trek, although I found the many plotholes, technobabble that pushed even Trek’s suspension of disbelief and general lack of character evolution frustrating.

But what did we get since then? First Contact aside, the NextGen movies ranged from uninspiring (Generations, Insurrection) to terrible (Nemesis). The series Enterprise, with the exception of most of its final season, was a combination snooze-fest and jingoistic forced 9/11 parallel. The JJ Abrams films were enjoyable but more Hollywood-does-Trek than actual Trek. And Discovery? The less said the better…from the flagrant disregard of continuity (super advanced tech, lobster-headed Klingons, tons of 21st century slang) to the ridiculous premises (a system of mushrooms allows instantaneous travel anywhere in the universe? Really?)

But Star Trek: Picard….this show finally got it right. And by “right” I mean, true to Trek while also true to the zeitgeist and expectations of the times in the real…