Oh good, I get to tell another man’s traumatic story as a result of everything we’ll see. Directed by Joe Menendez, Menendez isn’t known for much if I’m honest. An episode or two of a thing here, an episode or two of a thing there, a lot of late 00s, early 10s kids TV if I’m honest. Written this time by Jane Maggs, this is her third and final episode of the season. Two more from her are yet to come in the third season, and if I’m remembering correctly they were decent episodes. Better than “Monsters.”

So Gaius Baltar is the psychiatrist for the great Jean-Luc Picard as he’s laying on a bed in a clinic about to be mind-melded by fake Laris, and I’m supposed to suspend my disbelief for that? So say I do, and I don’t instantly think “he’s a bit creepy to just be Chekhov’s headshrinker.” That will only last about three point five femtoseconds until he opens his mouth and does that thing James Callis does so well – be a creepy, evil, horrible person.

Meanwhile, as not-Laris runs around with baby Picard in the old man’s dreams, Rios is telling the woman he wants to sleep with that he’s a spaceman, and the lip service lesbians are hunting down a Queen. Sadly they aren’t searching for a gay man or a drag queen. Much like we saw last time out, the Queen inside Agnes is trying to take control, and to do that she needs endorphins; Smashing stuff, snogging Chilean men, and singing Pat Benatar at a swanky space do. If only that was as exciting as it sounded to watch.

So the un-fun part that I need to talk about for context is that “Monsters” deals with a very small part of Jean-Luc Picard’s story. A story that was only in a handful of the 178 episodes and four movies – plus whatever else you want to include like DS9 and season 1 of Picard. That is the story of Maurice Picard, Jean-Luc’s long-dead (and happily so) dad. Patrick has spoken about this frequently as he’s an advocate of bringing awareness to the problem, though I think what aggrieves me so much about it here is how it is treated as the reason Jean-Luc F-ing Picard is who he is.

That being the fact Patrick’s father would beat his mother due to his abhorrent and disgusting behavior as a result of alcoholism (I believe), a result of PTSD from World War 2. As I’ve said a few times now, it seems Patrick had an agreement in the contract to add certain things to the script so he’d do the show. French-accented pirate, getting to wear a tux, and indeed, it seems to make it clear that Jean-Luc’s parents were the reason for his true kindness and aspiration to help others just through trauma. It is almost made blatantly clear, he loves it when others yell for help but he can never do it.

It is moments like this that I keep saying that Picard in seasons 1 and 2 aren’t about Star Trek, they are the modern TV nonsense that’s introspection on trauma and feeling sad about one’s self. Jean-Luc Picard wasn’t launching himself into space because his parents had flaws and he had to feel like he was better than his parents. His time wasn’t our current one where we reconcile with the bottled-up trauma instilled into our parents and we’re the brunt of it. The 24th century, as we see it in the franchise is a utopia that galvanized behind and encouraged adventure and knowledge-seeking.

To be Jean-Luc Picard, the man we’ve seen in 170+ episodes, films, and beyond, you were being encouraged by the systems and programs around you. Picard (the show) doesn’t care about that and instead instills that to be good, to do good, and to bring about peace and prosperity by helping those most in need. The systems that create this far-flung future of hope and utopia need to fail so you can be traumatized and be space Jesus. Supposedly that’s the future of hope we’re all looking forward to.

To care about others, your mother has to have never seen a psychiatrist and your dad has to be a drunk who would beat her, lock her up in the basement, and traumatize you. That’s the message “Monsters” gives, which if you’ve missed it for the last 50+ years wasn’t the point of Star Trek at all. Going beyond “Is it Star Trek or not,” we’re talking about 2318-20 when young JL is running around that basement. If you’re sending people into space to sleep with everything not nailed down and fighting unknowable monsters, I’d hope your STI and mental health programs are sorted.

My “problems” aren’t so much the technicals of the writing, but its understanding of the world and how this is the utopia we’re supposed to be fighting to get to. I know it is difficult for a lot of people to hear, especially when it comes to those early episodes that soured a lot of people. However, The Orville has done a better job of this recently than a lot of Star Trek: JJ-verse, Discovery, and a majority of Picard. Don’t get me wrong, there are Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds, but a lot of that is also rehashing the stars of the 60s, 80s, and 90s.

I’ll get away from this digression in a second, but as much as there are flaws in the world of The Orville, the show never treated it like a utopia that was solved. Picard and Discovery seem to be saying “No really, there were problems in this utopia that are exactly what we see now,” only after we’ve seen a world where it was more or less solved. I guess Star Trek has always been clean and tidy about its world, but had flaws, and now wants to pretend it’s always been messy, emotionally driven, and focusing on big societal problems in messy, emotionally driven, and cluttered ways.

At least since we first saw Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek has mostly been for a lot of people about grown-ups sitting down to talk about the big problems in small areas that affect the universe. I’m thinking: Bajoran liberation turning into an all-out war, can a race of people who change bodies be held liable for crimes another body has supposedly done, or does an android who feels, interacts, and is family have the right to live, and relevant here, the fear over humanity and technology combining, even in small ways, detrimental?

The themes of so much of Star Trek have been relevant but far-flung, grounded not in the problems of our world but the one that Star Trek actively inhabits. So much of Picard seems to forget that, yeah the place the characters are standing is 2024, but they are of the 24th and 25th centuries. I know education isn’t high on everyone’s list of redeemable skills in the last two decades, many of us were born in the 20th and live in the 21st century, for reference.

Give me a mental health episode with these characters, sure, but give me one that understands the world and explains why that mental health issue is a problem, and why it is still relevant in the 24th-25th century. It was another mystery box unlocking to frustratingly tell you as a viewer, “No, these characters don’t live in the world you’ve understood and been told they live in. They live in your depressing hellscape and there is no escape from that. Have fun!” Give emotion and have heartbreaking episodes, but write it like you care.

Of course, there are subplots but they aren’t sci-fi related, they aren’t characters you care about related, and they aren’t even anything you are given a reason to care about. My summations earlier about Annika and Raffi searching for a queen sums up the whole story, with the only addendum being that they discover the ship is plagued with Borg tech now. Wow, why do I care? Beyond knowing where we’re going, Agnes alone as a character isn’t interesting or exciting.

Meanwhile, Rios is doing something dumb I mentioned three episodes ago. You’d have to be not only blind and deaf to not know which direction Rios and Dr Ramirez is heading, and as I said multiple times already (I have Pike’s backing on this), “30% of the population and 600,000 animals and plants becoming extinct.” Again, this goes back to understanding the world from a base writing perspective: If you are writing time travel and you have a world that’s about to become an Elton Britt hit, then maybe don’t tell a beloved character to stay and have a romance subplot with a high ranking Star Fleet member.

Not only is he a high-ranking officer and he’s breaking one of the prime directives, he’s doing so after 2-3 days for an infatuation. It was noted earlier that the timeline the crew had to help Renée was three days. However, that was either very late at night or early morning; Rios was in I.C.E. Detention at the time, and we got him out and had the party where Picard was hit by a Tesla driven by Soong. That’s at least a day and a half, two days. “Currently” Renée is in lockdown before the launch into space and JL just woke up after being hit by a car. He’s acting like marriage is next.

I haven’t even gotten to the child shouting in the basement or Orla Brady’s fake accent, both of which are quite grating, to say the least. The best thing I think I can say about “Monsters” is the ending, not only because it ended but also the character introduction. So FBI Agent Martin Wells is a known subscriber to (and I need to be careful here) self-published newspaper The Light, which publishes conspiracy theories about a host of topics, I assume including about little green men on Mars.

He doesn’t, but he does care about little green men and their bum-poking devices. Jokes and levity aside in a “review” of a dour episode of Picard, Jay Karnes is making only his second appearance in Star Trek. I don’t care for the theory-crafting that maybe he’s a time traveler himself, I think and you can take this for as much salt as you like, David Duchovny had an asking price a little too high to play yet another FBI agent.

We’ll see why that’s a relative comparison later on, but something about that was far more interesting than the technobabble from Ito Aghayere’s Guinan moments before. If I have to psychoanalyze why that’s exciting to some degree, I guess it is the thought that maybe we’ll get some more Jean-Luc Picard being Picard in a show called Picard. Without magic space tools, he has to talk his way out of an FBI interrogation room with a man who’s obsessed with what’s upstairs. No, not like a Southern Baptist is.

Ultimately, “Monsters” fails to understand the universe it is supposedly set in, leaving the show about a great captain with no one at the helm to give the show a sense of constant direction. Picard is lost, much like a man of the character’s age who has escaped from the home. It has a glimpse of something that could work, but all the same, the majority of season 2 of Picard is much like its predecessor, a standard, treading-water, CBS drama that airs every Tuesday at 8 PM. That isn’t a compliment to FBI, FBI: International, and FBI: Most Wanted.

Phenixx Gaming is everywhere you are. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Also, if you’d like to join the Phenixx Gaming team, check out our recruitment article for details on working with us.

Phenixx Gaming is proud to be a Humble Partner! Purchases made through our affiliate links support our writers and charity!

Star Trek: Picard "Monsters"

4

Score

4.0/10

Pros

• Oh, an interesting new character that could pose the use of a special skill.
• Gaius Baltar-- Sorry, I mean James Callis as an actor.

Cons

• Please understand the universe before writing.
• What are these B and C plots?
• So much technobabble and King Arthur fantasy to care.