Star Trek: Picard - Season 2

★★★☆☆

It’s hard to pin down Picard Season 2.

The opening episode should have been an opening 5 minutes. From there it turns into something that looks like a Mirror Universe story but isn’t. By episode 3 it’s a fix-the-timeline story set in the present day (more or less – the Europa mission is way too soon for real-world 2024, but Artemis II is targeted for roughly the same window!) interwoven with an intriguing story about mental illness and trauma.

The next few episodes are actually pretty good! Interesting concepts, social commentary, some mystery, character exploration, some nice references to Star Trek IV for the nostalgia, Brent Spiner as yet another ancestor of Dr. Soong.

But once they figure out what’s changed and what they need to fix, the story just turns into a messy kitchen-sink stew. Things make sense individually but the connections don’t, or vice versa. Overkill is the rule, as character developments are sidelined or discarded, thematic resolutions are undermined, and the timey-wimey ball unravels into a timey-wimey mess.