After watching the first episode of the newest Star Trek series, here are my top 10 takeaways… (warning: potential spoilers for episode 1)
10) Not sure how he does it, but Patrick Stewart continues to age gracefully.
9) The opening shot is of the Enterprise D, which zooms into a Ten Forward window with Picard playing poker, reminiscent of the very last scene of ST: TNG where Picard first joins the rest of the officers playing poker.
8) The overall theme of this show (at least this season) is centered around Artificial Intelligence and Synthetic life forms, which have been banned by Federation Treaty.
7) Picard has a dog named Number One. He is a pit bull, which during a recent interview, I discovered that Patrick Stewart rescues pit bulls and it was he who suggested that Picard have a canine companion and he chose the breed.
6) The death of Data in the final TNG film, “Star Trek: Nemesis” obviously weighs heavily on Picard.
5) The opening theme song has a piccolo, echoing the flute that Picard learned to play when he lived an entire lifetime on an alien world due to a probe. In a later episode, Picard plays a duet with his flute and a new love interest,
4) Romulans are back! The destruction of Romulus, which was a big plot point in the first reboot movie (Starring Chris Pine as Kirk) and created what is commonly referred to as “The Kelvin Timeline” plays into Picard’s history. Now in retirement from Starfleet, we learn why he left.
3) Synthetic life forms play a big part, as does Data and B4. (Data’s not-so-clever brother discovered on a planet in ST: Nemesis.) There is even a reference to Bruce Maddox from TNG: ”Measure of a Man”, where Data’s rights as a sentient being were called into question.
2) Future episode previews have promised appearances by Riker, Deanna Troi, and Seven of Nine.
1) I accurately predicted this series SIX YEARS AGO!!
