Star Trek: Picard teaser drops; Os Davis squees like teenage fangirl

O boy o boy o boy – the folks at CBS All Access have dropped the first teaser trailer for Star Trek: Picard and does not disappoint. Go ahead, watch it again; we’ve done so a good dozen times already.

So what’s not to love about this? First off, the setting: The Picard family vineyards, previously seen in Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes “Family”, the extremely underrated chaser to “Best of Both Worlds”, and the classic closeout “All Good Things…” We always knew that Jean-Luc, although he’d probably serve as Starfleet admiral and/or ambassador along the way, would ultimately return to rural France and to his father’s winery.

And did you catch the music? Minor chords dominated by cellos leading into a goosebump-raising déjà vu-inducing sample from the TNG theme – somebody learned from that amazing Star Trek: Discovery theme…

Then there’s the dialogue, extremely telling for fans devoted and casual alike. The bit about commanding “the greatest rescue armada in history” immediately reestablishes Picard as one of Starfleet’s historical figures, but essentially confirms to those in the know that yes, Picard’s rumored retirement from Federation work is connected with the destruction of Romulus mentioned in Star Trek (2009).

Indeed, fan theories are already reckoning that the narrator of this teaser is Romulan: She mentions leading us “out of darkness”, which could refer to either the literal darkness of one’s sun going supernova or even out of the figurative darkness of isolation from their cousin species of Vulcan. Beyond this, the voice *sounds* Romulan, with the narrator pulling off the subtle cadences of ST’s Romulan and Vulcan characters expertly enough to impress Hoshi Sato.

Star Trek Guide will back that theory and we’ll double down with a prediction: The reason for Picard’s departure from Starfleet was due to the treatment of the Romulan survivors – refugees, immigrant and asylum-seekers to the Federation, if you will. Though Discovery has been surprisingly free of much social comment, but here’s to thinking that Patrick Stewart’s input in the very long pre-production process involved making Star Trek: Picard relevant to today.

Even the damn tagline is brilliant. Sure, the last episode of TNG is titled “All Good Things…”, which of course come to an end. As the ST:P motto reminds us, however, “The end is only the beginning.”

Yes, yes and more flurking YES! How much joy and hope can a single minute of video bring a Star Trek fan? As the man himself once said, “The sky’s the limit.”