How Star Trek: Picard’s Finale Wrote Around Jean-Luc’s Terminal Illness
Star Trek: Picard pulled off the improbable for its protagonist — by prolonging the good captain's life. Viewers have known for awhile that Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) was not well, since all the way back in the series' second episode, "Maps and Legends," which revealed that the titular character had a fatal brain abnormality; that episode established that Picard was living on borrowed time, with the specter of his impending doom hanging over season 1.
When Picard finally admitted to his crew that he was dying, the emotional outpouring took Picard — and most of the crew themselves — by surprise. The crew of La Sirena couldn't quite wrap their heads around the fact they could soon lose the man who brought them all together and gave them a purpose.
Click the button below to start this article in quick view. Start nowYet, at the conclusion of "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2," the closing chapter of Star Trek: Picard season 1, Jean-Luc manages to finds an unexpected new lease on life. Picard has managed to cheat death, for now, as his ailment is seemingly cured; however, the ramifications for Picard's new synthetic body are significant, and will likely be explored further in season 2.
Picard Has A Fatal Brain Defect
Picard's ailment was actually set up in his first Star Trek series, Star Trek: The Next Generation. In that show's acclaimed series finale, "All Good Things," Picard learns that he has a small defect in his parietal lobe that could leave him susceptible to several different degenerative conditions. As "All Good Things" bounces Picard between his past, present, and future, he gets a glimpse of what that illness could look like — in the possible future scenario, Picard suffered from Irumodic Syndrome, something akin to dementia. It's heartbreaking to watch the once powerful captain stammer and recoil at things that aren't really there. Fortunately, that possible future was aborted when Picard solved Q's cosmic riddle around the time jumps, but the possibility of a grim future for Picard remained.
Sure enough, in the show's second episode, Dr. Moritz Benayoun, Picard's chief medical officer on the USS Stargazer, confirms that Picard is almost fit to return to service — except for the brain defect, which has degenerated to the point that Picard is living on borrowed time. Unfazed, Picard proclaims he still wants to head out to the stars to save Soji. He's had a few health scares here and there, but nothing major until "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1," in which he was essentially catatonic after La Sirena experienced a hard landing. Dr. Agnes Jurati was able to figure out what was going on with Picard, and he matter of factly told the crew he was dying, but that he didn't want to be treated like a sick old man. The crew agreed to his wishes, but some of them — Raffi and Elnore, in particular — couldn't hide their sorrow at the thought of losing this man.
Picard Is A Synthetic Now
When Picard and crew arrived at Coppelius Station, they met Altan Soong, the long lost son of Dr. Noonian Soong, Data's creator. Altan took up his father's work, creating an entire civilization of incredibly advanced androids with Bruce Maddox, the cyberneticist that the Zhat Vash manipulated Agnes into murdering. Altan, himself not a young man, had developed something called a golem, essentially a synthetic body in which he could transfer his mind into and live indefinitely.
After Picard and his crew — with a little help from Altan and Captain Will Riker — are able to stop both a Romulan fleet and an oncoming army of extra-dimensional cybernetic life forms, Picard tragically succumbs to his illness, dying on the planet's surface, surrounded by friends new and old. It would have been a fitting end for Jean-Luc Picard, sacrificing himself to prove to Soji and the synthetics what life is really about.
But this would not be the end for Picard. Altan and Agnes decide to use the golem on Picard, transferring his mind into a synthetic body that's an exact replica of his old one (though there's no word on if they recreated his artificial heart). Picard doesn't have any "superpowers" like Data and Soji did, and he still appears to be a man in his 90s, but the brain defect has been repaired. Altan explains Picard'll live out the normal lifespan of a human in the 24th century.
What A Synthetic Picard Means For The Future
There's a sort of cosmic rhyme to Picard becoming a synthetic himself. He spent a not inconsiderable amount of his life fighting for the rights of synthetic life forms; it seems only natural that the same technology he's been championing for so long would end up saving him. And Picard has had more than a little experience with cybernetics — apart from his artificial heart, he was also assimilated into the Borg collective in TNG, which made him partially cybernetic.
Picard's new synthetic body also figures to strengthen his relationship with his crew. He's further along in his recovery from assimilation than Seven of Nine, the former Borg drone who joined La Sirena's crew in the season's final scene, but now he has an entirely new trauma to reconcile with, which seems like something Seven would be eager to both commiserate over and help him heal from. Further, Picard's experience will likely strengthen his relationship with Soji. The young synthetic was ready to throw humanity overboard and welcome the advanced life forms that the Zhat Vash so deeply feared; however, Picard's sacrifice led to a change of heart, saving untold billions of lives.
Star Trek: Picard is voyaging into the great unknown with Jean-Luc at this point. So much of his life has hinged on the nature of life, of what constitutes sentience. At every turn, he strived to legitimize synthetic life, sometimes to zealous lengths that put his career on the line. But now that Picard himself is a synthetic, he has an entirely new perspective on the very thing he's been defending for so many years.
It's not entirely clear where Star Trek: Picard will go from here. Picard's mission has been resolved, but he and his friends seem eager to re-board La Sirena and fly off to new adventures. Picard may be an old hand at space exploration, but he gets to see it all again now with new eyes — literally.
Source: screenrant.com