Star Trek: When The Picard Maneuver Was First Used
In Star Trek: Picard's season 1 finale,“Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2,” Jean Luc (Patrick Stewart) takes the La Sirena up against a vast Romulan Zhat Vash fleet in order to protect the synthetic population on the planet below - and he beat the odds by using the famous Picard Maneuver. In order to delay their "sterilization" of the planet, Picard hopes to not only stay Commodore Oh's (Tamlyn Tomita) Romulan hand, but also to convince Soji (Isa Briones) to close the portal to the advanced synthetic beings waiting to destroy all organic life in the galaxy.
Dr. Jurati (Allison Pill) comes up with the idea that Picard could employ his famous namesake maneuver to make it look like there's more than one ship against the Romulans. Jurati recalls that Picard used it as Captain of the Enterprise against the Ferengi, and there's a light-hearted moment as Picard corrects her. The Picard Maneuver was an act of desperation by Picard back when he was captain of the USS Stargazer, his first command.
Click the button below to start this article in quick view. Start nowSimply put, the Picard Maneuver is a means by which a starship can appear to be in two places at the same time. Picard invented the tactic during a battle with the Ferengi, when he used maximum warp for a very brief instant to move the USS Stargazer 30 lightseconds closer to a Ferengi vessel. A lightsecond is the distance that light travels in the space of a second, meaning that the visual image of the Stargazer's original position that the Ferengi were seeing was actually 30 seconds old. When Picard used maximum warp to jump forward, the Ferengi saw the Stargazer in two places at once: where it had been, and where it currently was. In their confusion they fired on the phantom image, giving Picard the opening he needed to destroy the Ferengi vessel.
The Picard Maneuver in The Next Generation
As detailed in Star Trek: The Next Generation season 1, episode 9 "The Battle," Picard is forced to relive the Battle of Maxia by the Ferengi, in the hopes that he will employ his battle tactics to destroy the Enterprise. Under control of a mind-altering device, Picard is placed in the Captain's chair of the salvaged Stargazer. Just like in the original battle, Picard uses his wits to create a false sensor reading that shows the Stargazer in two places at once. Fortunately, Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and crew of the Enterprise know this maneuver well, and are able to grab the Stargazer in a tractor beam to thwart the Ferengi plan.
The Picard Maneuver in Star Trek: Picard
Facing Commodore Oh and the Zhat Vash, Picard knows he's going to need more than a simple sensor trick to stop them, and it comes in the form of a tiny repair device given to Rios (Santiago Cabrera) to repair the La Sirena. Harnessing the imagination of the user, the device is able to manipulate matter to fabricate a repair. Dr. Jurati connects the device to the La Sirena's sensors, and creates an imaginary fleet of copies numbering in the hundreds. It's not exactly the Picard Maneuver per se, but it's close enough to buy Picard the time he needs.
Star Trek purists could argue that the maneuver is more Klingon guile, based on a special trick Worf used in the season 1 episode "War Games." But this is Star Trek: Picard, after all - not Star Trek: Worf.
Source: screenrant.com