Contains ALL THE SPOILERS!!!
Star Trek: Picard all starts with a dream. The retired admiral (no longer a captain!) and Data are playing poker together on what looks like the lounge area of a ship, and at first, there is a sense of an old familiarity. It seems like since that first time he stepped into the room to play poker with his comrades many years ago on the Enterprise, he continued to do it long after. Picard discovers Data’s tell—even though they both recognize that as an android, Data shouldn’t have one—and Data bets fifty. Picard takes his time, regarding the cards in his hand and offering his friend milk and sugar for his beverage before Data realizes Picard is stalling. Picard admits this, telling Data, “I don’t want this to end.”
Picard goes all in, and Data shows his hand—containing five queens. Picard doesn’t seem fazed by this, and he opens his mouth to speak just before something outside the ship captures their attention.
They look outside of the ship and see that Mars is in view. Picard wonders at this, as he doesn’t recall a mission to Mars, just before everything begins to shake and the planet explodes, taking the ship they are on with it.
Picard wakes, seeming disturbed by the dream he has just endured. He pats his dog, Number One, and goes to the window, where you see the vineyard of Chateaux Picard in all its glory.
The next scene takes us to Greater Boston, where a young woman is sitting with a man—a Xahian. His captivating eyes blink, much like the alien's eyes that Will Smith first sees in the first Men in Black—the ones that “K” refers to as gills, but I digress—and she gives the news that she has just entered Daystrom as a fellow in Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Consciousness. As he goes to the replicator to get something else for them to drink, three men materialize inside the candlelit futuristic living space, immediately killing the Xahian man (his name has not been given) by stabbing him in the heart.
They grab hold of the woman. They first talk to one another, saying in another language that she hasn’t activated yet. Interrogating her, they ask in English, “Where are the rest of you?” and “Where are you from?” After roughing her up, she eventually answers, “I’m from Seattle.” They place a fabric bag over her head with the intent to knock her out, but before they get that far, she begins attacking them all and kills them, having “activated.”
She runs to her friend, who has died, before having a vision of Picard.
The beginning credits then show, and I have to admit, upon hearing them, I teared up a little. There was a beautiful hint of The Next Generation interwoven with the beautiful music of the new series: Star Trek: Picard. *squee!*
Back at Chateaux Picard, Picard is walking along his vineyard before coming back to his house. I felt an odd thrill when he asked his replicator for “Tea, Earl Grey,” but felt strangely taken aback when the last part of his request was “Decaf.”
They begin talking about an interview, and Picard has made it very clear that he does not wish to talk about his departure from Star Fleet—and as the audience, it’s obvious there’s a story there!
Picard, shortly after, is sitting in his home, having an interview with a woman. He believes they will talk about solar flares but is taken aback when she starts talking about rescuing and relocating millions of Romulans, the enemy, many years ago. Following the talk about relocation, she then goes into how a group called “Synthetics”—which we later find to be artificial intelligence—had hacked into the Mars defense net, wiping out the armada (ships) and destroying a major shipyard, causing Mars to continue being on fire (years later), causing a “ban on Synthetics.”
Picard states that there is still the question of why the Synthetics went rogue, but he felt the ban on Synthetics was the wrong call to make. The interviewer brings up the subject of Data, asking if he ever lost faith in the android, to which Picard replies, “Never.”
She asks what he did lose faith in before questioning his departure from Starfleet, saying that he resigned his commission in protest. He responded, “Because it was no longer Starfleet!” He states that while many in the galaxy were burying its dead, Starfleet refused to do its duty of helping people they had sworn to save, and he could not stand by and watch it happen.
As he is talking passionately, the same woman we’d been introduced to before passes by on the street and sees Picard on a view screen, as his interview is being televised across the galaxy.
Picard, thoroughly upset about having to talk about a subject he was assured would not be brought up, walks out on the interview, leaving the woman in the room alone.
There’s much more to this episode! Please let me know if you would like me to continue!
All images were from the show, and the credit for them goes to the amazing cameramen/women who are filming Star Trek: Picard.