LogFAQs > #934590587

1. Jean-luc Picard
Heres to the finest crew in Starfleet! Engage. Captain Jean Picard of the USS En-ter-prise, Captain Jean Picard of the USS En-ter-prise, ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-make it so, make it so, ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-mak it so, make it so! The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether scientific truth, or historical truth, or personal truth! It is the guiding principle upon which Starfleet is based, and if you cant find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth, you dont deserve to wear that uniform!

Yeah, I know its predictable, but sue me, Picard is the best character in Star Trek, and its not particularly close. Id probably even say that hes the best sci-fi character of all time. Like, what do you even say about Picard? That hes the best-acted character in Star Trek? That hes the best-written character in Star Trek? Because he is. Its almost difficult to talk about what makes him so good because the answer involves pretty much everything about him.

So, as I said before, Picard and Riker are a duo to represent the perfection of humanity but theyre not an evenly-split duo. Picard completely dominates this duo, to the point where Rikers job is mainly to be physically impressive and be more passionate so we (the audience) cares when he wants to save a genderless alien or whatever.

Picards a very private guy. Kirk, Sisko, and Archer get emotional and passionate about things all the time. Picard doesnt. He gets super emotional when hes carrying Sareks soul, when his nephew and brother die, and when the Borg are involved. Thats a total of like four times. Picards girlfriend is possibly dead? Hes sort of antsy. Picard is told hes dead and hell have to spend all of eternity with Q? Hes mildly annoyed. Picard is bidding farewell to Riker after serving with him for twenty years? He gets a pat on the back. Part of what makes Picard so engaging (dohoho) is that hes so guarded and yet he remains almost ethically flawless.

Thats sort of an interesting point about Picard. Every other captain has some moment when he or she has to do something ethically questionable, whether its letting a goodhearted woman get hit by a car, framing the Dominion for a fake invasion, allying with the Borg, stealing an engine and stranding innocent people in space, or being on Star Trek Discovery, but Picard kind of avoids that by just being so relentlessly good. What Hamlet says with irony, I say with conviction: what a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving, how express and admirable in action, how like an angel in apprehension, how like a god!

Imagine trying to write this weird morally perfect philosopher-diplomat who can only be wrong about weird space shenanigans or the nobility of aliens he meets, and then successfully making him interesting. Picard should have been a terrible character, but instead hes pretty much the best thing ever. Like, it bears repeating: Data, Spock, Worf, Odo, Seven of Nine, and the Doctor are well-designed characters because their inner flaws and limitations make them compelling, while Kirk, McCoy, Sisko, Garak, and even Quark are well-designed characters because you can easily design a scenario to test them. Picard is a horribly-designed character who should by all rights be incredibly boring, he should be like Riker was in that s1 episode where they meet the Ferengi, and yet they make him work anyway.

The defining Picard moment to me is when the Crystalline Entity is going around killing people, Professor Insano builds a torpedo to destroy it, and Picard is like cool, hopefully we can just talk to it, though. Another defining Picard moment is like Hey Romulans, one of us has to drop his shields and hope the other wont kill him because its the right thing to do, so Ill do it. That Romulan had better have just killed himself after that episode, can you imagine getting owned that absolutely?

Anyway, heres a quote by a reporter asking Gene Roddenberry about Picard:
Surely by the 24th century, they would have found a cure for male pattern baldness.
No, by the 24th century, no one will care.

I guess I need to talk about Star Trek Picard. This is harder than talking about Discovery because it just came out and I dont know where a lot of things are going, and Im only on episode 3 right now, but okay. Mega spoilers, dudes.

I feel like they dont quite understand the Star Trek universe or dont care having robot slaves as a main plot element basically proves that and that they want it to be a generic Expanse-esque dark future, but it's not nearly to the same degree as Discovery. That said, Picard himself and his new cast of friends remain pretty good. Theres no moment when he turns to the camera and says I LIKE POETRY. Its even better than the TNG movies, which is not a high bar, in that Picard isnt laughing while driving a dune buggy and acting completely out of character because Patrick Stewart successfully asked the writers to insert a scene where he gets to drive a car (that happened, by the way). Like, I dont completely buy that Picard would retire to his family vineyard, I feel like hed go back to his dreams of archeology, but Im willing to roll with it.

So yeah, Picard. Pretty good character.

---

Not changing this sig until I decide to change this sig.
Started: July 6, 2005