Easy Branches allows you to share your guest post within our network in any countries of the world to reach Global customers start sharing your stories today!
Easy Branches
34/17 Moo 3 Chao fah west Road, Phuket, Thailand, PhuketCall: 076 367 766
info@easybranches.com
Star Trek: Picard picks up the story of Captain Jean-Luc Picard well in the future of the story that's been told in Star Trek: The Next Generation and its movies so far. Though it leaps ahead in Picard's career to a point 14 years after he's retired from Starfleet, the history of one of the Federation's most legendary captains is a big part of the show. His time on the Enterprise, his relationship with its crew, and his accomplishments over the years are major factors in Star Trek: Picard's story.
The premiere episode of Star Trek: Picard isn't just fully aware of Picard's history, though--it's also full of references that Star Trek fans will recognize from throughout the Star Trek universe. Here's a rundown of every Easter egg and reference we spotted in the first episode of Star Trek: Picard.
Star Trek: Picard opens with a very particular song: the Irving Berlin track "Blue Skies." Like a lot of the premiere episode, it's a callback to Jean-Luc Picard's relationship with Data. He sang the song during the wedding of Deanna Troi and Will Riker in Star Trek: Nemesis--the film that marked Data's final mission.
The crew of the Enterprise often played poker together throughout the run of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was a game Data enjoyed but struggled to fully understand as he worked at being human. Picard's dream at the start of the episode finds him playing poker with Data once again, although the game seems to have a lot more meaning than just an activity Picard and Data enjoyed.
Data and Picard became very close throughout the course of The Next Generation and the subsequent four movies that followed the Enterprise crew. In the final movie, Star Trek: Nemesis, Data sacrificed himself to save Picard--and the Enterprise. Clearly, the loss of Data still troubles Picard even years later.
Picard and the Enterprise have a long history with the Borg. During The Next Generation, Picard was assimilated by the cybernetic beings, only to be saved by the Enterprise crew. And in Star Trek: First Contact, Picard and the Enterprise put down a Borg invasion of Federation space, in which the Borg tried to use time travel to try to stop humanity's first contact with alien life and assimilate the planet in the past. The Enterprise stopped that attack as well, in large part thanks to Data and Picard, who defeated the Borg queen together. We catch sight of a Borg cube in the opening credits sequence of Star Trek: Picard and it shows up again at the end. The Borg play a part in the story that isn't completely clear by the end of the episode.
Apart from the dream vision of Data and Picard himself, the first character we meet is Picard's second-in-command--Number One, his pit bull. The dog's name is a reference to Picard's nickname for Commander Riker, who served as the Enterprise's first officer for years. Picard's pitbull is also a bit of a reference to actor Sir Patrick Stewart's real-life work with animal rescue organizations and fostering pitbulls.
At a few points in the past, we got a look into Jean-Luc Picard's family history. The Picard family owned a chateau and vineyard in France, which was run for years by Jean-Luc's brother Robert--who resented Jean-Luc for leaving the family to join Starfleet. We also saw Jean-Luc living in the chateau and tending the vineyard in the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which looked into Picard's potential future (although that whole storyline was the result of some Q interference). After his retirement from Starfleet, Jean-Luc returned to live in the family home. You won't see Robert or his family, though; in Star Trek: Generations, we learned that Robert and his son René perished in a fire. That makes Jean-Luc the last of the Picard family name (although we don't know what happened to Robert's wife).
Picard's morning in his home during the premiere includes his favorite beverage: Earl Grey tea. He spent years with the drink on the Enterprise, always ordering "Tea, Earl Grey, hot." In Star Trek: Picard, the former captain acknowledges his years by ordering the tea "decaf." You might also notice that the cup Picard drinks his tea from during his dream sequence with Data is the same type he used on the Enterprise.
As Picard engages in his interview with a Federation journalist, he discusses the Romulan supernova. It's a disastrous event that occurred some 15 years before the show's timeline, in which an exploding star destroyed the planet Romulus and everyone who resided on it. We never saw the destruction of Romulus during The Next Generation or its subsequent movies, but the event was mentioned in a Star Trek series: the 2009 Star Trek directed by JJ Abrams. That movie mentions the destruction of Romulus, which Ambassador Spock tried and failed to prevent. The events resulting from the Romulan supernova winds up creating an alternate timeline, which is where the Abrams films are set, but the fate of Romulus is still a part of Star Trek's "prime" timeline.
Picard's interview with FNN delivers a bunch of backstory that sets up where we find Jean-Luc at the start of the show. After the Federation learned about the Romulan supernova, Picard pushed Starfleet to launch a massive armada to rescue the Romulan people. Picard likened the attempt to Dunkirk, in which British civilian ships rallied together to save stranded British soldiers during World War II.
While the Federation and Starfleet initially agreed to the Romulan rescue effort led by Picard, the plan was abandoned after another tragedy: an attack on Mars. As discussed in the interview, a group of rogue "synths," or synthetic lifeforms, attacked Mars and the Federation's Utopia Planitia shipyards. The shipyards and the rescue armada were destroyed, as was Mars--"it still burns," as mentioned during the interview. Utopia Planitia is a major location for Starfleet: it's where ships including the U.S.S. Enterprise, U.S.S. Voyager (from Star Trek: Voyager), and U.S.S. Defiant (from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) were all constructed.
We only get a summary of the synths' attack on Mars during the Star Trek: Picard premiere, but you can get a slightly closer look at the event in another show on CBS All Access. That's Short Treks, a series of Star Trek shorts. Most of them are related to Star Trek: Discovery, but the latest episode, "Children of Mars," acts as a prequel to Star Trek: Picard. The attack on Mars resulted in the ban on synthetic lifeforms being built in the Federation.
The interview brings up a lot of information about Jean-Luc Picard and makes a bunch of references to his history, some of which are a little more opaque than others. When discussing the attack on Mars, Picard mentions that he disagrees with the ban on synthetic life. Picard has quite a history with synthetics, in fact--he not only was good friends with Data, but in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Measure of a Man," Picard successfully argued that Data was legally a person, rather than Starfleet's property. In other episodes, Picard showed a respect for all life, whether natural or artificial.
Throughout Star Trek: The Next Generation, Data constantly endeavored to be more human. One of the ways he tried to achieve that goal was through creative expression. He played musical instruments and also tried his hand at painting. Though the two paintings shown in Star Trek: Picard didn't appear on TNG, there were numerous moments in that series in which Data was shown painting.
Picard's vault in the Starfleet archives includes a number of keepsakes from his career, many of which appeared in various Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes and its movies. You can spot a model of the captain's yacht, a small ship attached to the Enterprise-E, which Picard and Data used in their mission during Star Trek: Insurrection.
Another model in Picard's Starfleet archives vault is the Stargazer, the ship Picard commanded before the Enterprise. Picard famously destroyed a hostile a Ferengi vessel at Maxia with a tactic later dubbed "the Picard Maneuver," in which he used warp drive to make the Stargazer briefly appear to be in two places at once. The Stargazer was mentioned repeatedly throughout Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Picard and the Enterprise crew even briefly visited the derelict ship in the episode "The Battle."
Also on display in Picard's archives vault is a Klingon bat'leth sword, a traditional weapon of the Klingon people. Picard has a long history with the Klingons, previously serving as the Arbiter of Succession for the Klingon chancellor and establishing a relationship, along with his Worf, the Enterprise's former tactical officer, with Klingon Chancellor Gowron.
Aboard the Enterprise, school children celebrated Captain Picard Day each year, creating art projects of the likeness of the captain. Picard personally judged a contest to pick the best of the projects, as seen in the TNG episode "The Pegasus." In Star Trek: Picard, we see the banner from Captain Picard Day on display in Picard's quantum archives.
When we first meet Dahj, we find out she's been accepted to work at the Daystrom Institute; later in the episode, Picard visits the Institute to try to learn more about whether the construction of a flesh-and-blood synthetic is possible. The Daystrom Institute has been a fixture of cybernetic studies for a while in Star Trek, with branches on several planets. Whenever studying Data comes up, it's often the Daystrom Institute that's involved.
As the first episode of Star Trek: Picard unfolds, Picard learns that Dahj is apparently the daughter of Data. She wouldn't be the first, though. Star Trek: The Next Generation saw Data attempt to reproduce himself in the Season 3 episode "The Offspring," in which he created a daughter named Lal. Though Lal soon advanced beyond her father in her development and socialization, Data was unable to replicate his own technology sufficiently, and Lal eventually shut down.
When Picard talks with Dr. Agnes Jurati at the Daystrom Institute, she notes that she was recruited by and worked with a noted Daystrom cyberneticist, Dr. Bruce Maddox. We've seen Maddox show up in Star Trek: The Next Generation before. In "Measure of a Man," it's Maddox who tries to argue that Data is property of Starfleet, so that Maddox can disassemble and study him. Maddox loses that argument, but apparently went on to continue studying Data (and androids in general) at Daystrom for the rest of his career.
At the Daystrom Institute in Star Trek: Picard, we see the disassembled form of an android that looks like Data: B-4. The android was discovered in Star Trek: Nemesis, making him the third of the androids we've seen that were built by Data's creator, Noonien Soong, in his own image. B-4 was the oldest, a less-sophisticated version built by Soong; he was followed by Lore, who was much more human but unstable; and finally by Data. In Nemesis, Data tried to download his memories into B-4, but B-4's positronic brain couldn't handle the information. B-4 is still around, but has been decommissioned, especially in the wake of the synth revolt on Mars.