Star Trek: Picard season 2 solves the Captain’s weird love life mystery

Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard, television’s beloved starship captain-turned-vintner (Patrick Stewart) shares a bottle of wine with Laris (Orla Brady), a retired Romulan spy who has been his friend and housekeeper for a decade. Picard looks on and sabotage the opportunity for Laris (a recently widowed woman) to finally act on their deep-seated attraction. This leads Picard to reflect back on his life and wonder — after all the worlds he’s saved and the lives he’s touched, how is it that the great Jean-Luc Picard has spent his golden years alone?

This episode, “The Star Gazer,” teases that the coming season will reveal some deep-seated trauma involving his sainted mother Yvette that has fueled his intimacy issues throughout his life. However, Star Trek: The Next Generation has already offered plenty of evidence to explain Jean-Luc Picard’s bachelorhood. Picard of TNGHe is romantic about art, history and exploration but is very careful to guard his private feelings. The moment he takes control of the EnterpriseHe is as opaque and inaccessible as possible. This allows him to maintain a professional image.

Seven years later, Captain Picard is a mentor or friend to his entire senior staff. But he seldom shares more of himself than he takes from the others. He has never been ashamed of his vulnerability, but this is a result of having to maintain starfleet’s highest ranking post.

His journey as we’ve known it begins in childhood, when Jean-Luc decides at a young age that his destiny is to command a Federation starship. Starfleet’s standards are daunting, and Picard throws himself into the tireless pursuit of academic and athletic excellence. In “Suddenly Human,” Picard says that this effort meant “[skipping] his childhood altogether.” Once at the Academy, Picard learns to have a bit of fun, playing cards and hustling dom-jot, but is still a constant overachiever, a two-sport athlete (cross-country and wrestling) who graduates at the top of his class. The single known blemish in his Academy career is a failing grade in Organic Chemistry, which he blames on his distracting romance with an individual known only as “A.F.” Picard spends the rest of his life overcorrecting for this mistake.

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Decades later (in “Samaritan Snare”), Picard tells his mentee Wesley Crusher that he’s “never had the time” for marriage. He claims that this is the cost of being an ambitious Starfleet officer, and that if Wesley wants to achieve what Picard has, he’ll have to eschew long-term personal commitments. There’s plenty of evidence in the Star Trek canon to support this claim — of the five classic Star Trek captains, only Benjamin Sisko makes time for a family life, and he commands a space station rather than a starship. Nevertheless, Picard’s avoidance of serious relationships occasionally leads him to make cruel choices. In “We’ll Always Have Paris,” we learn that Picard once had a passionate affair with a civilian, Jenice, while on shore leave on Earth. Picard and Jenice plan to meet again before he departs, but fearing that seeing them again would discourage him from going back to work, Picard ghosts their relationship. This act of youth cowardice is committed at the young age of 37.

Throughout his life, Picard seems willing to lower his guard and enjoy someone’s company only while totally separated from his work. These shore-based flings are great because they come with expiration dates. While on vacation to Risa in “Captain’s Holiday,” Picard hooks up with a roguish tomb raider, Vash, with whom he eventually opens up about his life and adventures. When Picard receives a surprise visit from Vash a year later (in “Qpid”), she expects Picard to be excited to see her. Instead, he’s embarrassed, and embarasses her in turn with his clumsy attempts to conceal the nature of their relationship from his crew. He’s told her everything about them, yet no one aboard the Enterprise has even heard of her. They’re all delighted to meet her, but Picard sees Vash as a threat to his well-protected image as a stoic, sturdy figure of pure superego. While Picard’s discomfort is somewhat understandable — plenty of people might find it awkward for their summer fling to show up at their office and make themselves at home — it’s also hurtful to Vash because there is no room for her in his life on the Enterprise at all. His entire crew is his office.

Picard avoids romance with his fellow officers and commanders, even though Starfleet doesn’t have any rules against fraternization. Picard feels for Marta Batanides, his Academy classmate. However, he doesn’t act on these feelings because it could complicate their friendship or their careers. A little Q-assisted time travel proves that this is the best outcome in this particular case (see: “Tapestry”), it still establishes an unfortunate pattern in Picard’s life in which he attempts to dismiss or suppress any feeling that might be inappropriate or inconvenient.

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One could even argue that Picard is attracted to unavailable women, not because he wants what he can’t have, but because he likes having an excuse not to have it. (See also: Kamala in “The Perfect Mate.”) Picard spends years in love with Dr. Beverly Crusher, his best friend’s widow who later becomes his shipmate and closest friend aboard the Enterprise. Picard feels that telling Beverly his feelings would be a sign he is leaving Beverly’s memory, which he died at his command. However, Dr. Crusher clearly doesn’t attach any such baggage to their shared attraction. Their friendship is too easy to disrupt by the time that they have admitted their love for one another. (Come to think of it, Q’s time travel lets Picard off the hook for this one, too, showing him a future in which Jean-Luc and Beverly are amicable divorcées in “All Good Things…”)

Picard made at least two attempts to manage an office romance. The first is purely backstory — his prior involvement with JAG officer Phillipa Louvois complicates Lt. Commander Data’s trial for personhood in “The Measure of a Man,” as well as Picard’s own court martial over the loss of the USS Stargazer years earlier. The second occurs on screen in “Lessons,” in which he falls in love with science officer Lt. Commander Nella Darren. Darren, a sophisticated and cultured man, is incredibly forward-thinking and they quickly became close friends because of their common love of music. She has a striking resemblance to Dr. Beverly Crusher in both appearance and temperament.

Their relationship suffers from a combination of Picard’s hurdles with Vash and with Beverly. Picard hurts Darren first by keeping a professional distance with her in front of the other officers. Picard orders Darren to put her life at risk on a far-flung mission. This is reminiscent of Jack Crusher’s death. This is painful for the both of them, and they mutually decide that it would be best for Darren, who’s only just arrived on the Enterprise, to request a transfer. This appears to be Picard’s last swing at an ongoing romance; We’ve yet to see any evidence of a serious relationship in the 20 years between the last Next GenerationThe beginning and end of film Star Trek: Picard.

In a manner of speaking, Jean-Luc Picard’s longest and most fulfilling romantic relationship lasted only 25 minutes. In “The Inner Light,” Picard becomes connected to an ancient alien probe that transports his mind to the planet Kataan and plays out the life of a local artisan named Kamin. Picard is still himself, retaining all his memories of his own life and none of Kamin’s, but his “amnesia” is patiently endured by his community and his wife, Eline. Picard spent years trying to get back to his starship. But eventually he settled down on Kataan and lives a peaceful, provincial existence. Picard falls for Eline, and the couple start a family. After becoming a father, Picard admits that, while he once believed that he didn’t need children to lead a fulfilling life, now he can’t imagine life without them. Picard carries out Kamin’s life into old age, welcoming his grandchildren and weeping at Eline’s deathbed. At the end of Kamin’s life, the illusion ends and Picard learns that this entire experience has taken place over less than half an hour.

The conditions for Picard’s relationship with Eline perfectly circumvent his usual hangups. He’s separated from his Starfleet career, which becomes a distant memory. He doesn’t have a reputation or authority until he starts investing in his community. He doesn’t need to seek attachment, because he’s already married to a patient, loving partner. He can’t cut and run, because he has nowhere to go. “The Inner Light” lets Picard live the life that his single-minded careerism and emotional boundaries have cost him, and he experiences it to the fullest. Eline might never have existed, but in many ways she is the love of Picard’s life. Her portrayal of Eline as such is impossible due to 1990s episodic TV. After “The Inner Light,” his experience as Kamin is only referenced once, in “Lessons.”

Indeed, the demands of the medium in which he lives might well be Picard’s most challenging obstacle to maintaining relationships. Next Generation was produced before serialization took hold over primetime American television, and the introduction of an ongoing romance for the main character would have been a major shake-up of the show’s comfortable status quo. Picard instead has a gradual, but satisfying character arc that spans seven seasons. This allows him to lower the barriers between his friends and himself over time. Picard at the end is technically single and childless but he does not appear to be alone. Instead, he accepts the fact that the crew of Picard is his. EnterpriseHe is his family and that he can make his life more fulfilling by accepting the love and support they provide.

In the series finale, “All Good Things…”, Picard is allowed a glimpse of a possible future in which the Enterprise crew has gone their separate ways and he’s become a lonely old man working his family’s vineyard and suffering from a degenerative neurological disorder. The episode ends with Picard, in the present, joining the crew’s ongoing poker game, symbolizing that he’s finally willing to nurture his personal relationships.

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The implication is that this act will change Picard’s life for the better, but Picard is denied his “happily ever after” by the ongoing march of the Star Trek franchise. Picard makes his return in four films that focus only on Picard and Data. This means Picard’s relationships with others become harder to follow. (Picard seems more comfortable with his peers in the 20th minute of this film. Nemesis, with a lot more “family” moments left on the cutting room floor.) He’s eventually pulled back into service for another spin-off, Star Trek: Picard, in which we discover that the crew of the Enterprise has gone their separate ways and he’s become a lonely old man working his family’s vineyard and suffering from a degenerative neurological disorder.

Star Trek: PicardIt is anticipated that the series will conclude three seasons later and offer its titular character a fulfilling final act. The first season finds an older Picard who’s had time to reflect, and regrets not sharing his affection for his friends more openly. Season 2 is poised to confront why it’s so difficult for him to string together the words “I love you,” not only to friends but to prospective partners. But as “All Good Things…” demonstrates, a happy ending for Jean-Luc Picard doesn’t necessarily mean riding off into the sunset with a spouse or partner. Season one of PicardPicard is offered a chance to reunite with his family, but this time with new characters. “The Star Gazer” implies that Picard has “one final frontier yet to come,” an emotional journey in which he’ll confront the part of himself that fears commitment.

This may turn out to be a journey worth watching, but it’s not exactly unexplored space. Although it may be interesting to add a childhood trauma against intimacy, this could also flatten his character and turn a decade worth of development into one-off events. Season 2 of the season was a success. Star Trek: PicardIt will depend on whether the new features add to the emotional well-being of the character, or if they smoothen out the existing ones.