Akiva Goldsman turned Jean-Luc Picard into an android for no reason

Akiva Goldsman turned Jean-Luc Picard into a robot for no good reason.

At the end of the first season of Picard, we saw the titular Jean-Luc Picard die, and his conciseness downloaded into an android body, that the show refers to as a “synthetic”. He’s a robot, make no mistake about it. If that bothers you, congratulations, now you know how most of the fans felt.

Had this been done for some other reason than some metaphysical malarky on resurrection; it would have been fine. Well, finer than it was. Recast the role, make Picard more of a combat threat, make him immortal, something, anything. Instead, they make him a robot that will die of natural causes eventually.

That’s it, that’s the whole thing. A robot who will die. Cool idea.

During a press junket for Picard’s second season, series producer Akiva Goldsman was asked about turning Picard into a robot, and he flat out says that there’s nothing of note about his robotic status in season two.

"Did you always have in the back of your mind when you were mapping out this second season that Picard is an android? It’s interesting, even in the sort of the turning of him to synthetic at the end of season one, we were pretty clear about saying there’s nothing enhanced here. That fundamentally you are who you were; it’s just that you won’t die of this particular genetic misfortune that you carry with you. And we really do play it that way. There are no super-secret neato-cool things that happen to Picard, or that Picard is capable of doing, that are in any way really tied to his new body. We did it to sort of make a resurrection arc, but… we’re not pressing forward with the idea of the hybridization of Picard and synthetic."

What was the point of giving Jean-Luc Picard a robot body if there’s nothing to it?

The point of him getting a new body was that he needed something to save him from a fatal brain disease. So instead of finding a cure, because it’s the 24th century and Tribbles can save anyone apparently, the answer isn’t medicine but “ROBOT BODY”.

So Goldsman gave the show a wild idea and then just went “meh, we’re not going to use it beyond season one”. There’s no point apparently. If there is, and he’s not telling us about it, why lie? Why not just be vague and say something like “it comes up in an interesting way?”

Because he’s not lying about it, and there’s no point to his robot body beyond season one.

And people wonder why so many fans hate this show?