What was missing from Admiral Picard on Star Trek: Picard

Star Trek: Picard will wrap up its final season next year.

Star Trek: Picard has had a wobbly race to the finish line for Trekkies. Some love the show while others detest it so much they don’t even want to talk about it. I can see both sides of the argument as though I enjoyed parts of the series, there were other parts that didn’t gel for me. One thing in particular that many fans have pointed out is the differences between Admiral Picard and Captain Picard. Yes, age does play a factor but only to a small degree. The things that made Picard the captain that he was weren’t present very often in Admiral Picard. It was almost as if he’d undergone a personality change.

Captain Picard was authorative, democratic, in love with Shakespeare and music, and called the shots quickly, with little hesitation. We were shown very little of that side of Picard on the series. The music was gone as were the Shakespearean quotes and inspiring speeches. Yes, he made command decisions, but they didn’t come from a place of self-assurance as evidenced by season two when his past trauma was revealed.

Star Trek: Picard did a disservice to Patrick Stewart by changing Admiral Picard so much.

The series was limited to ten episodes per season so there wasn’t a lot of time to build up newer characters much less enhance already established ones. But Patrick Stewart, being the star of the show, should have still been able to fully embody the captain we knew from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

That captain was self-assured and had a take-no-bull type of attitude. He wasn’t one to fall back when there was trouble nor was he content to not have all of the details before he began a mission. And that was some of the biggest trouble with Admiral Picard. He took it when slapped by Q without any type of response. He went off to change the timeline without demanding anymore information from Q. He didn’t stand his ground and demand answers like Captain Picard would have done.

Though Stewart will always be Admiral Jean-Luc Picard, the writers stripped away some of the characteristics that made him who he was as the captain of the Enterprise. That captain sussed out problems before they even occurred. He wasn’t easily fooled, and he certainly never would have trusted the Borg Queen no matter how much the world was in peril. Yes, they needed her, but Picard would never have left her unattended with Agnes Jurarti who had no clue what type of mind machinations the Queen was capable of.

As we gear up for the final season of the series, we can only hope that having his original crew around him will bring back some of the spark the original Captain Picard had. Stewart portrayed Captain Picard for fifteen years, remaining staunchly the same. Twenty years later, he had little left of the man we knew and loved.