Picard Is Not a Hugger

The perils of trying to force emotional moments

Landing a great emotional moment is hard. It’s extremely satisfying when a show pulls it off, and yet there are so many ways for it to go wrong. One way is simply trying too hard to force the emotions—dialing things up to eleven when less would have been more.

Take Star Trek: Picard season 2.

(It came out last year, but nevertheless, spoilers ahead.)

The season finale wants to have a big emotional send-off for Q. But the show doesn’t properly use Q in earlier episodes, and then it suddenly overcompensates in the finale.

Toward the end, Q reveals that he’s dying, and he’s dying alone. He doesn’t want Picard to die alone. To prevent this, Q has orchestrated events to help give his favorite human some emotional closure.

This is not a bad idea, but the execution didn’t work for me, especially in Q’s final scene.

As the dying Q gives his final bequeathal—sending Picard and his friends home—Jean-Luc Picard hugs Q.

It’s supposed to be touching, and maybe it worked for some people. This is subjective. But for me, all I could think was that Picard would not hug Q. And definitely not a long, lingering hug.

Picard might hug Guinan or Dr. Crusher. Maybe even Riker if the circumstances warranted it.

But not Q.

What Picard might do is give Q a firm handshake and a nod of respect—something understated, closer to what we saw in the Star Trek: The Next Generation series finale all those years ago:

A small but sincere gesture, after so many years of antagonism, could have been so much more meaningful than a great big embrace.

Let’s even go a bit further. If the season was supposed to be building up to this emotional farewell, why not make Picard and Q’s history a central theme of the season rather than dwelling on Picard’s childhood? He already had a lifetime to come to terms with any lingering family issues during “The Inner Light.”

Sideline the new characters, and just focus on old man Picard and a dying Q trapped in the past. Have Picard trying to find a way home while also trying not to strangle Q. Combine sci-fi stakes with a fish-out-of-water buddy comedy as these two old souls come to appreciate the roles they’ve played in each other’s lives, despite how much they grate on each other. And along the way, properly set up that emotional payoff.

Which still should not involve any hugging.

But maybe I’m wrong and Star Trek has been in dire need of more hugging all along.

Picard’s third and final season will begin next month. The second season certainly dampened my enthusiasm for further episodes, but then they pulled out all the stops and brought back the entire main Next Generation cast.

That’s a reunion I can’t refuse, and reunions are what this show does best (except with Q, for some reason). This is the big good-bye for Star Trek: The Next Generation, so hopefully it will at least be a better final installment than Nemesis was.