Absolute Candor

Production

Development

In June 2018, after becoming sole showrunner of the series Star Trek: Discovery, Alex Kurtzman signed a five-year overall deal with CBS Television Studios to expand the Star Trek franchise beyond Discovery to several new series, miniseries, and animated series. One of these new series was reported to star Patrick Stewart, reprising his role of Jean-Luc Picard from the series Star Trek: The Next Generation. Stewart had previously said that he did not want to return to the franchise, but was convinced to join the project after a pitch by Kurtzman, Akiva Goldsman, Michael Chabon, and Kirsten Beyer. Stewart officially announced the series in August 2018, and revealed in January 2019 that the first season would consist of 10 episodes. Kurtzman said the series did not have a traditional showrunner and was instead being "shepherded" by a larger creative team, including himself, Goldsman, Chabon, and Beyer, but in June CBS named Chabon as the sole showrunner of the series. This decision was made by Kurtzman and CBS ahead of filming and despite Chabon's lack of production experience (his background is in writing novels rather than television series). Chabon worked closely with Kurtzman and Goldsman on day-to-day production of the season.

Writing

The creators began writing the series by the end of September 2018, working alongside Stewart for two weeks. Chabon said Stewart's input was priceless, with the actor discussing his memories of the character, what he wanted to see in the series, and what acting challenges he wanted to face and avoid. They created the overall plot for the season, before expanding to a full writers room to break the episodes and write scripts. The stories for eight episodes were broken by December, and all scripts for the season were completed by August 2019. Chabon re-wrote most of the other writers' scripts to ensure consistency of tone, and found the collaborative writing process to be the biggest difference between his work on Picard and the shorts series Star Trek: Short Treks. Chabon also compared Picard to his work on the film John Carter (2012), for which he felt constrained by having to adapt the source material. In contrast, writing Picard allowed him to expand the franchise in new directions. Chabon wanted the series to focus on a retired Picard's life on his vineyard, potentially solving local mysteries, with no spaceships or gun fights. He acknowledged that the Star Trek fandom was probably not prepared for such a radical departure, and he had to balance these ideas with a more plot-driven approach.

The series tells a single serialized story, beginning 20 years after Stewart's last appearance as Picard in the film Star Trek: Nemesis (2002). It finds Picard deeply affected by the death of his android colleague Data in Nemesis, which Chabon and Goldsman felt had ended Data's character arc prematurely. They wanted to complete his journey with the first season of Picard, and it ends with Picard saying goodbye to the consciousness of Data before allowing him to "die" for good. Chabon began writing this scene early in development and did not complete it until the night before it was filmed. The season introduces new androids derived from Data's consciousness, referred to as synthetic beings or "synths". In the series' backstory, synths have been banned, and Picard fights for their right to exist. He gives his life to save the synths, and his consciousness is transferred into a synthetic body which the writer felt made him the "living embodiment" of the theme. This storyline builds off a terminal illness that Picard is diagnosed with in the season; since Picard is 94 years old, the writers had wanted to discuss relatable issues like this that people face at the end of their lives. Chabon unintentionally incorporated his personal experiences into this storyline after his father died during the making of the season.

The series takes place following the destruction of the planet Romulus as seen in the film Star Trek (2009), and reveals that Starfleet has abandoned the Romulans. Stewart wanted the series to depict the Federation as more isolationist than it was in The Next Generation to acknowledge the politics of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. He felt that The Next Generation was "too perfect and too protected ... a safe world of respect and communication and care" that did not reflect the real world. Chabon wanted to rehabilitate the Romulans in a similar way to how The Next Generation rehabilitated the Klingons by "open[ing] them up a little bit beyond the mustache twirling". This meant explaining why the species is so secretive and revealing a distrust that they have for synthetic life. Beyer, a long-time Star Trek writer and novelist, believed that the season's explanation for the Romulans' secrecy did not contradict the species' previous appearances in the franchise. Chabon wrote many pages of mythology about the Romulans as background for the season's story, including a history for the newly introduced Qowat Milat, a sect of warrior nuns. The season depicts many Romulans as refugees using imagery reminiscent of the Syrian refugee crisis, which Kurtzman said would be a difficult subject to approach if he was not confident in Chabon's writing. Initial director Hanelle Culpepper compared the Romulans to Muslims in the way that "the actions of a few can drive people to stereotype the whole bunch".

Casting

Patrick Stewart stars as Jean-Luc Picard, which he confirmed when announcing the series. The rest of the cast was hired in March and April 2019: Alison Pill as Agnes Jurati, Isa Briones as Dahj and Soji Asha, Evan Evagora as Elnor, Michelle Hurd as Raffi Musiker, Santiago Cabrera as Cristobal "Chris" Rios, and Harry Treadaway as Narek. In the two-part season finale, Briones is revealed to also be portraying Sutra, an older model of android with a similar appearance to the twin androids Dahj and Soji.

In April 2019, several of Stewart's co-stars from The Next Generation, including Wil Wheaton, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden, and Marina Sirtis, were asked whether they would reprise their roles for Picard. McFadden said she had not been contacted about it, while Sirtis said the group did not know anything about the series. That July, Spiner, Frakes, and Sirtis were revealed to be reprising their roles in the first season, respectively as Data, William Riker, and Deanna Troi. Also announced as returning were Jonathan Del Arco as Hugh, a guest star from The Next Generation, and Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine, a regular cast member on Star Trek: Voyager. Despite Seven of Nine never meeting Picard in the franchise before, the writers felt that she was the perfect character to include in the series due to her being a former Borg drone like Picard.

In January 2020, Kurtzman and Stewart explained that the writers did not want to "just throw people in" to the series because they had been in The Next Generation. Spiner was included after it became clear that Data would be important to Picard in the series, and Frakes and Sirtis were added halfway through the season when the writers came up with a story idea that required them. In addition to returning as Data, Spiner also portrays Altan Inigo Soong, the son of Data's creator Noonien Soong whom Spiner also portrayed in The Next Generation. In March 2020, Spiner said the season was a "gentle sendoff" and fitting end to Data's story, and would be the last time he reprised that role.

To establish the changes in Picard's life since the end of The Next Generation, the writers decided to have several Romulan characters working for Picard that may have been depicted as enemies in previous series. These include Orla Brady as Laris and Jamie McShane as Zhaban. Picard also has a dog named "Number One", portrayed by a dog named Dinero. Stewart felt that giving Picard a dog would, "without any dialogue or any dramatic reference, [say] a lot about this man, that he now has a dog always at his side". As an advocate for pit bulls, Stewart insisted that Number One be a member of the breed. Chabon and Culpepper explained that Dinero was a rescue dog and was not a good actor, so he was left out of some scenes that he was originally going to be included in. Chabon felt they were able to get a good performance from the dog for the scenes that he does appear in.

Design

When first approaching the costumes for the series, Christine Bieselin Clark looked at costumes from throughout Star Trek as research. Clark wanted to humanize Picard and show more vulnerability through his clothing. She acknowledged that he comes from a "lifetime of service and structure and order" and his clothes should reflect that, but she also wanted to depict him as a "very fit and active and viable older man" while showing the changes in his character since The Next Generation. An example of the latter comes in the episode "Absolute Candor", which begins with a flashback to Picard's time in Starfleet where he is seen arriving on the planet Vashti in a white suit with his Starfleet badge. This is contrasted later in the episode when he returns to the planet in rugged, darker clothing that matches the changes in his personality and in the state of the universe.

At the beginning of the season, the costumes seen at Chateau Picard are supposed to feel warm and familiar rather than futuristic, since it should be a place that the audience wants to return to once the adventure begins. The costumes include some asymmetry to acknowledge the time period, but this is kept subtle to not distract from the intended emotions of the setting. On La Sirena, the suggestion is that the replicators that create clothing on the starship are limited to its darker color palette and geometric designs which is why all the character's costumes on the starship reflect its own design. Clark still tried to reflect the personality of each character in subtle ways, such as having Jurati's costume look awkward while Raffi's is sleek. Clark was able to create "loud, fun outfits" for the planet Freecloud, taking inspiration from bioluminescent jellyfish for the character Bjayzl.

Clark designed two sets of Starfleet uniforms for Picard: one for the series present time period, and one for the flashback to when Picard retired from Starfleet. She said this was an especial challenge due to the history of the franchise and its costumes, and started her work on the uniforms by looking at the designs for Starfleet from throughout the franchise and creating a timeline of the evolving costumes. She then moved forward from those designs to create the new uniforms. Clark wanted the present day uniforms to have a "severity of lines", focusing on blocks of color, geometry, and simple shapes. In contrast, the uniforms from the flashback are more elegant, with the shapes and lines having "fluidity". Clark highlighted that the flashback is the first time that Picard is shown to be an admiral in the franchise, and she wanted to have a "grand" uniform for Stewart to wear.

Filming

In December 2018, the series was granted $15.6 million in tax credits by the California Film Commission for the production to take place in California rather than in Toronto, Canada, where Discovery is filmed. Before this grant, the intention had been for the series to be made in Toronto as well to take advantage of the existing Discovery crew. Ahead of the beginning of filming, director and guest star Jonathan Frakes said the season was being split into five "blocks" for production. Doug Aarniokoski served as producing director for the season, and worked with all the individual episodic directors to ensure a consistency in visuals and tone.

Philip Lanyon and Darran Tiernan served as cinematographers for the season, alternating episodes which allowed each of them time to prepare an episode while another was being filmed. Lanyon had filmed an episode of the second season of Star Trek: Discovery that was directed by Aarniokoski, and was subsequently asked to be the main cinematographer for Picard. Discovery used Anamorphic/i SF lenses made by Cooke Optics for its second season and Lanyon "fell in love" with them while working on the episode. He tested several different lenses for use on Picard, but ultimately returned to the same ones used on Discovery. It was important to Lanyon to honor the established visual tone of the "contemporary" Star Trek franchise, which he attributed to the J. J. Abrams-directed Star Trek films as well as Discovery, and this meant including lens flares in the visual language of the series. The SF ("Special Flair") lenses gave Lanyon greater control over when flares and other aberrations appeared on the images, and he felt the lenses provided a "warmth" to the series that worked well with Stewart's performance. The production had two complete sets of the lenses, covering several different focal lengths, and used them in conjunction with three Arri Alexa Mini cameras. The sets for the season were specifically designed to suit the wide 2.39:1 anamorphic aspect ratio of the lenses. Lanyon focused on practical lighting by taking advantage of the natural light of the vineyard in early episodes, and then tried not to use off-camera lighting on the series' sets.

Production began on April 22, 2019, at Santa Clarita Studios, California, under the working title Drawing Room. The first block of two episodes was set to be directed by Hanelle Culpepper, who previously directed for Discovery and is the first woman to direct the initial episode of a Star Trek series. Culpepper wanted to differentiate the style of the series from her work on Discovery, and felt there was some natural differences that arose from Picard being filmed on more locations than Discovery. Culpepper's general style involved more handheld cameras but less movement than Discovery, though she differentiated the scenes set in space from those on Earth by using more steady cam for the former to give it a "floaty" feeling. Culpepper first pitched her take to the producers in terms of colors, noting that the palette of Discovery features a lot of cool colors such as blues and purples and wanting Picard to be a warmer series with red, green, and orange. Culpepper was inspired to use these colors by the first episode's vineyard setting, and felt they reflected Picard's emotions in the series.

Visual effects

The series' visual effects were provided by Pixomondo, DNEG, Crafty Apes, Ghost VFX, Gentle Giant Studios, Technicolor VFX, and Filmworks/FX. Visual effects supervisor Jason Zimmerman explained that all design work for the visual effects began with the designs from The Next Generation. These were then updated to match the in-universe time difference as well as to take advantage of the advancements in visual effects since that series was produced. He noted that production designer Todd Cherniawsky is experienced with visual effects-heavy series and always designed for Picard with the visual effects team in mind. Pixomondo began work on the series before filming began, working alongside the production design department to help flesh out their designs into 3D assets that the vendors could use. These computer generated models included the Borg Cube, La Sirena, and the Romulan ships. The visual effects team also worked with the cinematography department to replicate the series' lenses and lighting correctly.

A lot of the effects work on the series consisted of digital set extensions and world building, something that differentiated the series from Discovery for Zimmerman. For establishing shots, fictional elements such as buildings and starships were added to exterior shots which also sometimes required modern-day elements like cars to be removed or hidden. Scenes set on Mars were based on reference images taken by Mars rovers, with Zimmerman noting that Star Trek fans expect the series to be "rooted in science" like that. The new planet Freecloud, and the holographic advertisements that appear when the characters approach the planet, were inspired by Las Vegas, which Zimmerman acknowledged was a departure from previous Star Trek planet designs. The visual effects team used digital doubles to help populate crowd scenes on different planets, as well as the interiors of the Borg Cube. For scenes in space, the visual effects team used reference imagery from throughout the Star Trek franchise as well as new footage from NASA, and worked to find logical ways to light starships in space such as having the light come from nearby planets or stars. Another difficult effect that Zimmerman highlighted was the outdoor transporter booths seen on Earth in the series, which use the bright flashes seen in previous Star Trek series but in broad daylight, something that required "a lot of finessing to get a good blend". The visual effects team also digitally de-aged Brent Spiner for his appearances as Data in the series, to make him appear as he did in Nemesis.

The Borg Cube is 4.7 kilometres (2.9 mi) across, and conveying that scale was difficult for the visual effects team since it is floating in space with no size reference. Pixomondo's model was created with 23 different pieces that the modelling team repeated over 9 million times across the surface of the cube. It also includes a Romulan hangar that is differentiated in terms of design from the rest of the cube. The final Borg Cube model consisted of 82.7 billion polygons, which Pixomondo was only able to render due to using the Arnold rendering software and its ability to create "stand-ins" to simplify elements of the render. Pixomondo then needed to share the model with DNEG and Ghost VFX who were using different rendering software; Pixomondo worked with the other companies to simplify the model down to a base language that they could use to get similar results with their own software. The interiors of the Borg Cube were built as sets, but were digitally extended; Zimmerman gave this as an example of the more "subtle" visual effects created for the series. The Borg Cube is revealed in the first episode with an "ambitious pullback reveal" inspired by a similar shot from the film Star Trek: First Contact, showing the advancements in visual effects since that film was made. The shot included almost every asset that Pixomondo created for the series, including the Borg Cube, Romulan hangar, and Romulan ships. Pixomondo CG supervisor Dan Smiczek said the vendor was "really proud" of the shot, with almost all of their Picard team having worked on it.

Music

Composer Jeff Russo had several ideas when he began work on the main title for Picard, but the first melody that he played became the idea that he associated with Picard and the series. He then had to fashion this into a theme that matched the tone of the show, and went through several different iterations: a "swashbuckling" version, a "'space' show" version, a darker and more contemplative version, and finally a more emotional and stirring version which became the actual theme. It is bookended with a piccolo, which Russo felt sounded similar to the fictional Ressikan flute that Picard played in the Next Generation episode "The Inner Light", while the main melody is played on a cello which Russo often uses since it "fills that same harmonic space as the human voice". In addition to his original ideas, Russo chose to use Fred Steiner's Romulan theme from the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Balance of Terror" (1966) to represent the Romulan characters in the season. He also referenced the main theme from Star Trek: Voyager for Seven of Nine's appearances. Russo had more opportunities to help tell the story in the season than his work on Discovery, with more scenes in Picard featuring the music and little dialogue such as Soji and Narek's waltz in "Absolute Candor" and Picard's death in the finale.

The season is bookended with the song "Blue Skies" by Irving Berlin, which is heard during Picard's dream of Data in the premiere and then again during Data's death in the finale. This is a reference to Nemesis, in which Data sung "Blue Skies". For Picard, Russo arranged a new version of the song with similar orchestration to the series' score. Kurtzman suggested that Briones sing the lyrics after performing in the touring production of Hamilton; Briones felt this was appropriate since she portrays Data's daughters in the series. Russo described the end of the finale, including "Blue Skies", as a "complicated puzzle". The episode ends with a swashbuckling-themed end credits cue because Russo wanted to end the season with a "rousing feeling". He began recording his score for the series in November 2019, at the Eastwood Scoring Stage at Warner Bros. Studios in California.

A soundtrack album featuring selections from Russo's score for the first half of the season was released digitally by Lakeshore Records on February 2, 2020. It also includes two cues from Russo's Short Treks score. The new version of "Blue Skies" was released digitally as a single on March 26, followed by a second soundtrack album on April 3. The latter is a complete album comprising all tracks from the first album, selections from the second half of the season, and "Blue Skies". A special edition vinyl release featuring selections from the first season album and pressed on "Borg-errific green vinyl" was released on October 9. All music by Jeff Russo:

Marketing

A teaser and first poster for the season were released in May 2019, on the 25th anniversary of the series finale of The Next Generation. Both the teaser and poster focused on the Picard vineyard and the season's new backstory. It was promoted in July at San Diego Comic-Con 2019, in a "Star Trek Universe" panel alongside other series from the franchise. The panel featured the main cast and executive producers, who introduced the first full trailer for the season. The trailer revealed that Spiner and Ryan would be guest starring in the season, and they joined the panel after the trailer was shown along with Del Arco. Also at San Diego, a special exhibition called "Jean-Luc Picard: The First Duty" was displayed at the Michael J Wolf Fine Arts art gallery, featuring props and costumes from throughout Stewart's Star Trek career along with first looks at props and costumes from Picard. A second trailer for the season debuted at the 2019 New York Comic Con in October, at a panel that also included Culpepper. The premiere date for the season was also revealed at the panel.

Also in October, CBS and Paramount released a Blu-ray collection titled Star Trek – Picard Movie and TV Collection, including two two-part episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation—"The Best of Both Worlds" and "Chain of Command"—as well as the four Star Trek films starring the cast of Next Generation: Star Trek Generations (1994), Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection (1998), and Star Trek: Nemesis. The collection also includes ten hours of previously released special features as well as an exclusive, original comic book titled Star Trek: Sky's The Limit from IDW Publishing. The comic book was written by Thomas F. Zahler with art by Carlos Nieto and coloring by Charlie Kirchoff. Additionally, CBS worked with Wines That Rock and the actual Château Picard in Bordeaux, France (which is not related to the fictional Star Trek Château Picard) to release a limited edition wine, the 2016 Château Picard Bordeaux, as marketing for the series. Wines That Rock also released a limited edition 2017 Old Vine Zinfandel wine labelled as a "United Federation of Planets wine" from California winery Dry Creek & Russian River Valleys.

In January 2020, RockLove Jewelry released a new line of Picard-inspired jewelry, including a necklace worn by Dahj and Soji that was designed with prop master Jeff Lombardi. Chabon wanted to be involved in all aspects of the series, including interacting with the fans as the season was released. He spent a lot of time looking at messages on Twitter and Reddit, but was discouraged when he found Twitter to be "kind of a horrible place". His children introduced him to the ability to answer fan questions via a story on Instagram, and he found that to be a fun way to interact with fans and discuss the series, likening it to his time as a younger Star Trek fan on the internet.

Release

Streaming and broadcast

The season premiered on January 23, 2020, on CBS All Access in the United States, and ran weekly for 10 episodes until March 26. Like Discovery before it, each episode of Picard was broadcast in Canada by Bell Media on the same day as the All Access release, on the specialty channels CTV Sci-Fi Channel (English) and Z (French) before streaming on Crave. Amazon Prime Video released each episode within 24 hours of its U.S. debut in over 200 other countries and territories around the world.

In the week after the season premiered, the first episode was released for free on YouTube in the U.S. for a limited time. On January 30, the ViacomCBS free streaming service PlutoTV aired a 24-hour marathon of the series' first episode, followed by repeat viewings each night through February 5 as the lead-off title for a programming block. Days before the release of the season finale on March 26, Stewart announced a free month of CBS All Access for viewers in the U.S., ending on April 23. This would allow non-subscribers to watch the entire season for free. The offer came while many in the U.S. were isolated at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first three episodes of the season were made available to stream for free on CBS.com, StarTrek.com, and PlutoTV for a week beginning June 17, 2020, as part of a CBS All Access event titled #StarTrekUnited. The episodes were among 15 of the "most culturally relevant" Star Trek episodes that were chosen to be included as part of the event, which served as a fundraiser for several organisations including Black Strategy Fund, Movement for Black Lives, and Black Lives Matter. For the fundraiser, $1 was donated to one of those organizations by CBS All Access for every fan that tweeted using the hashtag #StarTrekUnitedGives on the day of June 17.

In September 2020, ViacomCBS announced that CBS All Access would be expanded and rebranded as Paramount+ in March 2021. The season remained on Paramount+ along with future seasons. In February 2023, Paramount made a new deal with Prime Video for the series' international streaming rights. This allowed the season to be added to Paramount+ in some other countries in addition to remaining on Prime Video. In August 2023, Star Trek content was removed from Crave and the season began streaming in Canada on Paramount+ instead. The series would continue to be broadcast on CTV Sci-Fi and be available on CTV.ca and the CTV app.

Home media

The season was released on DVD, Blu-Ray, and Limited Edition Steelbook formats in the U.S. on October 6, 2020. The release includes all 10 episodes, as well as behind-the-scenes featurettes, deleted scenes, a gag reel, and a commentary for the first episode by Kurtzman, Goldsman, Chabon, Beyer, and Culpepper. Also included in the release is "Children of Mars", a short film from the Star Trek: Short Treks companion series. On September 5, 2023, a box set featuring the complete series and over seven hours of special features was released, while a 54-disc Blu-ray "Picard Legacy Collection" that includes this series was released on November 7.

Reception

Viewership

A week after the season premiere, CBS said that Picard had set a new record for the total streams of a CBS All Access original series with 115 percent more total streams than the previous record set by Star Trek: Discovery. CBS also attributed the premiere, alongside the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards and a busy month of football games, for the month of January 2020 breaking the service's record for the most new subscribers in a month. Previously held by February 2019, the new January 2020 record includes the second-most new subscribers in a single week for the service during the week of Picard's premiere. In Canada, 1.1 million viewers watched the series' premiere live or on the same day as its debut, the largest ever audience for an episode on the CTV Sci-Fi Channel. A week later, the first episode's confirmed audience had grown to 1.85 million viewers, with 3 million having watched at least part of the episode, making it the most-watched entertainment specialty broadcast ever in Canada. The episode also received the most first week viewership for any series premiere on Crave.

Critical response

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported an 86% approval rating with an average rating of 7.55/10 based on 252 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Anchored by the incomparable Patrick Stewart, Picard departs from standard Starfleet protocol with a slower, serialized story, but like all great Star Trek it tackles timely themes with grace and makes for an exciting push further into the final frontier." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 76 out of 100 based on reviews from 27 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

Reviewing the first three episodes, Liz Shannon Miller of Paste was happy that the series was not a prequel and instead expanded the franchise. She praised the cast, especially Stewart, but felt some of the big twists would not work as well for new viewers as they did for existing Star Trek fans. Writing for Forbes, Merrill Barr agreed that the series was more accessible to existing fans but felt it was less inaccessible to new fans than Discovery. He said there were elements of the opening episodes that could have been faster, but was optimistic about the rest of the season. Daniel D'Addario of Variety said Stewart was the series' greatest asset, praising his performance while also criticizing the slow pace. Joshua Rivera at The Verge felt the first three episodes worked well for both new viewers and old Star Trek fans, but criticized the amount of explanation in the episodes which he felt made them meander. He was also concerned that the series was providing too-easy answers to its philosophical questions, but hoped that this could be fixed in later episodes. Ben Travers at IndieWire gave a "B" grade to the first three episodes, praising Stewart but expressing concern at the series' reliance on nostalgia for previous Star Trek stories. He compared the series to the Star Wars sequel trilogy, feeling that seeing Luke Skywalker again was nostalgic, but deconstructing him in Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) was more satisfying. Travers said Picard could do the same thing as long as it moved away from its more nostalgic depiction of the character. Brian Lowry gave a negative review of the episodes for CNN, focusing on the nostalgic elements and slow pace.

Jennifer Ouellette reviewed the season for Ars Technica after its finale and noted that the slow pace of the opening episodes continued for the rest of the season and may have stemmed from Chabon's background writing novels. She acknowledged that this was one of several fan concerns with the season, which also included the series' darker tone and perceived similarities between its story and designs and those of the video game Mass Effect 2 (2010). Ouellette personally appreciated the season's focus on characters, and was especially positive about the inclusion of Seven of Nine and her interactions with Raffi. She felt the season would have been stronger if it was a miniseries, believing that Picard's death at the end of the season was undermined by the need to have him return for a second season. She also felt that the evolution of his mission from saving Soji to saving an entire race of synthetic beings elevated the stakes of the series beyond its exploration of characters and themes. Writing about the season for Rolling Stone, Alan Sepinwall praised Stewart and said he elevated the series which was otherwise "overstuffed" with a story that was too complex for its 10 episodes. Sepinwall specifically noted that the more episodic stories, such as "Stardust City Rag", were appreciated but meant that the overall storyline was not given the time it needed to be explored. He appreciated that the season gave a better ending to Data's story than Nemesis, and felt the overall season was a good start to the series, but hoped that the second season would have a clearer storyline. Stephen Kelly for The Guardian criticized the series' dark tone, violence, and profanity, stating that optimism for the future was more important than Chabon and Kurtzman seemed to believe. He contrasted the series to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which was able to tell a similarly dark story without losing the hopefulness of the rest of the franchise. In May 2020, Ruth Terry wrote an article for StarTrek.com with commentary by communications professor and author Dr. Thomas Parham III, in which they praised the season for acknowledging Picard's role as an ally to marginalized groups while forcing him to face his own privilege. Terry wrote that representation and inclusion were considered more important in 2020 than when the previous Star Trek series were made, and Picard was able to reflect that by showing the title character lose his able-bodiedness, his relevancy at Starfleet, and some of his relationships, while learning to show more empathy. She felt that reflecting the current time in this way was something that Star Trek had always done well and Picard continued that.

Accolades

The season is one of 33 television series that received the ReFrame Stamp for the 2019 to 2020 season. The stamp is awarded by the gender equity coalition ReFrame as a "mark of distinction for film and TV projects that ... hire female-identifying people in four out of eight areas of production" to show progress in gender-balanced hiring. In a general statement, ReFrame highlighted Culpepper as the first woman to direct a Star Trek premiere.