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Warning: This story contains spoilers for the Season 1 finale of “Star Trek: Picard.” Jean-Luc Picard just got a second reboot. In the Season 1 finale of “Star Trek: Picard,” Sir Patrick Stewart’s retired Starfleet admiral suffered a shocking death from a terminal brain condition. But, of course, he couldn’t just go to the great …
Warning: This story contains spoilers for the Season 1 finale of “Star Trek: Picard.”
Jean-Luc Picard just got a second reboot.
In the Season 1 finale of “Star Trek: Picard,” Sir Patrick Stewart’s retired Starfleet admiral suffered a shocking death from a terminal brain condition. But, of course, he couldn’t just go to the great beyond.
In a poetic turn, his neural makeup was transferred into a synthetic body, or “synth,” becoming part of a previously maligned life-form that had been banned following an attack by its kind.
It’s yet another chance to live long and prosper for the show’s title character, who originated in the 1987-94 series “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” It’s also a way to encourage viewers to question their own perceptions about equality and inclusion, says executive producer and director Akiva Goldsman.
“The show spent the [first] season saying synth life has all the same rights and capacities as organic life,” Goldsman tells The Post. “As such, there’s no better way really to test that theory than to ask, ‘Do you feel differently about Picard now that he’s synthetic?’ ”
In Season 1, co-star Isa Briones, 21, played two sets of synthetic twins — Dahj and Soji, plus Jana and Sutra. She thinks Picard’s new life could lead to existential questions for him.
“But you don’t really know what it’s like until you are in someone’s shoes,” she says. “Suddenly he has to grapple with the idea of ‘Am I considered real? Am I worthy of rights?’ It’s no longer him being an ally — he suddenly is that person.”
For her own performances, Briones drew on her theater roots: In 2018 she played the dual part of Peggy Schuyler and Maria Reynolds in the touring company of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton.”
“My experience with differentiating those two characters came back to me,” she says. On “Picard” Briones connected most with Soji, who harbored internal struggles about societal rejection.
“It’s amazing playing her because she is very much like me. It feels like I’m just playing me in space,” says Briones, who is of Filipino and Swedish-Irish descent.
“Being a mixed person you go through life with this constant inner struggle of people telling you, ‘No, you’re Asian,’ ‘No, you’re white,’ ‘No, you’re this,’ ” she says. “That journey of coming to terms with who you are, not according to what other people tell you, is very much close to my heart and what Soji is going through.
“It’s almost a form of therapy, you know? Getting to play yourself in someone else’s shoes is a wonderful way of looking at your own life.“
At the end of the finale, Picard and his crew — Soji, Rios (Santiago Cabrera), Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), Raffi (Michelle Hurd), Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill) and Elnor (Evan Evagora) — warped off to worlds unknown. “Picard” was renewed for a second season even before the show’s premiere in January, but the filming of Season 2 is on hold as the worldwide coronavirus pandemic has sidelined TV, film and Broadway productions. That tempers Goldsman’s willingness to share details about the sophomore season.
“My dreams for Season 2 are pretty prosaic right now. They’re to make it — by that I mean we’re all looking forward to the time we can go back out into the world and collaborate in person,” says Goldsman, 57.
However, he does offer two tidbits. In a January appearance on “The View,” Stewart, 79, invited co-host and former “Next Generation” co-star Whoopi Goldberg to reprise her character Guinan — she accepted on-air — which Goldsman is “hoping” will happen. “We have yearnings for Guinan, so we’re building with that in mind,” he says. And eagle-eyed finale viewers may have seen Seven of Nine and Raffi holding hands toward the end. “They are definitely having a potential love connection,” Goldsman says of the same-sex pairing.
But beyond that, fans will have to wait to find out what strange new worlds will be explored.
“Mortality and guilt were the headier flavors of the broth of Season 1. Season 2, we’re gonna cook other stuff,” Goldsman says. “The things around Picard, some will be the same, some will be different. And if I sound like I’m being coy, I am — because we want to surprise you.”
