Oh Captain, My Captain: the Xerox of Jean-Luc Picard

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I had been working on a long post about Ripley from Alien, but unfortunately real world work has gotten in the way and I haven't found the time needed to finish it. Instead, about all I can handle today is this: how the heck did the writers of Star Trek Picard think it was a good idea for our dear captain to wind up as an android? Jean-Luc, who had always proclaimed so proudly his humanity, who was so deeply traumatized by being borgi-fied, is fine and happy that he's been reduced to a computer copy plugged into an android body?

Hopefully a good chunk of season two will focus on some existential angst over this situation. I mean, is he even actually Jean-Luc Picard any more, or just an AI copy? What is his perception of himself? How do his friends look at him? What is his status in the Federation? It could be good fodder for episodes, but honestly, I can't really see a way that it ends happily. I guess it's obvious that I don't believe this is truly Jean-Luc.


Strangely, an android like Data doesn't disturb me - Data was always an android. It's his nature. You could move his central processor or whatever contains his mind to another body, and yes, it would be Data. To me, anyway. I think it's the innate difference between a human being and a mechanical being. If they had even moved Picard's organic brain to a synthetic body, that I could accept as still being "him." But when none of his physical form goes over, that's when I have a hard time accepting that this new Picard is in truth the same man.


Of course, the argument can (and has been) made that the transporter destroys people every time they use it, so after the first transport, the original never exists, it's all copies. If one believes in the existence of the soul or something beyond just the physical, what happens if "brain patterns" or what have you are transferred to a machine? Is the essential nature of that person lost?

All interesting questions, which I hope are not glossed over in the next season of Star Trek Picard. But for me, I feel like Jean-Luc is gone. At best, we'll be watching his ghost.

Comments

  1. Larry From Planet 8July 30, 2020 at 4:34 PM

    Do you know pal you make some good points here about the first season of Picard, I didn’t have as big a problem with the transference into the android body. I never thought of this before but after reading your post I can’t help but think of Dr. Roger Kirby in the classic Star Trek original series episode “ What Are Little Girls Made Of?” and I’ll have to take a few days to kind of think this over… I also went back-and-forth with why they chose not to put data consciousness into the android body? That was probably the plan all along but I’m not really sure about that. And admittedly I’ve not watched the season a second time to look For a little nuggets of information. I will say that I love those art to finish in the series much more than I did in the last next generation film. Although data always strived to be more human like, in the end he was the most human of us all, even Picard.

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