It is hard to quantify how much I missed Jean-Luc Picard.

When I walked out of Nemesis in 2002, it was with fatigue and something approaching despair. Nemesis was an exercise in nostalgia, though not really of The Next Generation. The film desperately wanted to be The Wrath of Khan, a film whose shadow is now so long as to be inescapable – just ask JJ Abrams (more on him in a sec). The film was tired, the franchise was tired and I was miserable this would be the last we’d see of these characters.

Thanks to The Streaming Wars, and again, nostalgia, Picard has returned. So has Data, ish. Star Trek hasn’t been this vital since Deep Space Nine. I won’t get into the plot too much on the first episode of Picard, but I found it just about pitch perfect. It’s Star Trek; it’s different. It’s Picard; it’s different. It’s fearless.

SPOILERS….

The show takes Nemesis head on, along with the Abrams reboot films which included a wholesale and calamitous remake of Khan, and embraces its own history while defiantly reorienting the franchise. The Federation and the galaxy have changed, irrevocably. So has Picard, though he remains as ever humanitarian, and compelled to help those who can’t help themselves. Long, long threads going back to The Next Generation regarding Romulans and the Borg – Data conspicuously lays down five queens at the beginning while the show throws down a Borg cube at the end – make this more than an exercise in nostalgia.

A lot of criticism over the recent Star Wars films deals with, essentially, how they treat nostalgia. The two Abrams films weaponize it, to the point Rise of Skywalker is like Star Trek Into Darkness, volatile. You have some of this in the other Trek show, Discovery, as well. Part of the reason nostalgia ignites such a reaction, in some, is because it can be dishonest. It’s emotional, manipulative and worst of all, lazy. The original Star Wars film was a story suffused with nostalgia for Flash Gordon, Kurosawa films, World War II, George Lucas’ youth. What came out was something blended, unique and original. The worst aspects of the sequel films, and nostalgia-heavy films in general, simply repeat what happened before with no thought or craft.

The Last Jedi eschewed nostalgia and the saga’s tendencies – mostly – and was assailed by some for ‘destroying the franchise.’ So you can’t win. Picard falls very much in the TLJ range. It is a fearless, unrepentant divergence from tradition while at the same time building on the foundations without excavating them. The story Picard tells is simply impossible without acknowledging the past, but it does not ape it.

Aside from a few callbacks to the past, Picard marches resolutely ahead. Most notable among the easter eggs is a lovely and fairly important I think reference to the song “Blue Skies,” an intertextual device that promised at least hope at the end of Nemesis. There is a great deal of hope here. The Federation and Starfleet are by Picard’s account, unlike themselves, but you yearn for the moment they will figure it out, and you suspect they will. And that’s why Trek and Picard in particular are so necessary right now.

When things seem bleak, a fictional utopia is comforting. Like nostalgia, the painless, optimistic future of Trek offers something familiar, warm and inviting. But for there to be hope for the future, there must be an acknowledgment of today’s despair. Picard cannily, subtly, goes right at a number of contemporary issues, weaving them together effortlessly in a way that reflects the interconnected troubles we face in the 21st century. The show promises perhaps not a resolution, but a contest, and it does with intelligence, grace and above all, honesty.