Would you really want to save a timeline without Star Trek?

 I liked the bus scene. In the most recent episode of Star Trek: Picard (STP), I actually liked the bus scene.

What starts as an almost word-for-word, shot-by-shot, lyric-by-lyric recreation of the classic "Spock meets punk on an LA city bus scene" from Star Trek: The Voyage Home, then subverts our expectations at the last moment by having the punk apologise for playing his music so loud and immediately turning it down.

It's beautifully done and catches Trekkers, like me, completely by surprise: I was actually quoting the lines with the characters (and the lyrics of the song too) as the scene played out and was about to sing "And I say... screw you" when the twist occurred.

It was a nice, playful homage to the film upon which so much of the tone and feeling of STP Season 2 is based.

And, I will grudgingly admit, the writers of STP 2:3 actually attempted to address at least some of my criticisms from Episode 2. Okay, okay. I know they didn't read my blog post and say: "Hey, we got some 'splainin' to do."

But at least they tried to explain some things that stood out last time:

• the Confederation ships have some built in defence systems that Federation ships lack that may have protected them from detection as they roared into earth's atmosphere and crash landed in France;
• the Picard chateau has been abandoned for a very long time so there is no one there to rush out to see what all the noise was about when they crashed;
• the Borg Queen has been carefully isolated from the rest of the ship's systems so that she cannot actually take over; and
• Q is losing his powers, which at least partially addresses the complaint of having all dramatic tension undermined by the presence of an omnipotent character around who is interested in the characters and can change anything at anytime.

Excellent. And, if we can accept that, despite Jurati's warnings, several of their landing party brought 24th Century Tech with them, including phasers, communicators and tricorders, we can enjoy what is turning into a pretty cool ride in the 21st Century.

Hell, they even gave us a Star Trek car chase... and an homage to the "classic" 1984 movie Star Man: "Green light go. Red light stop. Yellow light... go... very fast."

But what kind of 21st Century is this? We are told this is 2024 in the original timeline, the timeline that Picard and his pals are desperate to recreate.

But it is clearly not our 21st Century.

It is a 21st Century in which Star Trek, as a worldwide phenomenon, does not exist.

Like in the movie Yesterday, where the Beatles have been erased from the timeline, in STP, Star Trek itself has been erased from the timeline. This is consistent with The Voyage Home, which also exposed 20th Century people to a whole pile of recognizably Star Trek stuff and no-one made the connection.

Rios uses trademark Star Trek words and phrases ("Ferengi", "explore strange new worlds" etc.) in front of several 21st Century folks and none of them react. I guess it is a much easier to take this approach than to have the characters constantly faced with moments of familiarity and recognition: like having Star Trek fans mob Seven as she walks the streets of LA, asking her for an autograph; or having the ICE guard blast Rios for throwing lines from a TV show at him.

But it does bring even more complexity to the "which timeline is the right timeline" discussion. Who could bear a timeline without Star Trek? 

On a side note, and this will show my own ignorance more than anything else, STP presents a version of the year 2024 in which ICE Raids of workplaces are still carried out on a regular basis. We see one happen. We watch scenes of abuse in a detention centre and see Rios on a deportation bus apparently on its way to the Mexican border.

Is this still happening in the US?

If it is, then we should applaud STP writers and producers for making it a focus of this season of Picard.

But the Biden administration changed the approach to ICE enforcement on October 12, 2021 and, as of the date of writing this blog, I can find nothing on the internet to suggest that raids of the kind shown on STP are continuing. Yes, a recent article in a Washington 'paper expresses concerns about the effectiveness of Biden's changes and suggests that deportations are still taking place but even that article does not appear to suggest that these kinds of raids are continuing.

I am not naive enough to believe that the Democrats are angels and have instantly resolved one of the many evils of the previous administration so it is possible that, under Biden, these raids continue. But I can find no evidence that they are.

I wondered perhaps if these episodes take place after the next Presidential election, which is scheduled to take place on November 25, 2024. Perhaps they were suggesting that Trump will win in 2024 and re-introduce ICE's aggressive approach.

But early in this most recent episode, Jurati and Picard make a point of establishing the exact date upon which they arrived in 2024 and it is in early April. Before the election.

That means that either my research is wrong and raids of this kind continue under Biden or STP is suggesting either a significant change in the Biden administration's approach in the coming two years or an overthrow of that administration.