WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Picard Season 2, which is streaming on Paramount+.
Star Trek: Picard has returned in the last couple of weeks, and in its first two episodes it shows far more promise than the first season by bringing in classic Star Trek plots and ideas, such as time travel. The show has been able to bring a bit more of the fun that older Star Trek series had while also maintaining the more serious tone established in the first season. It also calls back to some of the best relationships Picard had on Star Trek: The Next Generation, while pointing out that those relationships were often held at distance.
In this recent Star Trek: Picard season, Jean-Luc Picard and his crew are trying to make contact with a mysterious group that ends up being a new iteration of the Borg. When they do, though, they are transported to a new timeline in which the Federation is a tyrannical organization that has conquered much of the galaxy. This was seemingly done by Picard's old adversary Q, a being with omnipotent powers, who would often force the crew of the Enterprise to play his games in order to learn some sort of lesson, or just satisfy his own desires.
Already from this description of Season 2, it is clear that there are callbacks to a lot of classic Star Trek plots, particularly time travel. Time-travel stories have existed in Star Trek since the original series and have seen several crews across all its shows try to save the future from something changing the past. These stories get to have a fun adventure feel that Season 1 of Picard very much did not have. Even in the nightmare timeline Q has taken them to, the characters get to find out who each of them is in this exaggerated version of the timeline. There is a levity to this because of how comically evil most of them are supposed to be in this timeline.
The best example of Star Trek's time-travel narrative is Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. The film sees the original series cast go back to 1980s San Francisco to steal a whale so that the whale can communicate with a lifeform that in the present is going to destroy Earth unless it hears a response from the whale. It is indeed that ridiculous, and it is better for it. One of the best things about this film is seeing the characters dealing with the difficulties of the current day and often watching them fail to do so in really funny ways. Picard is seemingly going to have the opportunity to do something similar as Picard and crew are trying to go back in time to 2024 to fix whatever Q has done to the timeline.
Time travel is not the only classic idea the show is returning to as the show has put a focus on Picard's choice to keep people at arm's length by having him interact with both Guinan and Q. Q and Guinan are two of the characters that Picard did have a more personable relationship with, even if he had little choice with Q. Both of these characters would often act opposite to him to provide lessons and advice, even if it was unwanted in Q's case. So having them back helps to reexamine this part of Picard's character.
Then there is Laris, who is the new possible romantic relationship that Picard rejects, calling to mind the ways in which Picard has always done this. Picard is a very put-together and reserved character; he very rarely acted on romance or even interacted with the crew of the Enterprise socially. Picard had chemistry with Dr. Beverly Crusher, and there was a romance that was gestured to but never acted on. While in a possible future, Q shows Picard they had a romance but were now divorced, showing that Picard had not changed.
Picard has always been this person and it will be interesting to see where the show takes these ideas. Star Trek: Picard has improved greatly on the first season and feels much more in line with the older Star Trek shows both in plot and characterization.
New episodes of Star Trek: Picard premier Thursdays on Paramount+.