Star Trek AI Storyline Ruins Classic Franchise Villains

To understand why this new plot point regarding these classic Star Trek villains is so strange, we need to look back at the past. For example, if the Romulans have a hatred of AI, cybernetics, and androids that stretches back for centuries, there should be plenty of onscreen evidence of this. However, the more you actually watch Star Trek, the more you’ll find evidence that none of these claims really add up.

To understand why this new plot point regarding these classic Star Trek villains is so strange, we need to look back at the past. For example, if the Romulans have a hatred of AI, cybernetics, and androids that stretches back for centuries, there should be plenty of onscreen evidence of this. However, the more you actually watch Star Trek, the more you’ll find evidence that none of these claims really add up.

For example, in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Defector,” a Romulan admiral admits to the android Data that he is familiar with many Romulan cyberneticists who would love to examine him. When it comes to Romulans not actually hating AI, this is really a double example. Not only does this Romulan admit that the aliens have cyberneticists in the first place, but he shows no hostility to the synthetic, AI-powered Data…someone who would literally be the personification of what the Romulans in Picard claim to hate.

Speaking of not hating Data, we saw the android officer join Captain Picard on a dangerous mission to Romulus in the two-part episode “Unification.” This episode is rightfully remembered as the one in which Picard met the famous Vulcan Spock, but it was also notable for giving us our best look at Romulan society. While there, Data interacted with a number of Romulans who knew who and what he was, and none of them seemed to care much about AI and cybernetics because they barely gave the android so much as a menacing look.

At this point, it’s clear that Star Trek: Picard was trying to do a clumsy retcon of Romulans and Romulan society with this revelation about the race having a burning hatred of AI. We were willing to accept the retcon as the new lore, but that’s when something weird happened. Specifically, an episode of Strange New Worlds seemed to reverse the retcon offered by Picard.

In the episode “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” a time-displaced La’an and a parallel universe James Kirk try to discover who or what ended up affecting the timeline and ruining the future as they knew it. It turned out to be a Romulan agent who admitted that her government had regularly sent time travelers to mess with the development of their enemies. She claimed they discovered who they needed to kill (in this case, a young Khan) based on calculations from a computer that told them how certain changes would affect the timeline.

Back in Star Trek: Picard, friendly Romulan Laris helpfully explained how far her race’s hatred of AI goes, and it’s deep: in addition to hating AI, androids, and cybernetics, she claimed that even Romulan computers were used for nothing more than simple calculation. Now, in the Strange New Worlds episode that premiered years after the retcon in Picard, we have Romulans using a computer so advanced that it can calculate how the future will change if any given individual is killed. It seems Picard wanted to situate these aliens as anti-technology in a strange retcon, and when fans hated the change, they simply ignored it.

From where we’re standing, it was a good idea for Star Trek writers to ignore the weird AI retcon in season one of Picard. However, we can’t help but think this is more wasted potential from that season: we got our first interesting Romulan plot development in decades, and it was almost immediately dropped. It’s almost like Paramount agrees with many fans that only the third season of Picard is worth watching, and they are content with future shows just ignoring that season altogether.

Who, though, could ever ignore all the important characters and plot points of Picard’s first season? All of them were important and mature additions to the Star Trek canon. Now if anyone needs us, we’re going to roll the D20 and hope our sword-wielding Romulan character can decapitate a few more people armed with guns once he gets another critical hit.