Star Trek’s Best Captain Hates Lower Decks

To fully understand the depth of Picard’s feelings, you may need a refresher on the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Tapestry.” In it, Picard seemingly dies and encounters Q in a kind of afterlife, and Picard expresses regrets about the Starfleet Academy-era incident that led to him needing an artificial heart. After the Captain swears he would have handled that event better if he had the chance, Q whisks Picard back in time and into his old body, giving Picard a chance to avoid the bar brawl injury that claimed his original heart.

This famous Star Trek captain is eager to preserve his heart because, without the artificial replacement, he would be able to survive the fatal accident in the future. After Picard successfully prevents his younger self from losing his heart, he finds himself in an alternate universe present where he is not the captain of the Enterprise but a lowly lieutenant junior-grade science officer. And this is where we find out about how this Star Trek captain really feels about the lower decks.

The Star Trek episode makes it clear that Picard hates being a junior officer, so he tries to tell Riker and Troi (neither of whom really knows him) that he is “capable of being very much more.” They are mostly unimpressed as Picard tells them “I feel that I would like to move beyond astrophysics to Engineering or Security, something that might even lead to Command.” In this statement, Picard signals his disgust at all things having to do with the lower decks.

For most audiences, one of the more idealistic aspects of Star Trek is that the Federation has no money and individuals can join Starfleet to follow their true passions. This allowed Worf to focus solely on Security, Troi solely on counseling, etc. In context, Picard’s dislike of anything that won’t potentially lead to Star Trek command is quite strange and implies he wouldn’t approve of any lower decks crew that simply enjoyed their career regardless of whether they ever got to sit in the big chair.

It’s also a strange attitude for Picard to have because, on a ship, all duties are nominally important. He may not like being in astrophysics, but the ship’s daily operation requires the calculations made by these lower decks officers. By focusing only on command-adjacent positions, Picard reveals how myopic his view of the crew really is.

Some Star Trek fans will defend Picard, saying that he doesn’t hate the lower decks people so much as he hates doing their job. But that is equally problematic because it showcases that Picard has no trouble giving junior officers crappy duties as long as he doesn’t have to handle them himself. Sorry, Jean-Luc: when it comes to this out-of-nowhere snobbiness, we’re going to have to make it “no.”