‘Star Trek: Picard’ Trailer Breakdown: Boldly Going Through the New Footage Shot-by-Shot

Reactions to the release of the much-anticipated Star Trek: Picard trailer at last weekend’s San Diego Comic-Con have been overwhelmingly positive, giving fans an injection of nostalgia, while also dropping some tantalizing clues as to what’s in store for the new series. Read on for a detailed breakdown of the trailer, including speculation on what it could mean for the 2020 show.

“Have you ever been a stranger to yourself?” a young woman who we’ll later know as the character Dahj, asks at the beginning of the trailer. “Many, many times,” Picard admits as the camera pans over what an earlier teaser revealed as his current home—a vineyard on his family’s ancestral home in La Barre, France.

The trailer then turns toward backstory, with a shot of Picard looking at his combadge with a look of disquietude before his thoughts via voice over turn to Commander Data, who at the end of the last TNG movie, Star Trek: Nemesis, sacrificed his life for his captain.

We then turn to an image of Data, dismantled in a drawer (or perhaps it’s Lore, Data’s evil brother who, last we saw in the series, was deactivated and dismantled; or perhaps it’s B-4, an earlier prototype of the android that houses at least some of the lost Data’s memories; or perhaps an entirely different version, who knows?!). We also get the first shot of a new character to the series—Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill), who Pill described as a “researcher” on the SDCC panel. Is she working to recover Data’s memories from B-4? Does she have Lore’s body and thinks she can overlay Data’s memories? The possibilities are many here.

I wanted to highlight here that the beloved doggo in the teaser photo released before Comic-Con makes a brief cameo in the trailer, and that we can expect to see more of him in the future if Sir Patrick Stewart has anything to say about it: “His name, by the way, is Dinero,” Stewart said about the dog at the SDCC panel, “and he is a wonderful creature, and I hope he is going to have an ongoing role to play in this entire series.”

Post-doggo we cut to Picard, still in casual wear in his home but wearing his combadge again and looking at the stars saying his vineyard never truly felt like home. The Picard we know, is itching to travel again, though it’s clear that he has mixed feelings about it. What happened to him since Star Trek: Nemesis? Something traumatic it’s clear, and we may get an inkling of what exactly when the Picard-focused Short Trek comes out before the series premiere.

The trailer now turns to the inciting incident of the series—a young woman named Dahj (Isa Briones), who we first see walking down a rainy street. Her head is covered, but we get our first glimpse of a gash on her forehead, and we see her clutching a unique ringed necklace that comes up later in the trailer as well.

Right after the close-up of Dahj, we get a wider view of her walking down the street, and can see Picard in the TV screens in the store. (As an aside, I love how the trope of characters finding out news by looking at screens in an electronics store still takes place in 2399.)

Dahj, I’m guessing because of seeing Picard on the TV screens, manages to track down Picard. “Do you know who I am?” she asks him. “Everything inside of me says that I’m safe with you.” So, who is Dahj? While we don’t know for sure, the gash on her head and the fact that she has a connection with Picard suggests that she was once Borg.

Picard, however, seems to know who she is, and first heads to Starfleet Headquarters for help. “If she is who I think she is, she is in serious danger,” Picard says as Dahj fights two mysterious attackers who have some pretty impressive teleporting abilities. It’s unclear at the moment who is attacking her, but the next scene gives some clue as to who they may be.

The trailer than moves to space, to the brief image of what looks like a Romulan fleet heading toward a red, hazy planet. We know that the Romulan’s homeworld was destroyed in 2387 by a supernova (which incidentally is roughly 15 years before Picard takes place, and when Picard left Starfleet). Was Picard involved in the Romulan evacuation that likely took place? Is that why he’s since retired and has complicated feelings about the end of his time in Starfleet? And if Romulus was destroyed, what planet is shown here? Could it be Vulcan, the home of the Romulans ancestral cousins? Or somewhere else?

We then get a brief cut to what looks like Romulans working on a Borg drone. The masks the Romulans wear here are similar to the ones worn by those who attacked Dahj earlier, suggesting that they are from the same organization.

The trailer then abruptly cuts to a brief image of a banner celebrating Captain Picard Day, an annual celebration that was held on the USS Enterprise when Picard was stationed there. The cut is a nice Easter Egg for fans, but also goes the voice over of a woman saying to Picard, “Sometimes I worry that you’ve forgotten who you are.” This is another clue that Jean-Luc has been traumatized by something that happened to him before he retired to La Barre.