Harry Treadaway’s Romulan spy Narek was one of the more interesting characters in Star Trek: Picard. The Romulan Zhat Vash agent showed his duplicitous, manipulative nature by tricking Isa Briones’ Soji into revealing the location of the synthetic homeworld. But he found himself torn between his genuine feelings for her and his Romulan extremist philosophy. By the end of the series, he’d teamed up with the heroes in an attempt to stop Soji summoning the apocalypse and, while he’s absolutely not a good guy, he’s still got some interesting complexities.
All of which made it a bit of a head-scratcher that Narek just disappeared during the season finale’s final scenes, leaving viewers wondering where the hell he went. Now, however, showrunner Michael Chabon has opened up about this on Instagram, admitting to the error and saying what should have happened.
“Yeah. Narek. We know, we know. A casualty of the editorial process, alas. The intention was for him to be taken into Federation custody.”
This mistake is just one example of some pretty slack storytelling in the first season. For example, the characters seem to forget that Alison Pill’s Dr Agnes Jurati committed cold blooded murder mid-way through the season. They said she’d have to turn herself into the Federation, but by the finale, she’s smiling on the Bridge with the rest of them. And let’s not even get into the head-scratching development of giving Picard a synthetic body that’s exactly the same as his old one.
With Coronavirus slowing down all sectors of the entertainment industry, I hope Chabon and company are using this opportunity to take more time with the Star Trek: Picard season 2 scripts. The first season wasn’t a disaster by any means, but it really could have used a few more drafts to tighten things up a bit. Simply having a key character disappear from the plot apparently by mistake just seems a bit lazy.
