'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. (Update: word out of Comic-Con suggests that this is B4 in the box, but that doesn't mean Spiner is only playing him in the series.)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. We then have another sharp cut back to the Romulans, who appear to be running a jail or camp that holds a group of young prisoners that are related to the Borg in some way, as a sign reading, "This facility has gone 5843 days without an assimilation," suggests. The next shot reveals Picard talking to a Vulcan or Romulan woman that did the previous voice over telling Jean-Luc that he's forgotten who he is. The two here do not seem to be on particularly good terms—the woman's tone is hostile when she reminds Picard they she (and her people) hasn't forgot what Picard might have done to them. And who are this woman's people? The pointed ears and her hostility suggest that she's Romulan, although she is missing the classic eyebrow ridges that differentiate Romulans from Vulcans.  I'm going to go with Romulan for now, given what plays out with the rest of the trailer.The next part of the trailer involves bringing what will become Picard's ad hoc crew for the series. We get flashes of his new crew: Chris Rios (Santiago Cabrera); Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill); Raffi Musiker (Michele Hurd); and, Elnor (Evan Evagora), a Vulcan (or Romulan?) with a big shiny sword strapped to his back. We then turn to Picard in travel wear, a satchel on his back as he walks through a market on someplace that is certainly not La Barre and doubtfully on Earth. Where's he going and what he's looking for is unclear. We get a quick cut of Picard walking through a long corridor flanked by drones and led by a woman all in white. One guess I have is that this is an out of sequence scene, and might be from the facility Dr. Jurati works at; Picard's clothes are different from the scene before, for one thing, so it's certainly a possibility.We then cut to the Romulan, Narek (Harry Treadaway) who we see saying to another Romulan, "She has no idea what she truly is." The 'she' he is referring to is, of course, Dahj. We get proof here that she was likely once a prisoner of the Romulans, as we see her in an institutional-like setting, gash-free yet still wearing that linked ringed necklace we've seen previously. Dahj, apparently (and unsurprisingly), is a big effing deal to the Romulans. "She's the end of all!" another Romulan cries out in another scene. "She's the destroyer."And then we get the money shot—the thing the trailer has been leading up to—a Borg cube. This cube looks damaged, however, and there appears to be Romulan ships flying around it. Have the Romulans salvaged it, and are trying to harness Borg technology? Is this where that Romulan prison camp is?And then we get to the first big cameo of the trailer—Seven of Nine. "What the hell are you doing out here, Picard?" she asks as Jean-Luc is pouring her an adult beverage. "Saving the galaxy?" Having Seven of Nine here may just be some appreciated fan service, but it also ties into the Borg hints we've gotten so far: Picard and Seven of Nine are two humans that were assimilated and then disconnected from the Borg, so it makes sense for her to be here, as Dahj likely falls into this bucket as well. The trailer is at its crescendo now, and we get quick snippets of the inside of the Borg cube, Picard being manhandled by Romulans, a shot of Hugh the Borg (Jonathan Del Arco) being disassembled on what I assume is a Romulan surgical table, people running, Picard with a big bad phaser gun and then, in a scene that will squeeze every Trek fan's heart, Picard giving his trademark phrase: "Engage."And then, just when you think the trailer is at an end, we get a denouement of Picard playing cards with...Data! Or is it Data? I've speculated above about who the android disassembled in the drawer is, and this could be a re-assembled version of whomever that is—a reprogrammed Lore, B-4 doing an imitation of Data but not truly the real deal. Or maybe this is just a holodeck experience; Picard simulating spending time with his long-gone best friend.  Whatever the answer is, we'll have to wait until when the CBS All Access show premieres, which will be some time in 2020.