Wednesday, July 3, 2024

Star Trek: Picard and Macbeth

“Penance.” By Akiva Goldsman, Terry Matalas, and Christopher Monfette. Perf. Patrick Stewart and John de Lancie. Dir. Doug Aarniokoski. Star Trek: Picard. Season 2, episode 2. Paramount+. 10 March 2022. DVD. Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment, 2023.

Shakespeare doesn't appear often in Star Trek: Picard, but we just have to take what we can get.

In this episode, Q returns for yet another test—either of humanity in general or of Picard specifically. When he starts to allude to his plan (in his usual ambiguous manner), Q suggests that Picard is guilty of something and that his guilt is akin to Macbeth's. For Q, the answer to Macbeth's query "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?" is decidedly in the negative:


I've noted that Star Trek: Picard is, in general, all kinds of terrible, and Season Two seems to be the worst of the three. That applies to its use of Shakespeare. Instead of carrying this allusion forward, making oblique or direct reference to it during the rest of the season and wrapping the season up with some great Shakespeare-related insight, this is it.

Perhaps there will be something in Season Three that provides more Shakespeare. We can but hope.

The Episode at IMDB.

For more connections between Star Trek and Shakespeare, head to Shakespeare and Star Trek Complete.

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Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
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