Star Trek: Picard Season 3's Criminal Underworld Is Pretty Goofy, Huh?
Is it just me, or is the new season of "Star Trek: Picard" feeling a bit claustrophobic? While the two seasons that preceded it anchored much of their action on-planet, the third has so far taken place pretty much entirely aboard strangely dark and dour spaceships. When the story does get to leave the confines of the U.S.S. Titan, we're transported to another new set: District Six of M'atlas Prime, a hard-partying place where the criminal element runs wild.
Only, "Star Trek" has always been a franchise by, for, and about the brainiacs among us, and that shows when it comes to District Six, which comes across like a geeky-generic interpretation of what a den of iniquity might look like. When Raffi (Michelle Hurd) goes undercover there on a series of missions, viewers are introduced to a delightfully corny criminal underworld that is played deadly serious. I say this with love, because in my opinion, corny "Star Trek" is the best "Star Trek." District Six is an unintentionally funny place, and I need to know everything about it ASAP.
Drugs, dancing, and Blade Runner-lite aesthetics
On close inspection, there are lots of details from Raffi's missions to District Six that stand out as both attention-grabbing and silly. It's a "Blade Runner"-like world full of neon lights, skyscrapers, flying cars, and random, blinking green lights. The aesthetic of the always-open club Raffi finds herself in seems to be a mash-up of retro American styles – dancers wear their hair teased high and have big sleeves to match – and (very light) futuristic hedonism.
As Raffi makes her way through the crowd in the season premiere, undercover as a junkie, she bumps into a man who says roughly, "Watch it, freak, I'm not your dealer!" In the background of the scene, you can just barely catch several audible exchanges from nearby partiers, including what I could swear is someone calling someone else "daddy," plus a man saying what sounds like (I'm not kidding), "I've got some various drugs, what do you want?"
Okay, sure, a drug dealer would never talk like that, but to be fair, this place does seem to have various drugs. Most people seem to be partying at a pretty mellow level, but there's also a shot of a woman who's passed out, and we see patrons spraying some substance in one another's eyes. When we meet one of Raffi's contacts, he's inhaling from something that looks a bit like a hookah tube, and he makes the woman prove she's not a narc by giving her a cartridge worth of the eye spray, which he calls Splinter. "I named it splinter because it feels like you're being ripped apart and pulled back together again and again and again," he says dramatically. So is it an upper or a downer then? Somebody get Raffi a glass of water, stat.
We have so many questions about District Six
I have so many questions about District Six, actually. There are open flames and passed-out patrons that make it seem like a dangerous place, but the same area also seems to feature some well-off, happy club-goers: what's the vibe here? We know it's not exactly the place for a chill Friday night out, because before episode 2 ends, both of Raffi's contacts have been beheaded, with her unexpected savior, Worf (Michael Dorn), casually killing several more goons along the way. But if a person wanted to visit District Six just to figure out what the random fluffy, dust-like particles floating in the air are, for example, could they do so safely?
"I like human things, retro things!" Raffi's drug lord contact says before losing his head, and I feel a deep need to know what he means. His hookah lounge-type den seems to entirely consist of bubbly fish-tank-like decorations and something hanging from the dance floor ceiling that looks like exposed power lines. He wears a not-so-clean-looking fur coat and seems to be drinking from a green glass soda bottle. This place is kind of nonsensical, but it's also a breath of fresh air compared to the blandly shiny starship sets. If "Star Trek: Picard" doesn't make it back to M'atlas Prime again, it at the very least definitely deserves a visit from the "Star Trek: Lower Decks" crew.