It’s rare to get a story so focused on old age. Star Trek is famed for tackling big philosophical concepts, and I’m sure that topics of this nature have been tackled in the series before, but this was an entire series based around getting old, regrets, and saying goodbye. There was action, yes, but a reasonable amount – and Picard never went beyond his limits. He’s an old man, and the nature of his mission has changed.

At the start of the series, Jean-Luc Picard has been knocked by twin blows: the sacrifice of Data in Star Trek: Nemesis and the Romulan catastrophe first introduced in Star Trek (2009). He has retired to his chateau to die, having lost any sense of purpose or drive. It takes the introduction of Dahj – Data’s android daughter – and her subsequent murder to bring him out of retirement, coming ‘back in from the cold’ despite his terminal brain condition.

But that retirement has been littered with mistakes. Former colleague Raffi felt betrayed, left behind by his actions; Starfleet felt that he shirked his duties before swaggering back in to demand a ship and a recommission; Elnor and his colony were left behind by Picard, never visited again. Most of Picard’s reunions are tinged with regrets and negativity, and this series is about him putting things right. He regains his strength and vitality over the series – literally reborn in his final transfer to a synthetic body free of his brain condition – as well as his capacity for inspiring humanistic speeches. By the end of the series, he’s Picard again, inspiringly sacrificing himself for the greater good, holding off a Romulan fleet with a clever trick, averting multiple wars. Some people say this isn’t Star Trek, and they’re right. It’s modernised Star Trek – there’s swearing, sex, violence, dynamic camerawork – but the core is still there, those guiding lights of humanism, decency, compassion. In The Next Generation’s ‘I, Borg’, Picard wonders whether letting Hugh go was the right thing to do when the alternative was destroying the Borg once and for all. Star Trek: Picard tells us that of course it was the right thing to do: Hugh has begun a Borg reclamation project, helping to restore the humanity of various ex-Borg. Picard realises here that the Borg are victims, taken against their will to serve a greater evil, and not the monsters he previously thought.

In its elegiac way, Star Trek: Picard embraces death as part of the human experience. Data, having always yearned to be more human, seeks that finality in order to complete his quest and Picard, having finally been able to say goodbye to his old friend, helps him to end his life. This represents a healing of both Picard and Data’s stories; in Star Trek: Nemesis, Data was killed suddenly, without warning, and this was a rupture in both the narrative and the meta-narrative – both Picard and the fans wanted more. So that final scene, where Data ages and dies to Isa Briones’s moving rendition of ‘Blue Skies’ as Picard removes his backup chips, allows us to move on.

Star Trek: Picard is not free of errors. There are pacing issues and weak character work in the supporting cast. But it is, at its heart, a wonderful elegy about ageing, moving on, and saying goodbye.