'Star Trek: Picard' season 2 continues to deliver

So much of the 10-episode first season of "Star Trek: Picard" in 2020, on what's now Paramount+, was devoted to cleaning up the collateral damage of 2002's "Star Trek: Nemesis" and J.J. Abrams' 2009 "Star Trek" reboot that it left me wondering what a second season of "Picard" might look like.

I shouldn't have been surprised, because even without those loose ends that were demanding to be addressed, the second season of "Picard" (which premiered March 3) is still much like the first.

It offers a wildly uneven balance of unabashed nostalgia for Patrick Stewart's Jean-Luc Picard (from "Star Trek:...