Our 11-year-old son giddily tossed the 2021 Hallmark Christmas Ornament catalog my direction. “Dad, there are lots of Star Trek ornaments in it-I know that you love Star Trek”, he said. Internally I was thinking, it’s not that I like Star Trek more, it’s just that we have more Star Trek Christmas Ornaments than any other franchise*, but I didn’t correct him. That got me thinking about Star Trek: The Wisdom of Picard, a book of quotations from everyone’s wisest and most follicly challenged captain.
As I started thinking about The Wisdom of Picard I started wandering down the path of Star Trek, as compared to Star Wars. Then I remembered the classic Phineas and Ferb episode Nerds of a Feather that put middle Earth fans against science-fiction fans. The entire episode is awesome if you haven’t seen it and is worth seeking out on Disney +.
In reading The Wisdom of Picard I was reminded about how smart and well-written Star Trek is. You can turn to any page in the book and find instances in the show where the writers created various moods with their words. Some of the quotes in the book are for Star Trek fans and will require a little knowledge in order to place it in the cannon, but can also be transferred to everyday life.
A Klingon may not be good at accepting defeat, but he knows all about taking risks. Let’s pretend that you have no idea how a Klingon acts or what they are. The structure of that sentence is strong notwithstanding the Klingon reference. If you mentally put any noun in that sentence, in the place of ‘Klingon’, it makes sense and is an empowering life lesson. I may not be good at accepting defeat, but I know all about taking risks.
Some of the quotes require no Star Trek knowledge at all. Who is to say that this history is less proper than the other? That quote is from Yesterday’s Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation; Season 3; Episode 15. I don’t recall that episode, but the syntax and philosophical vibe of it implies to me that Q was somewhere nearby.
The Wisdom of Picard has pictures of about half of the pages. Some of the photos are from the new Picard show, and some are from the Star Trek movies or Star Trek: The Next Generation TV show. If you’re a fan of Star Trek or Picard this book needs to be on your radar or in your Holodeck library. It’s square with glossy pages and its bite-sized content makes it at home on a Trekkies coffee table or on the back of their toilet. Granted, the latter description might not seem like a compliment, but it’s a place where I’ve read the book, and if it’s good enough for me then….
All of this also got me thinking about the other philosophical science-fiction pundit, Yoda. He’s got a couple wise sayings, the main one which is arguable much more famous than anything Picard has said. However, in looking at a sampling of Yoda’s most famous quotations, they stack up evenly to the ones in The Wisdom of Picard. In both camps, a very similar percentage of them are aimed squarely at the fans, while others can be interpreted by anyone or transferred to any situation.
The Wisdom of Picard is edited by Chip Carter and available on Adams Media, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
There are affiliate links in this post.
*closely followed by The Nightmare Before Christmas and not including Peanuts, which has its own tree.
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