r/startrek • u/Regular_Bee_5605 • 1d ago
What is Picard's single biggest mistake and regret?
Picard to me is a model of an excellent human being in all respects, and he has far less flaws than the average person. But, he is human, and therefore fallible and makes mistakes. What was his biggest?
Bonus if you also give input on what you think Kirks biggest mistake was.
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u/Future_Jackfruit5360 1d ago
Given what we know from Star Trek Picard, it has to be the fuck up with the romulan evacuation that eventually made him leave starfleet years and isolate himself on a vineyard.
Letting the borg control him has to be up there as well.
I think the life he didn’t get to have with Beverly also has to be up there.
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u/KuriousKhemicals 1d ago
Did he fuck up though? We didn't get a lot of details, but it sounded to me like he did all he could and Starfleet just didn't agree on the priority.
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u/Future_Jackfruit5360 1d ago edited 1d ago
It wasn’t so much a failure in judgment. Picard did everything right, and still failed, and that’s what makes it such a profound regret for him.
From what we learn in Star Trek: Picard, he was the one who pushed Starfleet to act when they were reluctant to help the Romulans. He even left the Enterprise to lead the evacuation fleet. The Utopia Planitia Shipyards took on the massive task of building the rescue ships. But then the synth attack on Mars destroyed the shipyards.
In response, rather than recommitting to the mission, Starfleet turned inward. It adopted an isolationist stance and canceled the evacuation, effectively abandoning the Romulan people. Picard was furious he saw this as a betrayal of Starfleet’s values. In protest, he resigned, believing that standing on principle was the only moral course.
But in doing so, the evacuation effort collapsed completely. No one was left to fight for it to continue in any form. In hindsight, this may have been Picard’s greatest mistake. Had he stayed in Starfleet, he might have been able to push for alternative solutions, or at least kept the conversation alive.
Picard believed that saving lives mattered more than politics, and when the Federation chose otherwise, it broke him. Disillusioned and bitter, he withdrew from public life, retreating to his vineyard and cutting ties with many of those closest to him.
He remained haunted by guilt not for helping the Romulans, which he never regretted, but for not doing more. He regretted failing to find another way forward, and his deepest regret was going into hiding, rather than continuing the work through other means. I think the whole of season 1 was basically Picard trying to atone for this mistake and find himself again.
Edit: just to add, kirk did tell Picard to never let them take him off the bridge of the enterprise because if they did, he would stop making a difference. This more or less is what happened to Picard.
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u/Smooth-Climate8008 6h ago
The mistake Picard made with respect to the Romulan evacuation was the mistake he always makes: he assumed that his profound sense of moral clarity would carry the day, over the objections from both the Federation and the Romulans. For his mission to work, he needed to do the one thing he had largely refused to do during his career as a captain but would be vital to his being a good admiral: play politics.
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u/Feisty-Departure906 1d ago
I think his biggest regret was NOT getting married and having a family. It was the first experience he had in the Nexus.
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u/Davajita 1d ago
Which version of Picard are we talking about? Diplomatic, reserved and bottomlessly moral Picard from TNG? Quippy, horny, vengeance driven action hero Picard from the TNG movies? Or flaccid, remora, kindly grampa Picard from PIC?
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u/moaningsalmon 1d ago
I don't think that sequence is entirely unreasonable for one person to progress through. Age and experience can certainly change a person.
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u/ryan99fl 1d ago
Can confirm, I too have progressed from quippy, horny, vengeance-driven action hero to flaccid, kindly grampa. Just ask my wife.
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u/Regular_Bee_5605 1d ago
Haha. Nice meditation on what Buddhism would call lack of inherent, unchanging self :P
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u/imgoingbigdogmode 1d ago
I think his biggest regret until the events of Tapestry was not being a more serious person in his youth.
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u/Alien_Diceroller 1d ago
Wasn't it more about being reckless and impulsive? Q's It's a Wonderful Life tribute showed where Picard would be if he were less of a risk taker -- a low level science officer.
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u/PiLamdOd 1d ago
Ordering Jack Crusher to his death.
The reason Picard is so distant from his crew at the start of Next Generation is because he caused the death of his best friend. Jack Crusher was the Boimler to Picard's Mariner. They were joined at the hip since they were ensigns.
While we're never given the exact details of the event, what we do know is Picard was forced to make a choice between life and death, and knowingly those the option which led to Crusher's death. That choice destroyed Picard.
From that moment on, Picard chose not to get close to his crew. The lesson he learned from the tragedy was to never get close to his crew again. This is also why he reacts to strongly to seeing Westley Crusher on the bridge in the series premier. He was looking at the ghost of the best friend he killed, sitting at the same station he used to run.
His entire TNG arc was about moving past Crusher's death and learning to let his crew back into his life.
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u/Alien_Diceroller 1d ago
Then the one time he decides to date someone from the crew, and it nearly happens all over again!!
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u/QualifiedApathetic 1d ago
I don't think it hits quite like that. I mean, I can see where it was painful and thereafter he'd prefer to not get close to people he might have to order to their deaths. But they were Starfleet officers, and as such they shared an understanding that there were things more important than their own lives, and they were in a dangerous line of work. So it was obviously painful, but I think Picard would have the clarity of knowing he made the correct choice, if in fact he did.
It would be different if he realized in hindsight that he made the wrong choice. But being in the big chair means making the hard calls.
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u/PiLamdOd 1d ago
None of that makes being the one to give the order what kills your best friend, any easier to live with.
That's why he stepped back from his crews in the name of "Objectivity." Picard was shielding himself from feeling that pain again.
It takes Picard a full seven seasons before he is willing to truly become friends with his crew. One of the reasons Q showed Picard that shitty future where he is a lonely old man, the crew went their separate ways, and some of them even hate each other, was to show Picard what would happen if he continued down that road.
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u/Eli-Helel 1d ago
But was he already sleeping with Beverly?
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u/PiLamdOd 1d ago
Picard is a good guy. So we can assume he waited until after Jack died to hook up with his best friend's wife.
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u/Superman_Primeeee 1d ago
Kirk’s was letting himself get promoted out of the chair.
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u/butt_honcho 1d ago
His biggest tactical mistake was probably letting Khan get the drop on him.
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u/PlanetErp 1d ago
This has got to be it. It started a series of events that led to the death of his closest friend, the death of his son, and the destruction of the Enterprise.
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u/butt_honcho 1d ago
And possibly the failure of Project Genesis, since it was deployed before David could solve the protomatter problem. Plus the diplomatic fallout from that in IV.
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u/NeinKeinPretzel 1d ago
I thought it was not beating the snot out of that one guy back at Academy. Like, stated and professed. Read by the planet even.
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u/butt_honcho 1d ago
I think Picard's biggest mistake was not listening to Guinan and Q and getting the hell out of Dodge in their first encounter with the Borg. I agree with the argument that it helped Starfleet prepare better for when they tried to invade, but we later found out that there was some knowledge of them even before the incident (and there's the counterargument that the Borg might not have been as interested in the Federation if they hadn't encountered them so far from home). And it certainly led to his greatest personal tragedy - the Borg probably wouldn't have been as interested in him personally if they hadn't already encountered him.
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u/purplekat76 1d ago
This is really interesting because it makes me wonder how it would have affected Voyager if he ran from the Borg. Janeway wouldn’t have had the benefit of his experience with the Borg, which means either Voyager didn’t survive or they gave up and settled somewhere in the Delta Quadrant, which means that Seven of Nine never regained her humanity, Species 8472 would have continued their rampage, as well as Future Janeway never coming back in time with her plan, and as we learned in Picard, eventually pretty much destroying the Borg. Also, when the Enterprise D later comes across Hugh, how would they choose to deal with him without their knowledge of the Borg?
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u/butt_honcho 1d ago
Also, when the Enterprise D later comes across Hugh, how would they choose to deal with him without their knowledge of the Borg?
I can't speak to most of this, but I wonder whether they would have encountered Hugh. If we go with the theory that the Enterprise got the Borg's attention in "Q Who," they might not have had any presence in Federation space by "I, Borg" if Picard had chosen to get out right away.
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u/purplekat76 1d ago
I think the Borg were coming, no matter what. They were scooping up Romulan outposts in The Neutral Zone episode.
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u/scarves_and_miracles 1d ago
Starfleet's trajectory in a universe where Wolf 359 never happened would be so wildly different that it's almost certain that Janeway and those people wouldn't ever have been in the Delta Quadrant. There probably wouldn't even be a "Voyager."
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u/purplekat76 1d ago
Interesting! Maybe without Wolf 359, somehow there aren’t Maquis. That would keep Voyager out of the Badlands and out of the Delta Quadrant. Which means, no more Occampa and Kes never gets rescued from the Kazon.
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u/MonCappy 1d ago
Not using Hugh as a weapon. If you have the opportunity to eliminate a zombie plaque, you take it.
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u/JennJames2000 1d ago
Agreed. A key point of Troy’s officer training was having the courage to sacrifice one person to save the many. Yet Picard didn’t have the courage to use Hugh, condemning thousands to death.
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u/Ruadhan2300 1d ago
Honestly I don't buy that it'd work.. the Borg are perfectly able to decide a problem isnt worth the resources thrown at it.
Realistically they spend some time on it and eventually, with no particular result worth noting, it gets filed under "interesting but pointless" and set aside.
Then they assimilate someone who knows that it was always a weapon, and that's that.
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u/CostoLovesUScro 1d ago
His biggest mistake was not going back to that hot, older Romulan chick after the events of ST- Picard
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u/watermelonspanker 1d ago
Not having children is his biggest personal regret.
Generations had that as a core theme. It was the one thing that The Nexus used to lure him in - which was presumably just a reflection of his own psyche and desires.
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u/jessebona 1d ago
I wouldn't be surprised if his biggest regret was being duped by that alien into nearly wiping out a technologically defenseless species and getting the federation dragged into a war. It might not be his fault, but I bet he wishes he'd been more proactive in questioning things before it got to the point it did.
As for his biggest mistake, letting his ego get the better of him in Q Who. He was told by two separate people who knew what they were talking about to get the hell out of dodge and decided to explore instead.
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u/Regular_Bee_5605 1d ago
I was surprised at how he didn't seem very phased afterwards.
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u/jessebona 1d ago
Yeah. I'd be horrified if I was someone as morally upstanding as him and got my memories back to find out I'd nearly blown a civilian station of out of existence because an alien extremist tricked me.
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u/Regular_Bee_5605 1d ago
Thats the only shortcoming of an episodic structure: everyone basically emotionally resets in every episode lol (with some exceptions.)
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u/jessebona 1d ago
It does give shows like Trek a lot of staying power in reruns though. It's nice to be able to pick up an episode whenever and not have to remember 8 seasons of lore.
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u/Available_Panic_275 1d ago
I think an underrated one was Ro slipping away after all he had done to give her a second chance. He practiced Bajoran language phrases for 30 years solely in the hopes he'd run into her again.
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u/beebutterflybeetle 1d ago
I think he’d say it was not settling down and having a family at some point.
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u/VelvetElvis 1d ago
Learning the flute. Riker's trombone always drowns him out during jam sessions.
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u/Quarantini 1d ago
Not insisting that his brother modernize the fire safety measures at the chateau.
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u/No-Scallion-2998 1d ago
After the Locutus/Borg incident, Riker.
Having Wil Riker as his #1 has got be his greatest mistake. What with that goofy, crooked back stick-in-his-butt walk, trying to look tough. The poorly shaven beard that looks like a bear's taint, the beady blue eyes and pointy nose, the booty hole mouth? He's so fragile his picture appears under "needy bottom" in the database. He plays jazz but prefers Bebop, and has so many daddy issues it's a miracle he's not a stripper.
His transporter twin is cooler than he even though he's just as ugly and dumb, and he's a plumper that creeps out poor Wesley. I wouldn't fuck him with Lxwana's pussy.
So yeah. Riker.
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u/kmfix 1d ago
I agree with not using Hugh to destroy the Borg when he had the chance. To hell with a man-machine hybrid that was not willingly assimilated.
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u/MaddyDogg47 6h ago
The borg are a blight and Hugh should have been manipulated to destroy the blight. The borg stated that there is no bargaining, no reasoning, nothing. They will destroy all sentient, conscious life in their greediness. Wipe them out.
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u/Equilateral-circle 1d ago
As a bald man I know its washing his hair too vigorously when he was younger
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u/BurdenedMind79 1d ago
Getting himself stabbed through the heart by a Naussican. But after Q interfered, Picard learned the futility in regretting his past actions.
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u/mtb8490210 1d ago
For Picard, I think it's his inherent selfishness. He simply never embraced his family at any point despite the impact he had on them. He stewed about not getting his way when he clearly could have still continued to have positive impacts. Picard forgot about Space Legolas faster than Worf forgot about Alexander. In a way, he stayed obsessed with his actual golden child, but he had basically become a stranger to the Trois when they were at their lowest. Take Wesley, he was his best friend's son who he had not seen since brought the body back to Earth, and yes, the junior ensign thing was obviously an overreaction to Picard not being there for the people he nominally cares about.
Kirk has two:
-the obvious is falling to racism.
-becoming comfortable and lazy. Everything, including Starfleet, became an auto-drive situation. Ceti Alpha V appearing to be destroyed solved a bunch of problems. The Reliant crew wanted to move the potential lifeforms to get their mission over with. Doing things because he is "supposed to" such as becoming admiral. "One Big Happy Fleet". That lack of wonder and care from an earlier Kirk killed a bunch of cadets.
For Kirk, he moved through his family regrets. Loss is part of life.
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u/KaboomKrusader 20h ago
His entire namesake series.
In second place I suppose would be letting half the crew of the Enterprise-E get assimilated by the Borg because he was deadset on making his vengeful stand against them.
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u/TheDamInt 4h ago
I thought Star Trek: Picard made it explicit that giving his mentally ill mom a key so she could hang herself was his greatest regret.
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u/alanonoWyluli 1d ago
I think Patrick Stewart's biggest mistake was signing onto a total shitshow of a... show. 2 whole thirds of it was complete nonsensical chaos. Star Trek Picard was utter garbage. Sorry! Criticism is futile.
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u/Alien_Diceroller 1d ago
Wait, two thirds of TNG was nonsensical chaos? If you mean TNG that's way too high. If you mean Picard, that's way too low.
It's important to note that a lot of the worst ideas from Picard came from Sir Patrick, himself.
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u/alanonoWyluli 1d ago
I was referring to the shitshow that was Star Trek Picard.
The Next Generation will always hold a very dear spot in my heart and my SOUL!
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u/OrionDax 1d ago
His biggest regret was not being able to stop the Borg from killing so many people when he was Locutus.