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Chosen One of the Day: A Santiagos Cabrera on Star Trek: Picard
Star Trek: Picard wrapped its largely acclaimed first season last week, and the show had a lot going for it. There was Patrick Stewart’s return as our beloved hero, Jean Luc Picard, there was not one, but two hot romulans (one emo, one elf), there was intrigue, and drama, and Data. But perhaps its greatest triumph occurred in Episode 8: a Santiagos Cabrera.
Cabrera plays the ship’s captain, broken, acerbic and funny, haunted by something in his past. This is Cristóbal "Cris" Rios:
He also plays five separate versions of digital holograms on his ship, all with varying personalities and accents depending on their duties. That’s a whole mess of Santiagos Cabrera. And in the eighth installment of the series, we got to see the lot of them!
There’s EMH — a very English-sounding Santiago Cabrera. Then Ian in engineering, who is (as per Star Trek’s engineering guidelines) Scottish. We’ve got hospitality who is hilariously American. Enoch who handles navigation and is Irish. And then there’s Emmet who is generally over everything and speaks Spanish very rumbly and attractively. He’s the tacticians expert. They all commit to their work very handsomely.
First of all: thank you to the producers of Star Trek: Picard for writing in so much accent work for Santiago Cabrera — sure he’s the addict artist from Heroes but he’s also Lancelot and Aramis. Let his accent work sing! Secondly: shout out to Wardrobe for the various looks we have going for these holograms. That beanie that Ian wears is *chef’s kiss*.
Raffi — played by Michelle Hurd — has tracked down all five holos in an attempt to figure out why Rios is angsting in his cabin, and without getting too granular into the plotting, she’s putting the pieces Rios has fractured himself into together to create the image of a man. By hanging out with five very attractive moving images of the same man. An inspiring commitment to the work, am I right?
If you’re not watching Star Trek: Picard, it’s not a bad time to pick it up. We can all take a little escape into Santiago Cabrera’s eyes, and his eyes, and his eyes, and his eyes, and his eyes, and his eyes.
I think Enoch might be my favorite because we both make the same “I’m so happy” face.
