Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard / Image credit: CBS All Access

There’s a moment during the second act of “Maps and Legends” — the second episode of Star Trek: Picard, the latest web series in the long-running franchise available for streaming through CBS All Access — where things get a little blue.

During a meeting at Starfleet Headquarters in 23rd century San Francisco, a weary and desperate Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) asks Fleet Admiral Kirsten Clancy (Ann Magnuson) for help. Now, this is Star Trek, so a lot is going on here contextually, but the general gist is this:

After having witnessed the murder of Dahj Asha (Isa Briones) — a female organic synthetic android and the potential daughter of Picard’s friend and colleague, the late Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner) — by masked assassins, Picard suspects a nefarious plot involving between Data’s creator Bruce Maddox (John Ales), the Romulans and other possibly shady actors. In his conversation with Clancy, Picard asks to be reinstated as a Starfleet officer with the command of a small reconnaissance vessel and crew for a one-time special mission. He also concedes that being reinstated to his former rank of admiral could be considered too on the nose, so just receiving the lowly rank of captain once again would be acceptable. Directly following this exchange, Clancy stares icily at Picard before blasting him with the following remark:

“Sheer fucking hubris!”

Now admittedly, watching a character as revered as Picard display a wilful level of pride and arrogance unbeholden to his previous career exploits is a little jarring. Still, it’s the sudden f-bomb curveball that really made my head spin. And while it’s certainly not the first “colourful metaphor” uttered in the world of Trek writ large, I continue to feel a niggling sense of unease when presented with this blue language of the future.

So, to better understand why this use of edgy expletives is so profoundly dislocating within creator Gene Roddenberry’s utopian sci-fi vision, we need to run through a few questions. What does it mean to offend the sensibilities of a media consumer? And, in turn, is it then possible for works of media deemed to be offensive to a person or group/s of persons to have value? If so, how does the use of vulgarity and profanity in media relate to concepts of aesthetic taste and cultural capital? And lastly, how do transgressive works help to define the relevance of contemporary media such as the Trek franchise?