“Star Trek: Picard” opens with Jean-Luc Picard, former captain of the Starship Enterprise, having a nightmare, and doesn’t that sound right. Through seven seasons of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and four movies, Starfleet’s most stalwart officer seemed always to be tripping out at key moments: pinging between time streams or dreaming alternate lives; forced into hallucinations by the Ferengi or assimilated by the Borg.

It was a storytelling device that reflected the endearing, if slightly contrived, makeup of the “Star Trek” franchise’s most popular character. Picard always did the right thing, but his moral certainty, bordering on self-righteousness, was balanced by doubt and guilt that could become temporarily crippling when it served the writers’ purposes.

And in “Star Trek: Picard,” which begins its 10-episode premiere season Thursday on CBS All Access, there’s a full complement of doubt, guilt and feelings of uselessness. Picard may be enjoying retirement on his family’s lovely French vineyard, but he’s not content. In the time since his last appearance (in the film “Star Trek: Nemesis” in 2002), calamities have transpired, involving an exploding star and a compromised rescue mission, that have tarnished his reputation. This cannot stand, of course, and before long — or at least by the end of Episode 3, the last one given to critics — he’s found a ship, put together a ragtag crew and set out on a mission of redemption.

The arrival of a new “Star Trek” series (the seventh), especially one whose roots go back to the 1980s, is an obvious occasion for nostalgia and Easter egg-hunting, and “Picard” does not disappoint. The dream scene brings Picard (Patrick Stewart) together with Data (Brent Spiner), the loyal android who sacrificed himself at the end of “Nemesis.” Poker, Earl Grey tea and “Blue Skies” are offered up as tokens for the faithful.