I am at least half a dozen episodes of Star Trek: Picard behind so it is at least possible, if not highly likely, that the show has gone in a way I didn’t expect after watching the trailer.

But deep in the middle of that surprisingly long trailer for the new Picard series, a character says “trust no one.”

Oh, aye, you know what that means. It means don’t trust them, the person saying it. If Star Trek: Picard does not bow to that trope, it means that maybe thrillers have moved on.

Because there are certain things in thrillers that come in to fashion because they were originally surprising and then eventually become unsurprising, become obvious, become risible.

Follow. Previously on “trust no one”, they just meant it. Whoever said it, whichever character they were saying it to, it was serious and true. You could object to how no such character ever follows this up with a list of suspects. And the character who told this never remembers anything about until the shock/obvious revelation later of who is the baddie.

I’m wondering now if there a moment in time where “trust no one” was not true, yet not serious. Because it seems in retrospect that we got very quickly to today’s version where “trust no one” is practically a guarantee that whoever said it is the specific person who should not be trusted.

Audiences are clever. You and I have seen a hundred thousand billion dramas and read at least two books, so we know the significance of tiny details, we know about face value and surprises and reversals and twists.

I once had a mentor who wanted me to change something in a script I was working on. It was a scene in a hotel bedroom and I remember that the way it played, you at first thought that there was a man and a woman about to, er, pass the time. Later you realise much more and I hoped that there would come a moment where you suddenly realised that all of the playful things said between the characters was actually really vicious.

This mentor wanted me to have the guy lose his socks. The mentor was far more experienced than me, so maybe this was the secret of his sock-cess, but what you’re picturing now is how he tried selling it to me. My male character is a klutz and he’s searching the bedroom for a sock while half in and half out of his trousers. If you just pictured him falling over, you’ve got it.

I said no.

If someone who is a better and vastly more experienced writer than you suggests something, you will listen at the very, very least from politeness. But this time, no.

“I’ve seen that before,” I explained.

“You have,” said the mentor, “but the audience hasn’t.”

Bollocks.

Not only has the audience seen that particular situation, they’ve seen every version of it. At this distance and having said to you what the real aim of that scene was, I’m actually quite pleased with myself because for its time, I think I was at least trying to do something a little fresh, a little new.

But it would have to have been for an earlier epoch before the sock story would’ve actually been new.

I like that things move on. I adore when drama respects the audience. But isn’t half a moving target. Trust me.