Star Trek: Picard season 3 review: A sendoff that’s much more than a nostalgia trip
The Patrick Stewart-led Paramount Plus series finally finds its stride in its last go-round
TV Reviews Wesley Crusher
Among the upper echelons of sci-fi television, is there a series as beloved as Star Trek: The Next Generation? Maybe. But the classic franchise is on a pretty short list. Some 35 years after the premiere of that show, audiences are apparently no less thirsty for Picard, Riker, and the rest of the Enterprise-D crew, as seen in Paramount Plus’ ambitious legacy series Star Trek: Picard, which reunites those heroes for a third and final season. Though early episodes may struggle to shake the writing and tonal tendencies that bogged the first two batches, Picard season three is, without question, the show’s strongest yet, recapturing a bit of that magic of The Next Generation and nicely utilizing its talented cast.
This time around, the show follows Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Riker (Jonathan Frakes) on a mission to rescue an old friend after receiving a distress call from Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden). It quickly becomes clear Crusher’s call for help is just a single piece of a larger, more sinister puzzle, and soon Picard is scrambling to reunite his old crew and align with new allies to escape the sights of mysterious new villain Vadic (Amanda Plummer).
In the beginning, Star Trek: Picard struggled with bringing the warm tones and characters of The Next Generation into the icy, harsher landscape of the modern Kurtzman-led Trek shows. This led to something of a clash, with Jean-Luc feeling like a fish out of water in his own series. For this last season, though, Picard veers away from the ensemble cast of new players from the first two seasons, opting instead to recenter its focus around uniting the crew of the Enterprise-D. It’s the best move the show could’ve made. By acknowledging and taking advantage of the strengths of the Next Generation cast, Picard blossoms, finally finding its stride.
Here, the plot-heavy and cynical storytelling feel (ironically) much more in the vein of The Next Generation. Episodes five and six, in particular, bear a remarkable resemblance in both structure and pacing to a famed installment of that famed show. And director Dan Liu’s ability to morph a modern story to fit a traditional form is indeed admirable. It’s bolstered by how Picard’s third season uses sound effects, display graphics, and music queues from the Next Generation, further embracing the idea that many fans are tuning in to catch up with characters they remember fondly from childhood.
That’s not to say that Star Trek: Picard is fan service or simply cashing in on nostalgia. If anything, the series continues to make the kind of bold, unorthodox choices for Picard & Co. that have caused frequent uproar among certain sects of devotees. But those same shocking, at times nihilistic moments are made personal and introspective by the acting chops of Stewart, Frakes, and the rest.
It’s difficult to pick a standout among a returning cast, who effortlessly seem to slide back into their roles, but Michael Dorn’s Worf is a particular scene stealer. His frank, no-nonsense attitude provides many of the season’s most memorable laughs. And it’s also a delight to see LeVar Burton’s Geordi La Forge, an underutilized presence on The Next Generation who gets time to show off both his dramatic and comedic chops.
At the center of it all, though, of course, is Patrick Stewart’s Picard, a character who (as previously mentioned) frustratingly lacked compelling relationships in the show’s early seasons. But with Jonathan Frakes’ Riker nearly constantly at his side, he shines. Though all the returning players from TNG are in distinctly different places from where we last left them 30-plus years ago, the dynamic that might benefit the most from attention in Picard season three is that of Beverly Crusher and Jean-Luc Picard. Crusher still doesn’t get quite the meaty dialogue and storylines she’s worthy of, but her increased significance here is a gratifying development.
Delving into the specifics of that relationships would be heading into spoiler territory, but rest assured that Picard has no qualms about drastically shifting the narrative with characters you thought you knew. (In this regard, we were particularly taken with the aforementioned fifth episode, “Imposter.”)
Still, despite this being far and away the show’s strongest season, Picard’s final bow does have its flaws. Newcomer Ed Speeler’s mystery character feels burdensome and repetitive when there are so many familiar faces we’d rather be catching up with, and Plummer hams it up as baddie Vadic. One new character who manages to deliver, however, is Todd Stashwick’s Liam Shaw, whose initially prickly exterior gives way to the kind of recurring Starfleet officer TNG often hosted.
Though it’s axed most ties to the ensemble from seasons one and two (Agnes, Cristobal, and the like are nowhere to be found), the presence of Raffi remains. And while she’s absolutely paired up with the right TNG vet, her character still feels a bit out of place among the larger ensemble. What’s more, the clunkiness of the dialogue is an occasional holdover from previous seasons, especially in the early outings.
More than anything, though, it’s Star Trek: Picard’s decision to finally embrace the audience’s affection for The Next Generation that helps it soar. From the use of archival clips of that show to music queues, callback characters, and visual references, this is a Picard that at long last lets itself savor the legacy of being a Star Trek series.
Star Trek: Picard season three premieres February 16 on Paramount+.
128 Comments
Yeah sure. Not falling for it this time!
I still don’t fucking understand how Q died.
100%. If you’re an omnipotent being that exists outside of causality and can see all of time in its totality, the only way you could die is if you were never actually those things.
If Q can see outside of time and causality, then he saw how terrible Picard season 2 was going to be, so he must have died in order to escape it.
That’s fine.
Neither did the writers.
I was pretty OK with it. Q was always overly confident in his supposed omnipotence—it makes sense that he wouldn’t see that his own existence had an end. Besides, I always felt that explaining the Q—which was a large part of their arc on Voyager—diminished them as a concept/characters/villains. The Voyager crew technobabbling their way into the Q-Continuum and threatening them with “Q-weapons” landed like terrible fanfic.
Goddamned Voyager
I would have been ok with it if the writers had done anything to explain it, and why major things we had learned about the Q over the last 30 years had changed. There were some interesting places they could have taken it, including your thoughts about Q’s arrogance distorting his view of the world.But, as with all the plots on the show so far, the writing was lazy. This was just another unexplained short cut to get to the next twist. So I didn’t like it. No foundation was ever laid for Q’s sudden mortality, so why should we care about it?
Voyager did that to the Borg too. Plus the acting was awful with a few exceptions.My least favorite Trek series, though Picard’s season 2 was probably the single worst season of any of the series. Yes, that includes TNG Season 1.
Season one of TNG was rough but I will always give it a pass just because I think Encounter at Far Point works for a pilot and Conspiracy is one of the best episodes of TNG. I am torn whether its a good or bad thing that they never followup with the seeds of more invaders at the end of that episode. I always thought a TNG movie being about that could have been done. Could have been Star Trek meets a 70s espionage thriller
Heck, they could make an entire series out of what we saw in Yesterday’s Enterprise. I’m calling P+ executives now! DONT STEAL MY IDEA!
Conspiracy is a fucking blast. I love that whole episode, from the meeting on Dytallix B to Riker and Picard killing their bosses.
Same thing can be said of what Voyager did to the Borg. TBF TNG started to run them down, but nothing like with what Voyager did.
Explaining the Q was like explaining the Force with Midichlorians.
Spoilers!!!Honestly I don’t care. When I gave up on season 2, Raffi was in a truck with 7 of 9 crying about some shit again and I was like “I’m done”. Q died, Picards a robot. They keep finding more convoluted ways to bring back Brent Spiner. This show is such a mess. Honestly just gonna try season 3 because I love Worf
How dare characters have emotions.
Raffi didn’t have emotions. She had one emotion
Michael Dorn was a voice actor in Saints Row 2 and I worked at that studio while we were making that game. I didn’t get to meet him but everyone who did said he was great to work with.
Doesn’t matter. Q was always a stupid character.
I actually always likes Q on TNG. He was clearly designed as a throw back to all the “God beings” the original TOS fought but De Lancie just had such screen presence that it was fun to see him show back up. It was clear after TNG that Q only works when he is facing off with Picard. Picard season 2 reminded us that Q works great as a special guest on a one hour episode of TV and not as the “big bad” of a season of modern streaming TV(where an episode length idea gets turned into ten hours of streaming TV)
Is there anyone who genuinely liked the character rather than De Lancie’s performance? I mean Q sucked as a concept and a foil, but it was the awesome chemistry between him and Stewart that made it worthwhile.
The “Mad God Losing His Powers” Q of most of the season doesn’t at all fit with the warm&cuddly, “I just wanted to give you one last adventure and shake you out of your rut, Old Friend” Q of the final few episodes. It really felt like Hack Fraud Alex Kurtzman™️* wanting to have it both ways—or more likely, loving the idea of Picard having to undo a dystopian future Q created, but…how do we get Jean-Luc and friends back to the 24th Century, then? Also, this is not my Beautiful Starship! This is not my Beautiful Q! I could accept that Q was dying because everything dies eventually, even gods, and his losing his powers once they all got back to The Future! Of 2024! is an analogue to senior citizens not having the physical abilities they had when they were younger. But it’s like anything Kurtzman puts his hand to, as he goes from intriguing premise to piling ideas on top of ideas as we’re all wondering “How is he going to pay this off?”—to it all collapsing in an incoherent heap because he has no more idea how to pay it off than we do! It sort of worked for FRINGE because whenever he and Roberto Orci ran into a story wall they always had an alternate universe, reversal of the laws of physics, Deus Ex Leonard Nimoy, orthat they could pull out of their asses to carry the story forward. Honestly, I’d like Kurtzman’s writing more if he went back to that loopy inventiveness he had on FRINGE, which he tried with Lorca using the DISCOVERY to travel back to the Mirrorverse….
_____
* I know Kurtzman himself doesn’t write a lot of this, but he picked the Writer’s Room and it’s clear that he either picked only people who plot as incoherently as he does, or people like Terry Matalas who can bend with his style.
He Q-uit.
He lost it after his daughter found blue meth.
Entropy. Eventually, all your vibrating atoms are belong to us. I’m not looking forward to it either.
I don’t even remember that happening; it was all such a mess that none of it stuck in my brain.
His powers were so great that he was able to break the fourth wall and see how terrible the show was so he manipulated the writers into killing him and end his misery.
The Q had their lives threatened multiple times, across the entirety of the Star Trek series. So to quote a well known source of action movies…
“If it can bleed, it can die.”
My head canon is that since our Q sided with “Quinn” Q on Voyager about the ability of a Q to end one’s life on their own terms, our Q decided it was time to do just that, just not by turning human and committing suicide like Quinn did. Picard had no knowledge of the episode with Quinn in the Delta quadrant (remember Riker’s memory of the event was wiped) so he wouldn’t know about any of this and just accepted that a Q could die.
Q was pretty clear that the word “death” was a metaphor that made the experience more relatable to Picard. Q was heading into some unknown form of existence that would find everything he knew shorn from him. That’s death as far as we know it, but for all we know, it’s similar to Kelpien vaharai, except that you leave everyone and everything you’ve ever known.
Q showing up dying and asking Picard to figure out why would have been more interesting.(It was because he tried his bullshit with Sisko and Sisko clocked him.)
He should have done the scarecrow.
That whole weird plot was so tonally ridiculous last season.“I tried to incite your relative’s suicide and create a Nazi version of you that there was no guarantee would get unmade because I kind of love you” was not on my reboot bingo card. and yet.
SPOILER FOR THE LAST SCENE OF PICARD’S FINAL EPISODE …Yeah, about that. 🙂
There were some extremely puzzling choices in season 2 (the musical number?), but I guess I’ve come this far. RIP Borg Queen
The band’s singer was played by Patrick Stewart’s wife, hence the inclusion.
Is there seriously a musical number in season 2?
to Shadows of the Night. It’s actually pretty good.
Yep, done by Alison Pill, who is an incredibly gifted performer…but also not a singer? The explanation given for it also makes no sense.
Agnes, Cristobal, and the like are nowhere to be foundWell, yeah, but I don’t think – at least in the case of the two examples you name – that would come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the events of the previous season.
The wife and I gave up half way through season 2 of Picard. Honestly we struggled to finish season 1. My biggest issue was the new cast never seems as interesting or had the chemistry that almost any other Star Trek show I’ve seen had. The stand out for worst being Raffi, aka bargain basement Gina Torres. This isn’t just hate for new Paramount+ Trek either. Discovery didn’t really click with me but I respected them trying different things. The wife and I are really enjoying Brave New Worlds, the whole family loved Prodigy and Lower Deck is far funnier and entertaining than I expected it to be. I’m a sucker for nostalgia and the Enterprise-D crew. So if I just skip the rest of season 2 and jump in with three, will I miss anything important?
Each season has been self-contained, so I doubt you’ll miss anything important. Hell, Picard becoming a robot at the end of season 1 seems important, but had literally no ramifications to any future stories. If you finish season 2 you may not feel like watching season 3.
Terry Matalas stated on Twitter that you don’t need to have watched S1 or 2 at all in order to jump on board.
Obviously haven’t seen S3 yet, but there are a couple character send-offs in S2- whether you care is more or less about how invested you were in some of the newer characters.The last episode is worth watching primarily for a very great scene with Q and Picard; they chew the scenery exactly like they did 25 years ago. Honestly, just watch the last episode; there’s a bit of WTF and plot lines that were abandoned getting picked up again, but you don’t really have to have watched the entire season to follow it.
Just watch the finale of Season 2 to get the gist of what happened with the Borg and Q, that’s all you need. Or even just read the plot synopses online lol
Absolutely not…in fact, I think most people are able to lead much happier lives pretending like seasons 1 and 2 never happened.
Nilus, I got through 2…maybe 3? episodes of Picard when the first season came out (free trial at the time, now I subscribe which I mentioned previously). Sucked. I’m going to watch Picard season 3 and ignore the other 2 seasons. My point is, I’m right there with you with a ‘meh, pass’ towards 1 & 2, now let’s move on to 3.
I actually don’t think so, barring some standout scenes with deLancie that you can catch on Youtube.That’s the weird thing: the seasons of this show and others like it are as self-contained as single episodes of TNG. Reborn as an artificial lifeform? Eh, no big. Resolved until-now-hidden childhood trauma while simultaneously dealing with two of the Star Trek universe’s biggest threats? Done, what’s happening this week?
Picard is a Cylon is honestly stupider than Ghost Candle Sex.
If you didn’t watch seasons 1 and 2 the only things you’ll be unsure of in season 3 are:- Who is Laris and why is Picard in a relationship with her?
– What is Seven doing here?
– Who is Raffi?
– Wait, Riker and Troi had a son that died?
Luckily season 3 explains these as they’re introduced here.
I am so glad to hear that Season 3 of Picard is what the show should have been all along. I am looking forward to watching it, more confident that the show will not repeat the disaster that was the first two seasons.I know there are folks who enjoyed the first two seasons, and I mean no offense. In fact, I really wish I could say the same. I love TNG, and wanted so desperately for it to be good. But to me, the first two seasons are some of the worst television I have watched. The plots were nonsense. I think the fact that the show is wiping away most of the developments and cast from the first two seasons tells you everything you need to know about this.If the third season sticks the landing, I will be so happy.
Some fans actually suspect that based on the way the shots of the Borg Queen are framed in the Season 2 finale, they actually had no idea yet who it would be at the time the scene was shot and set it up so anyone’s face could be plugged in. I’ve heard worse theories.
I am looking forward to, 15 years down the line, tell-all books about the production of DIS seasons 1 and 2 and PIC seasons 1 and 2. There have got to be stories upon stories for both of those shows.
Three seasons in and now they decide it’d be a good idea to put the old band back together? How has it taken so long?
Patrick Stewart was adamant he’d only come back if the show had its own reason for existing beyond just being a “nostalgia bomb,” and it reportedly took a lot of convincing for him to even be okay with Riker and Troi’s cameos in Season 1.
“and it reportedly took a lot of convincing for him to even be okay with Riker and Troi’s cameos in Season 1.”Which, amusingly, led the one of the few endearing episodes of the entire series so far.
So the writers came up with two boring crap seasons to make up for that demand?
To be fair, Stewart *is* the show. If he made stipulations to doing the show in the first place, the showrunners were pretty much stuck with that.
Actors have free agency about the work they are willing to take and they wouldn’t have agreed to a nostalgia cruise from the outset.
So, in other words, Kurtzmann et al wasted everyone’s time and a ton of money on the first two seasons, and this is what it should have been from the jump. Still not gonna watch it.
People seem to say here that Stewart was against what apparently is going to happen in S3 with the ‘reunion’ so maybe it took them that long to force him into doing it.
I actually disagree: the true tragedy of this show is that there was absolutely potential for a solo Star Trek show with Picard exploring the universe in the twilight years of his life, assembling a new crew and going on adventures. There was no reason a show with that premise needed to be as fucking garbage as it ended up; it’s just a shame that the writers turned out to be…well, the writers for Star Trek: Picard.
Honestly a show with Picard and a new fun crew, with guest appearances from the old cast every few episodes would have been great. The problem is no one thought Star Trek Picard should be “fun”. They wanted dark and serious. I wonder if they get a break on filming costs if they keep all the lights at 50%
My fantasy version of a solo Picard show was akin to that DS9 episode “Explorers”, where Sisko and Jake traveled around in that ancient ship that ran off of solar wind. Just a much more lax, exploratory vibe of a guy just drifting through the universe. Sometimes there’s a situation he has to sort out, sometimes they’re just seeing the sights.I know they’d never go for something like that, but still: there has to be a middle ground between that version and the one where they fucking vivisect Icheb.
I’ve been hearing that Picard season 3 is course correcting and to quote Captain Kirk, “Don’t believe them! Don’t trust them!”This happens every time. The writers and some early reviews say things will be better, they’ll go in a new direction, and they’ll fix problems that were in the previous season. This happened with every season of Discovery, this happened with season 2 of Picard. But it always ends in disappointment. Sure, they might go in a new direction, but the writing is still terrible so it doesn’t matter.
In the music industry, this is know as the “Hey, Weezer has a new album and THIS one is a return to form!” cycle.Also… Kirk was… kinda wrong?
“Also… Kirk was… kinda wrong?”Yeah, but the Klingons are more clever and better writers than Alex Kurtzman and the Picard writers.
Bob Dylan has been getting those reviews longer than most people here have been alive.
My Cleveland Indians (or Nativists or Guardians or whatever) are rebuilding and the 2023 season will their time to shine.Ah hell…who am I kidding?
I got the feeling from the review that the writing during the first half of the season is just as bad as S1 and S2, but that something happened in the middle of the season – I’d bet either the full return of the TNG cast or a series of TNG-like episodes in how they interact – that got them interested again, and so they softfooted around a poor start.We’ll see.
“Complex just like ….Justice!” — Lars“A return to form.” — CriticsAnd then, St. Anger was released to the fans.
“Don’t believe them! Don’t trust them!”“The show is dying, Jim.”“Let it die!”Even after mostly enjoying Lower Decks, Prodigy and Strange New Worlds, I just have zero trust in any promises from the Picard and Discovery crews.The second season of Discovery course corrected initially, then drove itself into a ditch. The second season of Picard started really well, then completely stalled out as it tried to fill an entire season with a story arc built for three episodes.If the third season of Picard is a legitimate improvement, cool, but I’m waiting until the entire season has been completed before even thinking about diving in, because I’m tired of the trap door opening underneath me with every new season.
The problem with Discovery is that I don’t think SMG (the lead) is that good of an actress, at least in this role.In previous seasons, she was mitigated by having the great Jason Isaacs, Michelle Yeoh, Anson Mount, Dave Ajala carrying a lot of the load. 3 out of those 4 are gone, and I’m not sure Ajala will be back next season. Last season, he was only in about half of the scenes because they separated “rogue” Booker from Discovery.They also seem to have pushed Saru to the background as almost a passive character now, so he can’t help.Then again, they managed to marginalize another great actor in Oded Fehr into a lifeless wishy-washy character, so maybe its as much to blame on the writing.
Discovery, for all its faults, somehow gave us Strange New Worlds which is the closet new Trek to really feel like how Trek is suppose to feel. Edit: For some reason I keep calling that show Brave New Worlds 🙁
Maybe you’ve just got Maiden on your mind.
Picard S02E01 was fucking great. The rest…well…yeah…fucking disappointing.
There are people who have seen the entire third series, people who hate modern Trek with the burning fury of a thousand overloading warp cores, and they say that this season is fantastic end to end.
I trust them.
I read the entire main titles sequence is different, with Jerry Goldsmith themes, and not boring anymore. Is it true?
Well this comment didn’t age well. 🙂
“Episodes five and six, in particular, bear a remarkable resemblance in both structure and pacing to a famed installment of that famed show.”
I mean, this has to be Best of Both Worlds, right?
I assumed it was the ep where they discovered warp drive was killing space and they instituted a speed limit…
Star Trek: The Next Bureaucracy
Nope, Irish ghost episode.
The Irish ghost comes back as a monologuing CGI bad guy that they have to shoot lasers at. Peak Picard moment.
Yesterday’s Enterprise!
That was a bad-ass episode. Closest we get the TNG crew to play something Mirror.
I know everybody loves BoBW, but for me TNG didn’t get any better than that episode. The acting was superb, even Wesley for the brief moments he was in it.
I hate when Star Trek uses new villains, though
I just can’t wait to watch RLM’s reaction video.
I’m still waiting for them to watch Strange New Worlds, and grudgingly admit it’s pretty great. Or say “it sucks!” but then spend the whole time complaining about STD and Picard, because they didn’t actually bother giving the show a fair shake.
Well, they’re still hack frauds after all.
Or maybe they just have different taste than you and that’s ok.
I mean, our utter hatred for STD and Picard aligns pretty heavily.That’s kinda my point: I was NOT gonna give SNW the time of day, given that there was absolutely no expectations for it to be any different from the other live-action shows. It took a lot of convincing from people who’d seen it to go, “No I swear to god, THIS time they’ve actually made a Star Trek show.” And they had, and it’s awesome, but it’s really difficult to convince people of that given how heinous the other two shows have been. And honestly, who can blame them?
I’ve read somewhere the plot is like paperthin, predicable and everything is spelled out like were morons cause every nostalgia cast member has ot have a line in everything. So I’m not counting on it
I guess it’s fortunate for Ed Speleers that if he’s Googling his name, this article definitely won’t come up.
So the best thing about the season is the references/callbacks to a much better show, and the worst things are all the new/original stuff, plus the dialogue is still terrible?It’s gonna be a pass from me
The most annoying thing to me is that the “icy, harsher landscape of the modern Kurtzman-led Trek shows” is PERFECT for the one show they won’t even acknowledge, Deep Space Nine. You’ve got Picard continuing TNG, Prodigy continuing Voyager, and even Discovery sort of carrying on for Enterprise. And basically all DS9 gets is…. Quark on Lower Decks (which to be fair IS the best of the new Trek shows, but come on!)
Picard also showed on a billboard that Kassidy Yates’ shipping business is thriving more than ever, so that was nice.
I’m actually good with them ignoring DS9 entirely. Not because it’s bad; quite the opposite, it’s my favorite Trek show…and the fact is, these “writers” do NOT have the skills necessary to do it justice.
It’s also kinda done? That’s part of the cost of telling a serialized story: part of what makes your ending count is it being the ending. These were not people who looked forward to their next adventure (except maybe Jake, who could look forward to being Tony Todd) – they got to enjoy having boring, stable jobs in their later years.
That’s a good point actually. DS9 is my favorite and while I’d love to see it get more attention…it’s nice to know crappy writing has soured it.
“Quark on Lower Decks (which to be fair IS the best of the new Trek shows, but come on!)“SNW has a real chance of eclipsing LD with that much promise in its first season.
That show is a case study in why it’s so important to never write off something sight unseen: from the outside that looked like the BULLSHITTIEST show, a total hack fraud Rick & Morty ripoff, and yet it turned out not only to be hilarious, but the best encapsulation of the spirit of Star Trek we’ve had in the modern era so far (although SNW is getting pretty close…)
Well, we get to see both of them together in the crossover this year.
I think one of the reasons Lower Decks works generally well is it take place in the future which is much easier to stay in continuity than fucking around YET AGAIN in the TOS era.
Judging from that trailer and the header image, it looks like some force is draining all the light from the universe, and the old TNG gang has to reunite to bring it back before everything goes completely dark.
“Star Trek Picard forgot to pay the electricity bill”
That’s such an annoying trend with modern TV: the whole time I was watching that Obi-Wan show, I kept waiting for them to turn the lights onIt’s especially egregious because TNG is such a “comfy” watch: not just in tone, but it’s also just pleasant to look at. And that hasn’t been the case in a Star Trek show in a long time (even the otherwise great SNW is way too glossy)
Literally the first article that comes up when you google “Star Trek Picard” is: Don’t watch ‘Star Trek: Picard’ season three, it’ll only encourage themWhich is really the best advice I can think of.
Isn’t that an article on some hack clickbait website? It’s not coming up on Google any longer, regardless. Rotten Tomatoes has Season 3 at 100% so far, and that includes reviews from some fairly notable critics/writers. The first two seasons were garbage, but it does sound like this season is turned out pretty different.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. When are we going to get more Strange New Worlds?
god I am DREADING the fact that once this is over, there’ll be nothing stopping the Picard “writers” from infiltrating the writer’s room for Strange New Worlds. Please, PLEASE keep them out: I want at least one modern Star Trek show that’s being written by people who actually like Star Trek. Or, hell, even just people who can write.
Strangely enough other than that infamous death scene, the one thing that really sticks in my mind about S1 was Pike’s droopy hair and effeminate cry during that fantasy episode.
Despite ships of that era not having holodecks, that fantasy episode ends up being one of the greatest holodeck episodes ever made.Its right up there with “It’s Only A Paper Moon” or ” Bride Of Chaotica!”.
“It’s good this year, we promise!” is a pretty familiar refrain for Trek by this point
But it’s right half the time.
Isn’t Crushers kid basically a Q. Why doesn’t he save her.
I’m really happy for Michael Dorn.
Guy has spent years trying to get back into Trek, get a Worf series up and running, and whilst this may not be that show, he gets to be Worf again.
Man, that sounds like such a horrible Monkey’s Paw situation: he finally gets to play Worf again in a Star Trek show……but that show is Star Trek: Picard.
Many people who despise nuTrek, and have done since JJ got involved, swear blind that Picard Season 3 is fantastic.
Let’s call it broken clock syndrome.
Would it be too much to hope that the overwhelmingly positive reception to Strange New Worlds finally kicked their asses into gear?…I mean probably, but I wouldn’t mind being wrong on this. TNG technically didn’t get good until its season three…
There are a few ways to look at it.
Strange New Worlds is a show I enjoy, but I can see the criticisms of it, as it’s not Trek moving forward. It’s Trek covering old ground (and in some cases stealing the world of sci-fi authors without giving credit outside of a “yeah, she inspired the story” on Twitter) and not doing anything new. Plus it relies too much on nostalgia and shrinking the universe (there’s a relative to Khan on the bridge? Really?).
At the same time, not every show hits the ground running. Some shows take a couple of seasons to get going. Some shows are unwatchable at the start (Spartacus springs to mind) but after a few episodes everything clicks and things start to work.
Picard seasons 1 and 2 didn’t fail because they were “finding their feet” though. They failed because they were genuinely bad. There were bright spots here and there – even bad TV/movies can have good scenes and good performances – but overall they were a detriment to Trek as a whole.
The person running Picard Season 3 isn’t the same person who ran the first two seasons. Picard Season 3 is what happens when you get someone who doesn’t just respect what they’re doing, but loves what they’re doing.
Why is it so hard to believe a descendent of Khan Noonien Singh would be on the bridge a few hundred years later? Consider that in the real world, right now, there are roughly 16 million direct descendents of Genghis Khan.
“Though it’s axed most ties to the ensemble from seasons one and two (Agnes, Cristobal, and the like are nowhere to be found)“oh noooo those characters we all loved so much!!
It’s weird to me that hardly anyone is talking about how Amanda Plummer as the TNG crew’s final villain is some brilliant meta casting, her dad was the baddie in Star Trek VI.
when you watch next generation and then this show, it’s like, how did this dogshit ever get made.. oh yeah Alex Kurtzman is a hack.
Some character better say “I’m getting too old for these Star Treks” or I’m out.
Related question: All the praise I’ve seen for Strange New Worlds – which I’ve yet to watch – has included something about Lower Decks being as good or better than it. Despite watching all of Lower Deck I’m unable to recall a single moment of connection to the characters, world, or narrative. I know I watched ostensibly comedic things happen but there’s a sense of joylessness underneath all the characters yelling over one another.Anyway, who didn’t enjoy LW but likes SNW?
After having seen all of season 3, I find it funny that this season did everything that it was announced before season 1 aired that Stewart said he would not do in a Picard series – have him be in the captain’s chair of the Enterprise, say “Make it so”, “Engage”, etc. I love the idea that the showrunners had to convince him to do all of this for season 3 and it was the best season of the show, hands down.