‘Picard’ Season 3: Where the Show Should Have Gone Before

The third season is the charm.

Star Trek: Picard season 2 nearly did me in. As much as I love Star Trek: The Next Generation, I didn’t know if I could take another season of this show that felt nothing like Star Trek.

Fortunately, that series ended after season 2. Sure, if you go to Star Trek: Picard on Paramount+ and select “Season 3,” you’ll find ten new episodes. But those episodes are an entirely different show. And they’re not an eighth season of TNG either. They’re a movie trilogy broken up into ten chapters.

I posted about the Next Generation movies when I first started this Substack. To reiterate, I liked Generations and loved First Contact, and then things got a little out of hand. The original Star Trek crew had a satisfying movie series (four out of six isn’t bad). The Next Generation fizzled out far too soon. At long last, they get the do-over they deserve.

I’ll have to get into some SPOILERS, so be warned. Go watch the show that’s labeled as Picard season 3 (even if you hated seasons 1 and 2 or didn’t even watch them), and then come back here so we can admire how wonderful these ten episodes are.

Kirk’s crew had that classic accidental trilogy of The Wrath of Kahn, The Search for Spock, and The Voyage Home. Those titles translate pretty well here. These episodes take us, essentially, from The Wrath of the Changelings to The Search for Data to The Voyage Home (with “home” in this case being the Enterprise-D). This is what we should have gotten in the late ’90s and ’00s.

Helmed by new showrunner Terry Matalas, season 3 has the incredibly difficult job of living up to the monumental legacy of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and on the whole, it succeeds.

As with any show, there are things I could quibble with—Crusher hiding Picard’s son from him for so long seemed out of character (sort of like Dr. Strange at the beginning of Spider-Man: No Way Home); the pacing was occasionally a little off; and where was Chief O’Brien? No, really, where were you, Miles Edward O’Brien???

But the many things they did get right make me so happy that I’d rather just focus on that.

1) Picard is finally the reunion show it should have been from the start.

When Star Trek: Picard was first announced, I was excited at the prospect of Patrick Stewart reprising the role of Jean-Luc Picard. But I also wanted everyone to reprise their roles. Those seven characters—Picard, Riker, Data, La Forge, Crusher, Troi, and Worf—have such perfect chemistry. They’ve all had their episodes where they’ve shone as individuals, but when you seat those seven around a conference table, magic happens.

Some of them guest-starred in the first two seasons, and Brent Spiner was even a regular in season 2 (albeit not as Data that year). But there were conspicuous absences. Data without Geordi? Picard without Crusher? Battle without Worf?

The first two seasons of Picard wanted to be something new, but it needed nostalgia bait to lure in audiences. The result didn’t work as a new show, and it didn’t work as a reunion show. If you want to make a new show, then make a new show. If you want to cash in on nostalgia, make a reunion show.

2) Season 3 is patient.

Reunions have to be earned, though. We’ve been away from these characters for a long time, especially as a full group, and they’ve been away from each other. They need reasons to reunite, and it’s going to take time for the story to bring everyone back into the fold.

The series handles the logistics well. Crusher serves as the catalyst to pull Picard out of retirement and back into space. So then Picard asks Riker for help. Meanwhile, Worf is working with Picard’s post-Enterprise colleague Raffi (the one new character to endure into this season), which ties into the threat facing Picard, Riker, and Crusher. And so on. We get these one-on-one or small-group reunions, gradually increasing our excitement for the inevitable big reunion.

And we finally get that catharsis in the eighth episode. And it’s magic indeed.

3) But there’s friction along the way.

The passage of time is going to create rifts, and closing those rifts will involve some friction.

The TNG main cast tended to get along pretty well during the original seven seasons. These characters were a professional bunch, and any disagreements were resolved in a mature, efficient manner. That was nice, but it was also many years ago. A good way to show change is by showing different dynamics between the characters. And those new dynamics bring about some conflicts, most of which involve Picard.

He comes into conflict with Riker over command decisions, with Crusher over their son, with Geordi over his reluctance to get involved, with Ro Laren over her past betrayal. (Part of what made Ensign Ro such an interesting character in TNG was that her personality, background, and worldview positioned her to routinely come into conflict with the main cast. If she had become a regular, she might have stolen the show.)

They’re the same characters, but we get the sense that as much time has passed for them as it has for us. Working through this friction helps set up that satisfying reunion.

4) The new characters are interesting, too.

The first two seasons tried to build a whole new cast around Picard. They stole Seven of Nine from Voyager and otherwise created new characters. But none of these new characters landed. The actors were all fine, but the scripts gave us no reason to care.

They might have worked better in a completely new show, but in a series that centers on a preexisting character, the new characters had the misfortune of not being who we wanted them to be. Picard is an unusual spin-off—typically, a supporting character or guest star is spun off into a new series, not the lead. Cheers led to Frasier, not Sam.

Picard season 3 makes the new characters count. In a few cases, we have The Next Generation’s next generation—Picard and Crusher’s son and Geordi’s daughters. Those familial relations justify their presence and add interest. Maybe it’s cheating a bit, but it works. We like Geordi, so how can we not like seeing his daughter at the ship’s helm?

They go further with Jack Crusher, though, by having him reflect issues that Picard has struggled with. Picard season 2 attempted to shoehorn in past trauma and psychological issues, but season 3 works with the Picard we already knew and it builds his son around that. Jack is basically Picard as a young man, as defined by TNG long ago. Plus, Picard had a taste of family life in “The Inner Light,” but Starfleet always filled that void in his actual life. Now, the life we’ve seen him put off is finally catching up with him. A series doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel when a sturdy one was assembled decades ago.

And then there’s Captain Shaw.

A sign of lazy writing is when the characters we’re supposed to like are all good and the characters we’re supposed to dislike are all bad. Picard season 2, for example, had those evil ICE agents who were just straight-up jerks, with no nuance whatsoever (and nothing to do with the main storyline).

With Shaw, however, we have a compelling new character who’s at times an antagonist, at times part of the team, often in the right, and always a distinct individual. He can be abrasive, and we learn why and it makes total sense. He poses an obstacle to Picard and Riker in the early episodes, but you can’t deny that he’s a competent and effective captain.

The man has layers. He’s memorable in a way the new characters of seasons 1 and 2 never were. The writers put the work into him, and they seem to have started with an astute observation: The Star Trek captains—the series leads we follow—tend to be less by-the-book than what we might expect from an organization such as Starfleet. Most Starfleet captains, on all those other ships passing by or blending into formation, would probably be a lot more like Shaw, making him an appropriate foil to living legends.

5) This season is a master class in fan service.

Fan service gets a bad rap sometimes, and it can indeed be done in a cheap, blatant way.

But fan service, done right, just means celebrating the past. The current story needs to be the priority, and along the way, we get these little nods that say, Yes, we all love this same thing, and isn’t it wonderful?

This season is loaded with nods like that—big and small—and yet they never derail the story. The First Contact theme. “Pop Goes the Weasel.” Moriarty. Deep Space Nine references. Spot the cat. The aforementioned reunion. The Enterprise-D. The Enterprise-D’s carpeting.

You could call it a “Tapestry” of Star Trek references, and they’re all woven into the story, never pulling us out.

6) Them again?

The beginning of the ninth episode reveals the Borg as the main villains, and I briefly worried that the show had taken its first major misstep. The Borg have long since become the go-to villains for this era of Star Trek, and I was hoping we’d see some other threat this time (like maybe the return of Tasha Yar’s Romulan daughter).

The writers may have tried to resist the temptation to include the Borg, but you know what they say about resistance. Nevertheless, the writers pulled off an amazing feat. Pretty quickly, they convinced me that no matter how overused the Borg were in the past, they were indeed the right choice for this Star Trek: The Next Generation grand finale.

There’s a reason the Borg have been overused: They really are the perfect Star Trek villains. Star Trek represents an idealized future in which humanity has learned to work together harmoniously and without sacrificing their unique individuality. The Borg, on the other hand, are the logical conclusion of a sci-fi dystopia—everyone being hammered into a soulless collective. Starfleet has come into conflict with various alien species over the years, but only the Borg represent Starfleet’s evil opposite number. (The Changelings come close, though, so it’s fitting that they also have a prominent role.)

And on the personal level, the Borg dealt Picard his most traumatic experience (and he’s had a few of those). The threat of the Borg gets under his skin in a way that no other enemies can. And now the Borg have corrupted the mind of his son, and they achieve a stealth assimilation of the youngest Starfleet officers.

The Borg hijack Starfleet as only the Borg can, and in doing so, they give the show a legitimate in-story reason to dust off the otherwise-obsolete antique known as the Enterprise-D.

7) They understood they had one last shot to get this right.

I can’t help but think of the disappointing Star Wars sequel trilogy. When I first watched The Force Awakens, it reminded me that I love the original Star Wars trilogy, but it went no further than that. The new characters had potential, which was later squandered. The old characters, too, were squandered, and we never got to see a full reunion of Luke, Leia, and Han—the three characters who are Star Wars as far as I’m concerned. Frankly, the sequel trilogy had a tremendous opportunity, and it blew it.

The first two seasons of Picard were also blowing it. This third season was their final chance to avoid the disappointment of Star Wars. And they pulled out all the stops—the full main cast, the guest stars and cameos, the classic score, a thorough understanding of the source material, the right amount of humor without going overboard, and most of all, a genuine love of one of the greatest science fiction TV shows of all time.

8) But is it the grand finale?

Now I’m going to get into final episode SPOILERS, so be doubly warned.

The ending leaves the door open for a spin-off with Seven as the captain of the Enterprise-G, whose crew includes some of those aforementioned new characters. I have no idea what the plans are, but I’d be surprised if there’s not at least a series of tie-in novels featuring this crew (perhaps written by someone like Peter David, who’s penned some of the best Star Trek novels). The mid-credits scene further hints at the prospect of more.

But as far as the core TNG cast is concerned, I think this is the appropriate high note to end things on. There’s nowhere to go from here except downhill. Troi has even learned how to pilot the Enterprise without crashing it—what more is there to accomplish?

They’ve definitely outdone Nemesis and Picard seasons 1 and 2. As for whether it beats “All Good Things,” that’s a much closer call.

Looking at the final scene, the edge goes to “All Good Things.” Both end at the same spot: the full cast of seven playing poker together. But there’s an important difference.

In “All Good Things,” it was the first time Picard joined a poker game with his senior staff, who had been playing together for years by that point. It showed us how much Picard had grown over the past seven seasons.

When those same seven characters assemble for a poker game at the end of Picard, it’s definitely fun and appropriate, but it’s nothing new. There’s no indication of progress here. It’s just celebrating and honoring the past. And that’s fine. That’s what this season is all about.

Now that we’ve celebrated the past in a satisfying manner, let’s end on this warm moment, and perhaps let’s just watch some excellent TNG reruns the next time we’re in the mood to visit the Enterprise-D crew.

All good things really do need to come to an end eventually.