I Watch TV: Star Trek Picard Season 3
Star Trek: Picard Season 3
Jean-Luc Picard gets an emergency call from his former lover/ship’s doctor Beverley Crusher who he’s not heard from for 25 years. She needs his help and says not to trust anyone; Starfleet has been infiltrated.
Picard and Riker, his former first officer, go aboard the USS Titan*. Riker used to be the captain, and it’s just out of refit, about to go on a test cruise before rejoining the fleet for the celebrations of Frontier Day. It’s under the command of Captain Shaw, whose first officer is returning champion Seven Of Nine (who Shaw prefers to call by her pre-Borg name, Commander Hansen).
They suggest to Shaw that he divert course to get them out to find Crusher’s ship. He refuses. And why not? If we’ve learned anything from Star Trek it’s that when a senior Starfleet officer comes on your ship and gives you a secret mission you’re going to get screwed over. Shaw, slightly less genre-savvy, knows about Picard and Riker’s escapades and knows, personally, the wreckage they leave in their wake. Maybe he shouldn’t wear that red uniform?
They catch up with Beverley and start to unravel a plot. But that’s not really what we’re here for. This is probably Patrick Stewart’s last appearance as Jean-Luc Picard so it’s time for a full Star Trek The Next Generation Reunion, bringing in the main cast, as well as a few fun callbacks (at one point Data’s memories are being literalised in virtual space and we get a brief hologram of Tasha Yar and also Spot). Geordie LaForge is in charge of the fleet museum where they keep old starships so we get to see a whole bunch of them; also LaForge’s daughter is the helmsman aboard the Titan.
So is this just nostalgia? Some tidying up of old stories? Well no, and in part because it remains trapped between episodic TV, the picaresque adventures in which we put out characters into a situation and see how they react to it, and a ten episode ongoing story. Beverley Crusher has kept a vital secret from Picard for 25 years and that’s needed for the story but also seems a betrayal of the character! Other than Data and Picard, we’re catching up with the characters rather than putting them through changes. Meanwhile it becomes clear why they brought Seven of Nine back for this series. Well yes, to get some Star Trek Voyager nostalgia in here as well, and because Jeri Ryan is a good actress. But it was about the Borg in Season 1, and about the Borg in Season 2. The great antagonist of both The Next Generation and Voyager that has loomed over the show and will continue to do so.
Nostalgia again I guess**. Well it was fun.
Watch This: All the old Star Trek stuff back again, occasionally actually touching on what makes Star Trek worthwhile
Don’t Watch This: Star What?
* Most of the new cast members from Season 1 and 2 of StarTrek: Picard have been taken off the board. Dr Jurati has become Borged, Rios is back in the 21st Century, Elnor is… missing? Raffi is undercover, tracking advanced weapons stolen from a secret base, so there’s no one with a ship at short notice. Again! It’s like Star Trek: Picard: Season 1 all over again though this time it doesn’t take Picard 3 episodes to get off Earth.
** Oh [SPOILERS] the Borg Queen has literally eaten her own flesh in one last attempt to dominate the Star Trek universe? Something something metaphor for this show?
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