TNG reunion injects a little fun into Star Trek: Picard’s uneven final season

Few concerned within the making or watching of 2002’s Star Trek Nemesis would say that it was a unbelievable send-off for the beloved characters of The Subsequent Technology. Over seven seasons, TNG grew to become one in all Trek‘s most nuanced and constant entries (although nonetheless one which was able to producing horrible, foolish, and simply plain bizarre episodes). However Nemesis is a flat motion film outlined by skinny characterization, a tacky one-note villain, and distracting plot contrivances, and it did so poorly ($67 million on a $60 million price range, in a time earlier than “perhaps it should make some huge cash in China” was a factor) that it foreclosed any risk of one other sequel. The solid and people characters, the considering usually went, deserved higher closure.

Star Trek: Picard has been the TNG continuation you’d get in the event you wished for a TNG sequel on a monkey’s paw. The primary two seasons made solely intermittent use of any non-Picard characters, and the brand new characters had been both annoying or bland or each. The present’s inventive workers makes use of “convoluted twists” as a stand-in for clear and fascinating storytelling. It is a present strictly for die-hard Trek completists, and it is simply the worst of the 5 Trek reveals in lively manufacturing as of this writing.

The present’s third and remaining season has been pitched as a real TNG reunion, and if nothing else, it is good to see the clear affection these performers nonetheless have for each other. However Picard remains to be Picard, and lots of the characters and plot factors within the season up to now (we have seen the primary six episodes of a deliberate 10, although this piece will solely seek advice from particular occasions from the season premiere and the trailers) are eerily harking back to those that made Nemesis so unsatisfying.

The film model of TNG

My favourite writing on the Star Trek motion pictures is Darrich Franich’s Leisure Weekly sequence that revisited every movie main as much as Star Trek Past‘s launch in 2016 (the hole between Past‘s launch and at this time is formally longer than the hole between Nemesis and J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Trek reboot movie). Franich is not notably type to any TNG motion pictures, for causes I broadly agree with. These are crystallized in his piece about 1998’s Star Trek Rebellion, which is partly a dialogue with a then-unpublished guide referred to as Fade In, written by Trek author and producer Michael Piller (who died in 2005):

However Fade In is on the market, in the event you’re on the lookout for it. And it’s, I believe, the primary important guide about screenwriting within the new century, a snapshot of Hollywood on the daybreak of the franchise period: A portrait of the artist amidst company necessity, narrative continuity, the perceived necessities of fandom, the hazy method that actors in iconic roles can know the whole lot but nothing about their very own characters, the urge to alter, the simultaneous urge to not change an excessive amount of. Piller writes how he wished this ninth Star Trek film to recapture the spirit of Subsequent Technology, to indicate how the Enterprise crew [w]as deep-down a household. Piller writes:

Throughout seven years of the tv present, Picard had emerged as a person of nice precept and ethical integrity. He solved issues along with his mind and communication abilities and would by no means fireplace weapons except fired upon. This facet of him had not been explored within the different two function movies.

I kind of love this concept? I kind of agree? Generations and First Contact each landed on the concept Picard wanted to finalize into a person of motion, wanted to battle Malcolm McDowell throughout a rocky missile ledge, wanted to hold massive laser rifles earlier than dangling above acid mist carrying John McClane’s Die Onerous tank-top. Certainly there was a method to make a movie with Picard the thinker, Picard the outwitter, Picard the intelligent? However somebody disagrees with me, disagreed with Piller. One of many main Picard specialists, really: Patrick Stewart, who allegedly writes a protracted and considerate (and sometimes fairly humorous) memo again to Piller declaring that these TNG motion pictures wanted to be completely different from TNG, that the feelings and motion wanted to be larger, that an excessive amount of sentimentality results in heroes round a campfire singing “Row Row Row Your Boat.”

I do not disagree with Patrick Stewart about what made for a profitable franchise blockbuster within the late ’90s. However the principle drawback with Picard as a TNG reunion car (which is usually however not solely separate from its issues as a present) is that these heightened, flattened film variations of the characters are those who made it again to TV. There is a scene halfway by way of the primary episode of the brand new season that encapsulates this.

Picard and Riker, once more drawn out of semi-retirement, board a Federation starship. The captain they’re trying to work with (Liam Shaw, performed by Todd Stashwick) is neither awed by them nor notably inclined to provide them something they need. He additionally appears, like too many Star Trek characters, to have skilled his personal actuality primarily by watching Star Trek.

Riker: Not a fan of jazz?

Shaw: Mm. No, I’m not. I like construction. I like meter. I like retaining tempo and time, which is why you’ll most likely discover this inspection boring, for the likes of you two.

Picard: Making certain the situation of our starships can be boring?

Shaw: Effectively, we cannot be blowing issues up. Taking or participating in fireplace. Crash-landing, expectedly or unexpectedly. You already know, the standard for you boys.

This picture—of Picard and Riker as rule-breaking, property-destroying, authority-flouting cowboys—is a wildly inaccurate evaluation of their characters on The Subsequent Technology. TNG was, kind of infamously, the slowest, talkiest, and most diplomatic of Trek reveals, at all times extra excited by monologuing than capturing torpedoes. The present leaned into this to provide it a long way from the Wild West feeling of the unique sequence, simply as subsequent Trek reveals like Deep Area 9 and Voyager leaned tougher into fast-paced motion to tell apart themselves from TNG. Picard was the consummate rule-follower, at all times able to drop a soliloquy about obligation on anybody he thought wanted to listen to it.

However it is an correct description of the film model of Picard. And there are different indicators, past plentiful references to the occasions of the flicks; the season has a mysterious, mustache-twirling villain with a huge warship, each retreads of Nemesis and Star Trek (2009). The track that performs over the tip credit is the principle theme from First Contact.

So, sure, the final season of Picard is lastly giving us what the present arguably ought to have been from the beginning: a full-fledged Subsequent Technology reunion that includes all the unique solid (plus a couple of enjoyable surprises). However for higher or worse, that is the film model of a TNG reunion. And beneath that, it is nonetheless a season of Picard, with the entire near-misses and unevenness and frustration that entails.