TNG reunion injects somewhat enjoyable into Star Trek: Picard’s uneven last 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 Next Generation. Over seven seasons, TNG turned one among Trek‘s most nuanced and constant entries (although nonetheless one which was able to producing horrible, foolish, and simply plain bizarre episodes). But 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 finances, 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 typically went, deserved higher closure.

Star Trek: Picard has been the TNG continuation you’d get should you wished for a TNG sequel on a monkey’s paw. The first 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’s a present strictly for die-hard Trek completists, and it is simply the worst of the 5 Trek reveals in energetic manufacturing as of this writing.

The present’s third and last 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. But Picard remains to be Picard, and lots of the characters and plot factors within the season to date (we have seen the primary six episodes of a deliberate 10, although this piece will solely confer with particular occasions from the season premiere and the trailers) are eerily paying homage to those that made Nemesis so unsatisfying.

The film model of TNG

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 These are crystallized in his piece about 1998’s Star Trek Insurrection, which is partially a dialogue with a then-unpublished ebook referred to as Fade In, written by Trek author and producer Michael Piller (who died in 2005):

But Fade In is on the market, should you’re on the lookout for it. And it’s, I believe, the primary important ebook 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 manner 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 Next Generation, to point out how the Enterprise crew [w]as deep-down a household. Piller writes:

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

I form of love this concept? I form 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 huge laser rifles earlier than dangling above acid mist sporting John McClane’s Die Hard tank-top. Surely there was a strategy to make a movie with Picard the thinker, Picard the outwitter, Picard the intelligent? But somebody disagrees with me, disagreed with Piller. One of the main Picard consultants, really: Patrick Stewart, who allegedly writes an extended and considerate (and infrequently fairly humorous) memo again to Piller declaring that these TNG films wanted to be totally different from TNG, that the feelings and motion wanted to be greater, 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. But the primary downside with Picard as a TNG reunion automobile (which is usually however not fully 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’s a scene halfway by means 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 present 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 holding tempo and time, which is why you’ll in all probability discover this inspection boring, for the likes of you two.

Picard: Ensuring the situation of our starships could be boring?

Shaw: Well, we cannot be blowing issues up. Taking or participating in hearth. Crash-landing, expectedly or unexpectedly. You know, the same old 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 Next Generation. TNG was, form of infamously, the slowest, talkiest, and most diplomatic of Trek reveals, all the time extra involved in monologuing than taking pictures torpedoes. The present leaned into this to present it a long way from the Wild West feeling of the unique sequence, simply as subsequent Trek reveals like Deep Space Nine and Voyager leaned tougher into fast-paced motion to tell apart themselves from TNG. Picard was the consummate rule-follower, all the time able to drop a soliloquy about responsibility on anybody he thought wanted to listen to it.

But it is an correct description of the film model of Picard. And there are different indicators, past plentiful references to the occasions of the films; the season has a mysterious, mustache-twirling villain with a big warship, each retreads of Nemesis and Star Trek (2009). The music that performs over the tip credit is the primary 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 Next Generation reunion that includes your entire unique solid (plus a couple of enjoyable surprises). But 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.