Now it’s all over, we can finally ask the question: was Picard the legacy sequel TNG-era Star Trek deserved? More importantly, what has it all been for? If wiser heads had prevailed, would the project have survived the moment Patrick Stewart, with his franchise tin ear, decreed it was only viable if it didn’t sequelise the parent series? For modern TV and movie writers, no nostalgia – no heavy-handed references to the past, is as radical and difficult an edict to follow as Gene Roddenberry’s no conflict directive. Picard only came alive when the writers finally managed to charm Stewart into a fully-fledged reunion. Only then were they enabled to fan fic the fuck out of this thing.
In the first two seasons, a creative necropolis as far as new ideas were concerned, the hacks tried to work around Stewart’s sabotaging imperative and make a show that recycled characters and concepts in other ways. Seven was imported from Voyager, minor characters were revisited and ruined, plot threads from the broad and braindead TNG movies that Stewart was known to favour over the less bombastic, more cerebral TV series, were pulled and broken. New supporting characters whom we never got to know; underwritten and locked into non-sensical, meandering plots; were a poor substitute for the conspicuously absent TNG cast. Stewart had little agency in the first two seasons – a headliner standing in the slips, looking lost.
Season 3 has been a very different experience – coherently plotted and character-centred, though not the complete break with the first two years many had hoped for. You can free the hacks of Alex Kurtzman’s dead hand, but you can’t fully exorcise the Great Satan from the minds of those he employs. Terry Matalas et al, returning from S2, may have written off the sophomore season as a sunk cost, as they secretly cajoled and negotiated behind the scenes to realise their vision of a repurposed third season becoming the final TNG movie, but the instinct to asset strip, to pastiche, to write a post-modern script that looked backwards, to add the illusion of grit with uncanonical swearing and sadistic violence, was still abundant.
This impulse, to remix and remake, to reference and retool, put a ceiling on how good S3 could be. It added constraints and limited options. Often the show felt a season of Star Trek written by a franchise literate Chat GTP. “Legacy” was the term used to excuse this bricolage approach, whereas once the word had been employed to simply mean giving the characters a victory worthy of the status and affection they had earned from the audience.
Kirk and crew didn’t need to revisit old plots and memorabilia from the previous 25 years to be given a successful send-off – they were too busy trying to end the space cold war. It was fresh and meaningful – it had weight. Picard S3 opted to sequelise a classic story that had been given a successful coda in the very next episode, plus a far less successful movie sequel. In doing so it blew the opportunity to fully unite the classic cast, despite Denise Crosby’s Sela being the embodiment of a legacy character whose story constituted a familial tie to the Enterprise-D crew.
As we contemplate whether Picard’s been a folly or a gift to fans of ‘80’s and ‘90’s Trek, let’s pause here to consider the episodes of Trek which have arguably been overwritten or ruined by the streaming sequel.
All Good Things… (overwritten)
The Measure of a Man (ruined)
The Offspring (ruined until S3, then coyly referenced)
I, Borg (ruined)
Time’s Arrow (overwritten)
Journey’s End (ruined by that Wesley cameo)
What You Leave Behind – DS9 (ruined)
The Best of Both Worlds/Family (ruined)
Woah, you say, “Best of Both Worlds” ruined? Well, here’s the thing. You can only tack on so much plot and complication to a classic story before it’s retrospectively weakened.
“Best of Both Worlds” is not the very best TNG story but it’s close, and no two-parter is more fondly remembered. Why has it endured? Perhaps because of the dispassionate cruelty of the set up. Picard is kidnapped by the Borg, not because their Queen has decided one human amongst billions sampled would make the perfect consort – but because, in a time before the Borg’s USP was tarnished by introducing an individual leader, they reasoned, with logic cold and calculating, that the decorated Captain of the Federation flagship – the only Starship they’d sampled up to that time, would be both a mine of useful strategic information and a morale-sapping blow to the enemy. Imagine an army confronted by the brainwashed shell of their best general. Locutus was strategically expedient as well as a great piece of walking enemy propaganda. The Borg’s interest in him ended when the Earth orbiting cube exploded. Our interest in the Borg ended with the same act.
“Family” picked up the story with compassion and subtlety. Here was a shell-shocked Picard, a proud man violated and victimised, struggling with the enormity of the experience and the menacing truth that he’d been chosen because of his status and experience. ‘They took everything I was,’ he told brother Robèrt, ‘They used me to kill and to destroy and I couldn’t stop them.’ And it was that simple, indeed that profound, until the entire incident was retconned as a barmy scheme by a newly invented Borg Queen to unite humanity and the Borg – a thread Picard S3 pulled with undue relish.
To appreciate how silly this is, how self-indulgent, you have to imagine a sequel to “Chain of Command” in which Picard’s torture at the hands of the Cardassians took on galaxy-wide significance. Be thankful there was no Picard S3 featuring the head of the new Cardassia who turned out to be the daughter of the woman Jean-Luc was forced to violate in a missing scene from the original two-parter. She’d be thirsty for revenge of course, having been told the human prisoner had been savage (like all Terrans), and she’d have hatched a plan to re-annex Bajor, go into the Gamma Quadrant, do a deal with dissident Changelings who didn’t like the Dominion’s surrender, and launch a full-scale invasion of the Federation. Ask yourself, and be honest now, would such a story improve “Chain of Command” by association, or diminish its power as a gut-wrenching ordeal for the Enterprise-D Captain?
You see kids, we live in an age of TV and movies where the writers can’t tell the difference between the significance of an event in-universe and that story’s hold on audiences. Using Sela as an antagonist for Picard S3 was probably dismissed on the grounds the character and her link to the TNG crew, didn’t have the requisite cultural cachet – it wasn’t big enough for the show’s grand finale. Needless to say, it could have been with thoughtful writing and a great story, providing the unprecedented opportunity for an original cast reunion that effortlessly fulfilled the legacy brief, but it was safer to regurgitate the Borg – dip back into “Best of Both Worlds”, remix the old hits.
“The Last Generation” was hopelessly constrained by its predecessor, because once you establish that Jack is the new Locutus and the Borg, as ever, are vulnerable to a severed connection, there’s very little to think about and nothing to do, except watch the climatic rescue, admonishment of the Queen, and destruction of the cube play out. It was all done with movie-like grandeur (and accompanying clichés), but for all those swooping shots of the Enterprise-D (euphoria fades fast without additional cerebral input) it felt like empty spectacle. This was well-charted territory and the way out was signposted a lifetime ago.
We were left to wonder – was this a story that needed to be told? It was all so maddingly derivative – from the speech the Federation President gave (Anton Chekov, indeed), half-cribbed from The Voyage Home, to the Queen’s grandstanding, to the matching overhead shot of the gang playing poker, patterned on “All Good Things…”, that closed the episode. The hope, at the beginning, was that Terry Matalas was reaching for all this off-the-shelf iconography to steady fan nerves and flout his franchise credentials before warping into original territory. But ultimately, we came to realise that a polished remix, sampled dialogue, score and sound effects included, was all there is – that there was nothing more.
It was a more enjoyable time that we ever had with this crew at the movies, but in some ways the closing poker game signified the redundancy of it all. Thirty years separate the poker game in “All Good Things…” from the one that closed “The Last Generation”. Everything of significance that happened in that time – Picard losing his family, the Enterprise-D’s destruction, the death of Kirk, the death of Data, Picard’s death – all had been reversed. So what had been the point of it all? Even Q, who dared to show up in a mid-credits scene, lambasting the Picard family for thinking in a linear fashion when he’d moved on to the next generation, was determined to pick up from the TNG finale and continue his trial of humanity. Still, au revoir Jean-Luc, with a new Enterprise crew out there and your son now the focus of the galaxy’s antagonists, at least you can retire and enjoy some new experiences. If only we could join you.
Anomalous Readings
Alright, we’ve established that Picard S3, tonal issues aside, was the only run of episodes that resembled the franchise of old since 2005, and that’s not nothing. The characters were on point, our old pals uniformly excellent, the newbies weren’t bad, and Seven’s promotion to Captain of the Enterprise-G (though it’s still the weird, kitbash Titan-A rechristened, not a new ship of awe-inspiring scale and complexity, to match the newly restored Enterprise-D’s beauty) was just reward for all the nonsense and shit she’s had to put up with over three seasons. But given the DNA links to the old crew, and indeed old shows, perhaps the G should also have been reclassified as Progeny Class.
‘I joined Starfleet to find the family I didn’t have,’ Picard told his son. RIP Robért, Marie and René – you deserved a relative who remembered you.
Jack was fast-tracked through the Academy on account of – er, the family name? Never mind if he’s psychologically stable, or a dubious choice for an officer given his recent problems with the enemy – he’s a Picard. Good to know nepotism still opens doors in the 25th century.
Starfleet was in a giving mood, considering Enterprise-G first officer, Raffi’s former relationship with Enterprise-G Captain, Seven of Nine. Might that not compromise the command structure somewhat? I suppose if you save Earth, the rule book becomes a set of guidelines.
We never learned how the Borg Queen, frail and reliant on the corpses of drones for sustenance, found Vadic and the rogue Changelings, and made a deal to infiltrate Starfleet, and I guess we never will.
Denise Crosby’s contribution to the season? Zero. She featured in a few seconds of stock footage. She deserved better.
Wesley Crusher did not return. He got what he deserved.
Another phone they forgot to ring – Diana Muldaur’s. Dr Pulaski, we’ll never forget you, even if the producers of Star Trek have. I mean, Majel Barrett got a cameo and she’s dead.
Jack said the quiet part out loud when he wondered what Starfleet was doing outfitting the Enterprise-G with officers famed for insubordination and, in his case, coordinating an attack on Earth. Captain Shaw must be spinning in his grave.
“They’ve moved into the deadzone,” said Data, inadvertently describing the plight of fans who from now must return to Alex Kurtzman’s suite of fan unfriendly shit. Starfleet Academy with Silly Tilly, a Section 31 movie with Empress Georgiou, Strange New Worlds II with Young Kirk. Yes, I hope you enjoyed this above average sequel to the Trek of yore because it looks like the last relative of the genuine article.
Will Star Trek: Legacy be made now its constituent parts are in place? I’m not convinced flying around with Seven and the TNG kids will be as much fun as people imagine, but if it’s the only show set in a recognisable Star Trek universe, with an ethos to match, then I’m game. But please, Terry Matalas, I beg of you, if you get the call, have some fresh ideas ready to go. The nostalgia well is dry. There are nails embedded in the walls. At the bottom a girl is crying. It’s time to make it new.
That’s all for now Space Folks. Thanks once again for joining me on another viewing adventure. Star Trek will return of course, and so therefore, must we. May Q have mercy on our souls.
Opinionoid
Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Picard 3.10 (Final Reflections)
Now it’s all over, we can finally ask the question: was Picard the legacy sequel TNG-era Star Trek deserved? More importantly, what has it all been for? If wiser heads had prevailed, would the project have survived the moment Patrick Stewart, with his franchise tin ear, decreed it was only viable if it didn’t sequelise the parent series? For modern TV and movie writers, no nostalgia – no heavy-handed references to the past, is as radical and difficult an edict to follow as Gene Roddenberry’s no conflict directive. Picard only came alive when the writers finally managed to charm Stewart into a fully-fledged reunion. Only then were they enabled to fan fic the fuck out of this thing.
In the first two seasons, a creative necropolis as far as new ideas were concerned, the hacks tried to work around Stewart’s sabotaging imperative and make a show that recycled characters and concepts in other ways. Seven was imported from Voyager, minor characters were revisited and ruined, plot threads from the broad and braindead TNG movies that Stewart was known to favour over the less bombastic, more cerebral TV series, were pulled and broken. New supporting characters whom we never got to know; underwritten and locked into non-sensical, meandering plots; were a poor substitute for the conspicuously absent TNG cast. Stewart had little agency in the first two seasons – a headliner standing in the slips, looking lost.
Season 3 has been a very different experience – coherently plotted and character-centred, though not the complete break with the first two years many had hoped for. You can free the hacks of Alex Kurtzman’s dead hand, but you can’t fully exorcise the Great Satan from the minds of those he employs. Terry Matalas et al, returning from S2, may have written off the sophomore season as a sunk cost, as they secretly cajoled and negotiated behind the scenes to realise their vision of a repurposed third season becoming the final TNG movie, but the instinct to asset strip, to pastiche, to write a post-modern script that looked backwards, to add the illusion of grit with uncanonical swearing and sadistic violence, was still abundant.
This impulse, to remix and remake, to reference and retool, put a ceiling on how good S3 could be. It added constraints and limited options. Often the show felt a season of Star Trek written by a franchise literate Chat GTP. “Legacy” was the term used to excuse this bricolage approach, whereas once the word had been employed to simply mean giving the characters a victory worthy of the status and affection they had earned from the audience.
Kirk and crew didn’t need to revisit old plots and memorabilia from the previous 25 years to be given a successful send-off – they were too busy trying to end the space cold war. It was fresh and meaningful – it had weight. Picard S3 opted to sequelise a classic story that had been given a successful coda in the very next episode, plus a far less successful movie sequel. In doing so it blew the opportunity to fully unite the classic cast, despite Denise Crosby’s Sela being the embodiment of a legacy character whose story constituted a familial tie to the Enterprise-D crew.
As we contemplate whether Picard’s been a folly or a gift to fans of ‘80’s and ‘90’s Trek, let’s pause here to consider the episodes of Trek which have arguably been overwritten or ruined by the streaming sequel.
Woah, you say, “Best of Both Worlds” ruined? Well, here’s the thing. You can only tack on so much plot and complication to a classic story before it’s retrospectively weakened.
“Best of Both Worlds” is not the very best TNG story but it’s close, and no two-parter is more fondly remembered. Why has it endured? Perhaps because of the dispassionate cruelty of the set up. Picard is kidnapped by the Borg, not because their Queen has decided one human amongst billions sampled would make the perfect consort – but because, in a time before the Borg’s USP was tarnished by introducing an individual leader, they reasoned, with logic cold and calculating, that the decorated Captain of the Federation flagship – the only Starship they’d sampled up to that time, would be both a mine of useful strategic information and a morale-sapping blow to the enemy. Imagine an army confronted by the brainwashed shell of their best general. Locutus was strategically expedient as well as a great piece of walking enemy propaganda. The Borg’s interest in him ended when the Earth orbiting cube exploded. Our interest in the Borg ended with the same act.
“Family” picked up the story with compassion and subtlety. Here was a shell-shocked Picard, a proud man violated and victimised, struggling with the enormity of the experience and the menacing truth that he’d been chosen because of his status and experience. ‘They took everything I was,’ he told brother Robèrt, ‘They used me to kill and to destroy and I couldn’t stop them.’ And it was that simple, indeed that profound, until the entire incident was retconned as a barmy scheme by a newly invented Borg Queen to unite humanity and the Borg – a thread Picard S3 pulled with undue relish.
To appreciate how silly this is, how self-indulgent, you have to imagine a sequel to “Chain of Command” in which Picard’s torture at the hands of the Cardassians took on galaxy-wide significance. Be thankful there was no Picard S3 featuring the head of the new Cardassia who turned out to be the daughter of the woman Jean-Luc was forced to violate in a missing scene from the original two-parter. She’d be thirsty for revenge of course, having been told the human prisoner had been savage (like all Terrans), and she’d have hatched a plan to re-annex Bajor, go into the Gamma Quadrant, do a deal with dissident Changelings who didn’t like the Dominion’s surrender, and launch a full-scale invasion of the Federation. Ask yourself, and be honest now, would such a story improve “Chain of Command” by association, or diminish its power as a gut-wrenching ordeal for the Enterprise-D Captain?
You see kids, we live in an age of TV and movies where the writers can’t tell the difference between the significance of an event in-universe and that story’s hold on audiences. Using Sela as an antagonist for Picard S3 was probably dismissed on the grounds the character and her link to the TNG crew, didn’t have the requisite cultural cachet – it wasn’t big enough for the show’s grand finale. Needless to say, it could have been with thoughtful writing and a great story, providing the unprecedented opportunity for an original cast reunion that effortlessly fulfilled the legacy brief, but it was safer to regurgitate the Borg – dip back into “Best of Both Worlds”, remix the old hits.
“The Last Generation” was hopelessly constrained by its predecessor, because once you establish that Jack is the new Locutus and the Borg, as ever, are vulnerable to a severed connection, there’s very little to think about and nothing to do, except watch the climatic rescue, admonishment of the Queen, and destruction of the cube play out. It was all done with movie-like grandeur (and accompanying clichés), but for all those swooping shots of the Enterprise-D (euphoria fades fast without additional cerebral input) it felt like empty spectacle. This was well-charted territory and the way out was signposted a lifetime ago.
We were left to wonder – was this a story that needed to be told? It was all so maddingly derivative – from the speech the Federation President gave (Anton Chekov, indeed), half-cribbed from The Voyage Home, to the Queen’s grandstanding, to the matching overhead shot of the gang playing poker, patterned on “All Good Things…”, that closed the episode. The hope, at the beginning, was that Terry Matalas was reaching for all this off-the-shelf iconography to steady fan nerves and flout his franchise credentials before warping into original territory. But ultimately, we came to realise that a polished remix, sampled dialogue, score and sound effects included, was all there is – that there was nothing more.
It was a more enjoyable time that we ever had with this crew at the movies, but in some ways the closing poker game signified the redundancy of it all. Thirty years separate the poker game in “All Good Things…” from the one that closed “The Last Generation”. Everything of significance that happened in that time – Picard losing his family, the Enterprise-D’s destruction, the death of Kirk, the death of Data, Picard’s death – all had been reversed. So what had been the point of it all? Even Q, who dared to show up in a mid-credits scene, lambasting the Picard family for thinking in a linear fashion when he’d moved on to the next generation, was determined to pick up from the TNG finale and continue his trial of humanity. Still, au revoir Jean-Luc, with a new Enterprise crew out there and your son now the focus of the galaxy’s antagonists, at least you can retire and enjoy some new experiences. If only we could join you.
Anomalous Readings
That’s all for now Space Folks. Thanks once again for joining me on another viewing adventure. Star Trek will return of course, and so therefore, must we. May Q have mercy on our souls.
The Wistful Musings of a Mandroid
Picard Portents
The Backdated Adventures of Logicman and Bleep
A horrifying vision of the future
Michael Burnham in the 32nd Century
Mick’s Calamitous 23rd Century
Station Keeping
Teen Fan Fic
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on April 20, 2023 at 19:09 Comments Off on Critic’s Log – Star Trek: Picard 3.10 (Final Reflections)Tags: Critic's log, review, Season 3, Star Trek: Picard, The Last Generation