![]() ![]() ![]() The Changelings were at least surprising, and also a small way for this season to pay homage to the wildly underrated Deep Space Nine, when otherwise it was made up of pieces of TNG and Voyager. This was a mixed bag, not only because it conflicted with what had happened previously on this very show, but because it feels like it is somehow always going to be the Borg with Jean-Luc. The season used the Changelings from Deep Space Nine as red herring villains, finally roping the Borg back in for the last couple of episodes.The emotional climax of the season is Jean-Luc plugging back into the Borg collective in order to rescue his son (as well as the entire Federation), but it didn’t hit nearly as hard as, say, Data saying goodbye to evil twin brother Lore. It’s not that Stewart was bad, by any means, but rather that the father/son relationship between Jean-Luc and Jack never entirely landed, while his trauma about the Borg felt like a rehash of earlier stories(*). Which makes it an inverse of the first two years, where Patrick Stewart was really the only reason to watch. If anything, the least interesting part of this season was Picard himself. Across these 10 episodes, Picard showrunner Terry Matalas did a lot to make up for that, and that by itself was worth it. TNG often gave the supporting actors very little to play - poor LeVar Burton, in particular, basically got nothing but technobabble for seven years - and it was a credit to that cast that we loved them so much. Combining that with various bits of personal history - the animosity between Riker and Worf over the brief period where Worf dated Deanna Troi, or Geordi La Forge’s ongoing quest to help best friend Data feel more human - made these episodes sing. (Or, in the case of Worf, being saddled with the last remaining Picard original character, Michelle Hurd’s Raffi.) The chemistry between these seven actors, who have known and liked each other for so long in the real world, just crackled on the screen. By this point, the TNG gang was finally coming together in full, rather than in smaller groups. The season’s concluding four chapters (which I hadn’t seen at the time of that earlier review) only amplified this feeling. Simply bringing back the entire crew of The Next Generation - and giving most of them much better and richer material than what they got to play back in the Eighties and Nineties - felt like more than enough, even if the season’s conspiracy plot was largely gibberish. When this third and final season of Picard debuted earlier this year, I wrote that while on the one hand it was shameless fan service, on the other this was exactly what Star Trekfans wanted and needed after the show’s first two years were so disappointing. This post contains spoilers for the Picard series finale, “The Last Generation.” ![]()
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