KEYLA DAMAER

There’s a lot to tell about Star Trek Picard, Season 3.

First off, I enjoyed it a lot. It felt like the film they never did or season 8 of The Next Generation. But, and you knew there was going to be a but coming, there are also several things I very much disliked. Take the first scene at Picard’s château. The authors forced Picard into a relationship with Laris at the end of season 2, ignoring the classic cliché, and the character Picard is its epitome: the command chair leads to solitude. Yes, characters change, that’s actually a basic rule when writing, but in this case, it was a stretch, and as a matter of fact, Laris is going on a mission on her own, to completely vanish from the story. I’m not against romance, but forcing a love story where there’s no need for one annoys me to no end.

Laris was a member of Picard security staff, why bother to use her as a love interest in the first place, to drag it over three seasons for nothing? They explain it with the excuse that Romulans’ life span is longer than humans, and she looks younger than she is, but that’s just a lame excuse. I get it, they had a pretty young actress and needed to ship her with an old actor, because women are good only when they’re young, and the TV set is great to perpetrate that understanding. We become invisible after 40 because gravity wins over our tits and our skin wrinkles. Yes, the rest of the cast—most of it—is old, and aren’t they great?

Bottom line is, I call all the Romulan subplot bullshit (together with season 1).

From a few articles I read since season 1 was aired, I understand that Sir Patrick Steward, executive producer of the series, didn’t want to produce a TNG sequel, except that the third season is the best one and that’s because they did exactly what he didn’t want in the first place. I’m no marketing expert, but if you want old fans—which implies we aren’t born yesterday—to like what you’re doing, you gotta give us something to hold on to. Picard’s legacy wasn’t enough. We wanted the entire crew back, and that’s the best part of this season.

Let’s focus on the new characters, though: Jack Crusher and Captain Liam Shaw.

When I started suspecting Jack’s father’s identity—rather soon—I immediately thought about The Wrath of Kahn and David Marcus and disliked the idea. I didn’t want to believe we were back to the same plot. We’ve been there already with Captain James Tiberius Kirk. The feeling didn’t die until we discovered about the woman’s voice persecuting Jack’s nightmare, and I immediately did the maths and thought about Locutus of Borg. I mean, who else could it be if not the Borg Queen? It was the only thing that made sense to me, although the Changelings’ involvement was preposterous. My other half was disappointed by the Borg plot, but in terms of the storyline, there was nothing else that made sense. I mean, let’s give some credit to the authors, who had to deal with a lot of crap to ignore from the previous two seasons. Still, one wonders why they never mentioned the other Borg Queen, Jurati. We get that she was busy keeping at bay this unknown thread somewhere else, but it’s like she never happened. There’s so much discontinuity in this series to drive me crazy. But enough with the negativity for now.

Captain Liam Shaw is presented through Seven’s eyes as an arsehole. He mistreats the heroes—but let’s face it, what he says about them at dinner is 100% true—and for that they want us to believe he’s a villain. Take it for what it is, I love the character. He’s a survivor, and when well-written, those are among the best characters. The scene at Ten Forward between him, Jack, and Jean Luc is top-notch acting.

I enjoyed the ongoing battle between Shaw and Commander Hansen—aka Seven Of Nine, or Commander Seven, and let me tell you this, Seven of Nine deserves her own series as Captain of her ship and crew. She grew on me so much in the last two seasons of Picard, and to me, she would be the first great female lead character in a Star Trek series—I never liked Janeway and I try to forget there’s a Michael Burnham ‘some-when’ in the future.

What bothers me the most is that sometimes the series writers forget about Shaw and act—write—as if he’s an ectoplasm. Orders are given by other characters, completely forgetting the chain of command, and that happens well before the Captain’s dismissal from the plane of existence. For instance, why does Crusher ask permission from Picard to examine the Changeling’s body? Picard’s not the one in command, Shaw is—Riker returned the command to him in the previous scene. The conversation between Picard and Crusher in the middle of a corridor of Shaw’s ship makes no sense. Picard hasn’t got the power to authorise shit. Not at that stage of the story where Shaw, the one with power, still is at odds with the retired admiral.

There’s no need to be a military expert here to wonder what were the authors thinking? What happened to consistency? It is missing from most Star Trek series—and films—of the new era.

Then, there were moments when I almost felt like I was watching Star Wars, not in a galaxy far, far away, but in a galaxy equally tiny, where distances don’t matter. Shuttles travel at the same speed as spaceships, obviously. Either that or every place is very close—hence the tiny galaxy. It’s jarring, no matter the series one is watching. And no, I’m not zeroing in on Star Wars. I like Star Wars, but the far, far away galaxy is the smallest one could imagine.

There’s someone I crave to talk about, and it’s Data, one of my favourite characters in the entire franchise, probably topped only by Garak. Episode 8 made me cry again, and listening to the android using contractions in his speech is marvellous. Talk about growing characters.

I must admit that in terms of canon characters, the authors did a great job, each one of them became something different from where they started in Encounter at Farpoint. Worf becomes a pacifist dedicated to meditation, and Deanna and William go through painful moments in their relationship, dealing with the loss of a child. Geordi is a father of two, promising starts in the fleet, and Crusher has become a warrior, kind of trading places with Worf.

The last two episodes are a mixture of sad moments and utterly funny ones—the latter mostly to blame on Data’s sense of humour. But there’s more. Seven’s first act of command, the opening line to her legacy remains a mystery, hopefully, to be discovered in a future series with Seven as Captain, Jack as a counsellor, Rafi as Number One, and Geordi’s daughter as a pilot. Oh, we need this so much!

At the end of the day, if I ignore all the crap the authors were able to throw in, I really enjoyed this season.