In preparation for the upcoming release of Star Trek: Picard, season 3, longtime veteran actor/director Jonathan Frakes sat down for a discussion with TrekMovie.com [1], where he shared some intel. This coincides with the recent teaser trailer for the third and final season of the Picard-focused show, putting a nail in the coffin of a woefully ill-advised concept.
Frakes talked about the role that his character William Riker would play in season 3, after being relegated to a series of brief cameos in the previous two seasons. “Picard is very much foremost and at the center of everything in this. But Riker I would say, Riker and Beverly I would say, are very close number twos. But there is a lot of Riker, so if you are a fan of Will Riker, you are going to get a healthy dose of Riker.” he said.
The teaser trailer has revealed that multiple TNG-era characters will be returning for some time in the spotlight, including Geordi LaForge, Worf, and Beverly Crusher. Seven of Nine also makes a reappearance, this time as Commander of the brand new flagship, known as the Titan.
Frakes described the ironic twist behind the concept design of the Titan starship, claiming “So, in the trailer, you see our hero ship of season three. It’s actually a class that’s called, in Starfleet slang, the Neo-Constitution class or Constitution III. It’s based on a design by fan Bill Krause. Let’s say there are a few fan-designed ships that are canonized this season in the fleet.”
An ironic statement, given overall fan revulsion over the first two seasons of Star Trek: Picard, with many claiming that it amounts to little more than poorly written fan fiction. We were especially critical of the second season of the show [3], which amounted to unfathomable garbage, and a total bastardization of the beloved Star Trek: TNG sub-franchise.
With the third season acting as the final culmination of the TNG story (presumably), Frakes’ take on the situation is no surprise. “If there wasn’t going to be a final Star Trek: The Next Generation movie then this 10-episode series would serve that and feel like that. So when it comes out, my recommendation would be to turn off the lights, pop some popcorn, and you got 10 chapters ahead of you that should feel as cinematic as possible.”
Little is known about the story at this point, but it’s possible that the Borg-centric cliffhanger at the end of season 2 could be a factor. The teaser trailer shows what appears to be the destruction of a Starfleet building by some sort of energy beam, suggesting the presence of the unknown threat that the Borg promised to guard against.
Of course, very few people actually care at this point. Picard lost half its viewership audience [6] before the end of the first season finale, and season two didn’t exactly revitalize the show in any meaningful way. Proof can be seen in the decision to shift a large chunk of the filming to modern-day California in order to save on the budget.
This is largely a repeat of the failed attempts to lure more viewers to Star Trek: Discovery [7], the current flagship Trek series for Paramount. If Picard was bringing home the bacon, the series wouldn’t have been cancelled after just three seasons. Clearly, the majority of traditional Trekkers aren’t interested in the fan fiction that Paramount is selling.
The question, as always, is whether companies pushing Woke material into big budget properties (while destroying them in the process) will learn their lesson, if they even cared enough to do so in the first place. It’s doubtful that season 3 of Picard will manage to escape its own Kobayashi Maru, but the presence of classic TNG characters could at least soften the blow for the few fans it has left.