As we’re confident you’ve already heard, the new Star Trek: Picard series is launching on the CBS All-Access subscription service this Thursday, January 23rd. Picard will take place 20ish years after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis, and we’ll see some new faces (Michelle Hurd, Santiago Cabrera, Isa Briones) as well as several returning ones (Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner, Jonathan Frakes), in this jaunt back to the original timeline.
Before we delve much into the general notion of the series, here’s the main trailer for the show. As a reminder, even if we knew spoilers (which we don’t) we wouldn’t post them. Still, if you’d rather go in blissfully ignorant, here is where you might want to jump ship.
We get very strong impressions that not all is as rosy as it was during Picard’s tenure on the 1701-D, even within the Federation. Patrick Stewart himself said “It’s not Next Generation. Almost 20 years have passed. Things have become more complex. The world of Star Fleet, the world of the Federation is not quite what it was the last time Jean-Luc Picard was seen in that world. It’s different, and it’s not all good.”
Granted, this makes perfect sense from a story perspective, especially if you watched the subsequent series of Star Trek (particularly DS9), but it also make sense simply given the state of our non-fictional world. While it’s lovely to imagine the idyllic realm of the Enterprise from The Next Generation, it’s difficult to fathom the creators going back there. Despite that, in a world where people regularly sacrifice morals for political expediency, and believe that the only integrity that’s relevant is the structural variety, my biggest hope for Picard is that he hasn’t lost his.
If you’re interested in a little bit more of the background of the show, here’s another vignette that might pique your curiosity. Again, Star Trek: Picard launches this Thursday, January 23rd, on CBS All-Access. If you’re not a subscriber already, but you’re planning on watching the show, maybe click on that fancy link on the right.
