‘Star Trek: Picard’ Season 3 Beams Us Up to a Better World

“Star Trek: Picard” is warping onto television screens for its third season on Paramount+. Optimism and reliance on brains rather than brawn — the series’s hallmarks — are again on display, should viewers beam up for another tour in space.The new season reassembles the main cast of “Star Trek: the Next Generation,” which explored the “strange new worlds” of the 1960s original between 1987 and 1994. Here, the “Picard” story arc revolves around Jack Crusher, the son Admiral Jean-Luc Picard unknowingly fathered with the ship’s doctor, Beverley Crusher. Fans were disgusted with the first two seasons of “Picard,” filled with nihilism and political messaging about as subtle as a phaser blast to the chest. Now, creator Gene Roddenberry’s “wagon train to the stars” is rolling again aboard the Neo-Constitution Class USS Titan, inspired by the original USS Enterprise.The showrunner of “Picard,” Terry Matalas, told Variety that the new ship wasn’t inspired by the retro trend in automobiles, not looking to score cheap nostalgia points like other iterations of the science fiction epic. Since the original USS Enterprise was part of the Constitution Class, it also reminds us of Roddenberry’s view of the United Federation of Planets, like America, as a force for good.The first two seasons of “Picard” saw Admiral Picard, played by 82-year-old Patrick Stewart, subjected — like so many traditional institutions — to profane insults and mockery, which the character suffered with befuddlement and shame. It was not the way viewers wanted to see a character of his gravitas treated.Twice in this season’s first episode, characters disrespect Admiral Picard, but his loyal first officer — Captain William Riker, played by Jonathan Frakes — leaps to his defense, saying what fans had been screaming at their screens: A man with Admiral Picard’s service record of saving the universe more than once deserves better than elder abuse.The original “Star Trek” depicted a better future, something to aspire to amid the political assassinations, racial injustice, Vietnam war, and other upheavals of the 1960s. It invited us to dream that one day, to paraphrase the prophet Isaiah, former adversaries would beat their swords into warp cores and advance humanity.The contours of Admiral Picard’s character have changed as he passed through the hands of different writers, but here he returns to type. Using his intelligence in a manner that’s even more appropriate given the actor’s advanced years, he discerns, say, that whoever put Dr. Crusher into a futuristic medical pod must have cared for her.While Admiral Picard tries to defuse the situation by applying wisdom, Mr. Frakes has a phaser pressed against his head. The actor looks filled with genuine terror, the kind of realistic touch that was absent from previous seasons where life was cheap.Another sign of charting a new course is Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge’s daughter, Sidney, at the Titan’s helm. The actor, Mica Burton, is the daughter of legendary “Roots” actor LaVar Burton, who portrayed Mr. La Forge in “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” the cast of which is reassembled for “Picard.”A daughter invokes the romantic backstory that the character was denied on the small screen, something Mr. Burton blamed on writers having “an unconscious bias that was on display to me and to other people of color.” Ms. La Forge’s nickname, Crash — the result of starship fender benders — avoids such pandering, not depicting her as flawless and, therefore, boring.It is unfortunate that Season 3’s visuals are so dark so much of the time, with very little depth of field, and that it features a tired trope: The villain bent on revenge, Vadic, played by Amanda Plummer, resembles the farcical Frau Farbissina of “Austin Powers” and sings the tired “Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song.” Turning the other cheek doesn’t happen in the fictional 25th century, as it’s alien to a Hollywood obsessed with revenge plots in the 21st.Despite such quibbles, “Picard” offers an escape to a world we’d like to live in, in contrast to the dystopias typical of modern “Star Trek” iterations. It’s a dose of 1960s idealism transported into 2023, inspiring us to build a future where humanity leaves behind racism, war, and hunger to reach as one species for the stars.

‘Star Trek: Picard’ Season 3 Beams Us Up to a Better World

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