FEBRUARY 10, 2023 - In one week, the world will finally be able to watch the first episode of Star Trek: Picard season 3, entitled “The Next Generation.” That episode title holds a lot of promise, especially for old-school Trekkies like me, who grew up watching Star Trek: The Next Generation every week as it aired.

The announcement that the TNG bridge crew would be returning touched off a firestorm of excitement and speculation mixed with trepidation. As with any new Trek property, the fans worry that the Powers That Be will ruin their favorite franchise by making the characters, ships, and situations “different” than in the past.

So, are Picard, Riker, Beverly, Worf, Geordi, and Deanna the same as when we last saw them 20 years ago, in Star Trek: Nemesis? Of course not. They weren’t the same characters then as when we met them in “Encounter at Farpoint” 25 years before that. Real people grow and change and, frankly, the TNG characters would be kind of boring if they didn’t do the same. But are they essentially the people we’ve grown to love over the past 45 years? Absolutely.

From the start, this season feels like the fifth TNG movie, the follow-up to Nemesis (or rather, Star Trek: First Contact) that we never got, and that is clearly the creative team’s intention. Most Trek shows have a cinematic quality these days, and the team behind PIC is leaning into that.

The episodes this season don’t begin with the opening we’ve come to expect for Picard, with a sweeping melody and sepia-toned graphics. Instead, after a brief teaser, each episode begins with a glimpse of the Star Trek: Picard title card, fading in from the darkness, with the beloved Star Trek fanfare playing gently in the background, and ends with a suite of music from First Contact. These touches encourage the viewer to compare the season to that fan-favorite film, widely considered one of the best Trek movies.

But a series is more than just its intro and outro. We’ve seen Jonathan Frakes reprise his role as William Riker in Star Trek: Picard before, but it’s always nice to see him return to the franchise. “Commander Riker's easy-going manner and sense of humour is fascinating to me,” Data says in the TNG episode “Data’s Day.” “I believe it to be one reason he is so popular among the crew.” That may well be true. His “easy-going manner” was on display in the PIC season 1 episode “Nepenthe,” as he prepared his bunnicorn sausage pizza, and in the first episode of season 3, he displays it once more.

Star Trek on television has never been particularly comfortable with humor. With the exception of a few episodes here and there (and the animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks, of course,) the humor often feels a little forced. The films, on the whole, have done a better job with it, especially Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and J.J. Abrams’ Kelvin timeline movies. In the six episodes of PIC season 3 I’ve seen so far, there’s a lot of humor and, far from feeling forced, the jokes tend to hit the mark. In my estimation, a big reason for this is that the humor comes from the characters themselves, not from a situation fabricated to elicit laughs. TNG, perhaps unfairly, would often create humor at Worf’s (Michael Dorn) expense. Not so in PIC. So far, the humorous moments he’s involved in come from the fact that we know and love the character. We aren’t laughing at him, but rather, with a fondness born of familiarity. Also, as we know from the New York Comic Con trailer. the Klingon is a pacifist now. Trust me when I say that doesn’t make him any less of a badass!

When the season opens, Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) are estranged for reasons even the Admiral isn’t certain of. This will probably displease some fans, particularly Crushard (Picerly?) “shippers,” but again, people change, and so do relationships. Riker and Picard’s relationship changes early on, too, when they have an epic disagreement, the likes of which we haven’t seen between them since the TNG episode “The Pegasus.” The characters don’t always see eye-to-eye as they did back in the day, but I have the feeling this season is about our old crew finding their way back to each other.

Michelle Hurd and Jeri Ryan return as Raffi Musiker and Seven of Nine, respectively, also now estranged, and their performances are as excellent as ever. There are some new faces, as well. Amanda Plummer joins the cast as Vadic, a new baddie with a mysterious agenda. Her gleeful portrayal of a possibly unhinged villain adds an interesting new layer to a show that could start to feel predictable with so many returning faces. Stage and screen actress Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut plays Ensign Sidney La Forge, Geordi’s (LeVar Burton) daughter, and her performance is spot-on, although discussing her character’s arc would be difficult without getting too spoilery.

Also joining the cast is Todd Stashwick, whose Captain Liam Shaw is kind of a jerk. Okay, he’s a big jerk, with a grudge against Picard, the cause of which we learn several episodes in. I won’t spoil it, other than to say that it’s really my biggest (and so far only) complaint of the season. It makes total sense, and perhaps I’m being too harsh, but it seems to me the Locutus of Borg’s shadow has been so overused that it’s become trite.

PIC season 3 is a starship nerd’s dream. If you’ve been staying up-to-date with the coverage, you know the Titan-A, a version of Riker’s old command, is the “hero ship” of the season. But if you like classic starships, just you wait. There’s a midseason episode that will bring a nostalgic tear to your eye!

In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” Spock suggested, “Change is the essential process of all existence.” And that’s true. We humans adapt to our environment or we die. If you’re a Star Trek: The Next Generation fan from back in the day and are hoping for more episodes of that, you’ll be disappointed. Patrick Stewart has been very clear that the third season of Star Trek: Picard is not a TNG reunion. Although the entire cast is involved in the season, he’s right. They’re not getting together to share a beer and reminisce about old times. (Although, now that I think about it, they do plenty of both of those things throughout the season.)

The way television shows are written has changed over the last 45 years, adapting to the audience’s evolving sensibilities. So, too, have the TNG characters changed, some growing apart, others subscribing to a new belief system. The changes won’t be for everyone, and that’s okay. But for my money, this is the best season of Star Trek: Picard. It’s nice to see my old friends together again after 20 years, seeing them, as they see each other, with a new perspective. If this is the end of the TNG cast’s adventures, is it a good sendoff? I can't answer that without viewing the remaining episodes of the season. But from what I’ve seen so far, it’s a great start.