Episode: |
21 |
| |
Writer: |
Terry Matalas |
| |
Director: |
Doug Aarniokoski |
| |
Air Date: |
16-Feb-2023 |
This week on
Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm starting
Star Trek: Picard season 3 with the episode
The Next Generation.
There's nothing weird about
Star Trek shows switching showrunners, but it's funny how every season of
Picard is clearly a new creator's story. The first season was helmed by novelist Michael Chabon, the second was by Akiva Goldsman, and the third was by Terry Matalas. Okay, that's an oversimplification, as Goldsman also worked on season 1 and Matalas worked on season 2, and the episodes themselves were by a bunch of different writers, but this was definitely Matalas' turn to steer the ship.
I'm one of the people who enjoyed season
2 but I have to concede that it was
a bit of a mess. In fact, a lot of
Trek fans consider it to be a complete train wreck, an embarrassing
disaster, perhaps the worst season of
Star Trek ever made. The trouble
is, it's hard to tell how much of that was due to Terry Matalas' presence and
how much was due to his absence. There was some overlap with the production of the second and third seasons, and Matalas switched his attention to season 3 after just a few episodes. So it could be that season 2
collapsed without him or it could be that his decisions set the season on a course for catastrophe.
Anyway, at the time I'm writing this intro I already know how season 3 went, but my episode reviews were written back when they were coming out so they're all full of
authentic ignorance. It just took me a year to publish them because, I dunno, it
seemed more important to write about
The Trouble with Tribbles
and
Doctor Who's 60th anniversary, and
Picard got pushed to the back
burner.
There will be
SPOILERS in this review for the whole
episode, and things like
Star Trek: Discovery, but it won't give away anything that happens later as I didn't actually
know what happens later.