Star Trek: Picard S03E01, "The Next Generation" (2023) TV Show Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Sorry for my lack of posts this week, but I decided to take the week off, except for this review, since I didn't get time off during the holidays. Today though I'm going to be reviewing the first episode of season 3 of Star Trek: Picard which aired yesterday. There will be some spoilers for the episode as there a few things in the episode that I want to talk about, but they aren't major story elements since it is a new episode that just came out. So let's get into it!

First, I have to say that I love this poster they put out for the season. It's bright, shows all of the major characters, and reminds me of the old Star Trek comic book and novel covers from the '80s and early '90s. It's probably my favourite poster out of all the current Star Trek shows besides the season 1 poster for Strange New Worlds.

After season 2 disappointed pretty much everyone with how incoherent it was, I did not have high hopes for season 3. Despite the return of my favourite cast of Star Trek characters ever, again, aside from the cast of Strange New Worlds, I did not have high hopes for this season, the way I did with Q and Guinan's return for season 2. Mainly because, while I liked the first season I was not in love with it the way I wanted to be with the return of my favourite Star Trek Captain, Jean-Luc Picard. There was too much about it that didn't feel like Star Trek just because of how violent and pessimistic it was for a franchise based on optimism and exploration. And so I hoped that that was simply because of season 1 weirdness that most TV shows have and that it would get better in the second season. Which it didn't. It got worse. This episode exceeded my low expectations simply because it gave us things to sink our teeth into with the mystery that Beverly Crusher gave Picard and Riker while the first two seasons felt aimless.

The first thing I want to talk about is the music. Besides the themes from Star Trek: First Contact (1996) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994), there are alot of musical cues from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) particularly in the spacedock scenes with Picard and Riker on the U.S.S. Titan-A, a refitted version of Riker's old command, which we've seen on Lower Decks. In fact the entire inspection/departing from spacedock scene was basically lifted directly from Star Trek II, including the music. Though the interior of spacedock itself is very much like the spacedock we saw in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), as well as, more recently, in certain episodes of Lower Decks. There are scenes where the music is original to this show, but the vast majority of it are from previous Star Trek shows and movies. But like it did in the season 1 finale of Lower Decks, my face lit up when Jerry Goldsmith's Star Trek theme, which he originally wrote for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and was reused for The Next Generation, Star Trek V and as the ending themes for First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection (1998), and Star Trek Nemesis (2002), played during the closing credits of this episode. It's the theme I'm most familiar with since it was the opening theme for TNG for seven seasons. 

One of the things I loved about this episode is that it was the first time that Picard and Riker went on a mission together, just the two of them. I guess you could say that the two part episode from season 7 of TNG, "Gambit", had them on a mission together, but it was unintentional, as Picard was thought to be dead and Riker was captured by the renegade crew Picard was investigating. But this is the first time that Picard and Riker are on a mission together for the entire episode, which I loved, because the chemistry between Sir Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes is astounding and always has been, even 30 years ago when TNG was first on the air. For example, during the scene where the Titan leaves spacedock, Picard and Riker are on the Bridge with Seven of Nine, who is the ship's first officer, under the name, Annika Hansen, and when Picard asks Seven if they should inform Engineering that they're going to warp 9.99, and Seven explains that it's no longer protocol on the new ships as it's all automated, Riker says, "Excellent recovery, Admiral" and Picard responds with, "Shut it, Will.", I laughed my ass off, which is the first time I've actually laughed at anything in Picard since it was so dark and serious in the first two seasons. 

Also the new captain of the Titan, Liam Shaw, played by Todd Stashwick, is a jerk. I think, aside from Captain Lorca, who turned out to be his Mirror Universe counterpart, Shaw is the first Starfleet captain I have outright hated on any Star Trek show or movie. I'm not counting Captain Styles from Star Trek III, simply because he was proud of the Excelsior. But Shaw is outright bigoted against both Seven and Picard because of their pasts as Borg, and dismissive of Riker as well. I honestly hope that Seven decks him at some point during the season, or at the very least, takes him down a peg, because he deserves it.

There are so many TNG easter eggs in this episode. The biggest one for me is at the beginning of the episode where Beverly is listening to the last log entry that Picard made before he was captured by the Borg in "The Best of Both Worlds Part I" at the end of TNG season 3. Apparently there were written logs from "Encounter at Farpoint" and "Unification I" on the screen of Beverly's computer terminal, which was an old style TNG version, but I couldn't tell. I looked it up on Memory Alpha. So that's pretty cool. Oh and the opening Stardate for "Encounter at Farpoint", Stardate 41153.7, was mentioned by Picard's home computer, which I loved.

I do think that Raffi's storyline feels super disconnected from the rest of the plot. At least in this episode since it might turn out that what Raffi is investigating is the same thing that Beverly investigating/running away from. But for  right now they seem to be completely disconnected and Raffi's storyline just isn't as interesting as what's going on in the main storyline with Picard, Riker, and Beverly. It has the potential to be interesting, it's just, right now it isn't. I don't hate it of course, it's just not where my focus is. Especially because they, once again, split Seven and Raffi up, not giving enough time for that relationship to develop to it's full potential. Which is extremely frustrating.

Overall this was a fantastic start to the final season of Picard. I'm excited to see Geordi La Forge, Worf, Deanna Troi, Lore, and Professor Moriarty in the coming episodes, and interested to see where this storyline is going. If you're a TNG fan, I recommend checking out this episode, even if you haven't seen the first two seasons, as they're all but irrelevant at this point.

And that my friends is it for me for this week, but I'll be back next week with more reviews. I probably won't be doing episode by episode reviews of season 3 of Picard like I did with season 1 of Strange New Worlds, but if there's an episode I particularly like in the season I'll talk about it on here. So until next time have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.