Everyone I have spoken to loved Season 3 of Star Trek: Picard. After the absolute dreck that Nu-Trek had been serving up, it was like a palate cleanser. Sure, it was loaded with ‘memberberries and precision-engineered to give you exactly what you wanted, but why do we talk like that is a bad thing sometimes? I remember watching it, and exchanging messages with other Outposters in real-time:
“You watching this shit? Where has this been for years? Why didn’t they do this earlier?”
After the season ended, there were widely discussed plans to carry on with showrunner Terry Matalas and a follow-up series Star Trek: Legacy. This would have followed Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) as Captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise-G, along with First Officer Raffaela Musiker (Michelle Hurd) and Jack Crusher (Ed Speelers) as special counsellor.
Because this is Nu-Trek, and people making decisions in Hollywood are fucking idiots, we never got it. Matalas moved across to Marvel and is the showrunner on VisionQuest, about which I hear good things. I haven’t got around to watching it yet.
Matalas appeared on Brent Spiner and Jonathan Frakes’ podcast Dropping Names and he confirmed that not only were they talking, but that Patrick Stewart wanted to return:
“Legacy wasn’t supposed to just be like we’re just going to keep doing Next Gen. It was supposed to bring in new people, young, switch off. We had a great idea for Worf and Alexander and the Klingons, but it was going to be back to feeling like Next Gen. Patrick was like, ‘I want to come and be the one who gets on the screen and tells him missions.’ I was like, ‘I don’t know why we’re not doing this.’”
The project never officially moved beyond active conversations, and it turns out it wasn’t the only ting featuring the character of Jean Luc Picard that was nixed.
James McAvoy is an established Star Trek fan, and alongside playing a younger version of one Patrick Stewart character in X-Men, he wanted to also play a younger Picard in an adventure set around the time before he became Captain of the Enterprise-D.
Appearing on the Happy Sad Confused podcast recently, he revealed that a Mutiny on the Stargazer limited series nearly happened:
“That was a whole idea I had I pitched to the Star Trek people as well, and we nearly did it…I had this whole story of a young Picard that I love. I pitched, it was like a one-off standalone season … when he took over as captain of the Stargazer and what actually happened, and the secret he’s been holding his entire career. I just pitched it to them, talking to them, and they were into it, but we had logistical issues that meant we couldn’t do it. But I love that story that I just got to bed and think about it at night”
Under new leadership, Paramount is wrapping up the travesty that is Nu-Trek and planning something different going forward.
