Picard Season 3, Terry Matalas, and Honoring the Saga
With the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard about to premiere, Matthew Rushing and I take a look at the first two seasons and ahead to the third on a new episode of The Artificial Tango.
When it was announced on August 4, 2018, that Patrick Stewart would be reprising the role of Jean-Luc Picard, I had mixed feelings. The prospect of seeing Picard once again, in fresh stories, was welcome. The captain’s calm and thoughtful approach to even the most challenging and dangerous situations had been a key influence on my personal development late in high school and throughout university. But that chapter of Star Trek closed for me long ago, and I felt that reopening it should only be done if there is a very good reason. A network chasing streaming money doesn’t qualify.
What we got in Season 1 turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Even though the various plots didn’t really fit together, I enjoyed the exploration of the character and the closure of Picard’s relationship with data. Season 2 brought even deeper exploration that made a greater effort to tie back into the man and the stories we watched on The Next Generation(TNG).
Now, with the third and final season about to premiere, it looks as if the promise of the series will finally be realized in a story that brings the TNG cast back together—not just for cameos but for one more epic mission that, like the Original Series films, acknowledges that passage of time for the characters and their relationships. And it has come to be thanks to the vision and determination of executive producer and showrunner Terry Matalas along with the studio’s willingness to invest in a well-deserved reunion of the cast that revived Star Trek on television in the 1990s and made the franchise the juggernaut it is today.
Before we jump into the season, which premieres on February 16, my co-host Matthew Rushing and I take a look at the first two seasons on a new episode of our Star Trek: Picard podcast The Artificial Tango. We discuss the lack of cohesion in storytelling from season to season—and how that was by design—and ask what could have been and what is to come as the crew of the Enterprise-D (and E!) reunite. You can stream above, visit the episode page on TFM, or subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or your player of choice.