With only a handful of episodes to go, CBS All Access’ “Star Trek: Picard” has found itself in an interesting position. Marketed as a return to the world of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” the series debuted to very good critical reviews.
However within a few episodes, people realised how very different the series was to what came before. Trek fans are famously divided over what constitutes “real Star Trek” and so there’s an inevitable backlash against any new go at the franchise.
The Abrams films and “Star Trek: Discovery” both bore the brunt of some fan anger, but the presence of Patrick Stewart and others was seen as a potential buffer from that. Not so it seems, as fans have been expressing their upset about how unlike TNG the new show is and wishing they had the optimistic, episodic parable formula of the old show back. A few cite FOX’s “The Orville” as being much closer to their ‘idea of Star Trek’.
Patrick Stewart famously said in the lead-up to the new show premiering that he had no desire to simply redo “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” and if he were to come back then the show had to grow and change. This week, showrunner Michael Chabon spoke with IndieWire and agreed with that assessment and says ‘Picard’ is very much its own story, even as he understands the desire to revisit the past:
“We had a commitment to telling the story of how time changes people and how twenty years can put you into a completely different place that you never would have imagined. As a fan, I share that desire to go back, and to have it be the same and to want more of what I already know I love. That sort of inherent conservatism – not in a political sense – I just meant there’s a lower-case ‘c’ conservatism in a fan’s heart that says if you already know you love something, why would you want it to be different?”
Indeed the first season as it has progressed has brought back more familiar characters and a tone more akin to the old show than the early episodes suggested. Chabon says the second season is already going over a wish list of characters and elements they would like to see again and there has been discussions: “’Oh, we can bring back this, we can bring back that, and we’ll have Ferengi, and we’ve mentioned Janeway and all these things that fans are continually asking me about now.”
The rule for bringing someone back though is each returning character has to have a meaningful story and can’t be handled “in the most perfunctory way – which would be satisfying to nobody.” “Star Trek: Picard” is available now on CBS All Access in North America and on Amazon around the globe.
