After two seasons that scored a lot of blowback from the audience, the third and final season of “Star Trek: Picard” turned the ship around – resulting in not only one of the most acclaimed TV runs of the year so far, but a far more well-received ending for the ‘Next Generation’ crew than “Star Trek: Nemesis” was.
The season not only reunited the major crew. It also brought back the Enterprise-D, which allowed showrunner Terry Matalas to achieve his vision of a ‘proper sendoff’ for the cast.
Since then there’s been a lot of chatter about a “Star Trek: Legacy” series focusing on the younger Enterprise-G crew, but the reunited TNG actors have all indicated they’d be willing to return to their roles again in some way.
In a joint awards season interview with Levar Burton recently, actor Patrick Stewart reflected on the third season with IndieWire and suggested that he isn’t ready to say goodbye just yet – he still thinks they have a movie left in them:
“I think we could do a movie, a Picard-based movie. Now not necessarily at all about [Jean-Luc] Picard but about all of us. And to take many of those wonderful elements, particularly from Season 3 of Picard and take out of that what I think could be an extraordinary movie. I keep telling people and mentioning it, and so far there’s been no eager response, but it might well happen. And that would be I think a very appropriate way to say, ‘And goodbye folks.'”
In an earlier part of the interview, Burton says he was satisfied with the ending provided by season 3 of Picard: “I think for the most part, I think all of us feel this the same way, basically. If this is indeed it, I don’t believe we could possibly have gone out in a better moment for the crew, and for us as a family.”
Should a movie be made, it wouldn’t necessarily be theatrical – Paramount+ is working on a made-for-streaming “Section 31” film starring Michelle Yeoh which aims to be the first in a series of “Star Trek” streaming movies in the future.
Could one more round with the TNG crew be a possibility? As TrekMovie points out it seems Paramount “did keep the rebuilt Enterprise-D bridge set, just in case”.
