Star Trek: Picard season 3 may see Jean-Luc Picard back with past Starfleet

Star Trek: Picard’s third season may see Jean-Luc Picard time traveling.

The first season of Star Trek: Picard was maligned at best and divisive at worst. It absolutely split the fanbase down the middle, with more than most not liking the series at all. The show had its supporters but one has to ask if they really liked the series or simply liked the nostalgia it was steeped in.

You can like the first season all you want, no one is saying you can’t, but ViacomCBS made the decision to bring in a different showrunner for seasons two and three. Michael Chabon took the job and made a show that was intentionally divisive. So it shouldn’t be too surprising that Chabon was out of the show before the series even premiered.

You can embrace the idea of Hollywood double-speak, and be amazed by how creative the excuses are about his involvement with the project but at the end of the day, people don’t leave a show as the head person in charge, a week or so before the show premiers, if everyone is happy with the work.

It’s one thing to announce after the season is over, but before it even premiered? Yikes. So out goes Chabon and his antagonistic desires and incomes Terry Matalas, a Trek alumni. While he did appear in one episode of Enterprise (“These are the Voyages”), he was an assistant to the producers on Voyager and a production assistant on Enterprise.

He’s a Trekkie. Perhaps the next great Trek creator.

Terry Matalas is taking Jean-Luc Picard back to Starfleet; in some way

Terry Matalas seems to be another in the long line of attempts to correct the franchise away from the mess that Discovery and Picard created. Like the shows all you want, but in an ever-increasing and divisive world, with people yelling at one another non-stop, these shows need to be an escape. More now than ever before. The way people talk about things is different, the way people consume entertainment is different. So it makes sense that Star Trek has to be different.

Matalas appears to be embracing that idea, and course-correcting Picard hard. For season two he already reached into the bag of tricks and pulled out, the Borg Queen, Q, and John de Lancie. He’s arguably the most popular recurring character and guest star the franchise has ever had.

Now it appears as though Matalas is bringing back the Federation that we all know and love.

Now it should be noted that this doesn’t mean that Picard is going to be a member of Starfleet again, but more likely that Picard will somehow, somewhen, end up back on the Enterprise-D (or Enterprise-E).

The props and sets look straight out of the Rick Berman and Brannon Braga era of Star Trek. That can’t be a coincidence. Not with all the modern versions looking like the inside of an Apple store. This could be a very cool, very different season of Picard, especially if most if not all of it takes place in the past.

It’d be a chance to retcon some of the bigger issues with the franchise. So here’s hoping that Matalas is the showrunner new and old fans deserve.