Modern Star Trek has got to stop doing the familial tie-in

Star Trek is over-relying on the familial tie-in

For years Star Trek thrived as a franchise with its ability to introduce new characters into the canon without resorting to ancestorial tie-ins. Kathryn Janeway wasn’t Jonathan Archer’s great great great great great granddaughter. Jean-Luc Picard wasn’t the great-grandson of James Kirk. Characters were their own thing.

That started to change with Star Trek: Discovery and the awful revelation that Spock had an adoptive human sister named Michael, who no one ever knew about. The unnecessary retcon was done to present this character as “more”. More important, more special, more justified. It flopped and their attempt to make her into a Vulcan minus the ears and green blood failed.

They tried this again in Picard with Data’s daughter-but-not-really in Dah and Soji Asha. While not biologically linked, they were only able to be created due to Data’s existence and a single positronic neuron. This was again re-visited in Strange New Worlds with La’an Noonien-Singh, ancestor of the famous Star Trek villain Khan Noonien-Singh.

Shows like Prodigy and Lower Decks have avoided this trope, but have over-relied on cameos and callbacks to past characters and storylines, which may be just as bad as constantly shrinking the universe and making everyone related to everyone.

All of these constant callbacks and interconnectivity have deflated one big reveal in Star Trek: Picard

The constant family ties have taken the bite out of Star Trek: Picard’s big reveal

There was a big reveal in Star Trek: Picard that was leaked months ago in advance, Jean-Luc Picard and Beverly Crusher have a child, named Jack, who’s in his early 30s and has seemingly ruined continuity.

While we’ll get into the nonsense that surrounds the character soon enough, what we want to focus on is the lack of an impact the reveal has had. Sure, part of it may have been the lack of a surprise. We told our readers that this then-mystery character was likely the byproduct of Picard and Crusher, simply due to how little information was given about the character, as opposed to everyone else.

So we knew he was well before he was revealed.

The other issue is that the enormity of the moment has been significantly watered down. Every show has had some sort of family tie-in save for Prodigy, so the significance of the moment wasn’t as impressive.

When you get inundated with the same story over and over and over again, it loses its impact. Sure, this is the first time that Picard has found out he has a son, but we’ve had the shocking family twist a few times already. And it’s kind of played out.

Star Trek needs to stop repeating the same story beats.