Patrick Stewart was absolutely wrong about Star Trek: Picard

Patrick Stewart was the cause of Star Trek: Picard starting out so poorly.

Season three of Star Trek: Picard has been a hit for Paramount+. Fans love nostalgia, for good or bad, they do. And when you give them that, they’ll show up. So it should be no surprise to anyone that Picard’s third season really rejuvenated the series thanks to the massive influx of nostalgia. From past actors to returning characters and a metric ton of easter eggs, everything that could be forced into the show was.

Whether it’s good for the franchise long-term or not is up for debate, but what isn’t up for debate is that it’s worked. And that’s in spite of Patrick Stewart. Stewart didn’t want to come back to do a Star Trek series like this.

This isn’t a cheap shot either, Stewart himself admits to keeping his former castmates away, not wanting to do a “reunion” series. When asked by People.com back in February if he or Jonathan Frakes had any idea the show would become a reunion, Stewart spoke candidly;

"No. Initially, my feeling had been — I had certain conditions attached to signing onto this. Though I was excited about the idea of a Star Trek series called Picard, Next Generation was something I thought we had done great work on, but this now was something very different"

Frakes would then go on to say Stewart gathered all of them and explained that it would just be Stewart returning to the franchise and that it would be focused on him specifically.

That wasn’t all, either. In typical grimdark format, everyone that everyone loved about the original idea would be stripped away. As it wasn’t just the cast he didn’t want, he didn’t want the uniforms or the Enterprise back either.

Thank goodness other people vetoed those original decisions.

Star Trek: Picard’s third season proves that there is only one universally loved format for the franchise

You know those people who say “Star Trek doesn’t have to be one thing”? They’re wrong. There’s a reason why Picard’s final season has resonated with fans, beyond the nostalgia, and it’s because it’s about Starfleet. It’s ships, protocols, uniforms, and working together.

It’s why Strange New Worlds is such a hit. It’s the same idea, the same concept. It’s about a ship, a crew, the rules, the regulations, and how everyone plays in it. When you distance yourself from that setup, you lose what makes Star Trek what it is.

Any new series has got to embrace that idea, if they don’t, it won’t work. We know it won’t work. We’ve seen what happens when you try to distance yourself from a winning formula; the property fails to reach the heights it could.

Stop trying to make Star Trek shows that shake up the formula. If you want to do a Star Trek show that isn’t in this formula, slap a different name on it and make the property its own thing.

Trek works best when it’s Trek.