With a successful third and final season, Star Trek: Picard highlighted the need for the continual appearance of legacy characters and a Star Trek: Legacy series.
Star Trek: Picard gave fans a reason to be excited about legacy characters again. It brought back some of our favorites from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It opened the door to a follow-up series which, although not in development at this time, is being seriously discussed and considered.
Star Trek: Legacy, according to Terry Matalas, would continue the journeys of Captain Seven of Nine, now commanding the new USS Enterprise, with her first officer Raffi and her special counselor to the captain, Ensign Jack Crusher. At least one of Commodore Geordi La Forge’s daughters remained aboard the ship at the end, and there have been mumblings about bringing Worf’s son onboard as well as Riker and Troi’s daughter. That gives the legacy characters reasons to come back periodically, if nothing else than to check in on their children.
So what happens if Star Trek: Legacy doesn’t happen?
Will we have seen the last of Captain Will Riker, Counselor Troi, Dr. Beverly Crusher, Admiral Picard, Data, La Forge, and the others who returned this season? Though we know they could always turn up on other series (and have), before now, though, that has been limited to voice acting on Star Trek: Lower Decks. So if a legacy series isn’t greenlit, have we seen the last of the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew?
A Starfleet Academy series is in production so it’s always possible one or more of the captains and admirals could show up there, but would the crew from the new Enterprise? Probably not, and that ship is carrying one of the legacy characters—Seven of Nine. So the big question is, without a new series that is well-established with connections to those characters, will we ever see them again?
And what about the characters we didn’t see? Will they ever reappear on our screens? Will we ever see Captain Harry Kim as Terry Matalas wanted? What about those well-known but hardly seen faces from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine?
A Star Trek: Legacy series isn’t just for the benefit of the fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It would provide opportunities to revisit characters from over fity years of Star Trek. While some fans may think it’s time to move past the older characters and stick with the new, there are those of us who don’t ever want to give up the familiar ones that heralded the beginning of our Star Trek journey. And I’m one of those people. I don’t want to have to say goodbye again. Do you?