Star Trek: Picard season 3 Blu-ray boo-boo disappoints fans

A goof on the Star Trek: Picard season 3 Blu-ray is causing a stir.

Some fans experienced a shock of disappointment when they watched the just-released Star Trek: Picard season 3 Blu-ray set. They may even have wondered if that cosmic practical joker Q hadn’t pulled yet another fast one!

At the beginning of “The Last Generation”—the season (and, presumably, series) finale—the Enterprise NCC-1701-D, meticulously restored to glory by Geordi La Forge at the Starfleet Museum, is on a course for Earth to stop the Borg, just as it did when the episode streamed on Paramount+ in the U.S. back in April.

This time around, however, everyone’s favorite Galaxy-class starship doesn’t look quite as splendid as it did then. Instead of gracefully coasting out of a swirling blue nebula and flying by in an up-close-and-personal beauty shot, the Enterprise-D rather sluggishly sails through some warp space star streaks, looking nowhere near as majestic as it should.

Bill Hunt, founder and Editor in Chief of The Digital Bits, was one user of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter who called attention to the Star Trek: Picard season 3 Blu-ray discrepancy early on:

Other users confirmed the error, and chimed in with their judgments of it. Some, like @karinchu, struck an evenhanded tone:

Others, like @TyrantII, posted the only possible meme response:

Some Star Trek fans declared they liked the “wrong” version of the scene better than the “right” one. @Anthony_y94 was of that opinion:

Still others, like @spac_man, sought out the silver lining in the snafu, speculating that they might have an instant collectible on their hands.

And still others, such as @sibear71, wondered if everyone else had lost all sense of perspective (which, in all fairness, Star Trek fans have been known to do):

The Star Trek: Picard season 3 Blu-ray has an unfinished effects shot.

As Bill Hunt’s post points out, the shot seen on the Blu-ray disc is a temporary visual effects shot, not the final version.

Over at Trek Core,Ken Reilly points out that this same erroneous edit had been seen even before the Blu-ray set dropped: “certain European regions saw this version of the episode which contained the no-nebula shot in initial ‘Last Generation’ streams—before it was corrected across the service using a final master of the episode.”

As of this writing, there’s no word from CBS, Paramount, or any other of the powers that be whether fans who bought this Blu-ray release will be entitled to a replacement disc—or, indeed, whether one will even be made available.

I didn’t buy the Star Trek: Picard season 3 Blu-ray, but I have empathy for fans who are upset that their physical media copy isn’t what they were expecting. And as many of them no doubt know, there’s reason for hope! Paramount has issued replacement Star Trek discs in at least one similar situation.

In 2016, Paramount Home Entertainment recalled Blu-ray copies of the Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan’s Director’s Edition because of some duplicate footage in the Kobayashi Maru sequence.

Were we to invoke logic, neither that error in the Star Trek II Blu-ray nor the current one in the Picard Blu-ray set deserve much attention or effort to correct. But, as devoted Star Trek fans, we know our logic is uncertain where our favorite filmed adventures are concerned!