Patrick Stewart really didn’t want to work with the Next Generation crew on Star Trek: Picard.
The reason why Star Trek: Picard’s third season did as well as it did is simple; it gave fans what they wanted. The fans wanted to see the entire cast of The Next Generation back, not just Jean-Luc Picard. That’s largely why the first two seasons were abject failures, and why, despite the ethos of the show being “there will be no Next Generation reunion”, there was in fact a reunion.
No show changes the entire concept of its show if it’s working. That’d be silly. Look at “Arrow”, Stephen Amell was adamant that there wouldn’t be superpowers on his show, but when fans were not really into the first season, things changed drastically. Sure, they probably overcorrected but that’s not the point today.
Today, the point is that Picard was only ever going to work with everyone back. Season three, compared to the best Trek has had to offer, is still not great. Or even good. The entire plot is just…rough, but it gave us some great moments of the entire crew back together. And when you’re trying to sell dopamine hits via nostalgia-infused shows, that’s really the only point.
So it should be stated again, that despite everyone knowing the assignment, that Patrick Stewart (who plays Picard) was so against bringing everyone back. Terry Matalas, the showrunner for Picard, spoke to The Seventh Rule Podcast (via SuperHeroHype) and spoke more about Stewart’s resistance to the reunion, saying;
"They said, ‘No, we’re never going to do that.’ But along the way, I think Patrick warmed up to the idea. The more his friends came back to the show, Jonathan [and] Marina came back, de Lancie came back, and Whoopi came back… Those days on set were so warm and so happy for him, that he started to say by the end, ‘We gotta have everybody.’"
Patrick Stewart never seemed to grasp why his show was successful.
Stewart really does have a fondness for his castmates, which can’t be denied, but he sure doesn’t seem to get that while some fans adore him, most of the fanbase adored the cast as a whole. He was simply one part of the reason everyone showed up. He wasn’t the main part. Just one of a few.
And it showed how little he realized that when the producers were talking about using his old friends for the new show. He was dead against it, saying;
"It was something which initially, I had my doubts about. It would seem to me that it would be paying too much attention to the fan appreciations of what “Next Generation” had meant to them."
He even went on to say that he didn’t want to just rewind the clock by bringing back the crew. And it turns out that’s exactly what season three did. It rewound the clock; all the way to the point where the heroes used the old, rebuilt, and outdated Enterprise-D to save the day. It was a corny way to end the show, not as corny as say Russell Casse showing up in Independence Day to blow up the space alien warship in a crop duster plane, but it’s not far from that idea.
There’s no doubt that bringing in the Next Generation cast was the right call. It just goes to show you that even the most venerated of a franchise like Stewart can so totally miss the plot.