Star Trek: Picard’s Terry Matalas selects darkest pick possible of his series for his ‘comfort’ episode

Star Trek: Picard’s Terry Matalas has some jokes.

Terry Matalas and company will forever go down in Star Trek history as the people who salvaged Star Trek: Picard from a similar fate that Discovery had gone down. Having been dramatically too dark and cynical, the first two seasons of Picard were met with negative reviews. Fans were quick to drop the show and rip it to threads; pointing out the tone being very un-Star Trek and questioning a lot of the plot choices.

Namely, killing Picard, Q, and others for the shock value of it all. Plus, not bringing in the original crew of the Enterprise-D also was a big sticking point for fans. After all, how could you do a sequel series to The Next Generation with just Patrick Stewart returning as a main character?

Fans didn’t like it and questioned why Stewart would want to come back to the show sans his castmates. Well, Matalas did the near-impossible and made season three enjoyable for long-time fans. Granted, it wasn’t great, but it was a massive step up in what the fans of the series had been getting.

Matalas, a former writer for the franchise in its heyday on UPN, brought his love of the franchise to the masses and fans really embraced him. His unique personality and vision resonated with more Picard fans than any prior showrunner had.

His personality showed through his content and the way he hyped it up on social media. His storyline decisions were bold and daring, and his desire to shake things up really resonated with fans. Especially when it came to one character’s questionable death.

He hasn’t shied away from walking his own path, so it makes total sense that for Matalas, his “go-to comfort episode” of Star Trek is the one that angered the most fans.

Terry Matalas loves to make Star Trek fans upset, apparently.

Matalas, on social media, picked the episode of Picard where he killed off Captain Liam Shaw in the 9th episode of season three, entitled “Vox”, as his “comfort” episode. Clearly, a joke, as fans were very shocked and upset about Shaw’s untimely death in the series, but fans still aren’t over Shaw’s passing.

Many foresaw a future Trek series with Shaw as the ship’s captain and with the talks of a new show entitled Legacy, many thought Shaw would be part of that show.  That obviously didn’t end up being the case.

And while fans may be sad that Shaw got killed off, they should also realize that this means his character arc will be remembered for a long time. His death will go down as one of the most impactful in recent Trek history for decades to come.

While a lot of Nu Trek isn’t going to be as well-remembered, the way Shaw was written (and acted by Todd Stashwick) means that the character, and his passing, will be galvanized in Trek lore, unlike so many other moments.

And you can’t get much better than that.