“Star Trek: Picard” has been renewed for a third season well ahead of the February, 2022, launch of Season 2. The early renewal was announced during Paramount’s “Star Trek Day” festivities.
And when “Picard” Season 2 arrives, it’s going pensively where a ton of other “Trek” stories have gone before: Back in time. Which, apparently, is all Q’s fault. See for yourself in the first trailer, which launched Wednesday, right now at the top of the page.
As we see in the trailer, following the (frankly bonkers) events of “Picard” Season 1, Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) has returned to his posh family vineyards in France. But whatever peace he seeks is interrupted by the return of Q (John de Lancie), the omnipotent interdimensional troll who has pestered Picard since the very first episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
Back once again to subject Jean-Luc to the ongoing trial of humanity’s worth, Q snaps his fingers and (as far as we can tell) changes history so that the Federation is now a “totalitarian nightmare.” Luckily, Picard and his friends from Season 1 — Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill), Elnor (Evan Evagora), Raffi (Michelle Hurd), Chris Rios (Santiago Cabrera) and Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) — retain all their memories from the original timeline. So they team up to travel back to the point of divergence and save the future.
Which if you know anything about “Trek” lore, then you know this is a surprisingly common “Star Trek” plot. For instance, “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.” Or “Deep Space Nine,” which had the groundbreaking two-part episode “Past Tense.” Oh, and “Star Trek Enterprise” had a whole thing where the show’s main villains went back in time to help Nazi Germany win World War II, and another where the crew ended up back in the 1990s.
Oh, also, there’s “Star Trek: First Contact,” which has Picard’s Enterprise forced back to the year 2063 to stop the Borg from changing history so that the Federation is replaced by the Borg collective. Which might be why Picard has to find the Borg Queen for help getting back to the past. But while the casting of Annie Wershing in that role was pretty cool, we have no idea how much she’ll actually appear, since the trailer sure makes it look like the bulk of Picard takes place back in the 21st century.
Oh right, I forgot to add that the point of divergence is apparently somewhere in Los Angeles of the 2020s, which feels weird knowing what we know about the “Star Trek” version of 21st century history, but is pretty great for a group of actors who get to wear normal people clothes instead of space clothes for a few episodes.
Anyway, if you’re like me, you’re probably going to start feeling anxiety over what does and what doesn’t end up being retconned out of canon. (Hands off the Bell Riots, guys.) But we’ll worry about that in February. For now, bask in the glory of a new season of “Star Trek: Picard.”
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