MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
Two not-overly-funny things happened the week after I got round to watching PICARD SEASON THREE on DVD: two of the actors involved passed away before I did my review. The first was TOS veteran Walter Koenig, who had only a "voice-over cameo" in the final episode of Season 3: he passed on October 26 of this year. The second was Picard himself, the venerable Patrick Stewart, who passed on October 28. Before either performer died, I'd been trying to organize my thoughts on this series, which at present stands as the final teleseries iteration of any series directly launched by Gene Roddenberry.
In my review of Season One I mentioned that during the original run of NEXT GENERATION, I was something less than an ardent fan of the show. However, despite my negative remarks about "the one where Picard talks to an oil slick," I did see assorted episodes that impressed me. Further, long before I viewed any of the PICARD seasons, I had been virtually inundated by podcasts asserting that nobody should even bother with Seasons One and Two, that only the third season, reuniting most of the regular cast and several key guest-stars, was worth bothering with. The Critical Drinker, for instance, reiterated this opinion as if he were delivering the Ten Commandments to a benighted audience of acolytes.
I had cause to doubt this pronouncement when I actually liked most of Season One. I'd even say that showrunner Michael Chabon *may* have been responsible for bringing a little more depth to the season's main trope, "androids are people too." This was a trope that had often appeared in TNG episodes but not always with great execution. After Season One ended, Chabon departed the showrunner position and was succeeded by the team of Akiva Goldsman and Terry Matalas, and for Season Two the two of them produced a pile of steaming politicized garbage. Then for Season Three, Matalas assumed the billing of sole showrunner.
And where does the third season wind up on the merit-meter? Well, since I wasn't a huge TNG fan, the "gang's all here" reunions here are -- okay. Just like the previous two seasons, the ten episodes of PICARD THREE depend on introducing some overarching plot-conflict, against which tapestry the various characters, whether brand-new or previously established, must react dramatically. Naturally, since so many characters in Three have detailed histories from the teleseries and from movies, the writers' main focus was on getting the character beats of those established players right. The second consideration was then having those fan-favorites interact with a handful of others, either new characters like main villain Vadic (Amanda Plummer) or alumni from PICARD's first two seasons.
Unlike many TNG episodes that were built around a major "A-plot" and an often-unrelated "B-plot," the two plotlines of PICARD THREE are meant to dovetail. The guy whose name is the title naturally gets the A-plot. Admiral Picard (Stewart) is summoned back into action by a distress call from his former ship's doctor Beverly Crusher, being menaced by the aforementioned Vadic. What Picard doesn't know is that he's also being summoned to rescue Jack Crusher (Ed Speleers), a grown son he never knew he made during a liaison with Beverly. Picard pulls Riker, his old second-in-command, into the rescue effort. Over the course of the show, the majority of "old faces"-- Riker, Beverly Crusher, Deanna Troi. Geordi LaForge, and an amalgam of Data and his brother Lore-- are also assembled in Picard's A-plot. The B-plot focuses on TNG alumnus Worf teamed up with PICARD alumnus Raffi, both of whom are investigating terrorist activity against Starfleet. Over the course of the season, that activity is intrinsically related to the motivations of the main villain. Vadic initially seems to be a bounty hunter, seeking to capture young Jack Crusher for assorted space-crimes, but all is not as it seems.
The upshot of all these mysteries is that Starfleet is being menaced by a rare "super-villain team-up" between two old enemies of the Federation: the techno-organic Borg and the shapeshifting ETs known as the Changelings. This was one of the better ideas of PICARD THREE. Still, the writing-staff neglected to play off the origins of this alliance of entities who'd not been previously associated. The Borg's motive remains what it always is: assimilation of all races into their collective. The Changelings get less attention, even with the caveat that Vadic and her comrades are described as a "splinter-group," rather than representing the totality of whatever metamorphs still exist outside the frame of the story. Still, even with Vadic's typical villain's-motive-- "Starfleet done me dirt"-- the splinter-group seems conveniently sanguine about the possibility that their whole race might find itself servicing cyborgs down the line.
And what's the one thing the villains really need to bring off their evil plan? Why, it's Picard's brand-new adult kid Jack. And here's another place where the writers, busy attending to all the callbacks needed to explore the marriage of Riker and Troi, or Data's new impressions of humanity, fell short of the mark. I know it's not easy to make a new character compelling amidst a flock of fan-favorites, but-- Jack Crusher's seriously lame. There's an initial attempt to make him seem like a roguish rule-breaker, and this might have worked had Jack been forced to shift from Mister Selfish to Mister Altruism. But since he's the son of two heroes, his apple can't fall from the tree. The viewer is told that Jack's mother discouraged him from meeting his father to avoid the Admiral's many enemies, and this excuse is so old and hackneyed as to have Silver-Age Superman's whiskers on it. So Jack's alienated from his father, but has no justification for being so alienated-- where's the drama in that?
Actually, of the many emotional spotlights in PICARD THREE, the only that grabbed me was the one between the Admiral and his "surrogate daughter" Ro Laren (Michelle Forbes). Ro only appeared in eight episodes of TNG, but the talents of Forbes and the TNG writers made Ro one of the show's most praised "featured players." The PICARD THREE writers gave this character a kick-ass finish to her story-arc-- while Jack Crusher, one of the figures most important to the whole narrative, comes off as "Wesley Crusher with a Big Secret That the Borg Need." Still, I guess I should be pleased that the emotional spotlights of the series regulars are at least decent. They all could have been as badly conceived-- and as badly performed-- as Amanda Plummer's Vadic. Every time she was on screen, I found myself missing the "God-alien" from STAR TREK: THE FINAL FRONTIER.
And how about the star of the show? As mentioned, Walter Koenig's cameo was little more than an affectionate toss-off. However, the third and last season of PICARD certainly needed to emphasize the immense charm and forcefulness of the actor who brought to life the successor to James Kirk. I might not have thought much of the Jack Crusher character, but Stewart's nevertheless impressive seeking to negotiate a relationship with a grown son. A short-lived quarrel with Riker doesn't add up to much, but the two performers still play well off one another, and the same principle holds true for the Admiral encountering one more iteration of his artificial crewman. Stewart's emotional palette was much broader in Season One, but PICARD THREE doesn't contain any false notes, which is more than I can say for Season Two.
PICARD THREE knows its audience and certainly seems to have pleased those viewers, and frankly, I don't know that the season would have been much better had the writers shown more attention to the shortcomings I perceived. Robert Frost said, "Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in," and the three seasons of PICARD are to TNG what the first six STAR TREK movies are to The Original Series. "Home" may include some very bad experiences as well as some very good ones. But since no one gets out of life without a heaping helping of both goodness and badness, there are worse fates for a fictional creation than to run the gamut of both experiences.
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