Fifty Aliens By Derek Charm, 2016.

Fifty Aliens by Derek Charm, 2016.

Love it or hate it (and I guarantee you that my opinions are more positive than the average fan), you must admit that the "Picard" series has been an odd duck so far.

Like they announced in 2018 that Patrick Stewart was coming back to Star Trek, and naturally this conjured up a particular sort of story in the imagination--a sort of "last roundup" of the TNG crew, getting the band back together sort of thing. But they were very quick to say, "No, it's not that, it's a character study." And that, too, conjures up a particular sort of story: intimate stakes, maybe reconnecting with some of the people who have been most important to him (Beverley, Guinan, Q...), giving some closure to some open-ended character arcs from TNG, probably dying at the end. OK. "Logan" in space.

And then the first season comes out, and none of the characters who were closest to Picard are present. More than that, the plot centres around Picard atoning for a mistake he made *offscreen* in the decades after his last appearance, and one that the season maybe doesn't do enough work to show is in character for him. The stakes *start* intimate, but the plot is Hijacked by Cthulhu eight episodes in and the whole thing ends with an action climax with the FATE OF THE GALAXY ITSELF hanging in the balance. Picard dies but then gets better. It's secretly brilliant, but no one believes me.

What follows after that is one of the *weirdest* seasons of television that I've ever seen. Parts of it are brilliant (Q giving a last gift to Picard; Jurati becoming the Borg Queen; Seven learning self-acceptance); parts of are absolutely bone-dead stupid (Picard's "Jane Eyre" childhood; Rios staying in the past); but most of it is just plain *weird*. The whole thing is set back in time; plot points are prominently introduced and then completely ignored; Q is dying, but the show has no interest in telling us of what; Rios spends 3 episodes in ICE custody, then it's never mentioned again; Picard and Guinan spend a whole episode with an Agent Mulder expy who's never relevant to the plot; a bunch of characters in the past randomly look identical to characters in the present; the Borg are trying to save the galaxy from a vague new threat, but it feels like an afterthought. And I assume that some combination of churn in the writers' room, budgetary constraints, and pandemic-related disruptions are responsible, but as it is, it's just...bizarre.

And now the third season is coming out, to surprisingly good reviews from unlikely quarters. And it's a last roundup of the TNG crew.

When cats yawns they look terrifying, I love it.

Revue de la Mode Gazette de la Famille 13 et 15, Quai Voltaire, Paris

1880 Volume 51, Plate 128

Signed: E Cheffen

Digital Collections of the Los Angeles Public Library

Every time Admiral Picard or Janeway or anyone connected to them goes missing for five minutes Starfleet panics. Because they know something so dramatic and unhinged is about to happen. If Picard and Janeway are in the same room, all Starfleet knows is fear.

The day they found out Seven was besties with Picard and therefore tying the former Voyager Crew and Enterprise crew together, a bunch of people resigned, moved to distant planets far away, planets who had been at war for centuries signed peace treaties, the universe itself shivered in fear