Picard Season 3 Episode 3 Review

To reiterate, the third season of “Picard” is, overall, plenty strong, especially when compared to the horrendous first two seasons. The storytelling is clear, the pace is tolerable, and the characters are no longer all violent murderers. As stated in a previous review, this season of “Picard” feels like a really good “Next Generation” movie. 

It is worth noting, however, that none of the “Next Generation” movies were stellar. The films had their moments, of course, but they were largely replete with inappropriate “badass” movie moments with a cast that was never selected for their capabilities as action stars. Perhaps not content to tell cerebral, talky stories, the filmmakers behind the four NextGen films panicked and fled into the genre that “Star Trek” is least prepared to inhabit: action. In “Star Trek: First Contact,” for instance, Picard is seen wearing a tank top, a gun strapped across his back, swinging on tubes to escape a room full of flesh-melting gas. In “Star Trek: Nemesis,” Picard drives a dune buggy during a machine gun battle. The moments are dumb, and Picard is completely out of character. 

Picard’s attitudes in “Seventeen Seconds” cement this season as deliberately cinematic and action-forward. Yes, the season still feels like proper “Star Trek” — characters are still in uniform, there is a chain of command, and most of the action takes place on a starship — but a Trekkie can lament the same things about this season as they could about the movies. “Seventeen Seconds” declares openly that audiences will not be getting a complex sci-fi story or an ethical dilemma. This will be about battles, mysteries, and resolving long-held personal issues left over from 1994.