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Healing Star Trek: Everything Picard Just Fixed About The Franchise

Star Trek has made a lot of mistakes, but Star Trek: Picard season 3 just fixed nearly all of them.

By Joshua Tyler | Updated

Star Trek Has Made Big Mistakes

Star Trek has struggled in recent years, making mistakes that raised the ire of fans and damaged the reputation of the franchise. That era of missteps ended with Season 3 of Star Trek: Picard.

Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Righted Wrongs

Not only did Picard deliver an excellent story, it intentionally righted many of the wrongs of the past. What follows is a visual guide to all the things about Star Trek fixed by Star Trek: Picard.

Data’s Many Terrible Deaths Made Irrelevant

Star Trek killed off Data not once, but twice. In Star Trek: Nemesis he died sacrificing himself in a situation where that didn’t seem necessary. In Star Trek: Picard season 1 he committed suicide. Both times it was hollow, empty, and a disservice to the character. So Picard season 3 brought him back to life.

Data Finally Gets To Be Human

The central core of Data’s character was his desire to become human. Previous Star Trek incarnations killed him without letting him achieve that. But Picard season 3 not only brought him back, new showrunner Terry Matalas brought him back as fully human. In fact, the entire season was in a sense resolved by Data using his humanity to go with his gut.

The Dumb Destruction Of The Enterprise D

The Enterprise D was destroyed in Star Trek: Generations in a rather stupid sequence that did the ship wrong. As a result, she never really got her due on the big screen.

Picard S3 Brings The Enterprise D Back And Restores Her

Star Trek: Picard season 3 not only brought the Enterprise D back, it also gave her the proper send-off she deserved

star trek best finale

Next Gen's Perfect Finale Was Ruined

The finale of Star Trek’s The Next Generation series (titled “All Good Things”) was a perfect send-off for the show and its characters. Then they brought them back for movies and totally undermined that perfect ending with a lot of running and shooting. Their stories should have ended around that poker table in “All Good Things”.

The Ending That Replaced All Good Things Was All Terrible

In fact, the last time we saw the Next Gen characters it was a depressing scene where they stood around on the wrecked bridge of the Enterprise E in Star Trek: Nemesis looking miserable and depressed, except for Data who avoided being miserable by being dead.

Picard Brought Them Back To The Poker Table For A Proper Ending

Picard brought things full circle by re-echoing the television show’s ending and finishing this final outing with another game of Poker between friends. It gave the Enterprise crew the perfect, satisfying, hopeful ending of Star Trek: The Next Generation back.

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Star Trek Killed Q For No Reason, He's Supposed To Be A God

The entire point of the entity known as Q is that he’s immortal and omnipotent. So it was a bizarre choice when Star Trek: Picard Season 2 killed him off in a series of vaguely explained events that made no sense.

Q Returns Because You're Thinking Too Linearly

Star Trek: Picard season 3 undid every terribly stupid thing that happened to Q by having him return and chide the audience and our characters for thinking too linearly. His trials continue, as they always should.

The Borg Were Ruined By Picard Season 2

The first two seasons of Picard set out to ruin the Borg by turning them into some sort of weak and friendly hybrids lead by that murderous nerd character from Picards season 1 and 2 that no one liked.

star trek borg

Returning The Real Borg And Ensuring They Can't Be Ruined Again

Picard season 3 fixed the Borg by basically ignoring everything the previous seasons did and bringing back the real Borg, the Borg we wanted all along. Then it killed them, for good, so no one else can ruin them again.

Ignoring B4

Star Trek: Nemesis left us with the tease that Data might still be alive in another android called B4. This plot point was then totally ignored going forward and never addressed again.

Resolving B4

Picard season 3 brought back B4 (or his head at least) and used him as a component in Data’s resurrection, resolving that hanging storyline. season 3 brought back B4 (or his head at least) and used him as a component in Data’s resurrection, resolving that hanging storyline.

seven of nine star trek

Seven of Nine Was Turned Into A Crazy Pirate

The first two seasons of Picard did their best to destroy the character of Seven of Nine by turning her into some sort of crazy pirate which bore no resemblance to the character we’d gotten to know on Star Trek: Voyager.

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Saving Seven

Star Trek: Picard season 3 morphed Seven back into the kind of character she was and that we’d hoped she’d become. It also just ignored most of the other things that happened to her in previous Picard seasons, as if throwing them out with the trash.

patrick stewart

Jean-Luc Picard Was Made Pathetic

The first two seasons transformed Jean-Luc Picard from being a strong, emotionally controlled, and rational leader into a pathetic old man who everybody made fun of and who tended to cry about his dead mommy and give hugs at the drop of a hat.

Picard Returns To Being A Leader

Admiral Picard returned to form in season 3 with better writing from people that seemed to actually know something about the character. And then the show did its level best to ignore all the idiotic things they’d done with him in the previous two seasons. Perfect.

Elnor Was A Terrible Character

Picard season 1 introduced a character called Elnor who is best described as some sort of violent Romulan ninja. The character didn’t fit at all and the show never seemed to know what to do with him.

Ding Dong Elnor's Dead

Elnor never appears in Star Trek: Picard season 3 nor is he even mentioned (thankfully). But in season 2 we learn he’s stationed aboard the Excelsior and season 3 makes it a point to blow up the Excelsior, killing everyone aboard. That almost certainly includes Elnor. Problem solved.

Riker's Burnt Tomato

William Riker returned in Star Trek: Picard season 1 and was turned into a fat old guy who hung around making pizza and didn’t seem to care all that much about the fact that he’d recently buried his son.

jonathan frakes

Riker Deals With His Loss And Takes Control

In Star Trek: Picard season 3 Captain Riker deals with his loss, heals his relationship with Deanna Troi, and rediscovers his sense of wonder and adventure in the Titan’s battle with the Shrike.

star trek: discovery scream feature

Star Trek Becomes Dark And Dire

New Star Trek has fundamentally misunderstood what Star Trek is and started out by making it dark and edgy, full of tortured characters who can’t do their job. That’s not the Star Trek we knew, at least not until Star Trek: Discovery and subsequently Star Trek: Picard’s season 1 and 2 set out to make it that way.

Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Brings Back A Sense Of Wonder

Star Trek: Picard season 3 made it a point to rediscover the franchise’s sense of wonder and beauty. Its appreciation for the unknown, and the positive possibilities of a new future.

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Star Trek Had Literally Become Dark

Star Trek hadn’t just become dark metaphorically, they made it dark literally. Recent Star Trek shows have been filmed in the dark with sets so bereft of light you can barely see what’s going on. You can’t even see the colors of anyone’s uniform, which by the way is almost always black.

Star Trek's carpet

Star Trek Brightened Up

Though Star Trek: Picard season 3 was stuck with the dark and hard-to-see aesthetic of previous Picard seasons, in the end they brightened things up and gave us a properly lit Enterprise D bridge set. The set is actually bright enough to let the audience see what’s going on.

Starship Window Or Viewscreen?

Before the 2009 reboot of Star Trek, the bridge of every ship in the franchise had a viewscreen up front. Star Trek 2009 turned it into a window, which makes no sense since it’s the most vulnerable part of the ship.

It's A Viewscreen Again!

Star Trek: Picard season 3 made it a point to show us that the big thing at the front of the USS Titan’s bridge is a viewscreen, a viewscreen on a wall, not a window. They did it by actually removing that section of the wall as a plot point.

star trek enterprise

Anything We Missed?

Did we miss anything Star Trek: Picard season 3 fixed? Reach out and let us know using Twitter, and we’ll add it to this list.