One of the central plot conceits of the third season of “Star Trek: Picard” was that Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) had finally had a love affair after seven seasons of toying with the idea on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Their fling, it turns out, wasn’t what either of them wanted, and after a night of wild passion, their relationship fell apart for good. Naturally, the pair begat a child that Dr. Crusher never told Jean-Luc about, making their reunion twenty-some years later a little awkward. To the credit of showrunner Terry Matalas, the two characters do not immediately feel warm and nostalgic when they meet; there is still a great deal of bitterness lingering.
The third season of “Picard” lasted a scant ten episodes (“The Next Generation,” you’ll recall, had seasons that topped out at 26), leaving little time to develop Picard and Beverly’s relationship. By the end of the series, they seemed to have cleared the air, although they don’t appear to be a couple. A few additional scenes where the two discuss where they are and how they feel about each other once the action climax part of the crisis had been averted would have been appreciated, but at least there was a romantic scene wherein Troi (Marina Sirtis) and Riker (Jonathan Frakes) talk about thei state of their marriage, strained since the death of their son.
Other romances are left aside. Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) and Raffi (Michelle Hurd) don’t seem to have any feelings for each other anymore, and a romance between Jack Crusher (Ed Speleers) and Sidney (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut) is merely teased.
In a recent interview with ScreenRant, Matalas admitted he wanted more time for romantic subplots.
No time for love, Dr. Crusher
The lack of romance in the third season of “Picard,” it seems, stemmed from scheduling and the necessities of the plot. Matalas constructed the season like a feature film, adding a lot more action and plot-driven (as opposed to character- or philosophy-driven) elements. There were sinister plot threads that involved devious Changelings, and a mystery about Jack Crusher’s developing X-Men powers. Raffi and Worf (Michael Dorn) spent a few episodes delving into the criminal underground to find who had stolen a super weapon from a Starfleet black site. Plus there were multiple episodes devoted to fan service and nostalgia; if you’re prone to wistfulness, avert your eyes during any of the show’s many Starfleet Ship Museum sequences.
Squeezing all that into only ten episodes left little time for much else. Lamenting the lack of love, Matalas said:
“As far as other things that I wish we could have done better, I think I would say, looking at some of the criticisms across the board, I would say it’s a decisively unromantic season. There was no real room for romance, whether that is Picard and Crusher, Seven and Raffi, Jack and Sidney had a moment of flirtation. Even Riker and Troi mostly deals with the tragedy of a couple losing a child. I wish I had fought for more time for a few extra scenes with those characters. I think the fans would have all wanted more romance throughout.”
Romance was rarely the central focus of “Star Trek,” largely because the characters tend to be co-workers in a professional environment; fraternization isn’t always appropriate. With “Picard,” however, everyone was finally off the clock. Sadly, adding one romance would have meant subtracting another plot thread.
‘That’s probably my biggest regret’
Matalas admitted that keeping the season tense and keeping his characters in mortal peril was, from a storytelling perspective, more important than some of the smaller, romantic character moments he would have liked. In his words:
“We stuck with the high stakes of it all. It felt like that was where we needed to stay. There wasn’t really a lot of time to talk about feelings and for people to kiss. But in retrospect, I think that would have been satisfying to fans, but that’s why we asked for more Star Trek, that those characters aren’t going away? Then we certainly leave all those characters in a place where we can do that. So that’s probably my biggest regret.”
Confusing language aside there, Matalas has been very vocal about his desire to create and run a brand new spinoff of “Picard” that he would like to call “Star Trek: Legacy.” Given the ending of “Picard,” the new series would presumably follow Jack Crusher onto the newly rechristened Titan-A, now called the Enterprise-G, as he and his captain, Seven of Nine, get into traditional Trek adventures. Raffi would serve as the first officer, and Sidney La Forge would be the ship’s pilot. It seems that Matalas didn’t have time for romance in a crisis scenario, but with a little more time — and perhaps longer seasons — he could finally make his characters kiss each other.
And if “Star Trek: Legacy,” like some of the previous Trek shows, is a long-running affair that lasts for seven seasons, then new romances would most certainly appear.
