After the second season of Star Trek: Picard wraps up this week, it will return with a whole new third and final season which will reunite the main cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. News of the TNG reunion season broke just a month ago and now one of the returning cast members is talking about coming back to Trek.
Plenty of Dr. Crusher in S3 of Picard
Gates McFadden played Dr. Beverly Crusher for six seasons on Star Trek: The Next Generation and all 4 TNG cast movies, she will join co-stars LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, and Brent Spiner in season three of Picard, reuniting with their former captain, Sir Patrick Stewart. Principal photography on season three wrapped up in March, but McFadden is still at work, giving an update today on Twitter revealing she just wrapped up her ADR (Additional Dialogue Replacement) for the season. She also cheered on executive producer and showrunner Terry Matalas saying “IT LOOKS AWESOME!”
Just finished ADR for first 6 episodes of #Season3 #Picard and I am here to report IT LOOKS AWESOME!! Go @terrymatalas
— Gates McFadden (@gates_mcfadden) May 2, 2022
McFadden also indicated that she might be in more than just six episodes (of the 10 episode season) in season three, and Matalas shared that with a funny GIF which backs up that hint.
https://t.co/uVf0uERy6F pic.twitter.com/lNPNiUM4pt
— Terry Matalas (@TerryMatalas) May 3, 2022
It was Matalas who came up with the idea of bringing back the TNG cast for what he has called a “proper sendoff.” The executive producer actually stepped back during the latter half of Picard season two so he could focus on season three as the sole showrunner. When a fan reacted to McFadden with a critique of season two, she responded that she loved the “story they wrote for our characters” in season three.
Personally I love the story they wrote for our characters. Hope you will agree😌 https://t.co/rquDgUBg7u
— Gates McFadden (@gates_mcfadden) May 2, 2022
The second season of Picard wraps up this week. There is no word yet on when season three will debut.
Gates McFadden and Patrick Stewart in Star Trek: Nemesis
ICYMI: Announcement trailer
You can hear McFadden and her other TNG co-stars in the teaser released last month.
New episodes of Star Trek: Picard premiere on Thursdays on Paramount+ in the U.S. and on Fridays where Paramount+ is available around the world. In Canada, it airs on CTV Sci-Fi Channel on streams on Crave on Thursdays. Picard is also available on Fridays on Amazon Prime Video around the world.
Find more stories on the Star Trek Universe.
This is probably wishful thinking on my part but it would be awesome if season 3 landed this year instead of next year. They could squeeze it in Nov/Dec after Prodigy and Lower Decks.
My guess is either December or January. So even if it’s not 2022, it’ll be right after the new year.
i think they already showed roadmap for the shows. it shows after strange new worlds, they will have lower decks then the 2nd half of prodigy to end the year. discovery will start out 2023
Can’t wait for Patrick Stewart to appear in Disney X-men. You know he will since he said he refused to. Like i’ll never play Picard again.
Hasn’t he already? I think he has cameo in Doctor Strange 2?
He’s in Doctor Strange but that may not mean he will be in future X Men movies. He may also just be a different version of Xavier in the movie. But Patrick Stewart is living the dream again these days though!
Thats not a Cameo…
From everything i’m hearing it’s indeed a brief cameo. Just a couple of scenes, at most. The Illuminati are not a big part of the move, it seems.
Yeah… and a couple of scenes disqualifies this as a cameo.
Hell the appearance of the Illuminati is even integral to the story and the MCU in general.
I really hope Crusher and Geordi get great sendoffs. They’re both likable screen presences who are sort of unheralded in the entire TNG celebration. I mean, who doesn’t love Geordi La Forge? Gates brought a nice energy to Crusher. I don’t need to see anything great or deep with Riker & Troi or Data/Lore/Soong because this trio of actors have done A LOT post-TNG, and in particular, Frakes & Sirtis really knocked it out of the park with their episode in season one, so, I’m good with all those people needing “a proper sendoff.”
As much as I want Geordi and Beverly to get great storylines, I DON’T want them to screw up Worf. His journey from TNG through DS9 is just wonderful and Dorn brought so much to it. I just don’t want to see his character vandalized like they’ve done with Seven and Picard in these past two seasons of the show. It’ll break the tiny pieces of my heart that are left after the first two seasons of the show shattered it.
I love me some TNG, as it’s among my favorite Trek shows. But Crusher and La Forge were its dullest characters, in my opinion.
I actually liked Geordie a lot. I’m not a big fan of Beverly though. I thought Pulaski was the much more interesting character, a true follow-up to Bones.
Oh, thank you! I thought I was the only Trek fan in the world who found Crusher boringly bland and Pulaski a vast improvement!
Pulaski had a terrible introduction, and it took almost half a season for me to warm to her.
In my last re-watch of the show, I found really liking the character a lot by “The Measure of a Man.”
I don’t hate Crusher, but she’s pretty much wallpaper throughout most of the show. Had they properly explored the Crusher/Picard relationship throughout the series, things may have been different with the character.
I wish Pulaski got at least one more season or guest appearances, as I think her sole season appearance has colored fandom’s perception of her more than her actual appearances. One season appearance means she was a “failure”, right? Denise Crosby gets “redemption” for her single season appearance because she returns as Yar and Sela.
I don’t know how true it is, but Muldaur apparently didn’t really enjoy her time on the show, but neither did Crosby, and she returned 6 times. I wish they could have had at least one subsequent appearance sometime during the show.
I honestly hated Pulaski like a lot of fans did at the time. She was a big reason season 2 wasn’t that good IMO.
HOWEVER, my mind did change about her when I did a grand rewatch of the franchise last year and completely watched all of TNG again including season 2 obviously. I have to say I started not liking her again at the beginning but by the end of the season I had really warmed up to her. She had become a much bigger part of the crew by then which I didn’t remember. I’m happy Crusher came back (and definitely at that time) but I probably would’ve gotten use to her if she stayed on.
And yes I agree, she probably could’ve came back in later appearances but the actress sounded like she really hated being there.
> I mean, who doesn’t love Geordi La Forge?
Every woman on the Enterprise, apparently
Ha! True.
You can love someone as a friend without wanting to be romantically involved with them. I think Geordi was popular enough, just not as boyfriend material. :-)
I can’t stand LaForge! Incredibly bland character, passive aggressive (his treatment of Barclay in Hollow Pursuits and Scotty in Relics) and the less said the better regrading his creepy behaviour around women (and then gaslighting them when they object, as in Galaxy’s Child). I used to dread episodes centred on LaForge, Troi and Crusher, because they were rarely any good and all three actors were limited.
What!? He was a genius, kind, loyal, open to help Data all the way. Always doing the impossible for Picard, the, crew, and the ship.
Kind and Shy does not necessarily means Busy and Creepy.
My last rewatch of TNG really cemented for me how bad the actors actually were. My cast acting power rankings: 1. Stewart 2. Sirtis 3. Dorn . . . . 4. Spiner . . . . . . 5.6.7. Frakes/Burton/McFadden
Troi had a lot of bad material, but, especially in seasons 1-3, she’s really present and in tune with her scene partners and she clearly tried to do something to elevate what she was given. Dorn starts out rough but gets better as the seasons go and character locks in. Spiner is a great Data. The others are basically playing versions of themselves. (Sirtis would later succumb to this just playing herself virus in the movies and Voyager/ENT/Picard).
I like Troi, but a lot of her (early) material is a mixed bag, I don’t know if the writers knew what to do with her sometimes. The use of her empathic abilities is either underused, or it’s used when it’s painfully obvious to the viewer what is happening (i.e., after a frustrating view-screen conversation with an alien race, “I sense much frustration”).
I agree about Sirtis down the road, basically playing “herself”. It’s definitely an issue with a lot of the cast in the movies where they “forgot” how to play the character or purposefully decided to act out of character (“Action Hero Picard”, for instance).
I just noticed how Sirtis moved and reacted in her scenes (again, mainly in seasons 1-3, maybe later on, too, but I can’t quite remember) with her scene partners. Yeah, the Troi material was usually pretty bad, but Piller had the character involved heavily early in his stewardship of the show and I think she really does great work. (Maybe I’m just thinking of her performance in “The Bonding,” which is a good showcase of the ship’s counselor role and Sirtis’ portrayal of Troi.)
Stewart, Spiner, and Dorn were all excellent. Frakes was laughably bad in the beginning but got better as time went on and eventually moved all the way up to adequate. Burton started out adequate and stayed that way. McFadden was so dull that I can’t really tell if she’s just a barely adequate actress, or if she just wasn’t given anything decent to play. Sirtis is hard to evaluate because they gave her such horrible material, but the rare episode that gave her something to do (like “Face of the Enemy”) showed that she was reasonably good.
Michelle Hurd, Santiago Cabrera, and Alison Pill can act RINGS around Frakes, Burton, and McFadden. I understand that people have a sentimental attachment to the TNG characters, but the Picard actors are all much stronger than the average TNG actor. We’ve seen the GOOD ones already, except for Dorn.
Good acting of bad writing counts for very little, unfortunately. I’ll take TNG in such a landslide that it doesn’t even merit consideration.
I could not disagree more, because I am enjoying Picard SOLEY because of the great acting — it is literally salvaging what otherwise would be a tragically bad season do to the horrid writing and inexplicable downturn in production values (COVID?) as compared to S1.
Alison Pill is doing such a fabulous job that I’m just stunned while watching her. I didn’t really like Jurati that much, but watching Pill channel the Borg queen, I see why they hired her!
I actually didn’t like Alison Pill much in season one but yes giving her the subplot with the Borg Queen was an amazing idea and one of the subplots that really worked for me. She did a great job with that. But I do wonder if we’re going to see her next season now? To me it feels like she’s done if she stays the Borg Queen because Terry Matalas already said next season will be a completely different story although I guess the Borg could still be in that story too.
And there is still a chance we could see the normal Dr. Jurati return though.
Pill has announced that she won’t be in Season 3.
I’ll take the GOOD episodes of TNG in a landslide, but “The Measure of a Man,” “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” and “Darmok” are rare in any show. I’ll take the average Picard episode over “Code of Honor.” :-)
I like many eps of TNG, but there are many, many eps in the first two seasons that I still find either awful or very tiresome to watch to this day, and it’s because for the combination of BOTH bad acting and bad writing.
Frakes is so bad in “Hide and Q” that I can’t take the episode seriously at all. I mean, he WILL get better later, but early on … sheesh.
I say this as someone who cannot act AT ALL, but then, I’m not trying to. :-)
I’m not sure it’s fair to say that Sirtis gave into playing herself.
If anything it sounds as though she was pushed by successive directors in the movies to bring a different version of Troi than in the series. She was particularly unhappy with what she was directed to do in Nemesis.
Funny enough I just re-read an article a few days ago on her podcast saying she wasn’t in season 2 and knew nothing about season 3. The article was literally a year ago, first week of May. She obviously knew then she would be in season 3. These actors can be great liars when they have to be. Well maybe Andrew Garfield can use some pointers. ;)
As much as season 2 has got me down, I still have high hopes for season 3, especially now. This is probably the project I’m most excited about out of all of them. It’s having the original TNG actors all back together, you just can’t beat that. This will probably be the biggest news in fandom for the next year; especially once season one of SNW is done. Can’t wait to see Beverly back and knowing she’s in at least six episodes really means we are going to see more than just cameos.
For the love of Kahless, JUST BE GOOD!!!!!
I remember awesomeness insisting to me about 7 weeks ago here after ep 2 of Picard how Picard was so much better than Discovery. LOL This season of Picard, while sometimes entertaining because the actors are really trying, is some of the lamest, “what in the F were they thinking?” Star Trek I have seen since Enterprise was on the air. By comparison to this season, any season of DSC looks like WOK-level quality Trek now. lol
Hey awesomeness, you around, pal? ;-)
Man, I have no idea who that is.
But yeah plenty of people were convinced Picard this season was going to be an amazing experience after the first two episodes, me included. Some people still like it though. I thought I saw a post somewhere that you are liking the season? Me, I’m just bitterly disappointed. This is the worst season of Star Trek for me and that’s saying a lot. I think it’s worse than season 1 which also started off pretty good but ended poorly IMO. I am not a big Discovery fan by a mile either but it is definitely better than Picard sad to say.
S1 I loved. S2 I am still enjoying because the actors are really trying and I am enjoying their performances, but man, this is more like Charmed than Star Trek. This is the dumbest Star Trek season I have seen since the days of Enterprise. And this is the first Kurtzman era series year of one of his shows that the production values seem shabby.
And Aghayere is doing for Guinan was Hayden Christensen did for Darth Vader…WTF? (although the writers share the blame here)
By comparison, Picard S2 makes any season of DSC look like Citizen Kane. LOL
Yeah I am soooo disappointed in this show. And I was upbeat originally about both seasons. It sounds like you really like season one. I thought it started great but stalled halfway through. It is better than season two though. I want to like these new shows more, I really do but there is just a lot bad plotting and AWFUL directions they keep taking them for me.
I’ve said this many times, I just don’t think they can write good serialized shows. I know you don’t like Enterprise but I loved how they did the Xindi arc. It wasn’t perfect but it was satisfying by the end. I watched it three times alone in the past. But with PIC and DIS, I have felt frustrated every season. . It doesn’t mean I hate every episode, there are a lot of solid ones. But I notice the ones I and most people tend to like are the more standalonish ones. I think that is more their cup of Earl Grey.
Hopefully the Picard finale will be good, but I thought last weeks was the worst one yet, so not holding my breath. I kind of given up on the show and it sucks because I love Picard so much as a character. He deserved better than this show.
Tiger2, hearing that Matalas basically signed off as showrunner halff way through season 2 production to focus on season three seems to say a lot about why season two is so incoherent.
Meanwhile, his coshowrunner Goldsman was focusing on SNW and was up in Toronto directing the Pilot/premiere.
After claiming to have written the entire Picard S2 during the 2020 lockdowns, they still managed to have a season that appeared to have no real firm hand at the wheel.
Will Spiner be playing Lore or B-4? Makes no sense really to have him appear and not be one of the Soong androids that had interacted with the crew of the Enterprise D/E.
B-4 is the only character in Star Trek that interests me these days, the only one really at the start of any kind of journey and having so much potential…….
EXACTLY my opinion!!!! Without the character of Data it will never be a real reunion because Data and the interaction with him was such an essential part of TNG!!!
for the love of… let’s let Brent rest for a moment! He is like 27 characters. Soon, it’ll just be Star Trek: Spiner, with him playing all of the characters of the show.
More seriously though, no Data android should appear. S1 of PIC was the proper end of Data’s story. (And I thought it was implied that B4 was gone).
Maybe Q will bring Data back to life and make him human. That would be lame, but at this point, why not?
That’s what I was thinking. A parting gift to Picard. Data is alive, but human. Old Man Spiner can play the part without android makeup.
I was convinced that was how the first season would end, minus Q’s involvement, and was totally okay with it. Doofy, but infinitely preferable to Spiner playing yet another Soong.
Coll that she replies to such an overtly negative comment. And she stays cool! :)
But yes… Season 2 … not good.
It’s 2022 and it’s Twitter. Every actor, producer, writer etc has learned to deflect negative comments on social media these days. It’s the price of fame.
And yeah they aren’t wrong!
“But yes… Season 2 … not good.”
Not good, but not bad either. Just mediocre. It’s certainly not an impressive center piece for an ambitious Trek show. But not half as bad as S1. S1 was an offense, S2 is just dull in parts and draaaaging…
PIC is certainly the worst Trek show and even if S3 is a masterpiece from start to finish it’ll have a hard time moving up in ranks overall. Maybe it can overtake TAS and LDS for me :-)
Just 2 let u know: A few days ago (and maybe still, I don’t know.. ) in Germany Season 2 was on number 1 of the amazon prime series charts.
…and they still love David Hasselhoff!
nah … maybe our grandmothers are loving The Hoff …
I have a completely opposite view. I loved S1 of Picard, and thought the story arch idea was brilliant, the writing very good, the production quality outstanding, the acting phenomenal, and I unapologetically love the ending…plus S1 reeked of gravitas!
This season, if you take all that I said above, the only thing I can say is that the acting is still very good (excepting the young Guinan). All of those other aspects I mentioned that were great last season fall between the levels of piss-poor and mediocre for this season.
I think Season 1 is the better one…
It has at least a propper Story and basicly important stuff happens in every episode.
Season 2 is a bee hive of filler material…
Exactly!
I have to agree with that and I thought season 1 sucked too. But the story was stronger and there were less silly things happening in it. I hated the Lannister Romulan siblings and the XBs story line was basically filler and a complete waste but most of the characters actually had stuff to do. Here, pretty much everyone is wasted minus Picard and Dr. Jurati and the season could’ve been made with five episodes, certainly not ten.
As the wedding comes to a close and night falls upon the old chateau, both Picard and Beverly settled down in front of a great open fire, sharing a fine bottle of wine. They looked at each other, smiled and knew this voyage was one which would last happily ever after.
THE END
….and Wesley is sitting next the Christmas tree, playing with his train set.
…and the Traveler is serving time in a Federation prison.
Haha Jimmy Saville of the galaxy
So, what are they going to retcon with the remaining TNG cast for S3? I mean we know they will retcon or forget about something important, right? There’ll be EMO over-emotional moments where characters are suddenly tortured by past events… There’ll be curiously 21st Century cussing out of the blue, and ‘hip’ contemporary slang. By the end of S3, none of our formerly beloved TNG characters will be seen in the same light again, most likely. My only ‘out’ from this strange alt.Trek is to believe that Picard never left the Nexus at all. Would explain his change of thoughtful Picard of TNG to Die Hard Picard of First Contact. Would handily explain the wild quality slump of TNG story telling from Insurrection through to Picard and onwards. My own personal ‘head canon’ now stops TOS after Star Trek IV, and TNG at All Good Things. Finito. Everything else is alt. universe (bad) fan fiction. Though saving DS9 and Voyager (never caught those originally) for future watches, so I know there’s still some classic Trek to watch out there. It’s the only way I can deal with the current decline of Trek writing minus any sense of consistant internal logic or common sense. Picard the character has been indelibly sullied by Picard the series for me. I think I’ll leave S3 well alone so the renaining TNG crew remain untainted, unless unpaid and un-shilling reviewers are absolutely unanimous that it’s a solid series and a return to form, once the entire season has been aired.
What’s kind of amazing is that the “All Good Things” future reality created by Q was supposed to be the BAD future.
The series ended on a hopeful note that things wouldn’t end that way. Well, things are a LOT worse in Picard than the future in “All Good Things.”
The best thing for the future of the franchise would be to chalk up Picard Seasons 1 and 2 as a fever dream/coma by Picard, a fabrication by Q, or have Q simply reset everything that happened in the series to some point between Nemesis and the start of Picard. He could easily do it.
They’ll never do it, but I don’t know how any kind of hopeful Trek can ever be produced how Secret Hideout has expanded the franchise.
My dream came true with this reunion! But only if I see Data again (or B4 with Datas mind).
In season 1 Data didn’t really returned because he was only in dreams and simulations. And wayyy to short anyway.
Since the terrible writer/showrunners write essentially one episode and stretch it out to 10 eps, I guess Season 3 is the TNG cast standing around android Picard’s body in a hospital bed deciding to pull the plug?
I think they have to have it where Robo-Picard now recognizes the importance of friends vs the impact of Locutus and obsessing about AI that caused organic-Picard to ditch his friends. Dr. Crusher seems to especially have given the shaft, I’d have it where they had a big fight over her opposing his use of psuedo-slave androids/robots to build the evacuation fleet. Provides a nice arc for Picard to try to rekindle and repair that relationship while she tries to save him from the Borg after him.
“Proper Sendoff”. All Good Things was more than proper, sir. These people are clueless.
AGT came before the movies and neither INS nor NEM came close to a proper send-off. So they need a proper sendoff at the END of this generation’s tenure. AGT ended the series, PIC S3 is to end their legacy.
Nemesis, man, Nemesis.
I have to agree, given how muddled story-wise PIC has been over two seasons, all these characters received a proper sendoff over 20 years ago. With the exception of seeing the Riker family in Nepenthe, which was a pleasure, I don’t think any other characters of the TNG crew need closure, after the inconsistent and feeble way they’ve written Picard’s character. I’d rather they stay preserved as they are in Trek lore. Bottom line, I’m afraid the current writers are going to screw the rest of the TNG characters up. My humble opinion.
The one flicker of hope for Season 3 is that Terry is the only showrunner. He was involved in writing episodes 1 and 2 of the current season and they were the best episodes of the entire season. I’m cautiously optimistic that the show will be far better under his solo season.
Exactly! “All Good Things” was a proper sendoff!
Nemesis was terrible, but I think it sufficiently closed the book on TNG. Data did the “most human” thing to do in sacrificing himself, B-4 can now grow beyond his programming (or have Data resurrect himself, depending on how you look at it), Riker and Troi got married and Riker now has his own ship, etc. The ending let the audience know that things still go on, but we definitely didn’t need to see it. Much messier than “All Good Things”, but as good as you can get given how messy that production was.
Picard being the “sendoff” we need is kind of like how Disney started calling Episode 9 the “end of the Skywalker Saga”, even though Return of the Jedi was really the end of the “saga.” Episode 7 was supposed to be the start of something new, even if it carried over OT/PT characters.
It would be funny if season 3 is just a rerun of AGT, remaking the future parts without old age makeup.
The perfect final scene:
Geordi reads a classic children’s tale while Crusher tap dances, Picard sings the verses, Data and Riker provide musical backup on violin and trumpet respectively, Worf looks on disapprovingly while downing prune juice and Troi gets blackout drunk.
Then Wesley shows up at the end and says, “Shut up, Jean-Luc!”
Riker plays Trombone. ;)
If we are into “dissing” – how about Troi and Riker walk out of the Enteprise series finale and then look at each other and say, “let’s see what they wrote about us.” So they go back to the Holodeck and tune in to “post-Picard” and realize it’s all WRONG.
Then they properly deconstruct Star Trek with a script created by algorithmic mashups with Bertold Brecht.
Then they have two hours of adventure.
I would definitely watch that for 10 hours.
Here’s hoping Gates can interview Patrick Stewart for her “Investigates” podcast! Sir Patrick is the only main TNG cast member she hasn’t interviewed yet.
I guess they will recast Geordi as a black man …
*BIG GRIN*
Based on what’s been happening in this horrid show, I wouldn’t be surprised if the writers kill off some of the main cast….
I wish they would kill off some of the writers instead (metaphorically speaking of course).
Yes, by “kill” you mean “fire.” Out of curiosity, what current-working writers would you like for Star Trek now? Maybe a Vince Gilligan?
A Stephen Knight (Peaky Blinders), Dave Filoni, Jon Favreau, Vince Gilligan, sure – Alex Ganza (Homeland), hell, even Ridley Scott, not that he’d take their call. I don’t read sci-fi novels, but tap into some of those writers, too, right?
Bring in Peter Gould to write an entire episode centered around a pie eating contest on the Enterprise. It would be the best written Trek since the early 00s.
Ha! That gave me a chuckle.