Enlarge / Jonathan Frakes is my dad. (credit: Paramount+)
Few involved in the making or watching of 2002’s Star Trek Nemesis would say that it was a fantastic send-off for the beloved characters of The Next Generation. Over seven seasons, TNG became one of Trek’s most nuanced and consistent entries (though still one that was capable of producing terrible, silly, and just plain weird episodes). But Nemesis is a flat action movie defined by thin characterization, a cheesy one-note villain, and distracting plot contrivances, and it did so poorly ($67 million on a $60 million budget, in a time before “maybe it will make a lot of money in China” was a thing) that it foreclosed any possibility of another sequel. The cast and those characters, the thinking generally went, deserved better closure.
Star Trek: Picard has been the TNG continuation you’d get if you wished for a TNG sequel on a monkey’s