Tuesday TV Touchbase: Star Trek Picard

Normally the Tuesday TV Touchbase is about TV I watch.  Let's start off today's post with some news about TV I don't watch.

Tucker Carlson is no longer on Fox News. 

Fox announced yesterday that the network and Carlson agreed to part ways and his last show was on Friday, April 21st. 

Since Carlson ended his show on Friday telling his viewers he would be back on Monday, yeah, I'm guessing it's not all that mutual. 

Fox News certainly had a lot of reasons to can Tucker Carlson's sorry ass:

• racism
• homophobia
• sexism 
• anti-Semitism 
• xenophobia 
• misogyny
• white supremacy
• conspiracy theorist 

Well, anywhere else, all of those would be bugs. At Fox News, those are features. 

Fox News is loyal to it's on air talent as long as that talent makes more money than it costs. In the wake of the $800 million settlement with Dominion Voting Machines, it may well be Carlson crossed that line from profitable to not profitable and the bastard had to go. 

More on the Fox News/Dominion settlement in Thursday's post. 

Last week, Andrea and I watched the series finale of Star Trek Picard and it was in a word awesome.

But to quote a maligned Star Trek theme song, "It's been a long road, getting from there to here."  

Star Trek Picard was at the time it was first announced the only project to allow Star Trek to move forward. In it's first two seasons, Discovery was a prequel as was Enterprise before it. 

In the movies, J J Abrams' Star Trek was a reboot of what had gone on before in the original series.  

Star Trek Picard would allow us to pick up from after where we left off, the deservedly reviled Star Trek Nemesis and tell us what happens next with the Federation, Starfleet and Jean-Luc Picard.  

Patrick Stewart was very clear that this new series was not going to be an exercise in nostalgia and would not be a Next Generation reunion show.  

OK, fine with me. And season 1 stuck the landing even if it did end of a very odd note: Jean Luc Picard dies but they saved his brain and put it in an android body that looks and acts human and will eventually die of old age.  

Well, that's just weird.

Season 2 was just... awful. A poorly plotted story involving an alternate time line where the Federation is fascist as fuck, time travel to go fix it and an interminable arc about how mental illness runs in the Picard family that was just so badly and ineptly handled and was completely unnecessary.  

To quote Keith DeCandido's assessment of season 2, "My head hurts! Augh!" (Click here for Keith's write up on Season 2 and all the myriad things it got wrong.)   

Which brings us to season 3 of Star Trek Picard for what is most definitely an exercise in nostalgia and is very much a Next Generation reunion show.  

But... 

While it's story about people characters we know from the past, we discover what they're up to now and how they have changed over the years as the cast gathers to confront a threat to the Federation. The Changelings from the Dominion War (Star Trek Deep Space Nine) have infiltrated Starfleet and are up to shit. 

Part of that shit is to capture Jack Crusher, the son that Jean Luc Picard did not know he had with Beverly Crusher.  

The name Picard is still in the show's title and a driving arc of this season is Jean Luc not only learning he's a father but what that means for his life and the life of his son.  It is a life lesson that will serve Jean Luc in good stead when the Borg come calling at the end of the season. 

Very long story made very short: the Changelings have fucked things up with Starfleet tech so that the Borg can assimilate a bunch of Starfleet officers from across space and now we've got starships at war with each other. 

Look, I could fill this whole post with quotes from Worf.

"For a moment there, I was worried we might actually survive." 

Or the joys and wonders of Old Man Data! 

“Greetings, U.S.S. Titan, this is your friendly positronic pissed-off security system, back online. Unwanted guests and monologuing protoplasms: I am issuing an immediate shift change.”

Yes, borrowing from the plot twist at the end of season 1 with Picard now living in an android body that can age and act human, we now have a way for senior citizen Brent Spiner to still play Data.  

And there is SO much nostalgia with so many references the vast universe of Star Trek: 

• Michelle Forbes is back as Ro Laren.
• Elizabeth Dennehy is back as Shelby, now a Starfleet admiral.
• Tim Russ from Voyager is back as Tuvok. 
• Walter Koenig, Pavel Chekov from the original series, is on hand for a voice cameo as Earth President Anton Chekov.  

But all this nostalgia is in service to a story that... well, to be blunt, it's a story that doesn't always make sense. There are plot holes a plenty and God knows the pacing on the first episodes of the season could do with some serious tightening up. 

But damn, once the finale hits, all those concerns fly out the window. The stakes are big and epic but the paths to resolving those stakes are found in the human condition, the capacity for growth, for forgiveness, for love. 

The series finale for Star Trek Picard gives Jean Luc and his Starfleet family the positive ending they were denied years ago. And it gives the fans who have patiently (or maybe not so patiently) put up with this show for three years to get the show we wanted all along. We got to spend time with friends we once knew and found out what they're doing now and what they hope to do next. 

And that is that for this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase. 

Next week, the Touchbase is brought to you by the letter "M" as I cover:

• the 3rd season finale of The Mandalorian.
• the debut of the 5th and final seson of the Marvelous Mrs, Maisel
• and I've discovered a murder mystery show that has captured my attention: Ms. Fisher's Modern Murder Mysteries. 

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.