‘Picard’ Season 3 Review: The Final Voyage of Jean-Luc Picard

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS Two not-overly-funny things happened the week after I got round to watching PICARD SEASON THREE on DVD: two of the actors involved passed away before I did my review. The first was TOS veteran Walter Koenig, who had only a “voice-over cameo” in the final episode of Season 3: he passed on October 25 of this year. The second was Picard himself, the venerable Patrick Stewart, who passed on October 28. Before either performer died, I’d been trying to organize my thoughts on this series, which at present stands as the final teleseries iteration of any series directly launched by Gene Roddenberry. While watching Season 1, I was never an especially devoted fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Still, despite my complaints about “the one where Picard talks to an oil slick,” several episodes impressed me. Before watching any of Picard, I had also encountered countless podcasts insisting that Seasons 1 and 2 were not worth watching and that only Season 3, which reunited much of the original cast, deserved attention. The Critical Drinker, for example, repeated that view as though it were settled fact. I came to doubt that claim after enjoying most of Season 1. Show...