From Skywalker to Picard, a legion of famous words are coming out of retirement for dreary final missions. Can’t we cause them lie?
The last epoch we ascertained Jean-Luc Picard, Patrick Stewart’s venerable Starfleet captain, he was aboard a box-fresh Enterprise at the end of 2002 ’s Star Trek: Nemesis, prepared to continue boldly travelling where no husband has gone before. Goody-two-shoes android Data was dead. William Riker, Picard’s ever-reliable No 1, had flown the roost to require a ship of his own. It was a bittersweet send-off for Picard: never mind that Nemesis wasn’t a great film, really only noticeable for a young Tom Hardy’s up-to-1 1 mugging as an evil Picard clone, its denouement succeeded in tying a symmetrical arc around the arc of Stewart’s character. In the imaginations of fans he lived out his epoches in merriment, whizzing amiably around the galaxy, or pottering about his vineyard getting gently sozzled. Fifteen years after it arrived on TV, Star Trek’s Next Generation had reached a satisfying end.
Or not, as it turns out. Picard is back in a new big-budget Trek series announced, well, Picard, and it transpires Jean-Luc’s dotage wasn’t quite as relaxing as we hoped. “I was recurred by my past, ” Stewart intones solemnly in a trailer, “but now I have a mission.” The Federation of Planets, whose values of honour and equality Picard has depleted a lifetime upholding, has apparently taken an alarming turn for the Brexit, and our erstwhile command is strained from well-earned retirement into a gritty, sweary, violent new Trek universe. It all reviews to be a rather serious affair. And while it’s goose-pimplingly lovely interpreting Sir Pat back in the Starfleet-issue spandex that obligated him Forbidden Planet royalty, it’s a hilarity tempered with betrayal, because it makes Nemesis’s intention- the one the character and gathering both deserved- has been effectively repealed. There are no decisive happily-ever-afters for our beloved heroes of sci-fi and fantasy. Welcome to the era of the “bleakquel”.
Read more: theguardian.com
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