Well, what a day to be had in Las Vegas, with Alex Kurtzman and Sir Patrick Stewart confirming that one of the new Star Trek series currently in development is a follow up to The Next Generation – seemingly twenty years after the events of All Good Things. While there were other panels, and other awesome events happening today, this announcement takes the cake.
We’re going to be focusing on Jean-Luc Picard according to the information from today’s panel, but at 94 years old (assuming we are twenty years exactly after Nemesis) just what stories can this character explore? Possibly as an Ambassador or a retired Starfleet officer living life in a society presumably still rebuilding following the Dominion War.
We’ve seen one notable case in canon where humans can live well into their fifteenth decade (Leonard McCoy’s appearance in Encounter at Farpoint) so it’s not unreasonable to expect 94 to be the new 64.
In real life, of course, Stewart looks fighting fit and I’m sure would command the same presence on screen as he did in his famous role, I just don’t see age as the barrier here.
I see the writers creativity and the studio’s reluctance to go back to a time post-Voyager, in that TNG-era as the hurdles here. Maybe CBS are willing to give the timeline some depth once again, instead of going back and exploring those lesser talked about moments in Trek canon. I don’t give in to rumour and gossip but I like to theorise, so lets wait and see!
It remains to be seen where this new show will end up, although it’ll most likely follow Discovery onto All Access (with a TV premiere?) and possibly Netflix as well for the rest of the world. This is just exciting and it’s great that, for the first time since 2001, multiple productions are under construction in the franchise that we love.
