In the end, Picard became the fan-service TNG reunion it always should have been

Enlarge / The Enterprise-D rides again. (credit: Memory Alpha)

Major spoilers for the third season of Star Trek: Picard are below.

Among the many sins of the 2002 film Star Trek Nemesis is the fact that its box-office bombing killed the still-nascent plans for a fifth and final The Next Generation outing, one that would have been designed as a finale in the same way that Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was for the original cast.

I have no reason to believe that this film is some great lost gem of Star Trek canon; it was being written by the same people who wrote the awful Nemesis, and it was set up to be a kind of Search for Spock retread about reviving Data and restoring the status quo. But its absence meant a lack of closure for the TNG crew—a story that wasn’t allowed to end on its own terms.