Familiar Faces Show Up in the Picard Trailer

I grew up on Star Trek TNG. Seriously, my sister has joked that our religion growing up was Star Trek. The show started the year after I was born, and I remember the grief I felt when the first show I loved actually ended - not realizing that was a rather normal thing (the other - primetime - show I watched at the time, the Simpsons, is of course still going about two decades after it maybe should have stopped.)

Anyway, Captain Picard was always my Star Trek captain, and when you say Star Trek, it's the Enterprise D that I think of.

I think it's either a really interesting or really terrible idea to bring him back. But I do think there is some good and rich storytelling to be seen about a hero who has grown old - Picard might be a weird choice, given that he was already a font of paternal wisdom 30 years ago (actually what I loved about the Last Jedi was how it examined Luke's transformation from youthful audience surrogate to old, grizzled master.)

Anyway, the trailer introduces some new characters, but also teases the presence of some old ones.

First is Data, who of course died in Nemesis, but apparently there was some sort of not-quite retcon in which his memories were transferred into another Soong android, effectively bringing him back. Brent Spiner always did a good work with a very hard job, and while I don't know if he'll actually be a major part of the show, I'm curious to see what Data's up to.

Much more surprisingly, Jeri Ryan's Seven of Nine shows up. At first, I found it bizarre, given that she and Picard have never interacted on screen. Seven of Nine showed up in Voyager season four as a Borg drone that the crew disconnected from the collective, and her journey to rediscover her humanity was probably the most interesting arc on that show (that's my opinion at least, as someone who watched through it over a decade after it ended.)

Picard's time as Locutus of the Borg was brief - just the cliffhanger between TNG's 3rd and 4th seasons - but the trauma of that event always stayed with Picard. (There's an episode early in season four when Picard returns to France after the ordeal while he's on leave which I found very boring as a kid but watching again as an adult found it to be really, really good) but it makes perfect sense that he and Seven would have reason to connect and compare experiences - one wonders if there's a support group, though I think the number of people to actually escape the collective is very low.

Anyway, the plot seems to center around some woman with a secret - very vague - and Picard finding he can't be satisfied in his retirement to the family vineyard. Get that man a starship and a crew!

I'll be curious to see the show, though given that it's on CBS All Access, I might have to find some workaround because I ain't getting another freaking streaming subscription.