Every upcoming Star Trek show and movie, ranked by anticipation

1. Star Trek: Picard (Season 2)

Due to COVID-19, we’ve had to wait an extra year for more episodes of Picard; season 2 was originally scheduled for 2021 before being pushed back to March of 2022. We’re now just a little over a month away from finally seeing it. While some Next Generation die-hards hated the first season, others were delighted with the show. Following up on The Next Generation decades later, Picard felt fresh, new, and up-to-date, although it still payed homage to the show that gave birth to it.

The first season was an eventful one for Jean-Luc Picard, who dies and is “reborn” in a synthetic body. Patrick Stewart and showrunner Michael Chabon are keen to explore what that means for Picard and how he deals with no longer being the man he once was. We can also expect other themes from the first season to continue in the show’s second; the relationship between Raffi and Seven of Nine will be explored and Agnes Jurati will answer for the murder of Bruce Maddox.

However, the main antagonist of the season will be Q, a fan-favorite character returning to Star Trek after an absence of 20 years and played once again by the peerless John de Lancie. Q appears to be central to the plot, which involves a parallel timeline and the Picard traveling back to our time period. The new storyline will allow the show to make the kind of social commentary that both The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine excelled at.

It’s believed that Picard season 2 may act as a sequel of sorts to the Deep Space Nine episodes “Past Tense I” and “Past Tense II,” which focused on the “sanctuary districts” created by the government as a response to increasing poverty, homelessness, and discrimination. As seen in DS9, this period features the fictional Bell Riots, one of the most violent civil uprisings in history; the government response caused hundreds of fatalities. It would certainly be a prime time period for exploitation by Q, with his meddling possibly leading to a totalitarian future where Picard himself is a fascist leader. No doubt the accusations that Star Trek suddenly got “woke” will come thick and fast from certain sections of social media.

De Lancie has said that the version of Q we’ll see in the new season of Picard isn’t quite the one we remember. “[I’m] a little bit of a different Q this time,” he told TrekMovie. “A little more age-appropriate, what can I say? It’s been a long time since I put on that hat, as it were.”

"I must say it’s not the sort of Puck-ish, Mercutio of old. It’s a different Q this time. It’s what they wanted, and I think that it makes sense. But Patrick and I have had nice opening scenes and scenes with Brent and working with Jonathan Frakes. It’s been really interesting, and I am delighted. Who would have thought?"

Alongside Q, we can expect the return of the Borg Queen, this time played by Annie Wersching. Whoopi Goldberg will be returning as Guinan, Brent Spiner as Altan Inigo Soong, and there are rumors that Robert Duncan McNeill (Tom Paris) and LeVar Burton (Geordi La Forge) will turn up.

Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard premieres on March 3 on Paramount+.

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