Patrick Stewart gets mad at Alexa in first clip from Star Trek: Picard season 3

The third and final season of Star Trek: Picard will feature appearances from a lot of old Next Generation crew: get ready for the returns of Jonathan Frakes as William T. Riker, Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi, Gates McFadden as Beverly Crusher, Wil Wheaton as Wesley Crusher, Michael Dorn as Worf, and LeVar Burton as Geordi LaForge. Brent Spiner is still around as well, although he won’t be playing Data anymore; he did that in the first season of the show.

Despite the way it’s getting the band back together, star Patrick Stewart insists that this season isn’t just about nostalgia. “It is not a reunion sequel, and this is one thing that I wanted to make clear,” he told Den of Geek.

"I didn’t want the show to be just sentimental: “Oh, we all love one another, and here we are again, playing poker and raising our glasses and so forth.” I mean, I love every single one of my comrades from that show. I can’t get enough of them or see enough of them. But what the writers and producers have done with Picard is to create this different individual living in a different world than the one that we had been so familiar with in The Next Generation."

So far, Star Trek: Picard has had some trenchant things to say about bureaucracy, fascism, and technology, and it sounds like season 3 keeps going in that direction. “I just hope that when the third season is aired, it will have some impact on the political world around us,” Stewart said. “I’m speaking of the United Kingdom and the USA, particularly. I think the political world is badly in need of Jean-Luc Picard right now.”

Watch the first clip from the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard

Paramount dropped the first clip from Picard season 3 during an episode of the Star Trek talk series The Ready Room. Most of this episode was dedicated to Kate Mulgrew’s return to the franchise in Star Trek: Prodigy, but towards the end we got a look at what Jean-Luc is getting up to.

We’ve time-stamped the appropriate point in the video below. Watch:

It’s neat that Picard gets a mysterious message on his old communicator, but I’m more entertained by how frustrated he is with the automated voice system thing. We’ve all been there.

Star Trek: Picard season 3 premieres on Paramount+ on February 16.

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