What? Starfleet is an essential service.

Hey, let's talk about something other than the bleak, crushing reality in which we live. Something like-huh? Yeah...Star Trek. How'd you-ok fine, I get it. I only talk about like three things: Star Trek, politics and video games. Guess you got me sussed. Obviously this is going to get pretty nerdy from here on out, so now's the time to bail.

Or we could discuss Star Trek: The Next Generation: A Final Unity.
It's a Star Trek video game about space politics...or we could not do that.

Above: Burton reads beloved children's
book, Go the Fuck to Sleep, to a bunch of
college kids. With swears and everything.

Still with me? Super. So last week, LeVar Burton told Entertainment Weekly that he'll be-well, he told a reporter from Entertainment Weekly. He didn't like just talk to a copy of the magazine. Anyway, he told them that he'll be reprising his character Geordi LaForge from TNG, on Star Trek: Picard. That feeling you're feeling? That's hope for the future. Sure, we're in the grip of a global pandemic. Yes, idiots are protesting the very life saving prevention measures that are keeping it from getting even worse. And ok, the President is calling for people to carry out armed rebellions. But this news is-

-actually all of that is really pretty terrible and nothing is going to make it ok. But let's focus on something that isn't a spiral of horror and misery. Hey, Geordi's back! And, and, he let slip that we may see even more of the TNG cast return.

Pictured: The TNG cast seen here with their awful season one hairstyles.

Ow! My heartstrings! 

I mean, Picard was teetering on the brink of being a full-on TNG revival already. Season one already gave us-wait, spoilers for Picard? Have you seriously not watched it yet? I'll wait. Back? Cool. Season one had Riker and Troi and Seven of Nine from Voyager. Not to mention Brent Spiner playing Dr. Soong's heretofore unmentioned non-android son and ghost in the machine Data. And Sir Patrick Stewart went on The View and invited Whoopi Goldberg to return as Guinan, the Enterprise's bartender/hippie aunt. Which, why isn't it just a full-on TNG revival?

Like, at last count there is something like, what? Seven new Star Trek shows either on or in the works? There's Discovery, Picard, maybe a Section 31 show with Michelle Yeoh and a Captain Pike show and two that's right, two animated series. Which is a lot, but I don't think anyone would mind if CBS just brought back The Next Generation.

The fact that that list doesn't already include an
Adventures of Captain Geordi LaForge is inexcusable. 

Incidentally, that number of times is zero.

Yeah, new characters and new storylines are great and all, but I don't know. Maybe this is just the weeks of isolation talking, but I just want more TNG. And yeah, I know there's like a hundred and seventy-eight episodes, and they're all streaming, but it's been twenty-five years and there're only so many times you can watch the one where Dr. Crusher has sex with a candle ghost. Or the one where the crew rescues a colony of Irish stereotypes. Or that one where swingers want to execute Wesley for stepping on their flower bed.

Well? Are you squeeing with joy right
now or are you a heartless monster?

It may seem weird that I'm pointing out the worst Next Gen episodes as part of my argument that CBS should be making more, but what we need now is well-worn familiarity, not quality. I mean, if we're being honest with ourselves, nostalgia is really what brought us in for Star Trek: Picard. Look, I think it was good in it's own right, but I'm a fan to begin with. And c'mon, tell me you didn't squee with joy every time our favorite seventy-nine-year-old shakespearian actor said "engage."

Look, everything is terrible right now and we're all trapped indoors with nothing but repeats. We need more TNG, and reuniting the cast for Star Trek: Picard is basically half way there. Why not go all in and get the band back together? Huh? Oh, right...the global pandemic.

Pictured: that time a virus got loose on the ship and Troi
turned into a fish. Huh. Wait, you don't suppose that I just
remember this show being better than it actually was?