Too old for this merde...

Didja see the Comic Con trailer for the New Adventures of Old Picard? Huh? Yeah, I'm still holding out hope that that'll be the title. For the time being anyway, it's the serviceable, if unimaginative Star Trek: Picard.

Does what it says on the tin, I guess.

Sir Patrick Stewat and showrunn Michael
Chabon seem eager to service the fans.
Wait, that came out wrong...or did it?

You know the drill. Buckle them nerd belts, because we're going to talk about Star Trek. If that's not your cuppa Earl Grey, bail out now. Still there? Thought so. If you haven't seen the trailer go watch it. I'll wait...well? Look, I don't have all day. There. Pretty good right? Now, if you're lying to me and you didn't watch the trailer or if you don't know what I'm even talking about, I'll sum up, but for real, it's like two minutes of your life. Cool, right? Yes. Although that might just be my nostalgia gland running at full tilt. The trailer is fan service incarnate. In fact, they should probably have called it Fan Service: The Trailer.

From what we can glean by obsessively dissecting the two minutes of carefully edited footage-and we will-it looks like an older, retired Jean-Luc Picard is still haunted by Data's pointless death at the end of Star Trek: Nemesis and I can't say I blame him. That movie sucked. Even the cast says so.

Pictured: That time Data shoved Jean-Luc out of
the way and hogged the heroic sacrifice for himself. 

Move over CG Grand Moff Tarkin.

So bringing a CG de-aged Brent Spiner back, even if he's just playing ghost Data or Lore or Data and Lore's dumber, prototype brother B-4, is still huge for fans. But wait, there's more! Jonathan Frakes is directing some episodes, and he'll be reprising Riker along with Marina Sirtis as Counselor Troi. Seven of Nine from Voyager shows up and we get glimpses of Romulans and even a Borg cube. This whole thing is like a big Star Trek stew.

I am pretty sure what I don't want though.

Is that a good thing? I don't know. Things like sequels and reboots and re-imaginings are on some level the exact opposite of creativity. I mean, paradoxically Star Trek is a show about exploring strange new whatevers and boldly going, but as a whole it's spent a lot of time reminding us of Star Trek we've already seen and based on the trailer Picard is leaning into that history pretty hard and I'm good with that. I guess I want new old experiences? I don't know. Like any good fan, I'm not sure what I want.

But retread or not, I'm there for it, even if it is just a greatest hits of Star Trek. Yes Picard is a spin-off of a spin-off and is 100% relying on my fond memories of Star Trek in the 90's to rope me in, but it's working. Huh? Yeah, earlier it was stew, now it's a greatest hits. I'm not great at metaphors.

You know who is though? These guys.