Now that everyone has seen it who likely was going to watch CBS All Access’s next Star Trek incarnation, Star Trek: Picard, it’s time to delve into the series. If you haven’t yet, take advantage of the free CBS All Access offer while you can. Series star Patrick Stewart has said he decided to bring his character back to the screen because of the role he performed for even more years than Picard–Charles Xavier in the X-Men series–specifically because of the strong finish he was able to give the character in James Mangold’s Oscar-nominated finale Logan, possibly Stewart’s strongest performance in his film and TV career opposite Old Man Logan as Old Man Charles. Stewart succeeded, as Star Trek: Picard, already expecting at least another season, showcases the beloved character as Old Man Picard and wraps far better fans’ last meeting with not only Picard, but Data, Riker, and Troi, too. And surprisingly it does that for Star Trek Voyager, specifically for Jeri Ryan′s Seven of Nine, who also had a rather anticlimactic finale in the last episode of that series. Her new take is very different from before, but still lots of fun.
Now that the series has wrapped, a new hardcover book from Titan is taking a look at the long-awaited return of Patrick Stewart as beloved Star Trek Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Via a series of interviews with cast members and key crew, Star Trek: Picard–The Official Collector’s Edition provides fans of the CBS All Access streaming service show Star Trek: Picard with insight into the latest generation of Starfleet tales. Now a retired admiral, Picard sets off on what might be a lost cause, protecting a young woman who may have ties to Data, the android who gave his life to save Picard the last time we saw the characters on the big screen in 2002’s Star Trek Nemesis.
Patrick Stewart is back again to save the day, and he’s doing it in two ways. As Sir Patrick Stewart, he has begun reading sonnets and sharing his readings online. And as one of our favorite Captains, Jean-Luc Picard, he’s sharing news of the ability for anyone to stream the first season of his new series Star Trek: Picard on the CBS All Access streaming service–free.
As most know, the master thespian was an actor in the Royal Shakespeare Company before appearing in Star Trek: The Next Generation and as Charles Xavier in the Marvel X-Men franchise films, including one of his landmark performances in James Mangold’s 2017 Oscar-nominated film, Logan. On his social media (see his Instagram page here) Sir Pat has begun reciting a sonnet a day, in the hopes that “a sonnet a day keeps the doctor away.” He has so far read Shakespeare sonnets 116, 1, and 2.
And Tuesday he announced more good news for his Star Trek fans: “Our #StarTrekPicard season finale is Thursday, and starting today until 4/23, you can watch for free on @CBSAllAccess in the US with the code: GIFT.” All you need to do is sign up for the streaming service and use the code GIFT. Check out the CBS All Access website for full details.
Star Trek: Picard takes place twenty years after the events in the movie Star Trek: Nemesis, which resulted in the death of Brent Spiner’s character Data, and also after the events of Star Trek (2009), which resulted in the destruction of the planet Romulus.
The pay streaming platform CBS All Access has posted the first episode of its latest Star Trek series free on YouTube. That’s right, Star Trek: Picard episode one is available right now. Unlike plenty of things on YouTube this is a legitimate, authorized release, but according to the studio it will only be available for a limited time. So take a look before it’s gone.
Star Trek: Picard takes place twenty years after the events in the movie Star Trek: Nemesis, which resulted in the death of Brent Spiner’s character Data, and also after the events of Star Trek (2009), which resulted in the destruction of the planet Romulus.
Returning to the Star Trek universe is Patrick Stewart as now Admiral Jean-Luc Picard, along with Spiner, Jonathan Frakes as Riker, Marina Sirtis as Troi, Jonathan Del Arco as Hugh, and from Star Trek Voyager, Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine, along with a next generation of new characters.
Take a look at the first episode of Star Trek: Picardon YouTube below:
For the new Star Trek: Picardseries, a sequel to not only Star Trek: The Next Generation and its films–and now apparently to Star Trek Voyager, also, the hints from the production that the series was going to be something entirely new weren’t altogether accurate. Brent Spiner, Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Star Trek Voyager’s Seven of Nine actor Jeri Ryan, and Jonathan Del Arco, who played Hugh, all will be joining Patrick Stewart as Picard, appearing in the continued journey of the Federation. But executive producer Akiva Goldsman insisted that this isn’t a sequel at a panel today at San Diego Comic-Con, appearing along with showrunner Michael Chabon and co-executive producer Alex Kurtzman. The direction for the series that the members of the production are stressing is that the series will be new, yet the trailer for the series is all throwback goodness.
As the saying goes: The old is new again.
Some nostalgia from the ghosts of Star Treks past includes Picard in similar TNG civilian shirt and First Contact jacket and combadge, he’s right where fans would expect him in the future: at his vineyard a la All Good Things… readying to be called upon to go off-world on some special mission a la the Unification, Gambit, Preemptive Strike, Chain of Command, Birthright, and Endgame stories, with scenes evoking Kirk’s final days from Star Trek Generations. Spiner’s character is in a box (literally), appearing to be B9 (and not the exploded bits of the actual Data?)–not that it matters. Seven of Nine is back (looking like she never left) with an only slightly updated cybernetic prosthetic on her forehead and more human than before. Although they didn’t make the first trailer, other blasts from the past include the return of Riker and Troi. And expect lots of the Federations’ original enemies, as Romulans return as one of the show’s key antagonists.
This appears to be exactly what fans have been after since the IDW Publishing comic book series prequel to the movie Star Trek 2009 (discussed here) put Picard back on the bridge with B9, and then Brannon Braga teamed up Picard and Seven of Nine in his IDW series (discussed here back in 2012). New cast members for the series include a diverse group of new faces, including Isa Briones, Santiago Cabrera, Evan Evagora, Michelle Hurd, Alison Pill, and Harry Treadaway.
The wait is over. Check out the first trailer for Star Trek: Picard:
It’s pretty rare–we’ve been able to watch the goings on at the LAPD of Lt. Provenza (G.W. Bailey), Lt. Flynn (Tony Denison), Lt. Tao (Michael Paul Chan), Assistant Chief Taylor (Robert Gossett), Detective Sanchez (Raymond Cruz), and Buzz (Phillip P. Keene) for eleven years now. Bridging their exploits in The Closer and three seasons to Major Crimes, it’s just remarkable for any series to successfully marry a group of writers and a solid ensemble cast to continue to provide us with more to look forward to each year for eleven seasons. Tonight, they’re all back, with Captain Raydor (Mary McDonnell), Dr. Morales (Jonathan Del Arco), Detective Sykes (Kearran Giovanni), and Rusty Beck (Graham Patrick Martin) rounding out the cast, as the fourth season of Major Crimes begins on TNT.
The bad news is that we hear the spin-off series featuring the S.O.B. (Strategic Operations Bureau) is officially off the table, with what would have been star Laurie Holden off on another series. But look for Jon Tenney’s Fritz Howard to be back at least once this year, and the return of Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Jeri Ryan, and maybe even Tom Berenger.
The network has hinted that we can expect less of the Phillip Stroh threat after last year’s finale, and more of the Flynn and Raydor relationship, but better yet, a focus on Raymond Cruz’s Detective Sanchez as he finally must deal with his anger issues.
Here’s some quick previews of the season premiere:
With the historic reboot of Doctor Who in 2006 and all of Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat’s world building since then with Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith and their five companion voyagers– what if the creators have been holding back? What if we haven’t seen nothin’ yet, if all these great science fiction episodes were all leading up to the real payoff with the 12th Doctor? I got that feeling last night with only the second Doctor Who episode of the season. This new Doctor is here to stay, and the writers are driving full steam ahead, plunging Clara (Jenna Coleman) and the Doctor straight into the darkness without giving us a chance to breathe.
We’ve heard it before: Resistance is futile. But this time the phrase is not about Star Trek and the futility isn’t about we humans, as the new Doctor stumbles into his latest encounter with one of his most hated borg nemeses: The Daleks. With “Into the Dalek” Steven Moffat has created what I am sure we’ll look back on as an episode up there with the David Tennant episodes “Waters of Mars” and “Silence in the Library” or Matt Smith’s “Cold War.”In only his second outing as the Doctor, Peter Capaldi is already comfortable in the role he was destined to play since his days sending fan letters to the BBC as a young boy. With last week’s season opener “Deep Breath,” we were introduced to Capaldi’s Doctor in a typical Doctor Who post-regeneration episode–part with the Doctor learning to “love the skin he’s in” while also getting a taste of how his companion is going to adapt, wrapped in a Tanagra/El-Adrel IV story.
If you’re keeping up with the third season of Major Crimes on TNT, you’ll have seen last night’s episode, “Frozen Assets.” Set up with a preposterous plot–a multi-millionaire who has her head frozen and a poisoning that is foiled by returning detective wannabe Dick Tracy (Andrew Daly) from a 2009 episode of The Closer–Major Crimes yet again proves the show knows no bounds as to what the ensemble cast can get sucked into (and suck viewers into). Like Season Two’s episode with a comedy twist “There’s No Place Like Home,” which featured Marion Ross, Tim Conway, Ron Glass, Paul Dooley, and Doris Roberts in a plot to murder their landlord, “Frozen Assets” shows the lighter side of a series that usually reflects the violent world of L.A. crime. If you missed Season Two, the DVD release from Warner Bros. is here, and it’s full of plenty of extras for Major Crimes fans.
Creator and executive producer James Duff delves deep into the story development for Season Two in the special feature “Major Crimes: Personal Conviction,” revealing his vision of a season split between stories about “identity” as a theme–who the characters are and who the culprits of the crimes are and how they all got to where they are–and “character,” growth of the main cast members and learning more about these characters we thought we already knew from the prior eight years on television. Each cast member discusses their view of the characters they play (except the strangely absent Raymond Cruz). The crew seems to agree that Graham Patrick Martin’s Rusty Beck became the lynchpin and glue holding together the series for the second season, especially his relationship with series lead Mary McDonnell as Captain Sharon Raydor.
The series begins with the opener “Final Cut,” directed by Roxann Dawson, who sci-fi fans will know as Lt. B’Elanna Torres from Star Trek Voyager, and who also played Detective Ortega in a 2011 episode of The Closer. This episode introduced D.D.A. Emma Rios, played by Nadine Velazquez, the prosecutor who constantly clashes with the Major Crimes squad (interspersed with a season full of hilarious flirtations by Detective Sanchez). Duff acknowledges why viewers proclaim how much they hate the character, and also why she fits perfectly into the dynamic of the show.
The tenth season of the Major Crimes team that began with seven years of The Closer, led by Kyra Sedgwick’s Brenda Lee Johnson, and continued with two seasons of Major Crimes under Mary McDonnell’s Captain Sharon Raydor, begins tonight with Major Crimes Season Three. If you haven’t been watching these two series you don’t really have time for a TV series binge before tonight’s season opener (although TNT will air a Season Two marathon beginning Monday morning at 1 p.m. Central/12 a.m. Eastern), but you can set your DVR and put it on your must-watch list and get caught up later this season.
Each member of Los Angeles’s Major Crimes squad is back: G.W. Bailey’s old school detective Lt. Louis Provenza, his able partner in fighting crime Tony Denison’s Lt. Andy Flynn, Michael Paul Chan’s tech savvy Lt. Mike Tao, Raymond Cruz’s Detective Julio Sanchez, who knows the neighborhoods of L.A. better than anyone, Phillip P. Keene’s evidence gatherer Buzz Watson, Kearran Giovanni’s Detective Amy Sykes, the newest member of the squad, as well as Graham Patrick Martin’s informant trying to be a regular kid Rusty Beck, Jonathan Del Arco’s Dr. Morales from the morgue lab, and Robert Gossett’s Assistant Chief Taylor, who helps keep them all on the right track. And don’t forget G.W. Bailey tied for Best Actor in our own Best of 2013 end of year wrap-up last year.
It’s arguably the best ensemble cast on television.
TNT’s first season of Major Crimes was the surprise win of 2012. It accomplished something very rare, taking a series–The Closer–that might otherwise have wound down after seven seasons, and used a change in cast to take the best ensemble cast on TV in a very different direction. For fans of the series wanting to delve deeper into the decision to move the story of L.A.’s Major Crimes unit from a team bent on getting criminal admissions to settling cases, check out Major Crimes: The Complete First Season, available on DVD, next Tuesday, June 11, 2013.
The DVD set includes the ten season one episodes plus four behind-the-scenes features, deleted scenes showing some good acting by the cast that didn’t make the final cut, and a blooper reel. The best of the features, “Major Crimes: Major Challenge,” examines the big hurdle for this spinoff series, and series creator/writer and executive producer James Duff reveals the challenges, rationale for story arcs, and casting decisions that resulted in the first season of Major Crimes. Duff is open about the struggle the writers had, ultimately pulling the reality of national economic crises into the series as a key story element that grounded the first season episodes. Here are three clips from Season One:
Series star Mary McDonnell and the rest of the cast discuss the characters in the feature “Crossing the Tape: Inside the Major Crimes Squad,” touching on Captain Raydor in particular. Fans of the series actors cannot get enough of these types of interviews, and hopefully future season DVD sets include in-depth interviews with Lieutenant Provenza (G.W. Bailey), Lieutenant Flynn (Tony Denison), Lieutenant Tao (Michael Paul Chan), Detective Sanchez (Raymond Cruz), and Buzz (Phillip P. Keene). This includes some insightful anecdotes, such as having show writers refer to Detective Tao instead as Mike to personalize the role and cut-through the possible stereotype of Michael Paul Chan’s character as just another Asian on TV. Instead of focusing on featurettes tied to the characters from The Closer, the DVD set includes two features focusing on the new key roles: witness turned foster teen Rusty (Graham Patrick Martin) and the too-eager-to-please Detective Sykes (Kearran Giovanni).
, available on DVD, next Tuesday, June 11, 2013.
