I know that I am part of the reason the nostalgia culture ate everything else, and there is genuinely nothing I can ever do that will make up for that. I find myself getting itchier and itchier as this cycle plays out, and the longer it lasts, the more it feels like we broke something, like asking for movies that treated the things we loved when we were younger with respect somehow metastasized into this endless IP onslaught.

Having said that…

PICARD season three is the way you do it if you’re going to do it. It takes all of the decade of storytelling involving these characters and this world and it uses your affection for it and understanding of it as part of the storytelling weaponry. It is a phenomenal use of the entire NEXT GENERATION cast and feels in some ways like a greatest-hits album. By the end of episode eight, we’ve touched on so many of the familiar icons of TNG that it almost feels like a guided tour, but it’s also dramatically urgent and thrilling and there are real stakes.

I hunger for new things with atomic intensity at this point.

But PICARD is great. Really great.