But season three of Picard has put Seven firmly back on the command path, and not just by sticking a red uniform on her. Leaving aside her unlikely promotion from renegade to Commanding Officer of a significant ship (someplace, Harry Kim sadly plays his clarinet), Seven has shown all of the hallmarks of a Star Trek captain: she knows the regulations, but has no problem discarding those rules in the right situation.
On social media, Picard showrunner Terry Matalas has been very open about calling for a continuation of the series called Star Trek: Legacy (while also being clear that no such show is in production). Although this show would continue the adventures of Riker’s old ship the USS Titan — presumably with Lt. Mura, Ensign Kova Esmar, and other bridge crew personnel we’ve met this season — the subtitle Legacy suggests that it will also bring back legacy characters.
That would be very much in line with the current slate of Trek shows, which love to reach back to classic series. In addition to the recast characters in Strange New Worlds and Discovery, we’ve seen Janeway and Chakotay play important roles in Prodigy, and Deep Space Nine‘s Kira and Quark show up in Lower Decks, along with Voyager‘s Tom Paris. These shows have even been willing to pull unlikely characters back into the mix, from Strange New Worlds giving Dr. M’Benga a lead role to Lower Decks catching up with Sonya Gamez, and the surprising returns of Ro Laren and Elizabeth Shelby in Picard.
With Seven of Nine at the conn of the Titan, Star Trek: Legacy can do what Matalas promised in his tweet proposing the series –exploring the last generation and the next during the 25th century. This allows the series to more fully mine the space between the end of Star Trek: Nemesis and Discovery‘s present in the 32nd century, a period that was largely ignored in film and television until recently.
“But I don’t care about that!” you might be saying. “I only want Star Trek: Legacy if I can get Captain Shaw!” You’re not alone. In just a few short episodes, Captain Liam Shaw grouched his way into the hearts of Trekkers by bullying our heroes in their old age. With his attention to protocol and impatience with Picard and Riker’s derring-do, Shaw has established himself as an interesting character; a compelling counterpart to the gleeful rule-breaking we see among most Starfleet captains. And then he died.
But that’s not really a problem, is it? As Picard itself has acknowledged, Picard and Data have both died before and yet they’re still shuffling around the bridge. Even more significant was the death of Spock at the end of Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan, something the then-reluctant Leonard Nimoy requested. But after the success of Wrath of Khan and the opportunity to direct presented themselves, Nimoy came back for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
