[Editor’s Note: This article contains spoilers for Star Trek: Picard, Season 3, Episode 2, “Disengage.”]Star Trek: Picard returned to the ninth warp with Season 3 offering a new adventure for beloved heroes from New Generation. After last week’s premiere episode, Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) to come face to face with his own legacy in a way he never expected. After Picard and his former number one Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes), board Beverly’s ship and are greeted by her son Jack Crusher (Ed Speleers). Riker seems to immediately capture the young man’s connection to Picard, though the former admiral is extremely resistant to even admitting such a possibility. In the final moments of the episode, Riker takes matters into his own hands at the eleventh hour to wake up Beverly and confirm that Jack is indeed Picard’s child too.
The idea that Picard has a son is something that Riker certainly has strong feelings for, as we learned back in Season 1 that he and Dinah Troy (Marina Sirtis) lost their first child due to a degenerative disease. Season 3, Episode 1 caused some alarm in Next generation a beloved Betazoid/crew human pair where Riker took the opportunity to join Picard on his rescue mission, telling his former captain that his wife and daughter would appreciate the time away from him.
After this week’s episode “Disengage” own Collider Maggie Lovitt spoke to the showrunner for Season 3 Terry Matalas to unpack the episode and explore all the juicy drama that befell the former crew of the Enterprise-D. During their conversation, Lovitt returned to that difficult period between Will and Dinah to better understand why Matalas and the writers of the third season decided to reintroduce us to these characters during a difficult period in their relationship. When asked about the friction between the two, Matalas explained to Collider that part of it is because Riker’s family history can serve as a sort of basis for what’s going on with Picard, saying, “It was a reflection of what was going on with Picard.” finds his son, Riker has lost his son. What would it be like for Riker to watch Picard, not necessarily rejecting his son, but certainly not going out of his way to connect with him?” Matalas also teased that Riker and Picard, who don’t see eye to eye on this, led them to clash, saying “it culminates in that friction between the two of them in the third episode.”
Star Trek: Picard Season 3 will make us fall in love with Riker and Troy all over again
Once the Season 3 writers learned that they wanted to explore friction between Picard and Riker over sons gained and lost, they began to explore how this would affect Riker’s relationship with Dinah. When we met these two in the first season, they were still in shock over the loss of their son; “This is the hardest thing anyone can go through. It’s the loss of a child… After that, it’s almost impossible for couples to stay together,” explained Matalas. Since Dina is half Betazoid, she has empathic abilities that allow her to feel the emotions of those around her as if they were her own - this also allows her to telepathically communicate with Riker. “Then we started asking ourselves, what would it mean for Dina, who could feel the grief of everyone, and how would they try to solve this problem? We look back at the first season and it was almost as if they were overcompensating for their grief. we wondered if it happens there.” If Riker is worried that his grief over his son is so intense that it hurts Dinah, it makes sense that he would like to give her a break.
Don’t worry though Imzadi fans, Matalas explained that exploring this heartbreak and this stress is part of the journey in circles for Riker and Troy. He went on to praise Sirtis and Frakes for bringing this relationship to life again and again for over 30 years. season 3 Picard will make us fall in love with this relationship again, now with the lived experience of a life of love and devotion. Matalas said:
“They are so wonderful, Marina [Sirtis] and Jonathan that we wanted to take a moment, understand who they are, bring them back to how we fell in love with them from the beginning, and then see them joke around like Marina and Jonathan did and fall in love with them over and over again “.
New episodes Star Trek: Picard The third season airs on Paramount+ every Thursday. Watch our conversation with Jonathan Frakes and LeVar Burton below and don’t miss our full “Disengage” showdown with Matalas.
Source: Collider
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