star trek picard why doesn't guinan remember picard

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Star Trek: Why Doesn’t Guinan Remember Picard?

Star Trek time travel rules can be a headache under even the best of circumstances, but Picard has introduced new ripples to the usual paradoxes.

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This article contains Star Trek: Picard spoilers.

S tar Trek: Picard season 2 has its fans and its detractors, delving into Picard’s personal history, Data’s ancestry, and Earth’s future history. But for a show that is so deeply rooted in Star Trek continuity, it has certainly thrown up some questions. Some of those questions can be simply put down to the show ignoring existing continuity – like Picard’s dad having hair when “Tapestry” showed his was an angry bald man. Others, however, have sparked lively debate about time travel logic.

Only, you know when you have a loose thread on a jumper? And when you pull on it everything else just sort of… unwinds? In Star Trek , time travel logic can be a bit like that…

The El-Aurian in the Room

The continuity problem in question is a pretty straight forward one. In the latest season of Star Trek: Picard , our titular former captain finds history has been changed, and so travels back to 2024 to try and right the timeline. While he’s there he encounters his old friend and former bartender, Guinan, introduces and introduces himself to her.

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The problem is that this isn’t the first time Picard and Guinan have met. Guinan has been on Earth since at least 1893 , when she met a younger time travelling Picard who was attempting to halt an alien time invasion. It’s the sort of thing that you think would come up?

Now, before we go into whether it makes sense, what the time travel “rules” are and what the repercussions for this bit of amnesia are for the spacetime continuum at large, it is time to admit something. Something pretty hard to admit actually.

It doesn’t matter.

We have written a few articles on time travel logic in various films and while it’s fun arguing Back to the Future logic vs The Terminator logic vs Primer logic if you really have the time, the truth is it doesn’t really matter if the time travel logic is even internally consistent so long as it is used to tell a compelling story.

B ack to the Future ’s time travel makes no sense whatsoever if you think about it for longer than five seconds. Do we care? Not at all.

The main reason why Guinan’s amnesia raises our hackles is that, regardless of whether it’s consistent, it doesn’t feel like great storytelling. There are long-running sci-fi franchises where the audience is best advised to put its fan wiki down, forget about continuity and just enjoy the show (even though we refuse to do this ). But Picard is very specifically about a long-lived character, with a rich history, revisiting his life and his friendships at the end of his life.

If we see Picard and Guinan reunited, we want to see Patrick Stewart and Whoopi Goldberg’s chemistry, and if you can drop that clanger of a line about El-Aurians aging when they choose to, you have some handwavium about them being able to age up-and-down at will.

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And it’s hinted at, repeatedly across Star Trek: The Next Generation , that Picard and Guinan’s friendship goes far longer and deeper than the show ever directly addresses. Why not give Guinan not one, but two historical encounters with Picard? Why not have Guinan working at the 21 st century Ten Forward and see her reaction to a human from the 24 th century walk in who she last saw in the 19 th ? Isn’t that a more compelling story?

Why does your story need a clean slate when the very premise of your series is about how much the slate has been written on?

Back to the Future

However, narrative gripes aside, it turns out that Guinan forgetting Picard isn’t a massive blunder from the writers, but an intentional product of the way they show time travel in the show.

As the showrunner, Terry Matalas has explained , “This Guinan wouldn’t remember Picard because in this alternate timeline, the TNG story ‘Time’s Arrow’ never happened. Because there was no Federation, those events did not play out the same. No previous relationship exists. However, she still was likely traveling to Earth and, as we know, she hung around a bit. So this Guinan is different. But she, of course, can sense something is off. She’s going through a kind of time-sickness thanks to Q’s meddling with the timeline.”

People arguing about this on the internet have pointed to an inconsistency in Matalas’ explanation. When Seven and Rafaella are travelling on a bus in 2024, they ask a punk to turn off his obnoxious music (Kirk Thatcher, playing his own song). The punk responds by quickly and politely turning his music off while seemingly genuinely frightened.

This is because it is the same punk who got neck-pinched into silence in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home . So, if “Time’s Arrow” never happened, surely The Voyage Home didn’t either, right?

Matalas has thought of this too , saying, “Now technically, Star Trek IV wouldn’t have happened in this alternate timeline, but maybe SOME part of him remembers his encounter with Spock in the Prime Timeline.”

But if humans are going around remembers alternate timelines willy-nilly, then what is even the point of El-Aurians?

A much more sensible solution is that while the Confederation were able to easily wipe the floor with the Xindi, the Romulans, the Klingons, and V’Ger, the Whale Probe completely handed their asses to them and Evil Kirk, Evil Spock, Evil Uhura, and Evil Chekov, Sulu and Scotty all had to travel backwards in time to get some whales in a grim and gritty dark reboot of Star Trek: The One With the Whales .

Meanwhile, the changes to the timeline have had other impacts on our history as well. The Devidians, the glowy blue alien time vampires that invade 19 th century San Francisco, are now running about unopposed and mistaken for a cholera outbreak. Does this Earth now have a mass cholera pandemic that dwarfed even the ones in our own history? Are Devidians, even now, still stealthing around 21 st century Earth draining people’s neural energy?

And that is only the beginning.

The Butterfly Effect

As we’ve mentioned before, Star Trek’s characters are no strangers to our present . If we are going to allow for changes in the timeline not only changing the future going forward from that change, but also retroactively changing any changes to the timeline in the past made from the future that has been changed, things are going to get even more complicated than this sentence. We have set off a chain reaction that is going bounce back and forth along the timeline like a Newton’s cradle.

For starters, we have mentioned before the theory that the Eugenics Wars did not happen in the ’90s as previously stated, because the events of the Star Trek: Voyager episode “Future’s End” featured meddling in the timeline that kickstarted the microprocessor revolution and brought about the timeline we all know and love.

If that didn’t happen, does Picard ’s 2024 take place after a 90s that involved sleeper ships and genetically enhanced dictators? How do the Bell Riots go, the very same year that Picard & Co are there, without Sisko and Bashir to mess things up?

Okay, so the “Future’s End” theory is just an unconfirmed fan theory, and the Bell Riots probably go much the same way as they did before. But what the Roswell Incident? In this evil human-supremacist future Nog would never be allowed to enter Starfleet Academy, so he, Quark and Rom would never accidentally find themselves flung back to 1940s Earth. Which means this 2024 takes place in a dark timeline that never saw the 90s sci-fi high school drama, Roswell , or the CW remake. Does this timeline even have The X-Files ?

But this isn’t just about Picard ’s little alternate-timeline rock pool. It also has repercussions for the movies. In the Kelvin-verse timeline of Star Trek , Star Trek Into Darkness , and Star Trek Beyond , the point of divergence is no longer Nero’s ship coming back from the future while Kirk’s mum is giving birth.

Now every time travel event that occurred after that will have gone differently as well, all the way down to First Contact itself.

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We are talking about an intricate mesh of consequence and coincidence being struck with a jackhammer, so that even events such as which sperm met which egg could change. Suddenly you could end up with a timeline where William Shatner looks like Chris Pine, or where Khan looks like Doctor Strange for some reason.

Okay, so that actually explains a lot.

But this model of time travel does have one other major problem.

Forking Timelines vs Fadey Photographs

Like we said- Star Trek is no stranger to time travel, and one device that it absolutely loves is the idea of alternate futures. Nothing makes Star Trek happier than nipping forward to tell a story set in the future of the show, then hopping back to the show’s present to whack the reset button and restore the status quo.

Alternate futures we have seen in the various Star Trek series include “ First Born ”, when Worf’s son comes back from an alternate future, “All Good Things”, which gives us a version of the Enterprise-D crew’s future very different from what the movies, Picard and Lower Decks have shown us since, “ The Visitor ”, where Benjamin Sisko gets displaced and sees Jake Sisko grow old, “ Visionary ”, where Miles O’Brien foresees his own death over and over again . (“ Future Imperfect ” doesn’t count because its alternate future was just a holographic projection to trick Riker into being the alien’s new dad.)

Voyager crewmembers, after they have finally returned home, travel back in time in “ Timeless ” and “ Endgame ” to change history so that they get home sooner or with more people alive, and frankly we’ve no reason to believe they won’t have a go at it again to save Joe Carey or that ensign they kept wiping the Doctor’s memory over .

The point is that each of these futures was negated by the events of the story they appeared in, but everyone who encountered those futures continued to remember them after events had changed. That suggests a branching timeline model, so the futures would continue to exist even after the past has been changed- which is the bit of time travel lore that justifies the existence of the Kelvin timeline universe alongside the Prime timeline.

It’s the standard “forking timeline” model of time travel logic that we have seen in Avengers: Endgame , some iterations of The Terminator , Primer , and basically any time travel story with pretentions of making coherent internal sense.

Except that we also know that isn’t what happens in the Star Trek universe. When the past is changed it doesn’t create a handy little spin-off timeline that lets the rest of the franchise carry on as before.

When the Enterprise-C turns up in “ Yesterday’s Enterprise ”, we see the Enterprise-D get a dark and gritty makeover. In both “Timeless” and “Endgame”, when Kim and Janeway respectively are leaping back in time to give Voyager a do-over, they do so with Starfleet in hot pursuit, because the changes they make will have repercussions for everyone else.

When McCoy screws up the past in “ City on the Edge of Forever ”, when Sisko and Bashir screw it up in “Past Tense”, and when the Borg screw it up in Star Trek: First Contact , we see the repercussions immediately for all but the crew at the eye of the storm. (Incidentally, do the Borg do that a lot? Just every time they encounter a species they can’t assimilate shout “Temporal vortex!” and go back and assimilate them in the past? Because we can’t help but feel more should have been made of that…)

So in that model maybe changes to the future can ripple backwards in time, meaning, irritatingly, that Guinan never had an adventure with Picard and Mark Twain and the Roswell High books were never even written, let alone adapted into two mildly successful TV series.

It possibly makes internally consistent sense, but it’s still not as good a story as Picard and Guinan reminiscing about hanging out with Mark Twain.

Chris Farnell

Chris Farnell is a freelance writer and the author of a novel, an anthology, a Doctor Who themed joke book and some supplementary RPG material. He…

“I don’t know you, old man!”

'Picard' showrunner reveals the time-meddling reason behind Star Trek's new Guinan

New timeline. New faces. New memories?

Star Trek has recast a fan favorite. In the new Picard episode, “Watcher,” Jean-Luc Picard shockingly encounters his oldest friend in 2024. But this person has no idea who he is. Longtime fans of The Next Generation might be confused by this turn of events, but luckily, showrunner Terry Matalas has the answer. Spoilers ahead.

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Guinan (Ito Aghayere) takes Picard (Patrick Stewart) to meet “the Watcher” at the end of the episode.

Picard meets 2024 Guinan

In Picard Season 2, Episode 4, Jean-Luc beams to the coordinates Anges Jurati stole from the Borg Queen’s mind in Episode 3. And once he’s there, he finds himself in a very familiar Los Angeles bar, Ten Forward. Just like in the first episode of Season 2, Picard meets a version of Guinan; only this time, she’s several centuries younger.

The Picard team did not try to digitally de-age Whoopi Goldberg for this scene, but instead, they cast actress Ito Aghayere as the 2024 version of Guinan. Pre-existing Trek canon established Guinan as a traveling El-Aurian, an alien who slowly ages. Both The Next Generation and Picard never reveal precisely how old Guinan is, but she’s several centuries old in all iterations, including in this new 2024 version.

In “Watcher,” Jean-Luc finds Guinan packing up her bar, getting ready to leave Earth forever. She’s been hanging around on Earth for a while and easily passing for a human, which was previously seen in The Next Generation's two-parter “Time’s Arrow.” This leads to one huge question most Trekkies might have: If Guinan has lived on Earth since at least 1893, why doesn’t she recognize Picard from that TNG time travel adventure?

Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) and Picard (Patrick Stewart) in the TNG classic “Time’s Arrow Part 2.”

Why Guinan doesn’t know Picard

In “Watcher,” Guinan tells Jean-Luc, “I don’t know you, old man!” Even when Picard tells her his name toward the end of the episode, she’s familiar with his name , but she still doesn’t actually remember him.

Assuming this is the same character who lived in San Francisco in 1893 and remained on Earth after that point, you might think she should remember Jean-Luc. In “Time’s Arrow,” Picard and Guinan experienced a pre-destination paradox in which Guinan actually encouraged him to lead an away mission to make sure he was sent back in time to meet her in the first place. Picard then went back in time and hung out with Data, Guinan, and Mark Twain (Jerry Hardin).

But now because the future timeline of Starfleet has been wiped-out, none of that happened. Inverse reached out to Picard co-showrunner Terry Matalas, who explained it like this:

“This Guinan wouldn't remember Picard because in this alternate timeline, the TNG episode "Time's Arrow" never happened. Because there was no Federation, those events did not play out the same. No previous relationship exists. However, she still was likely traveling to Earth and, as we know, she hung around a bit. So this Guinan is different. But she, of course, can sense something is off. She's going through a kind of time-sickness thanks to Q's meddling with the timeline.”

Matalas didn’t hint at any more of what Q is doing to the timeline. But, like in “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” Guinan feels some kind of alteration to the timeline, even though she doesn’t express it the same way she did in TNG . This time, Jean-Luc confronts her with something she said to him in an alternate future, which makes her become disoriented and nauseous.

Throughout TNG and the film Generations , El-Aurians have had a unique relationship with time perception, making them kind of the Trek equivalent of Time Lords from Doctor Who . That said, we never really have known the extent of Guinan’s powers.

With a younger Guinan back in the mix, it’s possible some of the oldest questions we’ve had about the enigmatic bartender could be finally answered. Then again, in some ways, this version of the character is entirely new.

Picard airs new episodes on Paramount+ on Thursdays.

This article was originally published on March 24, 2022

• Science Fiction

‘Star Trek: Picard’: How the Actor Playing Young Guinan, Ito Aghayere, Stepped Into Whoopi Goldberg’s Shoes (EXCLUSIVE)

SPOILER WARNING: This story discusses specific events in Season 2, Episode 4 of “ Star Trek: Picard ,” currently streaming on Paramount Plus .

As even casual fans of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” know, one of the beloved sci-fi show’s most meaningful relationships was between Capt. Jean-Luc Picard ( Patrick Stewart ) and the proprietor of the main bar on the U.S.S. Enterprise, Guinan ( Whoopi Goldberg ). The characters mean so much to each other that Stewart moved Goldberg to tears when he invited her to join him on the “TNG” sequel series “Star Trek: Picard” while appearing on an episode of “The View” in January 2020.

The Season 2 premiere of “Picard” wastes little time in bringing Goldberg back as Guinan, with a lovely scene in which the two old friends throw back some strong hooch in Guinan’s bar on Earth, as she attempts to soothe Picard’s wounded psyche.

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It turns out that scene wasn’t just an exercise in nostalgia, either. After his reunion with Guinan, Picard finds himself plunged into a horrific alternate timeline in which the Federation doesn’t exist, the Earth is the center of a violent totalitarian empire, and Jean-Luc Picard has risen to power as a ruthless and bloodthirsty conqueror. So with the rest of the show’s main cast — all of whom also retain their memories of how things used to be — Picard travels back in time to 2024 to the point where he believes the timeline diverged irrevocably from its true path.

And that’s how, in Episode 4, “Watcher,” Picard finds himself stepping back into Guinan’s bar, where he comes face-to-face with a young Guinan. As the exclusive clip below illustrates, instead of Goldberg, however, the character is played by actor Ito Aghayere (“Carol’s Second Act”).

In her exclusive first interview about the role with Variety , Aghayere reveals that playing Guinan was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream to be a part of “Star Trek” — especially “The Next Generation.”

“I watched all of ‘TNG’ as a kid, primarily because my parents are immigrants, and they’re very conservative,” she said in a Zoom interview. “As a kid growing up, there were very few shows that they would let us watch without having to care what it was about, or understand what it was about.”

She laughed. “I don’t think I told Patrick — as I probably should have — but they thought he looked really smart and intelligent,” she said. “So they were like, ‘Eh, she’s gonna learn something, let them watch it.’ I couldn’t watch ‘Power Rangers,’ but I could watch ‘Star Trek.'”

Rather than pour him a drink, Aghayere’s Guinan is so deeply disillusioned with humanity that she pulls a shotgun on Picard when he reveals he knows she’s a member of a long-lived alien species called El-Aurians. But as much as she enjoyed shooting the scene, as a “TNG” devotee, Aghayere also noticed that it seemed strange that her Guinan does not recognize Picard at all when he steps into her bar.

That’s because in the two-part “TNG” episode “Time’s Arrow,” Guinan first meets Picard in 1893 San Francisco, part of a twisty time-travel plot line that is launched when the severed head of the android Data (Brent Spiner) is discovered after its seemingly spent 500 years buried in a California cavern. So Aghayere said she asked executive producer and showrunner Terry Matalas about why Guinan wouldn’t recognize Picard in 2024 if she’d met him so memorably in 1893.

“I think what Terry does in terms of storytelling when it comes to time travel is just brilliant,” she said at first with a smile. “I don’t think he ever got me a clear answer on it. And I think…” She paused for a long time. “I never will.”

Fortunately, a representative for Paramount Plus did provide a rather head-squeezing answer from Matalas on this question: “Guinan does not recognize Picard in 2024. Fans might be briefly confused by this because she did meet him on Earth in 1893 in ‘The Next Generation.’ The reason that she doesn’t recognize Picard is that he’s traveled from a future in which Starfleet doesn’t exist, and therefore the whole thing with Data’s head in ‘Time’s Arrow’ never happened.” In other words, the alternate reality Picard was too busy conquering and never traveled back in time to 1893, so he never met Guinan then.

Time travel shenanigans aside, Aghayere talked with Variety about how much Guinan meant to her, how she approached playing the role, and what surprising gift cemented her own friendship with Stewart.

When you were first watching “The Next Generation,” what do you remember of your feelings about Guinan and who she was?

Oh, man, I just thought she was so cool. I have to paint a picture of you what it was like back then: I had braces until I was a freshman in college, so I was the epitome of a Black nerd. So watching Whoopi just steal scenes right out from under Patrick Stewart — I love you, Patrick — but just stealing scenes left and right. It just felt so empowering to watch her do that. Looking back now, I just think this woman completely encapsulated the kind of Puck-like quality of [being] both mischievous and omniscient. She wasn’t in that many episodes, so to have such a pivotal impact on the series is quite remarkable. As a kid, every time I saw, “And guest starring Whoopi Goldberg,” I was like, “Yes! She’s back! It’s going to be a good one!”

So given your abiding love for the show and this character, what was your reaction when you first learned it was not only “Star Trek: Picard,” but the role was a younger Guinan?

It was actually quite strange. I found out the normal way: My reps were like, “There’s this role, we have no idea what it is. But it looks interesting, read it.” At the time, my character’s name was Gwen. I had no idea she was Guinan. They were dummy sides — it was a scene that was written that had the same dynamic and the same relationship to the actual scene from the episode, between a person named John and a woman named Gwen. All I knew is that when I read the scene, it felt like I understood her. I understood her bitterness and her disappointment and her fear to hope in the world. That’s what locked me in, just to the story that she seemed to be telling, which resonated with me as a Black woman in America. It felt like a story I wanted to tell.

But did you know it was for “Star Trek,” at least?

I had no idea that it was “Star Trek.” I found out maybe two callbacks in that it was “Star Trek.” It was one of those things where I was like, No way . There are very few moments in an actor’s career where you get to be in the thing that you loved as a kid. Usually those things end — as they should. Unless you’re [auditioning for] “Grey’s Anatomy” and were born in 2000. So it didn’t sink into me until I was doing my final test with producers. It was at that point of the pandemic where my now-husband and I couldn’t be in the house anymore. So I was at Mount Zion National Park in some hotel room with my laptop stacked on top of the suitcase, stacked on top a case of water, doing this really heartfelt scene. I think it was with Terry Matalas, the showrunner. And at that point, in that moment, I was like, this is legit . This is “Star Trek.”

How did that feel?

It was lovely, because the thing about “Star Trek” is that they don’t shy away from delving into really reflective topics that shed a light on the world that we live in. There’s this moment where Guinan lets loose on “John,” and she’s just like, “Your privilege blinds you from my pain.” And it’s just, ahhh — what more can I say, as a Black woman? It just went there for me. So to be able to be with people who are writing about something that still resonates with me as a 33-year-old woman was cathartic. To be able to tell stories that are still relevant in a universe that means a lot to me — it was just unreal.

What really struck me in your performance is that your Guinan is in a much different place than Whoopi Goldberg’s — she’s much more emotionally demonstrative and distraught. How did you work on connecting on what Whoopi had done in the role while differentiating yourself?

Rewatching her episodes, it gave me a lens into the future of who this character would be. In some ways, what I did was reverse engineer what someone has to grow into in order to be Whoopi’s Guinan. What wisdom doesn’t she have access to, what optimism does she not subscribe to, so that she can have a place to go? What does she not know yet that she will come to learn to be the enigmatic, wise counselor that she is in “TNG”?

One of the things that I did was go through all of the different moments through “TNG” where Whoopi’s Guinan mentions things about loss, things about her history, things about her pain. I took note of every moment where she hints at a past pain. That allowed me to strip that down into its component parts. What wisdom do I have now, but isn’t applied in the best way? You know, and I think that’s why this story can happen, because I need the Picard of Whoopi’s timeline to at least get me going along the path of where Whoopi’s Guinan ends up.

What is something you wanted to emulate physically from Whoopi’s performance as Guinan?

I think Whoopi had this beautiful stillness to her work. I took that to be that to come from a place of confidence and an ease with which she exists in her body. She sits in the center of herself, in each moment. You never see her fidgeting. You never see her move around. I wanted to use that. I think that is key to who this person is, but in 2024 Guinan, I think that stillness is used as a weapon. It is the precursor to a threat, to an attack. It is aggressive. It’s not out of a place of ease, it’s out of a place of, “I’m going to gauge what I need to do to protect myself.” It is selfish in many ways. It’s not giving in the way that I think Whoopi’s Guinan is.

Did you get to meet Whoopi?

I didn’t because of the pandemic. There were so many stops and starts with closures and people getting sick, so pretty much no one shot anything in sequence. It was a lot of bouncing around. I think they’d hoped at one point that it could work out. I’m still holding out hope. I think eventually we’ll make a connection.

You did, of course, meet Patrick Stewart since all your scenes were with him. What was that like for you?

He is such a generous actor, on and off the screen. One of our first scenes together, besides having to go there calling him out on his privilege as Jean-Luc, I also had to pull a shotgun on the man and look calm doing it. And, I mean, he has a “Sir” in front of his name. He was just ready for it. He was like, “Bring it! Bring it!” And such a sweet soul.

A friend of mine had told me he really likes this yeast thing, Marmite. Because I have family in the U.K., I know it, and I hate it. It’s awful. But it’s hard to get here. I was at a store and I saw it and I was like, I wonder if it’d be cheesy to get him like a little jar of Marmite? It’s so random — why would some random person you’re working with just hand you a jar of Marmite? And so, the first time we met, we’re outside and I have this jar of Marmite in this bag. I’m like, “Patrick, you don’t know me. But here’s the Marmite.” He lost it! He was like, “Oh, my goodness, Marmite! I love this stuff! Who told you?” That was how we started. He just brought this joy. He doesn’t have to be kind and warm and generous. And he does. It was just thrilling.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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Star Trek: Why Doesn’t Guinan Remember Picard?

If we see Picard and Guinan reunited, we need to see Patrick Stewart and Whoopi Goldberg’s chemistry, and for those who can drop that clanger of a line about El-Aurians growing older once they select to, you have got some handwavium about them with the ability to age up-and-down at will.

And it’s hinted at, repeatedly throughout Star Trek: The Subsequent Era , that Picard and Guinan’s friendship goes far longer and deeper than the present ever straight addresses. Why not give Guinan not one, however two historic encounters with Picard? Why not have Guinan working on the 21 st century Ten Ahead and see her response to a human from the 24 th century stroll in who she final noticed within the 19 th ? Isn’t that a extra compelling story?

Why does your story want a clear slate when the very premise of your collection is about how a lot the slate has been written on?

Again to the Future

Nevertheless, narrative gripes apart, it seems that Guinan forgetting Picard isn’t a large blunder from the writers, however an intentional product of the best way they present time journey within the present.

Because the showrunner, Terry Matalas has defined, “This Guinan wouldn’t bear in mind Picard as a result of on this alternate timeline, the TNG story ‘Time’s Arrow’ by no means occurred. As a result of there was no Federation, these occasions didn’t play out the identical. No earlier relationship exists. Nevertheless, she nonetheless was seemingly touring to Earth and, as we all know, she hung round a bit. So this Guinan is completely different. However she, in fact, can sense one thing is off. She’s going via a form of time-sickness because of Q’s meddling with the timeline.”

Folks arguing about this on the web have pointed to an inconsistency in Matalas’ rationalization. When Seven and Rafaella are travelling on a bus in 2024, they ask a punk to show off his obnoxious music (Kirk Thatcher, enjoying his personal tune). The punk responds by shortly and politely turning his music off whereas seemingly genuinely frightened.

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Star Trek: Guinan Has Helped Picard in the Past

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Star Trek: Picard Season 2 has Picard and his new crew go on a time-bending odyssey to save the soul of Starfleet after the timeline is tampered with by the omnipotent Q . Fortunately for Jean-Luc Picard, Q is far from the only familiar face that he encounters as he and his friends travel back to the year 2024 to undo Q's mischief this time, with Guinan appearing in the past . And with the latest trailer showing Guinan lending vital support to Picard, recognizing her old friend immediately, their reunion harkens back to the first time Picard and Guinan worked together in the past to ensure the course of history would remain intact.

As a member of the El-Aurian race, Guinan is capable of living for centuries, aging at an exponentially slower rate than humans or Vulcans. Taking a particular interest in humanity, Guinan visited the planet in the 19th century, befriending author Samuel Clemens while living in San Francisco during the year 1893, which was explored in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 5 episode "Time's Arrow." In August 1893, Guinan and Picard met for the first time from her perspective, with Picard traveling to the past to stop time-traveling aliens that secretly feed off humans' life force during a 19th century cholera outbreak.

RELATED: Star Trek: Prodigy Provides Its Own Time-Bending Twist on a TNG Classic

During his time in the 19th century, Picard not only met Guinan but helped save her life when she was injured in a confrontation with the aliens. This served as the foundation of their dynamic from Guinan's perspective, centuries before she became the bartender on the USS Enterprise-D where she quietly struck up a friendship with Picard, with the captain unaware of this time-bending history for years into knowing Guinan. And in the latest trailer for Picard Season 2 , Picard's quickly decides to get help from Guinan in the year 2024, finding his old friend working at a dive bar in Los Angeles, with this timeline's Guinan happy to reunite with her friend for the first time since 1893.

Guinan is someone that has an extensive, if unseen, history with both the Q Continuum and the Borg Collective. In the TNG Season 2 episode "Q Who?" Guinan and Q have a tense confrontation in the Enterprise's bar, with the two characters revealing they are well aware of who each other are, and Q even implying Guinan has gone by different names before. When Q threatens to remove Guinan from the ship, she manages to get Q to stand by hinting that she can more than defend herself. Later in TNG , Guinan reveals her home planet was invaded by the Borg and the survivors scattered across the cosmos, with Guinan offering insight to Picard on how to deal with this unstoppable enemy in the Season 3 episode " The Best of Both Worlds ."

RELATED: Star Trek: Prodigy Brings in an Old TNG Enemy in a Big Way

Picard may be faced with a reality-shaking threat that could undo humanity's history with Starfleet, but thanks to Guinan's centuries-long history on Earth and their shared adventure in 1893, she is ready to lend help that the retired Starfleet admiral needs to save the day. More importantly, with both Q and the Borg figuring prominently in Picard Season 2, Guinan brings invaluable insight on both enemies that could prove key in Picard triumphing through Q's tricks and the arrival of a resurgent Borg Collective.

Created by Akiva Goldsman, Michael Chabon, Kirsten Beyer and Alex Kurtzman, Star Trek: Picard Season 2 premieres March 3 on Paramount+.

KEEP READING: Star Trek Meets The Muppets in Absolutely Perfect Wrath of Prawn Art

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Star Trek: Picard | Understanding Guinan And Q's History | Paramount+

When Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) calls on 21st-century Guinan (Ito Aghayere) to help him summon Q (John de Lancie), it's because he knows the El-Aurian has a special relationship with him. Take a look at the pair's backstory, from Star Trek: The Next Generation to Star Trek: Picard Season 2. Stream all-new episodes of Star Trek: Picard on Thursdays, exclusively in the U.S. on Paramount+.

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Showrunner Explains How ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Is Handling Time Travel And The Eugenics Wars

| March 27, 2022 | By: Anthony Pascale 117 comments so far

The second season of Star Trek: Picard features Jean-Luc Picard and his team traveling back in time from an alternate future to 2024 Los Angeles. The latest episode, “Watcher,” has spawned a lot of questions about how the show is handling the history of Trek’s past, and co-showrunner Terry Matalas is doing his best to try to guide fans along. Obviously SPOILERS ahead if you haven’t been keeping up with the season.

Time travel… and why Guinan didn’t recognize Picard

In “Watcher,” Jean-Luc Picard visited a younger Guinan in 2024. He revealed to her that they would become close friends in the future, but Guinan did not appear to recognize Picard and at no time did either one mention meeting before. This has many fans wondering about the two-part Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Time’s Arrow,” when Picard and other members of the USS Enterprise-D crew went back in time and encountered an even younger version of Guinan in 1893 San Francisco.

Picard with Guinan, Riker, Dr. Crusher, and Geordi in 1893

In the second part of that episode, Picard revealed everything about who he was to Guinan. The reason their 1893 meeting wasn’t mentioned in “Watcher” is because those events didn’t happen due to the change in the timeline. Terry Matalas explained to Inverse that “This Guinan wouldn’t remember Picard because in this alternate timeline, the TNG episode ‘Time’s Arrow’ never happened.”

Matalas has confirmed with TrekMovie that the way they are treating time travel is that even though they arrived before Q’s divergence in time, they are not in the Prime timeline; they are still in the altered “Confederation” timeline. This logic flows to other future instances of time travel, like Sisko going back to 2024 San Francisco (DS9 “Past Tense”) and Kirk going back in time to save the whales ( Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home ). Matalas explained this in our article about bringing back the Punk from Voyage Home , saying “ Star Trek IV  wouldn’t have happened in this alternate timeline.”

Star Trek has dealt with time travel in a number of different ways, but according to Matalas, they are following the same rules when changes in the past rewrite the timeline, like in “City on the Edge of Forever,” or Star Trek: First Contact . The unique situation here is that we have a time traveler encountering someone who he has encountered before in a previous instance of time travel. So even though Picard himself can remember the events of “Time’s Arrow,” he knows that this timeline’s General Picard of the CSS World Razer never went back in time to meet Guinan.

Picard and Guinan meet for the first time, in this timeline.

What happened with the Eugenics Wars?

One pivotal time in Star Trek history is the Eugenics Wars, which gave rise to the Augments and the franchise’s most famous villain, Khan Noonien Singh. Khan was first encountered in the Star Trek season one episode “Space Seed,” where he was discovered in a sleeper ship launched in the late 20th century. At the time it was said Khan was exiled after he ruled one-quarter of the Earth from 1992 to 1996.

Khan wakes up his followers on SS Botany bay

Of course, the 1990s came and went and there were no Eugenics Wars and no group of genetically enhanced supermen and superwomen vying for power over the globe. Nor was there the launch of the SS Botany Bay , or even the technology to launch a ship capable of putting people into extended hibernation for an interstellar voyage. This does create a bit of a conundrum of how one should treat this bit of history, and even in the alternate timeline, there is no clear reason why any future instances of time travel would have changed the events of the 1990s in such a profound way.

When asked this question on Twitter this weekend, Matalas explained that how to treat the Eugenics Wars was a big debate, but it was decided to sort of punt on the issue, explaining that maybe records became less clear after World War III (which itself is supposed to kick in the early 21st century). Matalas’ co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman also chimed in to back up the “endless” part of this writers’ room discussion.

ENDLESSY — Akiva Goldsman (@AkivaGoldsman) March 26, 2022

Of course, there are some details to deal with, like how the 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan reinforced the 1990s timeline, but Matalas got practical, explaining that no one could have anticipated the franchise outliving these future dates.

Maybe because in 1967 they didn’t anticipate the show still going for another 6 decades. https://t.co/P6THdEpWV8 — Terry Matalas (@TerryMatalas) March 26, 2022

There were a series of (non-canon) novels by Greg Cox that reimagined the 1990s where the Eugenics Wars were happening behind the scenes, but it appears the  Picard  team decided it’s best to just fudge with the numbers a bit so the Eugenics Wars didn’t happen in the 1990s, so they don’t need to be addressed in the 2024 seen on the show.

No Eugenics Wars for this 2024

And there is a possible way out of this canon conundrum, as suggested by Prodigy executive producer Aaron Waltke: Perhaps the exact timing of the Eugenics Wars was changed during the Temporal Cold War from Star Trek: Enterprise .

There’s also the ripples of the Temporal Cold War shifting the Prime Timeline in Enterprise — at least until the Temporal Accords put an end to that wibbly wobbliness. — Aaron J. Waltke (@GoodAaron) March 26, 2022

Keep up with all the  Star Trek: Picard  news and analysis .

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Fandom implosion in 3… 2….1…

Uh sure, timey-wimey, yadda yadda. I’m hoping they get back to the Borg possibly wanting to make peace with the Federation sooner rather than later. That seemed more interesting to me. And a fresher idea. Guess that’s one of the reasons I enjoyed the first episode so much.

Yes. I’m very tired of the Borg and that was a VERY interesting take on them. And it had my attention. Then they brought in Q and all this other stuff that wasn’t NEARLY as interesting. Talk about a buzzkill.

I bet the possibly future Borg Queen in the episode Stargazer is actually Agnes Jurati.

This is all but confirmed at this point. Unless they’re gonna do a stupid bait and switch.

Yes. Very likely. Why hiding the face? Also Jurati being the one surprised for the Queen’s change.

Because without some attempt to reveal a “shocking” mystery in the last part of the series, there is nothing to sustain these shows.

Oh, that makes sense. I like that. I don’t like her character, she’s a bit annoying.

The Voyager writers ignored the Eugenics Wars as well when they travelled back to 1996. The only nod was a DY-100 model in Rain’s office.

And the DY-class ship launching on one of th tv monitors Neelix and Kes became addicted to apparently.

I came here to write the same thing. We already had this issue literally back in 1996. I actually didn’t think it was a big deal the Eugenics War wasn’t mentioned this season because it already happened decades ago, so I don’t think they really needed to include it other than maybe referencing it in a line.

But now we know they are basically doing what Voyager did and just kind of forgot it even existed. I understand why it’s such an issue today but it’s canon. Either you retcon it to happen later or you just dive in. Star Trek is NOT our world, it’s just another variation of it in a huge multiverse. This is really the only way you can get around it as Star Trek fake historical events is now combining into our real world every year. It was nice they at least included the Sanctuary Districts even if those too are not from our real world.

Yep, how are they going to explain the bell riots in a few years? It’s a multiverse.

I read that at the time but to this day have never spotted it in that set.

But I was fine with assuming the war wasn’t fought on North American soil, which absolves Voyager and Picard. We know all too well how all sorts of massive conflicts can happen half a world away and not affect people’s daily lives in a monumental way, even if the US is an active belligerent.

Now, large swathes of 25th century LA not being flooded post-earthquakes (as per Janeway in Future’s End) is the new one to ask Matalas about. ;)

Only the beach front sunk, the core city was fine. There’s a fault line next to the ocean.

It’s barely legible on screen, but there a plaque in the ally outside of Guinan’s bar that says the core of the city was largely spared by the Earthquake. DaveBlass has a picture of it on twitter.

The earthquake “was” in 2047

I think that the Future’s End 1996 never really happened. Captain Branson crashed in 1969 where Henry Starling found his ship and started introducing radically advanced technology far before it was meant to be available. The 1996 that Voyager saw was a different 1996 than would have happened if Starling hadn’t interfered. Things got reset (one of thee show’s huge number of Reset Buttons) at the end of the episode.

I’ve always thought it would be wonderful living in the Trek universe, ranging from TOS all the way through Discovery. This is no longer true with Star Trek: Picard. Season 1 showed me a future I didn’t want to live in. Season 2 is at least more entertaining.

So, lemme get this straight. You’re cool living through (1) a terrorist attack on Earth and war against the Xindi, (2) a war against the Romulans, (3) a war against the Klingons, (4) a series of wars/skirmishes against the Xenkathi and Cardassians, (5) the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, (6) repeated Borg invasions, and (7) a high-casualty war against the Dominion.

But somehow Picard season one is objectionable because…the Federation started a Marshall Plan for the Romulans but couldn’t see it through because the Romulans destroyed the key Federation shipyard.

Your points 1-7 were negative events caused by outside influences. Earth/Federation society was still idealistic and a positive vision of where we can be in the future if we want to be. Earth seemed dreary in Picard season 1. As Thaddeus wrote: “ Something had changed in Federation society, and Picard season 1 did very little to explain WHY those changes had occurred.”

Why is it that I can watch and re-watch every Trek series from TOS-ENT but have zero desire to re-watch Picard season 1? Maybe I’m just too old. Even the thought of re-watching Discovery isn’t very tempting.

An “Assignment: Earth” series that didn’t carry the Trek name would be a great place to explore all the negative stuff going on.

Sorry, looks like we posted at the same time. Apologies for any repetition.

Hmm, I expected Gary Seven to be the watcher, but that would have been too far fetched.

I was interested to read your posts and relieved that I’m not the only one who feels this way. I think ST: Discovery and ST: Picard deviate from Gene Roddenberry’s artistic vision, and make them non-canonical more fundamentally than errors or mishandling of lesser Star Trek details.

I think the things some found objectionable had more to do with the changes to Federation society itself, like android slavery, more cynical and mean-spirited people like the reporter, the workers on Mars, and the admiral, plus people with substance abuse and mental problems. Any society can be attacked from outside forces, it’s the decay from within that’s more damaging in the long run, and greater felt to those watching.

What makes you think cynical and mean-spirited people won’t exist in the Future? Plus a reporter asking a tough question in an interview isn’t cynical or mean-spirited. FYI.

The Dominion did nothing wrong. It was Sisko who started the aggression with repeated incursions into Dominion territory. Never forget that.

The Dominion massacred a Bajoran colony.

putin supporter?

I still don’t get what made season one of Picard so bad to live in? Other than not help Romulus or banning Synth technology that affected no one that had no association with robotics, what was so bad about it?

I don’t understand it at all. The future in Picard wasn’t any bleaker or darker than what we saw in DS9 20 years prior. We only saw our characters who had a rougher time with things but it didn’t really assume everyone had the same problems. Earth seemed as livable and open as it did in the TNG era IMO.

And I wasn’t a big fan of the first season of Picard. It’s one of the worse first seasons of Star Trek for me and that’s saying a lot. ;)

Don’t forget the android slaves, and the miserable so-and-so’s working on Mars. Plus, there was Raffi going on about Picard living in a chateau while she was getting by in a trailer in the desert. And the obnoxious, paranoid reporter. The obnoxious admiral. People smoking. People with drug and alcohol problems.

Something had changed in Federation society, and Picard season 1 did very little to explain WHY those changes had occurred. I was happy to see “The Star Gazer” had done away with much of that.

OK, I’ll give you Mars lol. That did seem out of whack. But it didn’t seem like that on Earth at all. Earth seem just as it always been, ie, Paradise. What am I missing?

As far as Raffi, I actually said this back in first season when she was introduced. The thing some people seem to confuse with a ‘Utopic’ society is A. It will be accepted by everyone and B. You can still have all the benefits of it if you do absolutely nothing in that society.

That’s just not true. Raffi basically fell into a depression and started using drugs. You’re not going to get all the benefits in ANY society when you decide to drop out of it. Now, I think if she wanted to clean herself up and start over, she could. And she DID, right? As season 2 showed us. But I know this is about season one. But remember what Tom Paris was like before he joined Voyager? How was he any different from Raffi? He wasn’t, he simply decided to be a drunk and getting into trouble instead of a drug user. And he was an Admiral’s son. We just didn’t see that side of him but we know that’s what he was. And they have penal colonies on Earth even in the 24th century for a reason.

Why are people like Harry Mudd selling women and drugs even though he was human and could just live comfortably on Earth? Because just being part of a positive society doesn’t mean everyone can live by the rules of that society either or stop being criminals. That’s what gets missed. Utopia doesn’t mean everyone will act perfect in it and they will be ejected from it the minute they dismiss its ideals to do what they want.

So again, I don’t think Picard showed the future anymore bleaker than before. And Admirals have always been ball busters. Does Admiral Nechayev ring a bell lol. She just never dropped the F bomb because she knew the FCC would never allow her to. ;)

Let’s not go back to the ‘perfect humans’ of Roddenberry. You can still just be a dick, even in the 24th century. That was always a silly idea IMO.

There’s quite a bit of difference in just being a dick and being openly hateful towards androids and Romulans. The reporter and other characters seemed like they were pulled right out of our time, and that’s the basic problem — there’s hardly any difference between our culture and their futuristic one. (So in older Trek, the FCC unintentionally helped make Kirk and Spock’s culture a different one.)

It’s a problem that persists, albeit to a lesser degree, in season 2. The people from the 25th century have the same delivery, snark, and profanity as those in 2024. Not to mention looking so average the past few episodes. It’s now Picard: LA Investigations, a hard-hitting LA based detective show… with teleportation.

But hopefully the Watcher will change that.

This is exactly how I feel, especially “ The reporter and other characters seemed like they were pulled right out of our time, and that’s the basic problem — there’s hardly any difference between our culture and their futuristic one.”

Yeah, one of the charming things about Star Trek, for me, is just how unashamedly dorky many of the characters are. Voyage Home and other time travel stories made the most of this.

It’s not as fun if they’re super cool, like Raffi taking away a pistol and instantly taking it apart. That’s modern cop show stuff. At least give her a second to look at the gun and do a wonderfully dorky Trekkie thing like remark what a crude specimen it is.

A reporter was asking Picard tough questions. What does that have to do with how they live in the future? That’s what reporters do, right?

That’s because they were. . . The idea behind Picard (both seasons) is to showcase today’s problems, not to show what society could look like without them.

“ The idea behind Picard (both seasons) is to showcase today’s problems, not to show what society could look like without them.”

One of the USPs of Star Trek was that it showed a humanity that had outgrown “today’s problems”; to make a Star Trek show without that characteristic is like making a “vegan” version of a recipe that still has meat in it, a contradiction in terms.

They have been openly ‘hateful’ towards Romulans since the 22nd century, hence a galactic war and creating a neutral zone that lasted for 200 years lol. I mean, yeah, the Romulans ARE the Federation’s biggest enemy. There wouldn’t even be a Federation without them. So I don’t understand that argument at all? Remember the episode where Worf let a Romulan die because he refused to give him treatment?? Yeah, Worf isn’t human, but he IS a Starfleet officer and raised on Earth. So it’s not like all hatred of an enemy just disappears when you put on a Starfleet uniform.

It took their planet getting wiped out to even create a relationship with them? What does that say? It’s no different with the Klingons and their empire falling for the Federation to start warming up to them 100 years earlier. And yeah, it still didn’t start off great and would take decades after TUC before they finally became real allies. Trust doesn’t happen overnight when you been paranoid of someone for literally centuries.

The Synths went crazy and wiped out an entire planet of 90,000 people. It’s not like the fear and hatred came out of nowhere, right? And btw, do we remember WHY the Synths went crazy again. Oh yeah, the Romulans. See my above paragraph again.

No offense, but these are just strange and weak arguments to prove the 24th century is suddenly more barbaric and hateful. These are valid reasons why ANYONE would be suspicious of people. Obviously still wrong, but it’s not like this is a first either. Did you forget Section 31 tried to cause genocide on an entire species to win a war? Weren’t they also Federation citizens in the 24th century.

A reporter asking Picard tough questions is suddenly a sign paradise has fallen? Why? I don’t follow this thinking. That’s what a reporter does , right? What did she do that’s different from being a reporter?

As far as the profanity, not sure where being in utopia mean people can’t curse? And let’s be honest, that’s just a production issue because now they can let the characters sound more mature. That just wasn’t the case with the old shows.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with showing a society backsliding once in awhile; they just didn’t bother to show WHY it happened. Undiscovered Country also failed in this.

I’m not looking for utopia. But a well-written script would be nice. Picard has had none of those, in my opinion. It’s not inspiring. It’s just average. And cool. You gotta look cool. It may not make sense, but it’s gotta look cool. ;-)

But your entire argument makes no sense to me. How are they ‘backsliding’ with the Romulans?? You don’t set up a Neutral Zone with someone for two centuries to have them feel welcomed, so what am I missing? It’s been explained why it happened. There was a war, the Romlans feared humans were afraid they were expanding too far once Starfleet began and exploring and colonizing the space. Add to that they were allies with the Vulcans, that gave them more reason to be suspicious of them and its been that way since. They never trusted each other and frankly the Romulans never gave them a reason TO trust them.

And again, I wouldn’t have a big trouble with your premise about Picard if you didn’t just ignore all the other questionable things Starfleet/Federation was doing. I already mentioned Section 31 trying to poison the Founders but what about the Admiral creating a false flag to militarize Earth against the Dominion? What about the Federation displacing people on another planet outside of Federation space so they can use it. What about the Captain going around blowing up Cardassian ships because he suspected they were building secret bases (he was probably right though ;)).

If you think Picard sucks as a show, fine. I’m only saying your ‘examples’ of how the Federation has turned into a paranoid and dark place on the show could be found on ALL the other shows with much worse examples, agreed? That’s why I don’t agree with this at all, nothing we seen in Picard hasn’t been shown before.

And one last thing, regardless of how people felt the Federation handled the Romulus evacuation, the fact they have a relationship now does speak to the Federation trying to do the right thing when its all said and done.

And you’re also forgetting that the ban against the Synths was eliminated the minute they learned the truth on Mars….once again all created by the Romulans. And this was AFTER they tried to bring some crazy killer bots from another galaxy.

So you can’t pretend people were just trying to be mean for no reason. These are all very complex issues.

By the way, there’s such a thing as a reporter asking tough questions and then there’s being a yellow journalist, like the kind we have today. Seemed like they were looking to cable news for inspiration, and that’s not at all an example of a healthy society.

Ok I understand your point about the journalist more. I can agree with that.

…and there was no evidence that the journalist in “Remembrance” was one. She was not pandering to the lowest common denominator, or trying to whip up public opinion into supporting a war (as in 1898 or some pro-NFZ commentators today). She was asking legitimate questions.

There’s quite a bit of difference in just being a dick and being openly hateful towards androids and Romulans.

Who in season 1 was “openly hateful” towards Romulans? And if OP is OK living in the world of Lt. Stiles from “Balance of Terror,” what did anyone in PICARD do that was so much worse?

The reporter and other characters seemed like they were pulled right out of our time,

Good reporters are supposed to probe, not accept PR uncritically — in any time period. That’s exactly what she did. You’re punishing her for *doing her job*, and you’re excusing Picard’s behavior only because we’re familiar with him as an avuncular character.

profanity 

I think this is the *real* objection, when you come down to it: someone swore in a language other than Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, or Data-ese. Pearl clutching at its finest. Go watch Disney fare.

BTW, people raised the same objection to McCoy’s use of “piss” and “damn” back in the 1960s.

You’re not going to get all the benefits in ANY society when you decide to drop out of it. 

Exactly. OP is OK living in the world of “The Way to Eden,” where Irina Galiullin dropped out. Raffi is no different.

The Androids we saw on Mars were not sentient, that’s even stated in Season 1. So they were no more slaves than the Ship’s computer is.

Besides we saw holographic Slaves in Voyager season 7.

Don’t forget the android slaves

The android “slaves” were supposed to be non-sentient — they were not Data. They were no more slaves than your Roomba, or the robot that paints from the Venice biennale , or the actual bipedal computer Elon Musk keeps talking about. They’re no more slaves than the cutsey “zeros” we keep seeing doing minor housekeeping on Discovery. Are oxen slaves?

 miserable so-and-so’s working on Mars

As opposed to the miners in “Mudd’s Women,” or the miners in “The Devil in the Dark,” or the miners in “The Perfect Mate,” or the two somewhat racist enlisted personnel in TUC, or the waste extraction teams and Dabo girls on DS9, or even all the miserable holodeck-cleaning lower deckers (for those that insist that series is canon)?

A lot of manual labor has presumably shifted to robots in the 24th century (again, see the android “slaves” above), but I see no evidence that “working stiffs” have disappeared altogether in any prior Star Trek series.

The obnoxious admiral

We’ve *never* seen obnoxious admirals before, of course.

And the obnoxious, paranoid reporter. 

I don’t see anything obnoxious about her at all. She deviated from the agreed script to ask Picard about the events on Mars. Film at 11. That’s something reporters do all the time.

At best, she was a tyro when it comes to matching wits with Picard as a naval/Starfleet historian. Again, big whoop. In the present Ukraine crisis, I’ve seen multiple amateur and professional pundits alike talk about analogies to Munich 1938; if you are to suggest that in 400 years of Westphalian politics, there might be other relevant historical precedents (e.g., Otto von Bismarck), the typical response I’ve gotten is “well, I don’t know about those.” Well, perhaps they should, especially if they’re in policymaking positions; but World War II is fresh in their minds, amplified by popular culture like Indiana Jones and “Patterns of Force.” So it is with the reporter in Picard for being unfamiliar with the Dunkirk evacuation.

Finally, “obnoxious” reporters are a thing in real life, because (assuming they’re not working for RT) they’re supposed to probe comments by public figures. Are we better off without the likes of Tim Russert and Helen Thomas? We’ve seen relatively few reporters in Star Trek, other than Jake Sisko (who was not a veteran war correspondent, at least in the beginning), and even he could be obnoxious. The more relevant examples are the reporter in GENERATIONS and “Terra Prime.” If you can live with them, why not the reporter in “Remembrance”?

People smoking.

Pearl clutching at its finest.

People with drug and alcohol problems.

This is the only example that might have some merit, as I would hope that there would be better therapies for alcoholism by then. (Harlan Ellison’s script for “City on the Edge” featured a drug-dealing Starfleet officer, rightly scrapped.) Still, genetic predilection for alcoholism is a thing, and as we know, the Federation is (justifiably or not) biased against gene therapy; and you can’t easily force people to undergo medical procedures (again, justifiably or not), whether those are coronavirus vaccines or blood donations (cf. Worf in “The Enemy”). So it makes sense that alcoholism hasn’t entirely disappeared; it’s just that *Starfleet* does a good job of requiring treatment of its personnel, just as the US military requires vaccinations.

And we’ve seen Picard, Troi, and Scotty get drunk. Probably others I can’t remember, too.

What I loved about Season 1 is that it showed Picard’s achille’s heel: namely, his arrogance. He didn’t understand that constraints are a thing. The prelude to season 1 was a true Greek tragedy, hubris causing the hero’s downfall.

The Federation spent years and devoted countless resources towards evacuating the Romulans. Starfleet reoriented its entire force structure towards that mission, if the quasi-canon first PICARD novel is to be believed. It did all this despite the complaints from peripheral Federation worlds about resources being diverted away from “interplanetary development.” Only after the destruction of Utopia Planetia did the Federation curtail the mission. Picard could not accept that, so he resigned in haste.

This is the same Picard who was willing to relocate the Native planet in “Journey’s End,” BTW. The mission had become too personal for him.

Unless the Confederation timeline is a mirror universe, then it should still be the prime timeline until the branching off point (the thing that’s three days out) — and Prime Picard’s trip to the 19th century still happened just in a different way— Prime Picard is the Enterprise-C crossing into the altered future where the Klingons are winning the war. At least, that’s taking all of Star Trek’s time travel/reality conventions into consideration.

ETA: Very smart of them to mess around with the historical dates and for the reasons they gave. Plausible, and keeps the inherent warnings to modern audiences alive instead of being something dated.

There is no one single branching point, because the future where other time travelers came back from to interact before the branching point also no longer exists. For instance -the Devidians likely killed a lot more people in 1893 because Picard and co were not there to fix things – or the Devidians are now fearful (or destroyed by) of the Confederation so would not drain life from people on Earth.

So many knock ons, which was the point the producers were making

Picard and Co. are inhabiting a continuity in which the Federation never happened. There was no timeline change that only Picard and Co. noticed, they were actually lifted (at the point of death on the Stargazer) and deposited in a different universe by Q. There is no branching off a new timeline, but Picard & Co. can prevent the Confederation from happening by altering the events of April 15.

Okay, I’m totally fine with the explanation for Guinan because the events of Time’s Arrow never happened! But then, the PUNK shouldn’t remember Spock’s nerve pinch either! But he DID rememer that. They made it totally obvious! So, this is an unsolvable mess :-)

As for the Eugenics Wars… PLEASE move them to 2092-2096… It’s what the German dubbing has always done and it makes so much more sense…

The Punk on the Bus maybe is more mature in 2024. :D

Not the point. He touched his neck. He remembered Spock. It was depicted on purpose that he remembered. He didn’t tune down the volume out of maturity. He was scared as hell.

I think it would’ve worked if they avoided the neck thing and just see him more accommodating by politely apologizing and turning it down. That would’ve been funny on its own completely subverting expectations. That way it would’ve still be a great in joke and align with canon at the same time.

But it’s one of those things these writers have to connect every single incident for some reason. Him just being there was already enough.

Based on Matalas’s explanation to Inverse, I don’t think the Punk on the Bus was remembering Spock. He was simply touching his neck. However, members of the audience who have seen Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home can interpret his neck touching as an Easter Egg.

Otherwise, he was a human who could also experience Af-kelt.

Or maybe he was another El-Aurian whose life was similar to Guinan’s, from living on Earth for a long time and going “native,” to getting rescued from the Nexus by the Enterprise B, but leaving behind an echo in that gravimetric distortion.

I’m with you. He clearly remembered. Spock’s ears were covered, if I’m not mistaken, and Seven is very Spock-esque. He didn’t at all seem like he was just being polite. He was afraid. The neck thing sealed the deal for me. Furthermore, the event that changes the future happens in 3 days. Everything should be as it was in the Prime Timeline until that event, including 1984.

What the Punk seemed to be remembering could have been an attack by a bus passenger other than Spock. After Spock gave him the nerve pinch in The Voyage Home, all of the other passengers on the bus applauded. This indicates the probability of someone attacking the Punk on that bus, or on some other bus, was extremely high.

Furthermore, the event that changes the future happens in 3 days. Everything should be as it was in the Prime Timeline until that event, including 1984.

Looking at time as non-linear, the event in 3 days has already happened. The timeline has already been corrupted. Picard, et al. must prevent the corruption from happening before the prime timeline can be restored.

Another way to think of it, were Picard, et al. to travel back to the future, the future they would travel to would be the corrupted timeline, not the prime timeline.

Speaking of 1984, see my comment about that year ( https://trekmovie.com/2022/03/27/showrunner-explains-how-star-trek-picard-is-handling-time-travel-and-the-eugenics-wars/#comment-5557011 ).

I think your reference to 1984 opens up a door to answering whether the Eugenics Wars took place in the 1990s/late 20th century or as part of World War III: The 1990s was the 1984 of Star Trek.

As Matalas tweeted, Picard’s writers concluded that several EMP bursts kicked everyone back decades during WW3, but if these bursts only kicked back everyone’s electronic clocks, not their memories, paper calendars, and tick marks on walls, then an Orwellian, dystopian global tyranny, perhaps during the dark ages of the Postatomic Horror completed the job by establishing a new calendar, altering every date, and implanting mind-control devices in everyone. “Whom Gods Destroy” (TOS) mentioned Lee Kuan and Krotus.

So the 1990s was the 1984 of Star Trek.

+1. They need to move the entire timeline 100, or probably 200, years into the future.

Ironically this is why so many of us want Star Trek to move forward because the longer you keep everything back in the 22nd and 23rd century, it just reinforces how much it ISN’T our future because a lot of the things created in those centuries started in the 21st century, first contact with an alien race being the biggest.

It’s also why I think a reboot of Star Trek, all of it, is a good thing too. You can set events much farther in the future and not have to drive yourself crazy explaining why things that happened in the 21st century on Star Trek never happened in the real 21st century. In four years, World War 3 is suppose to happen. Sadly, that looks like an event that could actually happen ATM, but I’m going to be optimistic enough to say it won’t.

There was an earlier article where Matalas admitted the bus punk should not have ever been neck pinched. He admitted it was a conceit. It was left in because they thought the moment was cool.

Matalas actually brought that up in his interview with TrekMovie

Matalas:  It was one of the first things I had pitched actually. We loved the idea that maybe this guy migrated from San Francisco to Los Angeles at some point. Now technically,  Star Trek IV  wouldn’t have happened in this alternate timeline, but maybe SOME part of him remembers his encounter with Spock in the Prime Timeline. And it made me chuckle that he’d go up against Seven of Nine. I reached out to Kirk right away, who was absolutely game to return.

Mostly it was just a fun easter egg for the long-time Trek fans though, nothing to think too hard about.

I’m glad they mention Greg Cox’s Eugenic War novels. Been my own head canon ever since. Maybe that once-mentioned Nick Meyer Khan mini-series could clear up a bit of this.

I agree with the times arrow explanation.

Eugenics Wars is a conundrum. My head canon says, “why are we assuming it didn’t happen?”‘ We don’t know everything about treks 2024. Even when Voyager visited 1996, we only saw a small part of that 1996. I argue there is no canon violation and events are flowing like they are supposed to.

Nobody wants Trek as an alternate reality like Marvel or DC. Most people want it to be OUR future. This is why the Eugenics Wars not having happened is such a big deal. And this is why Putin invading Ukraine and China backing him – as horrid as it is for the local population – will always be interpreted as a precursor to WWIII and the Eastern Coalition. As horrible as it may seem to others, we “know” or suppose that something like that has to happen because Star Trek said so… I know, I know, overly simplified and illogical but at the end of day, those notions are there deep within my psyche…

I’m fine with the Time Arrow explanation too. When I first saw the episode, it never occurred to me why Guinan didn’t recognize Picard but made sense later. I think they should’ve added a line or something that suggested Picard was confused that Guinan didn’t recognize him until he realized it himself the future changed those events; even just for the audience sake. It doesn’t take a lot.

As for the Eugenics war, yeah, it is what it is at this point. It’s funny how no one seems to want to touch the subject at all. Even in STID, they completely skimmed over the fact Augments created a war and colonized a fifth of the world. In the movie they just sounded like they were genetically engineered people who tried to create more like them and why they were outcast back in the 20th century. You would never know a war existed at all.

And sure you can argue it’s not a canon violation like in Voyager, but it just feels strange such a pivotal event in the world of Star Trek is completely ignored over and over again. It might just be best to retcon it to happening much later in the future as others suggested. It always made more sense to me it would happen in WW 3 itself and was a big reason why that war even happened. But even that’s becoming a bigger issue as time moves forward.

Good Points and Agreed! I don’t know why they hesitate with the Eugenics war or WWIII. I just try to make it work in canon, but it would’ve made an interesting spin on this season of Picard to tie it in.

It’ll be interesting to see how making a change in the alternate timeline 2024 will result in the original timeline 2401.

That’s the point of the time jump, right? To put the timeline right again?

So alternate 2024 having a change made to it by JL and the Fam results in original 2401 because they’re changing something *back*, but the events that led to the original 2024 didn’t happen so how can changing the alternate 2024 result in a timeline that ends in original 2401, since original 2401 was the result of the timeline which included the 1893, the 1986, and the 1996 temporal incursions of various heroic and canonical Starfleet officers.

Hopefully this endless discussion will include a logical resolution. Or Q will snap them all back maybe.

Don’t forget the 1930, 1966, and 1968 incursions (“City on the Edge of Forever,” “Tomorrow is Yesterday,”, and “Assignment: Earth”). While Q’s change of time line would have removed the need for Starfleet to get the photos, reports, and tapes of their 1966 incursion from the US Air Force, and allowed Gary Seven to destroy the US orbital nuclear weapons platform in 1968 without Starfleet’s interference, “Edith Keeler,” as Spock said, “must die.”

Keeler did die. It was Mccoy who saved her and kirk who let her die, so no change happened.

Matalas said in this alternate timeline there was no Federation. So with no Federation, “City on the Edge of Forever” never happened in the past of this alternate timeline. Perhaps, some Confederation officers were the ones who let Keeler die.

. . . or more characteristically, the Confederation officers killed her.

Also, don’t forget 2004 [“Carpenter Street” (ENT)”]. Somebody had to stop the Xindi-Reptilians from building and deploying their bio-weapon, but then in the Confederation timeline, with no Federation to drive the Sphere Builders back to their trans-dimensional realm at the Battle of Procyon V in the 26th Century, the Sphere Builders would have no reason to manipulate the Xindi into attacking Earth and sending the Xindi-Reptilians back to 2004 to build and deploy their bio-weapon. Maybe, the Confederation lost to the Sphere Builders.

And also don’t forget 1944 [“Storm Front” (ENT), “Storm Front, Part II” (ENT)]. Somebody had to restore the timeline changed by the Temporal Cold War , but then, the Confederation timeline might not have had a Temporal Cold War that changed history.

Incidentally, I think Season 2 of Picard is a subtle version of Storm Front.

I think its easy enough to just ignore the Eugenics Wars in this story. They happened 30 years ago, and probably not in LA, so it makes sense that they wouldn’t come up in conversation.

They way over thinking this and making it far more complicated than it needs to be. Just having Guinan forget him after over a hundred years. And have him encounter on multiple trips in time afterwards like The Doctor and River Song.

Guinan remembered Time’s Arrow 200 years later though.

Or how about this? Due to the amount of time travel that has happened on Star Trek, time has shifted causing the Eugenics Wars not to have happened as mentioned in Star Trek: TOS. Because tech didn’t advance as far as it should have and the Eugenics Wars didn’t happen, Khan was allowed to rule behind the scenes and is actually the reason behind the confederation, so it’s up to Picard and crew to stop Khan and develop a sleeper ship in 2024 so that Khan can be stopped and launched into space.

Two things accomplished: finally settling the age old Eugenics Wars debate among fandom, and providing a much more interesting storyline than we are getting so far.

That was the same excuse they could’ve used for Voyager and that the time ship crashing on Earth in the 1960s caused a shift in history where it never happened when they landed in 1996. I’m still surprised they didn’t just go with that idea back then; especially for a franchise that’s infamous for alternate timelines.

But then the OTHER problem is everyone still remembers it. People still talk about it and genetic engineering is still banned in the 24th century because of it. So it would still be a paradox.

I believe this season’s plot might actually be linked to Khan. What if Adam Soong is his “creator”? His great-grandson certainly was active in that field of expertise…

I don’t see how to handle this properly timeline-wise though but then again, whatever happens, happens.

I also hope there will be more than one Khan… It doesn’t make sense to have only one Khan created from his DNA strain. I can totally see many versions of Khan popping up in future series. He is after all a clone. With Keon Alexander around to give new life to him, Khan could become Trek’s very own Joker to pop up time and again… Not the Space Seed Khan but anyone of his clones…

While watching Keon Alexander play Marco Inaros in The Expanse, I kept thinking how he would be great playing Khan.

I should note that while watching Anson Mount in Hell on Wheels, I kept thinking how he would be great playing Pike. And my thoughts came true.

That makes no sense. If events even BEFORE the alteration to history were changed, then undoing the alteration wouldn’t put things back to normal because history was changed far more than just that one point in time. This is the biggest cop-out explanation I’ve ever heard. They should just admit that they didn’t watch the previous shows.

Hi, my first time posting here. I am not someone who knows a whole lot about Star Trek canon history, but at the time Picard meets Guinan in the 21st Century, has she supposedly been on Earth ever since the events of Time’s Arrow in the 1800s? Or has she perhaps come and gone to different places, and perhaps time travelled a bit herself in the mean time? 

Imagine this: 

From Picard’s point of view, he was originally living in the 24th Century, then time travelled to the 1800s in Time’s Arrow, saw Guinan, then time travelled back to the 24th Century when the episode was over. Then he travelled to the 21st Century in the events of this past week’s episode and saw a younger version of Guinan. He of course would remember Guinan from his previous time travels because those time travels are in his personal past. 

But suppose in Guinan’s view, she first came to Earth just a few years before the events of this week’s episode. Let’s say that for her, the events of Time’s Arrow happen when she time travels back to the 1800s at some point AFTER the events of this week’s episode. So for her, Time’s Arrow hasn’t happened yet, even though they have happened to Picard. In this scenario, she hasn’t experienced events in the same order as Picard, and so she would not remember Picard from the 1800s the way he remembers her. Do you see what I mean? 

Maybe this could be an explanation for her not seeming to know or remember Picard in this week’s episode. Or at least it’s an interesting thing to think about when it comes to time travel. If two people time travel a lot and meet each other at different points in the way, it’s possible that they met each other in different orders in their personal experiences. So in each specific meeting, one person may not have all the memories from previous meetings that the other one has, because they time travelled to different meetings in a different order in their personal experiences. 

It’s nice to see Star Trek is in the hands of people that actually understand how the rules of time travel work as established in this universe.

This is what happens when you use time travel so much, everything gets wobbly wimey. I think its high time Trek leave time-travel behind for a while. It gives needless headaches to everyone.

So the earth is flat again?

Hey Bob, good to see you here! Are you watching season 2 of Picard? What are your thoughts so far?

It looks like they have tried to explore all options and deal with the specifics as best they can to satisfy the 5/10% who like to dwell on such things. For me that’s fine as I would hope it is for most people.

I like the writers’ room conclusion of several EMP bursts kicking everyone back decades, during the endless discussion over when the Eugenics Wars took place. By “kicking everyone back decades,” I take this to mean that the EMP bursts kicked everyone’s electronic calendars back. However, this would not have affected human memories, paper calendars, etched tick marks on walls, and the motions of the celestial objects. For these to have been affected as well would require the establishment of a new calendar or perhaps something nightmarish or both. A few points from within the franchise allows for the establishment of a new calendar and later dates for the Eugenics Wars and launch of the SS Botany Bay:

– The Third World War began in 2026 and had a cease fire in 2053 [Star Trek: First Contact, “In a Mirror Darkly, Part II” (ENT)]

– The Postatomic Horror started in 2053 and ended no earlier than 2079 [“Encounter at Farpoint” (TNG), “Demons” (ENT)].

– In “Space Seed,” which was set in 2267 according to the Memory Alpha website, Kirk gave an estimate of two centuries for how long the crew of the SS Botany Bay had been sleeping. This date and estimated period of suspended animation indicates a launch date of circa 2067 for that vessel. However, since the SS Valiant, which was lost before 2065 according to Memory Alpha, had impulse engines, albeit old ones [“Where No Man Has Gone Before” (TOS)], while the Botany Bay had simple nuclear-powered engines, which were more primitive than impulse engines, then the latter ship was launched before the former. Of course, the Botany Bay also had to have been launched before the Phoenix was in 2063 (Star Trek: First Contact). And if relativistic time dilation of the ship’s star flight were also taken into consideration, then the launch date was even earlier – the faster the ship, the earlier the date. For example, if the shipboard time were exactly 200 years and the ship had been traveling at a constant velocity of 0.36c (and acceleration to this velocity is neglected), then the launch date was 2053, the year of the cease-fire.

– The Federation principally measured time in stardates, but could convert stardates to and from dates in other calendars, including what Spock called the Old World calendar and what the Enterprise D’s computer called the Old Earth calendar [“The Galileo Seven” (TOS), Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, “The Neutral Zone”, “Up the Long Ladder” (TNG)]. The Old World calendar or Old Earth calendar might or might not have been the Gregorian calendar (and the Old World calendar and Old Earth calendar might or might not even have been the same calendar). So the dates mentioned in the episodes and movies cited above might or might not have been Gregorian dates. However, since the Eugenics tyranny and wars did not happen in the 1990s in real life, then these events happened later, and the dates cited in “Space Seed” were most likely the dates that were not Gregorian.

– In the Postatomic Horror, someone – Colonel Green, Lee Kuan, or Krotus, perhaps – might have actually succeeded in doing what Khan could not, becoming world dictator [“Whom Gods Destroy” (TOS), “The Savage Curtain” (TOS), “Demons” (ENT), “Terra Prime” (ENT)], and as such, established the new calendar, as Julius Caesar had done in Rome.

In this dark ages that Spock mentioned in “Space Seed,” this dictator might instead or might also have had every date altered so that the year had become uncertain, as was done by the totalitarian system in George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” To ensure his control of the world, he might have had mind-control devices implanted in everyone other than himself (harkening back to the Mind Control Revolts of 2043-2047 mentioned in a footnote in Gene Roddenbery’s novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture). This would make the 1990s mentioned in “Space Seed” the 1984 of Star Trek.

In this nightmare, Zefram Cochrane, Lily Sloane, and their team and their families would have had to relocate offworld, perhaps, the Moon, Mars, Titan, or even Alpha Centauri.

So . . . what about Kirk, Spock and McCoy going back in time in “The City on the Edge of Forever” TOS episode? If that didn’t happen, then we suppose that the US did not enter WWII and Nazi Germany would have won . . . and we should be seeing a very different world that the one we are familiar with in Picard. . . Can they explain this one? *lol*

Edith Keeler presumably died in whatever way she was meant to before she encountered Dr. McCoy.

I dunno. Maybe they should just run with having the Eugenic Wars in the 90s and leave it be. Yeah, this advances spaceflight technology significantly, but if the wars are in Asia/Europe and they’re not dealing with human spaceflight, why not just run with it? That is, just have the present shown in Picard be one with Khan and the Eugenic Wars in it. Is there any reason that can’t happen? I mean, we’d have all that if we’d actually spent money on spaceflight tehnology instead of stupid wars and other wasteful programs, that’s a fact.

I don’t get the Eugenics thing. It happened in the Trek Universe, not in ours. They still could have happened 25 years or so before the events of this story… why do they need to be acknowledged in a story that has nothing to do with them as an in-universe event?

The Star Trek universe is our future. Don’t ruin it.

I’d rather just think of the events in Star Trek history as happening in some alternate reality. Why pigeonhole it into real life? Like someone said: who would’ve imagined the franchise to have lasted this long? It’s not like Star Trek is some sort of collection of historical documents anyway! ha!

Was hoping he would explain why Guinan suddenly aged at a different rate than has been shown. To me, that is a weird and major character change. Equivalent to Spock deciding he no longer needed to suppress his emotions.

And I’m fine with just ignoring the Eugenics Wars. Voyager ignored it when they went back, too. Although I guess one might argue that they never reached N America just as WWII never reached it either. But I understand why the idea was dropped. It’s just another can of worms that didn’t need to get opened.

Guinan explained it in episode 1.

No, she explained it for 2400. There was no reason for her to look like that in 2024 when it has been established she ages so very slowly that there are no discernable age differences in 500 years. They should have used the same actor for both Guinans. Either Whoopie or the new chick. Either way would have worked.

By that logic, the computer revolution of the latter half of the 20th Century would have never happened, because in Star Trek it was the result of the prime-timeline 29th Century ship Aeon ending up in 1967. So 2024 would have looked very different than presented.

I don’t see the problem here with the Eugenics Wars. It’s 2024 and this is an alternate Earth. The Eugenics Wars might not have taken place on every single Earth in every single alternate timeline. All that was for sure was that they took place on our Earth, not any or every different Earth out there.

In fact, there’s a comic called Star Trek: Hell’s Mirror that reveals that Khan was a pacifist in the Mirror Universe. Not every Earth probably went through the Eugenics Wars. Plus, it’s been just about 30 years since they happened so you wouldn’t see the effects the war had on anything anyways, especially since it was a covert war or that’s what was stated in the Eugenics Wars novels anyways. In those books Khan and his brethren waged a shadow war against the world’s governments.

But at the same time Khan and his family were waging war, everybody else went about their life normally. Nobody knew what was going on or what Khan was doing. I always thought of the Eugenics Wars as another Cold War. In the books, Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln were even involved in it.

When I was a kid and I first heard about the Eugenics Wars though, I thought it was this huge war between regular humans and genetically engineered humans and there was tons of devastation involved. I believe when Captain Kirk and Spock are talking about the Eugenics Wars, Captain Kirk says that it took Earth decades to recover from them and he said something similar about World War 3 as well. But when I heard Captain Kirk say that about the Eugenics Wars, I always associated that reference with massive damage and casualties. But when the books came out and I read it was a war waged behind the scenes, it disappointed me a little bit because we strived to be better than what we were because of the Eugenics Wars and World War 3 and all the devastation that was caused by those wars.

But that stuff did not take place on every single Earth out there and for people to assume that it did is just ridiculous. On some Earths, we might not have reached the point of genetic engineering at all and on others, Khan might have forged a mighty empire that set fire to the galaxy. This Earth in Picard is not our Earth so there might not’ve been a Eugenics Wars or World War 3. Khan might’ve been a poet laureate on this world for all we know 😊.

I am intrigued though about World War 3 spanning decades now in the Prime Timeline. That’s a new one to me because in First Contact, didn’t it just end like a few years before Cochrane finished building the Phoenix? And that was in 2063 when the Phoenix launched and somebody tweeted that World War 3 went from 2026-2053 and that’s a new one to me that I’m gonna look up. I knew it took place in 2050-something because Colonel Green is in the Star Trek: Federation novel and that shines a light on WW3 a little bit.

But it always seemed to me like that wasn’t a long, drawn out war because nuclear weapons were used to end it. I was under the impression that war only lasted for 3 years or so. Guess that’s what Memory Alpha is for, right 🙂? I’ll go on there and look it up.

I saw people citing Voyager as another show that messed with the Eugenics Wars. Voyager was in an altered timeline because of Ed Begley Jr. In that timeline, maybe there was no Eugenics Wars? Or maybe they were going on but because it was a covert war, you wouldn’t know it was going on especially since it wouldn’t be plastered all over TV, right?

So the Eugenics Wars might’ve been going on while Voyager was there and Captain Janeway would not have known. Now you can accept that or blame the Krenim or the Temporal Cold War for all of these temporal discretions that are happening😊. Live long and prosper, Trekmovie 🖖.

It’s one thing to put-in deep-cut references & expect the audience to do the reading, it’s another entirely to put-in narrative contradictions & expect the audience to do the (double)thinking… 😏

First season was so bad I couldn’t get through it. This season is pretty good. It has an essence of the old series but with a modern twist. I do like the tacky low effects from the old series more. Call me old fashion, but to me that is Trek.

The events of STIV didn’t occur but the bus punk holds his neck where Spock pinched him? Sure…. sure… This is them covering up they didn’t know what they were doing with Guinan. They didn’t watch their source material. These writers are a joke. And shame on Stewart or ANYONE on set not to ask for this clarification. I know Sir Patrick isn’t suppose to remember every episode he made, but he has listed that as one of his favorites so he should have at least vaguely remembered that he met Guinan in the past.

I imagine the whale probe still came circa 2283 to the Confederation, and that the Confederation version of Kirk and Spock time travelled back to 20th Century Earth. I imagine that version of Spock may have been BRUTAL to the bus punk and that is why he acted all scared with Seven.

This logic cramming is exhausting…… I hate that Star Trek is just Time Trek now. Such lazy writing.

Her not remembering him makes sense, I get handling the timeline in that manner. I have a bigger problem with recasting her and the characterization of her, she’s always been a character of patience and wisdom, even when we saw her in the 1800s, having her show up here acting like an angry impatient 20 year old stumped by what’s happening, complete with “so you’re telling me…” dialogue is just dumb and pointless.

The writers for New Trek don’t seem to know how to be subtle with their activism.

In all timelines it seems the Europa mission happens 2024. After all it’s the crux of the timeline change. There is no way our current tech will put a woman on that moon in two years. Therefore, Star Trek is an alternate timeline, one in which the Soviet Union never fell as can be seen in maps in TVH. So why do we care that a eugenics war never happened in the real world? It could still have happened in Star Trek’s 1996.

I agree that our current tech will not put a woman on, or rather launch her to, Europa two years from now. I would also expect the Europa mission to occur after the Ares IV mission eight years later (VOY: “One Small Step”), and before the Earth-Saturn mission and Charybdis mission 13 years later (TNG: “The Royale”), but one can argue that Earth was sending many missions throughout the Solar System.

TVH was released in 1986, and the Soviet Union fell in 1991, so when TVH came out, the USSR had to fall.

Sorry for the Freudian slip, but by “the USSR had to fall,” I meant to say, “the USSR had yet to fall.”

This kind of thing used to bother me a lot more, but the mcu’s approach to in-universe history has made me realize it doesn’t have to be reality-breaking. You can show fantastical things happening over almost a century of time that you would expect to transform global culture and at the same time just assert that things in any given time period still look and feel about the same as they would in our reality.

well, there’s always the famous quote by another well-known time traveller who’s been around a lot longer than any of us mere mortals. “It’s a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.”…

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Star Trek: Picard : Whoopi Goldberg to Return as Next Generation ‘s Guinan in Season 2 — Watch a New Trailer

Keisha hatchett, staff editor.

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Another familiar face is headed to Star Trek: Picard in Season 2.

Paramount+ has dropped the official trailer for the upcoming season, which you can check out above, featuring Whoopi Goldberg reprising her Next Generation role as Guinan.

The sneak peek finds Picard turning to his longtime friend for advice after Q presents him with one of his signature enigmatic tests.

See below for a full photo of Guinan back in action.

Goldberg recurred as the beloved bartender in Star Trek: The Next Generation Seasons 2-6, and appeared in the films Star Trek: Generations  and Star Trek: Nemesis .

New episodes of Picard , premiering Thursday, March 3, take the legendary captain and his crew on a journey into the past. Picard must “enlist friends both old and new to confront the perils of 21st century Earth in a desperate race against time to save the galaxy’s future — and face the ultimate trial from one of his greatest foes,” per the official description.

The upcoming season will see John de Lancie reprise his role as Q, the omnipotent shapeshifter who reveled in testing Picard. Plus, Annie Wersching ( Bosch , The Vampire Diaries ) will recur as the Borg Queen, the infamous villain first introduced in the 1996 film Star Trek: First Contact (played then by Alice Krige).

The Season 2 cast also includes Alison Pill (back as Dr. Agnes Jurati), Isa Briones (Dahj and Soji Asha), Evan Evagora (Elnor), Michelle Hurd (Rafaella “Raffi” Musiker), Santiago Cabrera (Cristobal “Chris” Rios), Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine), Orla Brady (Laris) and Brent Spiner (Data/Dr. Altan Inigo Soong).

Are you excited for Whoopi Goldberg’s return in Star Trek: Picard ? Sound off in the comments.

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Oh boy, a full-on time travel plot. Ambitious, but risky. Some of Trek’s most memorable moments have been time travel adventures, but also its least scientifically plausible. We’ll see how the concept holds up under modern storytelling sensibilities. I suppose it helps that Q is involved. That really lets them do whatever they want and then just literally hand-wave it away.

I like that Q has always had a soft spot for humanity and that his tests always have a purpose.

I had always liked Guinan on the original TNG series but Goldberg’ss acting in this new trailer was stiff and felt uninspiring. I just remember some of Guinan’s memorable speeches to Picard, especially in the episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise”. It’s painfully obvious that the new writers for these rebranded ‘Star Trek’ streaming shows are just as uninspiring as their writing and the acting. They should have left these legacy characters where they were and not have brought them back. Least STD doesn’t use legacy actors who portrayed their characters.

Worst mistake ever to bring Goldberg on to the show. Lost me as a viewer.

Worst mistake ever? You make it sound like they cast Bill Cosby or something. I feel like most true TNG fans have a soft spot for Guinan, and for good reason.

Guinan was everything to the crew that Troi should have been. . Loved her and can’t wait for this.

Why do I get the feeling that WD doesn’t realize that Whoopi has been a part of Star Trek since 1988?

Either that, or whatever grudges he has against her (whether they are racial, gender, or politics-based) would also apply to half of the other actors in Hollywood too, but he’s chosen to focus his prejudices on Ms. Goldberg for whatever reason?

Star Trek is based on tolerance and diversity. If you’re not a fan of those, you really don’t understand the franchise.

Not to mention her character has a timeless friendship with Picard. Wasn’t it something like 18th Century England when they first encountered one another?(At least to her?). She waited a generation to be aboard his ship and for him to be born and reunite with him. Time stuff works so weird haha.

as it was mentioned she recurred from seasons 2 to 6 and also was in the first and last next generation

Would bet cash that his issue is that she’s liberal.

The entire cast of Star Trek shows are liberal which is true to the characters they play too.

I’d be careful with that whole “entire cast of Star Trek shows are liberal” comments. Marina Sirtis (Troi) showed her true colors on twitter last year when she came out in defense of not only Piers Morgan, but defended Prince Andrew against the s** trafficking allegations. I would hardly call a royalist who defends a man’s rantings, railings, & attacks against a black woman AND defends a pedo****, a liberal.

Sirtis has been very vocal about her anti-Trump and anti-Brexit feelings. The only thing she agreed with Piers Morgan about was Harry & Megan—and she prefixed that agreement with “What is the world coming to? I agree with [Piers Morgan]” So yeah, she’s pretty unabashedly liberal.

For whatever reason I can’t reply to Simon’s comments so my follow up goes here:

She agreed with a man when he said a woman was lying about her mental health. She defended a pedo****. Being anti-Tump and anti-Brexit does not automatically equate to liberal. JKR is very vocally anti-Trump and she is most certainly NOT a liberal.

“Hey ⁦⁦@tedcruz⁩, lefty liberal here holding her OWN Bible. Didn’t have to borrow one like the president.” -@Marina_Sirtis Jun 2, 2020 . But sure, @Web you *definitely* know her politics better than she does herself. SMH.

The husband is a HUGE fan of Whoopie’s daytime show, only him and he never misses an episode, but he never watches scifi stuff. I am the one that read every scifi short story and novel since the beginning of the genre way back when up to the 80’s and a real scifi tv junkie. There might be other things at play with that comment, here. Peace, Man/Everyone! Super cool the Guinan character is back. With everyone rushing around, it was always fun for a take-a-deep-breath character.

OP doesn’t like Whoopi Goldberg and you basically call him a racist. Newsflash: people are allowed to dislike actors without it being about race. People like you who make unsubstantiated claims of racism are as big a problem as racists themselves.

@Ellen – The OP has not provided any explanation for why tons of other former ST actors have returned to Picard but somehow Whoopi doing so is “the worst mistake ever.” You may theorize it’s a simple matter of “dislike,” but there’s no particular reason why that guess should be any more accurate than other explanations offered—especially given the OP’s evident rancor.

People often hide racism under thinly veiled criticism because they don’t want others to see them for what they are.

@Snow: So very true. You see it here quite often. There is one female poster here who gets bent out of shape if there is one gay character or if an interracial relationship is depicted. I don’t understand these people. But hey, I have given up trying to do so.

And u were the most important viewer according to you .. LOL

Seven of Nine looks like she kicks serious butt this season

“Video not available”.

check youtube

Thanks – found it😀

Aahhh! That just made me more excited than I thought I would be

Love that Guinan will be back! Whoopi playing Whoopi? Looks like it will be a great season.

❤ EGOT winning Whoopi… anywhere is always better with her unparalleled talents on display!

She’s not really an EGOT. Her Emmy is actually a *daytime* Emmy. Those are a joke and don’t really count.

Bitter, party of one!

Apparently those ‘joke awards’ matter to show biz historians (and every performer/crew talent who was ever nominated and/or won). But thanks for your condescending opinion, Amanda. How is it up there in the ivory tower?

Happy to see Guinan again. Let’s learn more of Guinan’s past and give her some powers. She was supposed to have powers in the original.

Whoppi back as Guinan? I’m in. I loved the first season of “Picard.” Looking forward to this season.

Awesome, can’t wait!

Didn’t Patrick Stewart appear on The View and invite Whoopi to appear on Picard? IIRC, she quickly said yes to him.

Yes, I watch The View every weekday and remember that episode well. Whoopi was giggling while the audience (they had one in studio that day) applauded wildly and chanted in encouragement. Whoopi and Sir Pat are longtime genuine buddies in real life, too.

Yes, I was watching that day as well.

They already had me sold on Season 2 with Q. I’ve always loved his character. :D I needed nothing else. Guinan is a bonus. Huzzah!

Agree completely.

So excited! Both Q and Guinan are back!

I hope they will expand on the relationship between Guinan and Q. The two have an unspoken history I would love to see explored.

I’m hoping we learn about their history as well as more about Guinan’s past. I’m truly excited to see her again with Picard.

I’ll admit this looks intriguing. I just hope it’s better than the disappointing first season.

to each hir own I guess….with the exception of that ‘Casino Boogie Nights’ episode, I thought S1 was solid…it was definitely JEAN-LUC 2.0 without being TNG 2.0 (which I wouldn’t have minded)

Yay for more Laris! What about Zhaban? Be good to see both of them featured more prominently in season 2.

Agreed! I loved Laris & Zhaban together. Laris & Picard have a special friendship as well, like chosen family. Here’s hoping they’ll be around for more than one episode.

Heck yes..What took so long? Guinan has always been a mystery character in the Star Trek universe. From a wise, long living race of star seekers forced to do so when their homeland was destroyed. Not to mention the mysterious connection that is still unspoken between Picard and Guinan. How are they related? She has always been like his physical subconscious mind in order to reach a solution in a crisis. An unspoken language between the two of them. Bravo! Brava! Writers hop to it. “Make It So!”

Much more excited about Guinan than Q! . And you can never have too much of Seven of Nine kicking ass.

Thrilled! LOVE Whoopi & Guinan was my favorite character on TNG after Picard. They work together so well, especially the mystery element of their past. Look forward to see where Picard 2 goes with this.

Star Trek Picard season 2 it’s not about race.

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10 Biggest Star Trek Retcons Ever, Explained

Star Trek is a long-running sci-fi franchise which has been distributing new productions nearly non-stop since its inception in 1966. Every Star Trek movie and show is supposed to occur within the same fictional universe, so it follows that they should all abide by the same basic in-universe rules and premises. 60 years of ongoing creation of episodes and films is sure to have employed a multitude of screenwriters, directors, producers, and editors. With so many contributors, inconsistencies are inevitable and for such an expansive franchise, Star Trek still has impressively few.

One cause of such retcons is that showrunners are bound to disagree with each other at times. Other backtracking results from simple human error. In contrast, a few retcons have been thoughtfully planned and placed in the show's projects, adding meaning and depth to prior stories without contradicting any past events. This type of retcon is generally appreciated by fans rather than being lamented like most others.

Some of Star Trek's retcons are disruptive only to its most obsessive followers, while others are blatant enough to be noted by the general public. From resurrections of the dead to alien overhauls, here are 10 of Star Trek's biggest retcons ever.

Captain Benjamin Sisko's Father

Is captain sisko's father dead or alive.

Benjamin Sisko commands a far-flung outpost in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine . Promoted to the rank of Captain in the Season 3 episode "The Adversary," Sisko has become a beloved character who is now known as one of the best Starfleet captains ever . An interesting part of Sisko's backstory is his relationship with his father, Joseph. Early in the series, he fondly speaks of Jospeh in the past tense, and it is implied that Jospeh is dead. A later retcon proves this not to be the case.

The Writers Decided an Appearance by Sisko's Father Would Boost the Story

In early episodes, Sisko's backstory is laced with a tragic tone. In the Season 2 episode "The Alternate," Sisko states: "When my father became ill, I can remember how small and weak he looked lying there in the bed.......In the end, I realized that there was nothing that he could do, and nothing that I could do to help him."

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In the Season 6 episode "Far Beyond the Stars," Captain Sisko's father decides to leave Earth for the first time to visit his son on Deep Space 9. Viewers were likely relieved and amused to learn that Sisko's father is a riotous Creole cook, spouting lines such as, "Point me in the direction of a party and a pretty girl, and I'll show you how good I feel!" He adds dimension and conflict by clinging tightly to his earthly New Orleans heritage, eschewing modern technology, and distrusting a blood test while the crew is looking for shapeshifters in "Homefront."

While this retcon is rather obvious, it was an overall beneficial choice for the plot . Seeing Joseph cling to his customs, such as scratch-cooking when food can be automatically synthesized in Trek's futuristic universe, is a compelling struggle and sets up an intriguing and relatable conundrum for Ben Sisko while offering a glimpse into his origins.

Dr. Beverly Crusher's Secret Son

How old was beverly crusher when she gave birth to her son with captain picard.

Dr. Beverly Crusher is the doctor on Enterprise-D in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Throughout the series, she and Captain Picard have a mutual attraction on which they never act, partially because they seem to feel guilty about the death of Crusher's husband who happened to be Picard's best friend. In the show Star Trek: Picard, viewers learn that Dr. Crusher has been living in seclusion for the past 20 years, cutting off all contact with her former crew mates.

In Season 3, she makes her big return to reveal that she got pregnant the last time she saw Picard. She now has a second son, along with her first son Wesley who falls among the ranks of genius kids portrayed onscreen.

The Explanation for Beverly Crusher's Secret Pregnancy Is Surprisingly Simple

At first glance, Crusher's stunning news of a secret baby seems unrealistic based on the timeline. The episode "The Conondrum" reveals she was born in 2324, making her 55 years old during the events of Nemesis, the final movie for The Next Generation ensemble. Her lines in Picard reveal that her son was born sometime after that.

However, fans must not forget that in another movie, Insurrection, the crew visits a rejuvenating planet known as Ba'ku. It is plausible that Crusher's jaunt to the planet extended her fertility, making the surprising twist possible. This retcon works because it is not contradictory , and makes a nice Easter egg for devoted detail-finding fans.

The Eugenics Wars

Were the star trek eugenics wars the same as world war iii.

The Eugenics Wars are first referenced in the Star Trek episode "Space Seed." It establishes that the Eugenics Wars occurred in the 1990s when genetically modified superhumans nearly succeeded at taking over the planet, when Captain Kirk's crew finds a lost ship containing a small group of these selectively bred people who have been frozen in time. They are led by Khan Noonien Singh, who they drop off on an uncolonized planet, Ceti Alpha V, to see what they can make of it. This sets up the premise for the 1982 film The Wrath of Khan, a must-watch for lovers of classic adventure films .

The Dates of Star Trek's Wars Were Retconned to Keep Them in the Future

The '90s would have seemed like a futuristic and far-off time to the Star Trek's creators as they were writing episodes in the 1960s. At that point, no one knew that Star Trek would become a long-lasting franchise, so they didn't think to push events far enough in the future to keep them ahead of current times. By the time new shows and films were made, the '90s were no longer in the distant future so the timeline needed to be moved.

At times, World War III and the Eugenics Wars are spoken about as two separate events, while at other times, various characters seem to imply they are the same thing . A war called "The Second Civil War" is also brought into the mix. Captain Pike of Strange New Worlds offers perhaps the best explanation, describing the various wars as an ongoing cascade of conflicts which were referred to by different names as they grew.

Ultimately, while the retcons about the timeline of Earth's wars are a bit annoying, they do not significantly detract from the plot or conflict with Star Trek's overall themes. The key takeaway is that Earth devolved into chaos, nearly destroying its entire planet and species with nuclear attacks, before making contact with an alien species, the Vulcans, in 2063 and realizing they must work peacefully together.

Lieutenant Geordi LaForge Becomes an Engineer

Why was geordi's uniform changed from red to green.

Geordi LaForge is well known as the charismatic and quotable chief of engineering aboard the Enterprise-D in Star Trek: The Next Generation. He is portrayed by the charismatic LeVar Burton, who was originally given the role of a generic red-shirted bridge officer who mans the helm. Season 1 makes no mention of his engineering expertise, but by Season 2 he is wearing the green uniform reserved for the operations, security, and engineering divisions, and running the ship's engine room.

Geordi Was Possibly Promoted Because the Chief Engineer Was Fired Over a Salacious Star Trek Scandal

Season 1 of The Next Generation features various characters leading the engineering department, including Sarah MacDougal, Mr. Singh, and perhaps most notably, Chief Argyle. While it's possible the show was simply testing different engineers and never found the perfect fit in the first season, a rumor alleges that Biff Yeager, the actor who played Chief Engineer Argyle, was fired from the show . He supposedly solicited fan mail supporting his character, some of which arrived to the studio prior to the airing of his episodes.

Spreading spoilers is sure to be frowned on by any studio, especially in an era where the absence of social media meant television surprises could be tightly held. Regardless of the reason, the promotion of Geordi LaForge was well-suited. With his ability to pick up minute details invisible to other humans using his superior eyesight, it makes sense that he would excel in engineering.

Changes to the Borg

Where did the borg queen come from.

The Borg is a villain entity which is introduced in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Q Who" and are expounded upon in the two-part episode "The Best of Both Worlds." The original Borg group is a mind-twisting, almost incomprehensible opponent because it contains trillions of drones who are physically separate, but connected as one through a singular hive-mind identity. They work towards a unified goal: to assimilate any intelligent life form they encounter into their composite. Because members are not quite dead, but certainly not alive in a person-like way, Trek episodes featuring the Borg are disconcerting in the same way great zombie movies are.

The Queen's Human-Like Behavior and Motivations Detract From the Borg's Fear Factor

The 1996 film First Contact introduces the Borg Queen. Unlike the other Borg who behave like automatons and speak with an artificial, electronic quality, the Queen speaks like a human, carries a special vendetta for Captain Picard, and behaves more like a stereotypically sinister movie villain than the disturbingly robotic Borg of past productions.

This drastic change to the Borg collective is one of the more disliked retcons of Star Trek. The Next Generation , in which fans first meet the Borg, has a reputation for avoiding overt horror, and relies mainly on psychological factors to create fear and suspense. Dark episodes are effective because of their subtleties, which is why the introduction of a grotesque-looking "monster queen" who menacingly gyrates and gives loquacious speeches was an unnecessary addition.

Several Star Trek Characters' Names Have Changed

Is captain kirk's middle name tiberius.

One Star Trek retcon is that a few of the characters are now referred to by different names than they previously were. In Season 1 of Star Trek: The Next Generation , Dr. Crusher calls her old friend, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, "Jean" and Counselor Deanna Troi calls her former fiancé, William T. Riker, "Bill." After Season 1, these nicknames are never used again.

More noticeably, Captain Kirk's middle name has been changed . The name "James R. Kirk" appears on a gravestone erected by possessed crew member Gary Mitchell who is trying to kill him. The later episode "Bem" reveals his middle name to be Tiberius, and a film explains the name comes from his grandfather.

The Writers Decided Other Names Were a Better Fit

In the cases of Riker and Picard, the writers most likely decided their nicknames didn't sound very good. "Bill" is too obvious and old-fashioned, and "Jean" doesn't have the same ring to it as Jean-Luc. As for Captain Kirk, the writers probably didn't consider his middle name important, so they chose a random initial. Later, they decide to choose a specific middle name that helps illuminate his backstory. The name changes, while noticeable, are forgivable because the new names fit better and the alterations do not disturb the story. No other name than "James Tiberius Kirk" would fit the iconic original captain .

The Origins of 10 Forward

What does 10 forward stand for in star trek.

10 Forward is a key feature of the ship's atmosphere in The Next Generation, and also serves as a crucial dot connector in Star Trek: Picard . It was first introduced as the public eating area on Enterprise-D where social meals and celebrations can be held. Crew members can also receive advice at the bar from a mysterious mixologist named Guinan. Guinan is played by the wisened Whoopi Goldberg, whose sage and enlightened aura unsurprisingly qualified her to once have a role as God . Guinan's domain is named for its location at the front of Enterprise's tenth deck.

Not All Fans Love the 10 Forward Retcon in Star Trek: Picard

Guinan is well known to be a time traveler, a fact which allowed the 2020 series about the beloved Captain Jean-Luc Picard to retcon 10 Forward's origins . The episode "Seventeen Seconds" features present-day Guinan running a bar in Los Angeles by the same name as her former eatery aboard Enterprise-D. But the show later displays Picard, who is now an admiral, time-traveling to meet a young version of Guinan. Young Guinan is running the same L.A. bar, suggesting that the celestial gathering place with which TNG fans are so familiar is actually named after this earthly bar which came first.

This retcon simply doesn't make much sense , because how could Guinan have influenced the makers of Enterprise-D to build the café in the perfect spot to be named after her former haunt? This retcon was an attempt at a charming full-circle moment which didn't quite meet the mark.

Transformation of the Trills

Why does jadzia dax have spots on her face.

A glaring retcon in Star Trek is the transformation of the Trill species, which became all the more noticeable when one of its members, the vibrant Jadzia Dax of Deep Space Nine , became one of the franchise's most popular characters and earned a place among the ranks of famous sci-fi beauties . Changes have been made not just to the Trill outer appearance, but also to the rules of how they operate and interact.

The Next Generation introduces the Trill as a humanoid species with ridged heads who have the ability to host a slug-like creature known as a symbiont. It is mentioned in the episode "The Host" that transporting a Trill via beaming will kill the symbiont it is carrying. In the following series, Deep Space Nine , a new type of Trill appears. The new Trill have traded their ridges for a spattering of giraffe-like spots, are able to transport, and exist as a combination of the host and symbiont's personalities rather than being a singular consciousness controlled by the worm.

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The Trill of Deep Space Nine Should Have Been Introduced As a New Species

Instead of trying to retcon and reconfigure the Trill, a better plan would have been to introduce the new version as their own Fans must remember that in the early 1990s when production on Deep Space Nine began, the television landscape was very different. There was no ability to instantly binge past episodes via streaming, so retcons were often able to go unnoticed by all but the most devoted Trek junkies.

Despite being rather obvious, the new version of the Trill works because it makes more sense . The original form left too many unanswered questions, such as what happens to a Trill when it becomes host to a symbiont. Does its personality and consciousness permanently die until removal, and if so, why is anyone willing to become a host?

The Klingon Redesign

Why do the klingons look different in star trek: discovery.

The Klingon are arguably the most popular of Star Trek's aliens. They are introduced in the episode "Errand of Mercy" of the original series, and they feature prominently throughout the franchise's subsequent movies and shows. These original Klingons look very similar to humans, with thick raised eyebrows being their most prominent "alien" feature.

The second Star Trek series, which prominently features a Klingon named Worf as the chief of security, shows the Klingons with their original eyebrows and enhanced, ridged heads. Star Trek: Discovery is when the Klingons are completely overhauled, featuring much darker skin and a turtle-like appearance. The new Klingons of Discovery are also bald and eyebrow-less; a giant change considering their eyebrows were formerly their most distinctive feature.

Discovery's Klingon Upgrade Goes Too Far

The second iteration of the Klingons, as seen on Lieutenant Worf, artistically takes advantage of the expanded budget and cosmetic technology available to the makers of The Next Generation, while retaining the spirit of their original look. However, Discovery makes the Klingons look like a completely new species . The makeup job stacks up well with other great cinematic special effects jobs , but it makes the Klingons fully unrecognizable from their predecessors. This redesign ultimately comes across as "playing" with the budget and adds a somewhat distracting flashiness to the film's aesthetic.

Captain Pike Sees His Future

Why did spock get court-martialed, and what happens to captain pike in the future.

All fans of the OG Star Trek will remember when Spock is court-martialed in "The Menagerie" after defying Starfleet in order to illegally return Captain Pike to the planet Talos IV. Pike has been injured in a horrible accident and Talos IV, a planet with magic-like powers, is the only place Pike can be comfortable rather than living in misery for the rest of his days.

Captain Pike Seeing His Future is the Best Star Trek Retcon of All Time

Captain Pike's glimpse of his future in the Strange New Worlds episode "Through the Valley of the Shadows" is sure to give viewers a chill. Trek connoisseurs already knew that Spock risked his life out of loyalty to his former captain, but seeing new footage of the events prior to Pike's accident playing out adds a new depth to Spock's actions as well a new layer to Captain Pike's integrity .

In the horrifying psychic vision, Captain Pike watches his own face being melted off by radiation. The choice to still go through with his heroic act of putting himself in harm's way to rescue cadets during a catastrophe on a training vessel hits harder after seeing this new revelation.

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Star Trek: Picard: Why It Was Crucial Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine Returned

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Jeri Ryan's Seven of Nine was a huge character in '90s Star Trek, and it was very important she returned in Star Trek: Picard.