Ed Whitfield on the TNG cast reunion.
The independent author and critic on the recent "cast announce":
Whether you felt adulation at this news or dread depended on how far your trust in Picard’s creatives had been eroded by the first season and a half of this clumsy pseudo-sequel. Can showrunner Terry Matalas, at the death, fully in control of show and it seems, Patrick Stewart (who may be too tired to resist) retrospectively make the whole ill-fated exercise worthwhile by delivering the first satisfying, poignant, high-minded post-“All Good Things” adventure? If like me you wouldn’t bet on it – imagining instead something like the fifth terrible TNG movie (with a running time of ten hours!) then there’s little to look forward to except Picard awkwardly trying to explain why he didn’t call on his old friends earlier when faced with threats to all organic life and the Federation’s existence, respectively.
Like me, Ed has a sense of priority around the staffing:
And Terry, kudos for getting the TNG design people to return, but without the show’s writers – you know, the people who actually understood the characters and the world in which they lived, it will all be for nought. Of course it’s already in the can so you’ve done what you’ve done, but I will hold out hope to the last, though I know resistance to the Kurtzman project is futile.
I didn't recognize the name "Terry Matalas," but apparently this person worked a little on DS9 and Voyager. I'd like to think that counted for anything, but this is the person that's been in charge of Picard, season 2.
Thank you to Ed and others like him for caring out loud; these years, Star Trek is found in their minds if not on the screen.