Review: 'Star Trek: Picard' Reunites the 'TNG' Crew for One Last Hurrah

Old-school "Star Trek" fans have much to rejoice over as "Star Trek: Picard" arrives for its third and final season, bringing the entire cast of "The Next Generation" with it.

Sir Patrick Stewart shines as brightly as ever in the midst of this constellation of sci-fi legends, and based on the episodes made available for review prior to the premiere of the 10-episode run, it's clear that showrunner Terry Matalas wasn't kidding when he said he wanted to give this crew the proper sendoff they missed out on when the "TNG" franchise fizzled out after 2002's disappointing feature film "Nemesis."

Season 3 feels like a movie in many ways – and borrows unabashedly from the films when it comes to music and other production elements – but it's also very much a serialized TV show. In some ways, it's almost like a mini-season of the old "TNG," though with glossier production values and more modern aesthetics and effects work. (This is definitely a show that adapts current lighting trends; the show is swaddled in darkness, and the lighting often looks like something from a Berlin disco.)

The character dynamics are still there, though changed; these people are now 30-some years older than they were when they first served on Enterprise-D after all. But the same bonds of trust and affection... and some of the same sparks, romantic and otherwise... still fly between them.

The episodes themselves combine the pacing of movies with the sometimes-jarring character-driven moments that give us emotional beats and yet feel like lacunae in the action. A slow dive toward certain destruction in the heart of a menacing nebula hardly seems like the best time for a visit to the holodeck, let alone the simulation of a San Francisco bar, but there you have it. Stitching the smaller beats of the episodes together is a larger story of a mysterious villain named Vadic (Amanda Plummer) who's seeking revenge.

Meanwhile, the season pulls all our old favorites back into the fold, often in unexpected ways, then surprises us with the ways in which time has changed them... or not.

The season's trailers have given tantalizing clues to some of the old faces we'll see in Season 3, including Jonathan Frakes as Will Riker (he also directs two episodes), Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi, Gates McFadden as Dr. Beverly Crusher, Michael Dorn as Worf, LeVar Burton as Geordi LaForge, and Brent Spiner as... well, it's complicated. Jeri Ryan and Michelle Hurd are back as Seven of Nine (now the first officer of the Starship Titan) and Raffi Musiker, respectively... and while those latter two are no longer a couple, they might yet end up starry-eyed for each other all over again, rather than star-crossed. We can hope that Season 2's queer representation wasn't a mere fluke.

As with previous seasons, the show sometimes doesn't know just how it wants to land in terms of scope and pace. Is it a feature film? Is it another big-budget example of Peak TV? There are segments that have a "bottle episode" feel (and a sense of treading water, like some installments of the earlier seasons did). But there's a greater ratio of action to meander than in "Picard"'s first two seasons, a sense of history and meaningful stakes, and a palpable rush of joy at this reunion that only grows as the legacy characters assemble by ones and twos. The old magic remains strong, even when longtime spacefaring companions need to hash things out in a manner that "Star Trek" from decades ago would have shied away from. That's okay, too; as Seven retorts when Riker chides her for dressing Picard down, "That's how I talk to a friend."

"Star Trek: Picard," Season 3, premieres on Paramount+ on Feb. 16, with new episodes dropping weekly.