10 Star Trek Movies And TV Episodes That Enhance Picard Season 2
Picard season 2 owes a debt to TOS, TNG, DS9 and Voyager, here's how...
Star Trek: Picard doesn't just reference seven seasons worth of Star Trek: The Next Generation; it draws from a variety of Star Trek sources to create the new era in which the aged Jean-Luc Picard lives. The first season killed off an obscure Voyager character, referenced the disastrous destruction of Romulus that caused Nero to create the Kelvin timeline in the Abrams movies, and more obviously than that, Seven of Nine is one of the main protagonists of the series. The second series is no exception, and draws influences from various different stories from Trek history.
The nightmarish timeline that Q has created is, of course, reminiscent of the infamous Mirror universe but there are numerous episodes from TNG, Deep Space Nine and Voyager that all feed into the second season's thematic concerns. A week is a long time to wait between episodes, and there's a lot of prime Star Trek to return to that can shed new light on what Q's plan is, what's going on with the Borg and what happened to Jean-Luc during his clearly traumatic childhood.
BEWARE: This will contain mild spoilers for the first three episodes of Picard season 2!
10. Future's End
The crew of the USS Voyager were almost comically unlucky. The third season saw the crew get back to Earth, the only problem was that they'd arrived in 1996! It's the result of a clash with a time ship that believes Voyager to be the cause of a devastating explosion that wiped out the solar system in the 29th century.
As Braxton, the time ship's captain and the Voyager crew are sent back through time, it quickly becomes apparent that it's Captain Braxton's ship rather than Voyager that causes the explosion. It's all thanks to a nefarious businessman who's got his hands on 29th century technology and has used it to become incredibly rich.
It's worth rewatching in light of Picard season 2 because it's another stab at replicating the formula of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. There's less of an environmental message to this one, but it's definitely a story about the dangers of capitalist greed. Star Trek loves to juxtapose these futuristic idealists with our primitive contemporary times, and while Future's End is more overtly comic than Picard, it acts as an enjoyable companion piece. Especially that cliffhanger that sees Voyager on the news!