Vee

Rewatching the golden age, he was so good and so underutilized most of the time. I would happily let him do another few ghost appearances for Bobbie and Lucas (Ryan Carnes again, please). I enjoyed when they did that a couple years ago. We'd have to let Jackie's face cool off again though, she's back to barely being able to talk. Every time she gets it together she does something else to herself, God bless.

Always nice to have my ridiculous fan theories justified. From IGN, Matalas re: Shelby's apparent demise: I adore Shelby and Dennehy, so I hope it happens sometime.

I don't know about healthy - I believe a number of the old guard split across the 2000s (to say nothing of Patrick Mulcahey, whenever he left?) for various reasons. I know Karen Harris, IIRC, left before Frank and Ron. But the issue was that it seemed like a considerable amount of stalwarts of the long-time team were flushed in 2012, the last remains. The show sounded different overnight and got much more superficial in terms of dialoguing. Which is not to say it was exactly Shakespeare over the prior decade, there had been a lot of quality decay. But when they'd wanted to deliver they still had people who could. (On a side note, correct me if I'm wrong but IIRC Elizabeth Snyder was one of the HWs at AMC 2.0.)

I was under the impression the famous Sonny/Brenda car scene was always a random chemistry test that took off. I do recall her talking about tweaking the Karen scenes out of the gate, but I can't remember if she said that she and Riche had already seen potential in Maurice and acted accordingly.

The final Picard Ready Room:

I'd like to go back and look myself. I knew Labine talked about tweaking things early in September or October in her WLS interview.

Murray Melvin, Mary Quant, Dame Edna: All greats. I'll never forget Murray Melvin's work in classic '70s films like The Devils.

What a shitshow.

I've always wanted to see these - thanks so much. I know very little about Connor, Evan and the takeover storyline but I'm all ears if anyone has a brief primer.

Speaing of the kids, I am not super into Miral Paris bc I just found Paris terminally boring and B'Elanna not far behind most of the time sadly, but I am open to whatever. I do hope a Janeway live-action series can happen, as well as some sort of return series or TV movie for some of the DS9 gang. I adore DS9. And Kira is my fave. As Matalas has said, if the show had been 13 eps I think there would've been room for Kira or others. I do think a Legacy spinoff is a show that could sustain 13-15 eps again, as could SNW. I know the trend in prestige TV these days is towards 8-10, it's been rapidly shrinking in the last decade, and I have zero interest in going back to 20-30 eps a season bc I think that is the death of quality. But I think a largely episodic show like SNW could sustain it and so could Legacy. DSC could not because they never understood how to properly plot serialization; they can barely make 10-12 hold together without becoming a grind. But SNW and Legacy, with serialized elements or not, I think deserve a longer episode order. I just don't think it's likely these days for many reasons, beginning with budget.

I choose to hope Forbes or Dennehy could return on Legacy. I will cackle if he eventually gets to do Captain Harry Kim; Matalas has said he wanted to use a number of VOY and DS9 people including Kim and Kira. I do think Molly or Kirayoshi O'Brien could easily be used. Ben's son with Kasidy should be old enough by now too, but I have my doubts she or they would want him in Starfleet.

Some interesting stuff from the Terry Matalas AMA, mostly spoiler-tagged:

@AdelaideCate007 Did you know they also had to cut Naomi Wildman?? A little of her went a long way for me lol.

That's wonderful for him and the show. A huge get. Bill Hayes has some age competition! I do wonder if they will have Dick's amnesiac character turn out to be a core character - I thought there were several long-lost Hortons from the golden years. A bold move, but I can see why they might not choose to go there with someone who is unlikely to return.

That is a wild connection. I remember PO5 getting weird, though I was not a constant viewer. For anyone who cares: Still have a slight backlog of notes going into the end of Season 6, so I'm going to try to tie those off this weekend or next week but don't quote me. I was planning to sync up and watch the creative swap at Dallas and KL together in their concurrent seasons, but I'm probably going to wait on that a little bit until I can secure further constant access to Knots or unless I get lucky on some corner of the Net. It's definitely going to sting to watch the new remasters of Dallas in HD on FreeVee(?) while looking at these poor old Knots recordings.

Some discussion of Alice Krige's involvement:

Matalas with Walter Koenig, who is his pal Todd Stashwick's (Shaw) neighbor. An article with Variety which already covers a lot from Movieweb but has some new tidbits:

Lord. I'm staying away from this mess just like the flap with Vincent Irizarry's kid.

I think they should def bring Lulu Wilson back! I just doubt she'd commit long-term. I am amazed if keeping Ro around was on the books. I was sure Forbes had asked to be killed off and will never return again. She'll now spend years alive again in the books just like poor Trip on Enterprise, I'm sure.

I'm pretty sure it's bc Alice Krige was not about to put that makeup on again at age 68, lol. I love Kestra and was amazed they got Lulu Wilson for that part, but Lulu stays very booked and busy these days and I would be surprised if they secure her long-term going fwd. I do wish some of the mooted plans for Ro, etc. had come off. But they clearly had a tremendous uphill battle with budget and time as is.

This has some wild reveals:

Now trending: #StarTrekLegacy.

So, the finale. Very happy. Protip: Stay through the end credits, there is a mid-credits surprise (and big teaser for the spinoff). Overall this season was a very strong farewell to the TNG crew. Color me very happy and bring on Legacy.

Yes, it's that time again! Star Trek: Picard finale spoiler - watch through the end credits.