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Is Star Trek: Picard Basically Just seaQuest DSV For a New Generation?

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Is Star Trek: Picard Basically Just seaQuest DSV For a New Generation?

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Published on May 24, 2019

Look, I am excited as anyone to see Patrick Stewart play Jean-Luc Picard again. But I have some lingering questions that the brand new trailer helped to exacerbate, and I feel the need to point out:

It’s seaQuest. The new show is seaQuest? I’m pretty sure this is seaQuest.

For those who didn’t watch Television of Dubious Quality in the 90s, the pitch for seaQuest DSV was relatively simple. In fact, it was quite similar to Star Trek—just under water. SeaQuest was the name of the submarine that the show took place on (the “DSV” stands for Deep Submergence Vehicle), and the people aboard the seaQuest were tasked with exploration and protection of the seas. The start of the show sees Nathan Bridger, a former Navy man who retired from service following the death of his son (who was also in the Navy) living alone on an island in solitude. Because his wife is also dead. He’s approached by the Navy again, who completed his seaQuest project while he was away; they want him to command the ship he designed despite his intentions to never serve again. After some cajoling, he takes the tour of the ship, and eventually stays on to become the captain. He’s a man of science and discovery, not interested in war-mongering or military operations. He’s got a difficult teenager on the crew to look out for, he’s in love with his redheaded CMO—wait, this is super familiar, what is going on.

Picard is also coming back to Starfleet after a long period away, having suffered losses at some undisclosed juncture. This is nearly the exact same set up. (Sure, Picard doesn’t have a son or wife to lose, but his brother and nephew did die in a fire not long before his retirement.) Picard and seaQuest are one, there is no denying this now. Based on this fact, we can make assumptions about where the Picard show is going based on seaQuest’s first season. Here is some of what I’m looking forward to:

  • Picard is going to spend a lot of time talking to a holographic interface that is really just video projecting onto a smokescreen. The hologram will look like one of his old Starfleet Academy professors. Said hologram will be dressed like a butler for some reason.
  • He will be surrounded at all times by either one of Dom DeLuise’s sons, or Sam Raimi’s brother.
  • Everyone will wear a wetsuit at least once over the course of the first season.
  • Picard will train a space animal, and one of his crew will develop a software so everyone can talk to that animal. The animal will be named after a Very Obvious Scientist. (I’m going with Newton.)
  • At some point, there will be a black market for a strange glowing rock with amazing properties that turns out to be animal shit.
  • Picard will be unimaginably fit from all his time in the vineyard and take every possible opportunity to show it off.
  • There will be a haunted house episode. In space. Don’t ask questions.

There will obviously be some serious intergalactic conflicts, but Picard will handle that with all his usual panache, and be responsible for stopping wars and saving colonies and generally making everyone happier and safer. In the second season, Picard will grow his beard back. The show will suddenly leap forward in time ten years, and Picard will have disappeared with no notice, telling everyone before he goes that his dead son is miraculously alive and that he’s a grandfather now, so he’s got other stuff going on. He’ll be replaced by Michael Ironside, to the surprise of all.

Now that we’ve settled all of that, we just need important initials to amend to whatever ship Picard will travel on. How about… STP.

Space Travel Place.

Screenshot: NBC

About the Author

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Emmet Asher-Perrin

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Emmet Asher-Perrin is the News & Entertainment Editor of Reactor. Their words can also be perused in tomes like Queers Dig Time Lords, Lost Transmissions: The Secret History of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Uneven Futures: Strategies for Community Survival from Speculative Fiction. They cannot ride a bike or bend their wrists. You can find them on Bluesky and other social media platforms where they are mostly quiet because they'd rather to you talk face-to-face.
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