Star Trek: Picard is to Star Trek, as Episode VIII: The Last Jedi is to Star Wars, as Logan is to the X-Men film series. Discuss.
Now that you mention it, I'd have: Soji to the top-left of Picard instead of the top-right. Narek on the top-right. Seven in the bottom-center since, like Liea, she's the only other character on there from the previous era. Then the positions of the characters in Picard would match the positions of their counterparts in The Last Jedi.
Terminator: Dark Fate to the Terminator films Prometheus to the Alien films Before Midnight to the Before Trilogy
Prometheus is a prequel to Alien and it doesn't star Ripley, so that analogy doesn't work. If they'd made Neill Blomkamp's Alien 5, then that would've been their Picard.
To be more specific: All three are about the central male hero, now much older and alienated from the world around him, being summoned back into the world of their settings by a young woman with whom the old man establishes an ersatz familial relationship, and all three end with the older male hero figure sacrificing himself to save his ersatz daughter/granddaughter. (And in two of them, he then comes back, either as an android or as a Force ghost.)
To be honest, it's not that controversial. It was incredibly popular, and although the ending threw many for a loop, it FORCES them to really look at the message: that when you have to face something you always supported for others for yourself is the real test of ideals! People will get over Picard being uploaded. Logan was at least part of the template! I did notice some people mention this early on. We all knew this was going to be personal and dramatic, so with Picard there are only a few directions to go in, as Picard was shown as basically being almost perfect, so the drama had to come from somewhere new..at least for TNG/Trek.
The connection to Logan is obvious. Indeed, I think Patrick Stewart himself has even described this show as a Star Trek variation on Logan. And I can certainly see the connection with The Last Jedi, with Picard basically taking on Luke's role. Well, sort of. It was a bit easier to get Picard to leave his self-imposed exile and get back in the swing of things.
That would be a shame. I think it would be a lot of fun if Cersei and Jamie -- excuse me, Narek and Narissa -- became recurring villains.
I'm disappointed because I thought Narek really worked well for the few scenes he had with the La Sirena crew in the finale.
Its a commom trope, even in a new hope, though Luke is a guy, finds old guy as a father figure, and the father figure passes, could say the same for Rey and Han in Awakens, and Rey and Leia in Rise. Though with Picard and Luke, there shown character in previous films/tv should have negated any Lets go away and hide like a hermit, they were more proactive and not giving up.
Oh yeah, I'm not saying it's some revolutionary thing. There's certainly a direct lineage to the traditional "call to adventurey/hero's mentor" thing. But I do think this represents a distinct evolution into a new trope, this whole thing where it's a familiar hero now aged and reclusive, and where the person who summons him back into the world is an ersatz daughter or granddaughter figure.
I explained Picard to someone as old as me by saying its like Lou Grant. It features a main character played by the same actor from another show (in Grants case, The Mary Tyler Moore Show), but it’s different in tone than the parent show.
I thought the realization was that PIC was mirroring 21st century Earth? (That would also make the "Picard = Obama" comparison some made a bit different too...)
This thread is only about the trope of an older, alienated version of a fan favorite hero being summoned out of de facto exile by a young female warrior whom the old alienated hero adopts as an ersatz daughter-figure or grand-daughter figure.