Season 3 had a fantastic story that, like the best of Trek, addressed issues that are very pertinent to our real world today, and also had a secondary message that just because someone is over the age of 35 doesn't mean that they are useless or to be ignored. Seasons 1 was absolutely awful, season 2 was mediocre, but season 3 had a tremendous story.
Definitely better, tighter, made some good statements, good use of established characters, and took some risks to push the crew forward* as well, and for all things continuity the occasional hiccup wasn't so large or egregious compared to some of 90s (and 60s) Trek changing characters**.
Was this season geared toward casual viewers or more established fans as were the Borg necessary (
again!)? After 3 seasons of
Everything Borg, will casual viewers still care?? it'd make
more sense for
the Dominion to pair up with (if anybody) the critters from "Conspiracy" as a big rematch*** as they'd fit right into this caper but, having said that, given the way the new Borg splinter was rolled out in previous seasons that caused some headscratching, the more established Collective with "The Queen" did arguably need to make a comeback and their return was actually pretty strong****, yet also there just to shoehorn in Shelby in, who also gets finished quicker than you can say "Al Bundy". The Borg also did feel tacked on at the end of the Dominion subplot when it started to fizzle out, and the finale with the USS Falconprise flitting about on screen was hokey - more so when you consider a brilliant way to have reintroduced the big "D" by Geordi in the first place. Much loving and impressive attention to detail was on display in the exposition (it's genuinely great), only for it to fly around like a caffeinated flying squirrel. May as well rename it "Rocky" and have Natasha chasing him...
Amanda Plummer was frickin' awesome as Vadic, though a couple nitpicks about being a Changeling yet the hand detaching do raise questions if splitting apart is unhealthy to them. Didn't Odo do that under torture in season 3 of DS9 in an episode? (Could be a side effect of the experimentation done by the Federation's latest batch of the "evil admirals of the week" trope, but the presentation was more compelling than the wishy-washy shlock from INS where the attempt to "do something" felt so feeble, complete with reset button atop inconsistent dialogue. 90s Trek already did the bad admiral shtick so often that it was all losing meaning and underlying weight that it became more than a tired trope. PIC3 manages to restore that, albeit via a big conflict with the Dominion but it felt more natural and not artificial and gimmicky, which is huge.)
Even the return of Data and Lore came across better than expected.
But Jean-Luc and Beverly actually making a child, named Jack (holy memberberries, Batman!) was stretching it a tad. Yup, it's "Hi honey, we're naming the kid after my hubby who died under your command and caused emotional turmoil so we'll name him that!" Okey dokey then... um, what might Counselor Troi or any counselor versed in the DSM-XLVI or whatever it might be by then, if it's roughly one edition published every 15 years or so and it's ~430 years in the future***** and we're only up to DSM-V right now, forgive me if my math is terribly off as I've not had my XVII cups of coffee yet this morning...
The swearing seemed toned down and generally more applicable to the scenes, ratcheting up the tension appropriately. By comparison, certainly. No fucking apples tasting like shit, this third season of PIC put effort into the use of TV-MA language, rendering it more compelling.
PIC3, for me anyway, is a lot more rewatchable than a lot of TNG seasons 5-7.
* e.g. the Riker scene from episode four, if I recall
** which is going to happen for any long-running series at some point and sometimes it works
*** by far the biggest open-ending of any show of all-time and the plot proceedings of PIC3 would have made those critters a perfect fit to build and improve on... Also, as that's the other rub, the Dominion were a DS9 creation now siphoned into TNG (something INS did by namedrop only, but now we see it in full force. It doesn't not work, but makes more sense to have closed the TNG's open ending with the critters, or fold them in with the Dominion instead.)
**** though I miss the TNG TV Borg outfits, which looked more utilitarian than the 90s flicks-onward, but even the 90s flicks/VOY style looked better than PIC3's oddly minimalist fare
***** not making a comment on that number. I'd otherwise might if the number was CCCLI smaller...
