The first trailer for season 2 of Star Trek: Picard was released Monday, and it’s definitely designed to get fans talking. There is still no footage from the show, just a pan over various items in Jean-Luc Picard’s home office: a watch and an hourglass, a painting and a model of the spaceship Enterprise, a copy of Milton’s paradise lost and the Dixon Hill novel The long dark tunnel. But the real annoyance comes at the end, with an image of a playing card dissolving to leave a talking ‘Q’ behind, and a single line spoken by John Voice of Voice by John de Lancie, the actor who the powerful reality-shifting alien Q on various iterations of Star Trek shows past.
The teaser implies that Q will return to challenge Picard, his first Trek foil and preferred opponent, when the second season airs in 2022. Even more, the theme of this 63-second teaser seems to be about Picard’s regrets, and how nothing can be done about “what could have been” – unless Q gives him a chance to change the past. The visual emphasis on watches, along with Patrick Stewart’s voice recording as the star of the series, Jean-Luc Picard, who talks about ‘second chances’ and history, suggests possible time schedules in season 2.
Lots of Star Trek: PicardPicard’s first season was focused on failure and regret after the Romulans’ home system star became a supernova. He promised them help and resettlement, but the Federation abandoned the promise and left the Romans under disaster. Picard left Starfleet in a rage and went into exile, and his feelings of betrayal and helplessness drove much of the first season’s often contradictory and difficult plot. It is possible that season 2 will continue with the effects of these life-changing events, and how Q’s powers over space and time can change that and Picard can redeem himself. Or the series can just let Picard jump into an earlier version of the program and deal with someone else’s problems, such as the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Trials and Tribulation” done by placing the cast in the original Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles.”
As for Q, just about anything is possible – including a DS9 flashback or crossover episode, with another mysterious item in the teaser. For some reason, in the middle of Picard’s office sits the old Bajoran tablet that Captain Sisko put in the DS9 episode “The Reckoning.” It’s unclear what that could mean for the second season – it could be anything from returning to Deep Space Nine‘s plot lines to a discarded Easter egg for hardcore Trek fans. As a way to boost the audience’s curiosity, it’s a clever play. With possibly more than a year of waiting for the next season ahead, they will meanwhile need something to think about.