More TNG cast members return.

New York Comic Con opened this week at the Javits Convention Center in, of course, New York City. While not as iconic, as the San Diego Comic-Con (the two organizations are completely separate entities), NYCC is among the premier pop-culture events, with many of the same entertainment industry giants attending both shows and reserving their respective weekends to make big announcements about upcoming movies and shows.

Following up from its publicity blitz at San Diego, which included a pop-up museum dedicated to Jean-Luc Picard, the release of the first full-length trailer, and Deanna Troi actress Marina Sirtis revealing that her character and Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes) will also be returning, the show’s publicity team has released another full-length trailer revealing more details – and raising more questions.

We’ve added a non-geolocation specific version of the trailer for your convenience so you can watch this no matter your galactic coordinates. Be sure to temporarily mute the SCIFI.radio live stream using the controller in the upper right of this page so you can catch all the action.

Going a little deeper

Let’s take a quick look at the major beats. No doubt you’ll find your own callbacks and there’ll be a plethora of articles over the next week calling out real and imagined tie-ins and speculations. We’re going to stick with the basics.

We know the dog’s name.

The poster for Picard was first unveiled in early July, featuring the retired admiral and a faithful companion, whom we know is named Number One.

Picard felt compelled to leave Star Fleet, but he has unfinished business.

This is, of course, almost explicitly stated in the dream sequence with Data who is painting a seascape in the vineyard. Picard later says that he came home “to find safety.” And, as we find, Star Fleet’s current command is not exactly excited to see him.

Troi and Riker are back, along with Data, Seven of Nine – and a TOS Romulan Warbird?

As was announced at SDCC, Commanders Riker and Troi are part of the show and they are apparently a family with at least a daughter. Data appeared in pieces in the first trailer, having sacrificed himself to save Picard 20 years prior. But, we get a hint that Star Fleet wants to make more of him as it there seems to be a number of them in a storage room. And, Seven of Nine from Voyager, is apparently living on an outworld colony when Picard comes across her as he searches for allies on his unsanctioned quest.

But, a number of space ship battle scenes show the ship that Picard has apparently found himself aboard exchanging phaser fire with an old school Romulan warbird as seen in the Original Series – even down to the dome-tipped nacelles. Of course, the Klingons and Romulans shared this class of vessel and some 50 years on, it’s only logical that a few vintage warships have made it outside those two militaries.

The Borg also seem to be a theme as both trailers showed a cube looming over smaller vessels, although this time one has a more glassy surface in places.

Now, who are those guys?

Of course, no trailer would give away all the secrets, and a better one leaves people with more questions than answers. So now we have to wait to find out who the crew of humans, Vulcans (or is that a Romulan in the mix?) and others are, and what is their motivation. We still have no idea who the mysterious Dahj (Isa Briones) is, nor what compelled her to seek out Jean-Luc, nor why she is “the Destroyer of All”.

And, on a larger scale, who is in those triangular-shaped warships bombarding a planet, are they part of the same fleet seen approaching a red planet in the first trailer? And why exactly is Star Fleet decidedly not eager to look into appears to be the makings of a quadrant-sized crisis?

Of course, Picard‘s creators hope you’ll tune in to find out when the show when it debuts on CBS All Access some time in 2020.

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