Star Trek: Picard is here for season 3, and it’s bringing a lot of our favorites from The Next Generation back into the world of Trek. One of the delights of Picard, from the first season on, has been the slow reintroduction to the characters we’d come to love from TNG. While we’re following along with Sir Patrick Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard, he’s still met by some of his old team throughout the seasons.
In season one, we saw as Picard was reunited with Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and my dreams were a reality, but then we also had a wonderfully poignant end for Data (Brent Spiner). In season 2, characters like John de Lancie’s Q and Whoopi Goldberg’s Guinan came back into Picard’s life.
Yes, there has been Seven of Nine throughout the show (played again by Jeri Ryan), but she wasn’t a part of The Next Generation, just the lore of Star Trek as a whole. What season 3 is bringing us, though, is a family reunion—in multiple ways. We’re seeing characters like Geordi (LeVar Burton) and Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) join the series.
But what’s great about Geordi’s inclusion isn’t just the return of Burton to the world of Star Trek or that we’re getting the team back together. It’s also that we’re seeing some new characters with legacy parents joining the fold, and one of those characters happens to be Geordi’s daughter, who is in Starfleet, played by … well, LeVar Burton’s daughter. (We meet his other daughter, Sidney La Forge, in the premiere, who is played by Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut.)
Meet Alandra La Forge
Mica Burton, who is an iconic nerdy girl who I know many fans (like myself) love to see pop up, is an actress. She is also the daughter of Star Trek’s own LeVar Burton! Throughout the years, Mica Burton has become a beacon for the nerdy girl, though. She’s big in the gaming space, but she is just brilliant as a whole.
Having her as part of the Star Trek family is a gift to fans of Geordi, and while we haven’t met her character yet, I’m already very excited to see how Alandra and Sidney interact with each other given Picard and Riker’s introduction to Sidney in the premiere. The siblings know all about Picard and the Enterprise, and so it will be interesting to see how Sidney and Alandra interact with each other as the series goes on.
But in the premiere of season 3, titled “The Next Generation,” we met not only Chestnut’s take on a Starfleet officer but also Beverly’s son (played by Ed Speleers)—yes, a new one, not Wes (who was played by Wil Wheaton). So with the upcoming inclusion of Alandra La Forge, having her sister Sidney already show up, and Beverly’s new son, it seems as if Picard is a family affair!
So we might not have seen Burton starring in the show just yet, but knowing that she’s coming to Star Trek: Picard is still amazing! And she seems to be so happy to share this with her father, posting pictures of her and her father on her Twitter from the premiere for his birthday.
Overall, the first episode of season 3 is an emotional return for the show because it does feel like it is building the “next” generation of the characters we know and love, and making Burton part of the team is a beautiful nod to the character her father played, and I can’t wait to meet her. In the meantime, I do think that Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut as Sidney La Forge might be my new favorite character.
(featured image: Paramount+)
