On Saturday, I linked to an article about actor Michael Dorn and his long-running portrayal of the character of Worf across multiple Star Trek series and movies.
Last week, the third episode of Star Trek: Picard‘s final season gave him a glorious (formal) introduction that is already spawning memes across the Interwebs.
In fact, the whole season promises to give us a measure of closure with the TNG era on many fronts. There’s the main characters sure, but we were also promised some villains from Trek of yore including Daniel Davis’ Moriarty, holographically conjured to defeat Data — and Lore, Data’s android brother who probably has competing against his brother as part of his source code. Three episodes in, neither of these repeat villains have shown up, so we’re left to wonder if Vadic, the captain of the Shrike (with Ahab focus) is related to someone we’ve seen before (no worries if not, Amanda Plummer is chewing scenery and exuding cool menace that would make her dad, General Chang, proud).
But to allude to the machinations of Sauron and his predilection for seizing power through jewelry, all of the trailer audiences were deceived, for another villain was added this past episode. And if Worf’s intro gave me delight, this reveal gave me
Those of you who don’t want spoilers, don’t click or read further.
As discussed in Alex Cranz’s article for The Verge: it’s changelings.
Besides feeling the DS9 love, the thought of a splinter group of Founders unhappy with all that peace and love Odo brought to the Great Link, separating and plotting lo these many years is wonderful. The Founders were shown to be patient, methodical, and ruthless in Deep Space Nine and however they factor into the series of pulled strings that will eventually give us Moriarty and Lore (and may explain some of Vadic’s intent), it’s a wonderful Big Bad to behold. I might even call them a solid villain, which would naturally incur their wrath.
It also reminds me I should work on those viewing guides for TNG and DS9.