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Is the ‘Star Trek: Picard’ season three opening the same plot as ‘Wrath of Khan?’

'Star Trek: Picard' season three has kicked off with a bang but some viewers are wondering if we haven't seen all this before.
Matthew Doherty
Matthew Doherty
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Published: Feb 26, 2023 10:09 pm

Warning: Contains Spoilers about season three of Star Trek: Picard.

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Star Trek: Picard‘s third season has kicked off with a bang. Patrick Stewart’s character is teaming up with his old shipmates to take on a deadly enemy and potentially save the Federation from a world-ending weapon.

But some viewers are wondering if this plot hasn’t done the rounds before in the Star Trek universe.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was released in 1982. It featured the original Enterprise crew of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. In the film, Admiral Kirk is on Earth and grappling with the reality of aging. McCoy urges him to get a new command before he becomes a museum piece. Kirk meets Spock aboard the Enterprise and receives a distress call from his ex-girlfriend stationed on Regula 1. Taking command, Kirk rushes to Regula and finds a son he didn’t know about, a piece of planet-destroying technology, and an unhinged enemy out for his blood.

In the opening episodes of season three of Star Trek: Picard, the same plot occurs. Admiral Picard is concerned about his age and his legacy. He receives a distress call from old flame Beverly Crusher. Meeting his old friend Will Riker, the pair commandeer the U.S.S. Titan to go find her. Throw in the fact that Picard has a son he didn’t know about and the revelation that a piece of quantum tunneling technology with the potential to cause planetary destruction has fallen into the wrong hands, and viewers are left with what amounts to a remake of Wrath of Khan.

The producers themselves seem not to be unaware of this, as there are a vast number of callbacks in Picard. The ending credits of Picard re-use the famous score from Wrath of Khan, and the opening credits show the caption “In the 25th Century”, mirroring Wrath of Khan‘s “In the 23rd Century”. The nebula in the Ryton System where Picard takes the Titan is a clear callback to the epic fight in the Mutara Nebula between the Enterprise and Khan’s Reliant.

Wrath of Khan is a great film, and if Picard keeps its current trajectory, we are in for an action-packed ride… even if we have seen it all before.

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Image of Matthew Doherty
Matthew Doherty
Matthew Doherty is a writer at We Got This Covered. His work has also appeared on WorthPoint and The Collector. Matthew loves to write about anything TV and movie related, but has an obsession for all things Star Trek. In his spare time, he is writing a science fiction novel that will be finished at some point in the 22nd Century.