Gates McFadden Admires Star Trek: Picard's Generational Collaboration

"Star Trek" is, at the time of this writing, on its twelfth TV series since 1966, and with just shy of 60 years of history, there's not a lot of shared DNA across every show anymore. There are, generally speaking, stars, but people don't even trek every time. Sometimes they just work on a space station and argue about religion.

But if there's one aspect of the franchise that's persevered throughout the decades, it's a dedication to the idea that we all do better when we work together — that teamwork makes Gene Roddenberry's dream work. It is, therefore, only appropriate that Gates McFadden, "Star Trek: The Next Generation's" own Doctor Beverly Crusher, is so enamored with the focus on intergenerational collaboration in the series follow-up "Star Trek: Picard."

"I think it was so clever to have all of these younger people," she told ScreenRant in an interview, singling out Geordi La Forge's (LaVar Burton) daughters, who debuted on the program. "Something I feel is missing so much in our society is young and old people working together and collaborating. I love that about this season."

Gates McFadden, who knows a thing or two after 36 years with the franchise, brings up a good point. "Star Trek: Picard" definitely puts a focus on cooperation between its legacy characters and new additions, which makes a certain amount of sense. For its farewell season, the show has managed to land appearances from every member of the main bridge crew of "TNG," bar a few short-term staffers who got killed by tar monsters or disappeared without an explanation.

That's not to say that the crew of the Enterprise-D ever needed any help carrying a story, but "Picard" finds plenty of story beats in the interactions between established favorites like Worf (Michael Dorn) and new faces like Jack Crusher (Ed Speleers) and Sidney La Forge (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut).

It's a dynamic that McFadden found unique and exciting about season three of "Picard." "Both old and young make mistakes," she continued in her conversation with ScreenRant, "and very often, and I am certainly living proof of this, the younger generation is smarter in many ways than the older generation. But then again, the younger generation lacks a certain amount of experience and the wisdom that comes from having made mistakes and how to correct them. So that's what I love. And I do not see that happening a lot on television. I see there's often antagonism between the two generations."

The third and final season of "Star Trek: Picard" is streaming on Paramount+, with new episodes dropping every Thursday.