NEW YORK – Star Trek fans are notoriously hard to please, which makes the fairy-tale comeback of Star Trek: Picard, the ninth series in the nearly six-decade science-fiction franchise, all the more impressive.

The third and final season of the show – which debuted in 2020 and will release its much-anticipated series finale on Prime Video on Thursday – has reversed its fortunes among fans, who were not exactly thrilled with earlier chapters.

Seasons 1 and 2 received dismal audience scores of 52 per cent and 29 per cent respectively on review-aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.

But Season 3 has earned a 90 per cent audience rating and won near-universal praise from critics with a 98 per cent Tomatometer score.

Star Trek: Picard – which continues the story of retired Starfleet admiral Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) – has also delighted long-time fans by reuniting Picard with his co-stars from Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987 to 1994), the show that introduced them.

This includes actors Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden and Michael Dorn, whose characters are franchise favourites.

English actor Stewart, 82, had initially vetoed such a reunion and was reluctant to reprise the role, but making the show left him “fulfilled way beyond anything I imagined”.

And at a fan event and panel discussion in New York late last year, the cast and creators of Star Trek: Picard say bringing back more Next Generation characters for the last hurrah was a valentine to all fans of the franchise, which began with the television show Star Trek (1966 to 1969), and now comprises 12 television series and 13 films.

Stewart says: “At the beginning, I had been uneasy about it being a reunion. But as I worked with one after the other of my dear, beloved colleagues, I saw how important it was and how well it was working.”

“And so we agreed, ‘Yes, let’s at some point bring everyone back’,” explains the veteran, who is also known for playing Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men superhero films (2000 to 2014).

“What our producers, writers, crew, sound recorders, editors and everyone did was create something original, which had always been my hope and my endeavour.”

American showrunner Terry Matalas, 47, says The Next Generation actors were consulted on how their characters would be depicted in Picard.

“They know their characters even better than we and the fans do – they’ve been to (fan) conventions and been asked every question about it. And it worked out. I think it’s a pretty satisfying conclusion to these arcs.”

Series co-creator Alex Kurtzman, 49, says this season also makes good on the writers’ promise to Stewart that the show would not be simply a rehash.

“One of the things Patrick was very clear on from the beginning was that he didn’t want to just repeat what we had done, what he had done and what everybody had done on Next Generation.

“So that led to the idea that things had changed radically in Picard’s life.”

Frakes, Sirtis and Spiner’s characters had already been reintroduced in Season 1, but Season 3 is the full-throated assembly many fans have been praying for.

And for the grand finale, there have been hints of even more surprise cameos by characters from previous Star Trek shows.

But no one has been brought back just for the sake of it.

American writer-director Kurtzman, who also wrote the films Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), says: “What’s so satisfying this season is that the show has earned the return of every character, and every character comes back with their own story.

“It’s a love letter to all fans of Star Trek and to the legacy of this incredible show.”

For Stewart, this is not necessarily the end of the road for the cast of Next Generation or Picard.

Noting the presence of studio and streaming-service executives, he says with a smile: “You know, we could still make a movie.”

• The final episode of Star Trek: Picard is available on Prime Video from Thursday.