Bravo Fleet
This week, on Thursday, February 16th, the third season of Star Trek: Picard begins! I hope you’re all ready and excited; come what may, this is the future of Trek and the future of Bravo Fleet’s place in the 25th century.
That’s what I want to talk about today. Bravo Fleet does follow Trek on-screen canon; we have no interest in returning to the hinterlands of being ruled by decades-old fanon. With the release of PIC season 1, we catapulted our fleet canon into the dawn of the 25th century and incorporated brand-new Trek canon like the Attack on Mars, the synth ban, and the abandoned Romulan evacuation. At the same time, we threw out old ideas like the details of the Hobus supernova and the status of the Romulan Star Empire. On some points, we don’t know anything – what’s going on with the Klingon Empire or the Cardassian Union? All we’ve been able to do is make educated guesses, and be prepared to change if Trek reveals anything new. Anything could happen in PIC S3, and the Intel Office is braced to deal with what we know and what we don’t know. Fleet canon is still in 2401, before the (modern) events of season two even, so we have time to write through the various events we’ll see spill out on-screen, if appropriate.
This announcement is thus a reminder that the Intel Office does not, as a rule, implement any new Trek or fleet canon until the end of a new Trek season. We might begin preparing in back rooms, drafting new articles, but none of it will go live until we have the whole package. After all, something we learn in episode 2 might make us scramble for the edit button, but then something else might arise in episode 9 that means we have to change again. This includes any new starships we might see in S3 – and we know there will be some (this, along with the timeline, is part of why we’ve held off on the Sagan-class – we have reason to believe we’ll see more of her in S3 and thus learn more). We’re watching, too. And we’ll be getting to work.
So in short, cool your heels asking us when you’ll get to command a ship like the one you just saw on-screen, or if you should be writing your character in accordance with X fact from the latest episode. The guidance will be along once we have the full picture.
Furthermore, discussion of new PIC episodes as the show is released should be restricted to the #picard-spoilers channel on Discord.
It’s an exciting time to write Trek in the 25th century. PIC season 2 gave us a plethora of ships, but precious little by way of world-building. Will season 3 be the same? Will it turn our worlds upside-down? Impossible to say.
Let’s see what’s out there.