Star Trek: Picard Season 2 features an adventure that spans space and time as the omnipotent Q resurfaces to tamper with humanity's history and alter the reality that Jean-Luc Picard and his friends know and have dedicated their lives to defend. With Starfleet no longer the peaceful, idealistic organization that Picard and his associates are familiar with, the ragtag crew makes their way back to the year 2024 to restore the timeline from Q's alterations. And based on an episode from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, this particular year is already a pivotal one in humanity's history, making it a prime target for Q's scheme.
In the DS9 Season 3 episode "Past Tense," a transporter malfunction sends the USS Defiant's senior officers to San Francisco in the year 2024. At this point in humanity's history, there is widespread unrest as the marginalized parts of society are ostracized and abused by the government, leading to a series of protests that are met with violent response from the authorities. Though many of those behind the protests are killed, their ideals and self-sacrifice inspire attitudes to change and eventually serve as the cornerstone behind the utopia spread by the United Federation of Planets decades later, with Commander Benjamin Sisko personally ensuring this timeline comes to pass.
The version of 2024 that Picard and his friends arrive in during Picard Season 2 appears to still in the midst of the police state that Sisko and his crew visited in DS9, before the societal changes instituted after the San Francisco protests that year. Chris Rios, Captain of La Sirena, is seen being accosted by the authorities in 2024 Los Angeles in the latest Picard Season 2 trailer, with the police force appearing to round up individuals in a prison bus. DS9 established that the government of 2024 kept society's marginalized in forced encampments with poor living conditions which served as a major motivation behind the protests.
With 2024 being such a vital year in humanity finding the progressive ideals that would inform the creation of Starfleet and the Federation, this makes the year an easy target for Q as he seeks to rewrite history, potentially even altering the protests that Sisko visited in DS9 to make sure the change that it inspired never comes to pass. Tampering with such an event could trigger a proverbial butterfly effect that would make humanity less receptive towards a diplomatic envoy from Vulcan, as seen in 2063 in the film Star Trek: First Contact. This would also cause any spacefaring organization from Earth that actively employs a heavy-handed, authoritarian abuse of a power to be much closer in line with the Mirror Universe's Terran Empire than the United Federation of Planets.
Q knows exactly when and wear to strike history to completely change the course of humanity, leading to the Federation that Picard knows being radically altered centuries later. This appears to align with a popular fan theory that Q created the Mirror Universe as part of his ongoing test of humanity, with the trailers' glimpses of the changes Q caused suggesting that this is indeed how an iteration of the Terran Empire comes to pass. If true, this makes Sisko's actions in 2024 all the more instrumental in laying the groundwork for the Federation's ideals before traveling back to undo this societal turning point.
Created by Akiva Goldsman, Michael Chabon, Kirsten Beyer and Alex Kurtzman, Star Trek: Picard Season 2 premieres March 3 on Paramount+.