As a restless Jean-Luc Picard ponders his next adventure in retirement, he gets one when an old friend sends up a distress signal as “Star Trek: Picard” returns for its third and final season.

Premiering Thursday on Paramount+, the last round of 10 episodes kicks off with a ship commanded by Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) attacked and boarded by an alien enemy. Badly wounded, she sends up an emergency communication to her friend and former Enterprise commanding officer Picard (Patrick Stewart), who calls on old allies, including Riker (Jonathan Frakes), to determine her whereabouts and come to her rescue.

This last season brings together much of the cast of the iconic 1987-94 syndicated series “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” also including Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Marina Sirtis and Michael Dorn. Additionally, Amanda Plummer joins the cast as Vadic, captain of an alien warship, as do Mica Burton and Chestnut Sharpe. Michelle Hurd and Jeri Ryan are “Picard” cast returnees.

Though she’d been involved with other “Trek” projects since the series ended in 1994 and is in regular contact with her old castmates, McFadden nonetheless jumped at the opportunity to again work with them, this time playing what she says is a more “badass” version of Crusher.

“We had a fabulous time working on our stuff because there was real meat to chew in the scenes,” the actress explains. “And the thing about revisiting, it’s so fortunate to revisit something that you worked on a long time ago because you have grown as a person and hopefully you’ve grown as an actor, and yet you have this history with somebody.

“And it was just so much fun to go at it,” she continues. “The first scene I had with (Stewart), you know, we hadn’t really discussed much at all and we just did it and it was exhilarating. Because the scenes were meaty, they were really fun to do.”

McFadden reports that a “Next Generation” reunion was the brainchild of showrunner Terry Matalas, and Stewart floated the idea to his castmates over dinner at his house. Not needing a whole lot of convincing to begin with, she decided she was on board after reading the script.

“You know, we are a family, so it was a fabulous family gathering,” she says. “I loved what the producers and writers had come up with for Beverly Crusher. It’s a great storyline and I just had a blast. It was really, really, I think, the highlight of my ‘TNG’ stuff for me.”