Star Trek: Picard, which drops on CBS All Access later this month, certainly has a Next Generation feel to it. Lots of regulars from that show are returning, including Jonathan Frakes (Will Riker), Brent Spiner (Data), Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi) and Jonathan Del Arco (Hugh, the former Borg drone). But, according to Picard executive producer and Trek veteran Akiva Goldsman, the new show is not a sequel to TNG.
“e pointedly wanted to not make a sequel to Next Gen,” Goldsman told Hollywood Outbreak. The Oscar-winning producer knows of which he speaks, having written and directed episodes of Star Trek: Discovery. He stresses that Picard is a new adventure for the aging hero. “I think that tonally, it’s a little bit of a hybrid,” he said. “Obviously it’s – you will see, I hope – slower, more gentle, more lyrical. It is certainly more character-based.”
Jeri Ryan (who played Seven of Nine in Star Trek: Voyager) also joins the cast, despite never appearing on TNG. And obviously, Patrick Stewart is back as Jean-Luc Picard, but this will be a different kind of story for his character, even if it’s rooted in classic Trek themes.
It also takes on the same thing that The Original Series took on, that Next Gen took on, that Discovery takes on, which is a hope for a future that is in many ways better than the world we live in today,” Goldsman said. “Star Trek remains aspirational and what we get to do that DS9 got to do a little bit and Discovery got to do is to tell serialized stories, and in serialized storytelling, the characters can evolve in a way that makes it unique. So we think it’s a new kind of Star Trek show, made by a lot of people who love all the old kinds of Star Trek.”
Pictured: Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine of the the CBS All Access series STAR TREK: PICARD. Photo Cr: Trae Patton/CBS ©2019 CBS Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Goldsman makes it sound like Picard will be pure Star Trek, but packaged in the more modern, cable-influenced way, where questions need not always be answered, complex characters weave between the light and the dark, and huge story arcs can take years to resolve.
One of the series creators, Alex Kurtzman, has backed this idea up in the past, describing Picard as a program that viewers won’t experience in the same way as TNG. “You know, we feel a tremendous responsibility to the fans who have loved (Captain Picard), and Patrick himself, who took a massive leap of faith with us in choosing to come back and play Picard he said he was done forever,” Kurtzman told TrekCore a while back.
"This is really a very different experience. It looks incredibly different, the kind of storytelling is different, but if you’re someone who’s never watched it at all, it’s been built for you to come into it and get to be dropped into this very emotional story about this captain who’s in the late stage of his life and is dealing with the sum total of all his choices."
“It also has an incredible new crew,” Kurtzman continued, “incredible, to a person, they’re all so wonderful. And we have now started showing it to the studio, and they’re thrilled with it … We’ve now watched five episodes with Patrick and he’s thrilled with it too. Because he was so happy with it, it makes us feel like it honored what we promised.”
It’s been 26 years since Stewart donned the red-and-black uniform to portray Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994) and became one of the most popular characters in the Star Trek universe. Picard may well continue to cement its hero deeper into his own legend in the new century. Star Trek: Picard debuts January 23rd, 2020 on CBS All Access in the USA and on Amazon Prime internationally.
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