Patrick Stewart teases “startling events” in Star Trek: Picard season 2

Patrick Stewarts talks about what’s in store for Star Trek: Picard season 2, who’s coming back, and who, unfortunately, is not.

We’re currently in the midst of a major Star Trek revival, with two shows already on the air and two more on the way. My favorite so far is probably Star Trek: Picard, a gentle exploration of Jean-Luc Picard’s twilight years, decades after the end of The Next Generation, when he’s suddenly spurred to leave retirement and get back to the final frontier.

The first season was a good time, introducing us to several new characters, bringing back old faces, and sending Picard on a new adventure that explored his relationship with synthetic lifeforms. Of course, for TNG fans, the most important synthetic in Picard’s life was always Data (Brent Spiner), who died in the movie Star Trek: Nemesis.

Patrick Stewart talked to Gold Derby about the show, outlining how Data’s death had always haunted Picard thereafter, and explaining why their final scene together in Picard hit so hard.

“I had a long scene, for a science fiction series, a very long dialogue scene, six pages, with Picard and Data talking about what it means to be alive and coming to the conclusion that death has to be one of the benefits of being alive, that our lives cannot be extended indefinitely,” Stewart remembered. “I found that very, very potent and playing that scene with Brent Spiner, who I adore and whose work I love was such a good experience. From where I’m sitting right now, I’m looking across my studio and there is the chair that I was sitting in when I played that last scene. I asked the company if they would let me buy the chair. It’s a beautiful chair. But I wanted to have something concrete that reminded me of that scene and if you can see the print, the picture that’s behind my head, that also came from Picard’s studio and was there in that scene. So that’s how sentimental and emotional I’ve been about all this.”

I’m not a huge Star Trek guy — Picard was actually my first Trek show — but even not knowing much about the past these characters share, that scene got me pretty good, too.

When Picard “woke up” from this moment, he got another surprise: although his original body had died, his crew had transferred his consciousness into a new, synthetic body, which brought some of the themes of the season full circle. “I learned it from reading the script,” Stewart said. “And when I saw Picard collapsed and died when he was on that alien planet, I thought, ‘Oh, my Lord, I’m being written out of the show. I only make it to the end of Season 1. What are they gonna call the next season? They can’t call it ‘Picard’ if I’m not there.'”

"And then, of course, brilliantly and wonderfully, they were able to perform surgery on me in such a way that I survived and came back. But now, with an artificial life inside me, not a subservient, cruel one like the Borg, but, well, we shall see. We don’t know how Picard is going to live with this new condition that has become part of his life, which is going to extend his life. I think he said 20 more years is what he wanted. I think I’ve probably just got 20 more years in me if it should go in that direction."

We’ll see how the new body affects Picard when season 2 rolls around. Unfortunately, we still don’t know exactly when that is, the coronavirus having put the kibosh on plans to resume production, for Picard and many other shows. But Stewart assures us that it’s coming. “Because of how we’re living currently, there is no writers’ room, of course, but everybody is writing and they’re keeping me in touch with what is going on,” he said. “We have conferences and so forth, video conferences. There are startling events predicted in Season 2. I’m so excited about them because it is taking Season 1 on from where we were. We’re not going to be covering the same ground. And it’s going to be, I think, extraordinary. I’m very excited about it.”

I thought the first season of Picard explored some pretty interesting territory, and I’m happy to hear the writers aren’t resting on their laurels for season 3.

Of course, part of the fun for Star Trek fans is seeing old faces turn back up. In addition to Data, Picard season 1 caught us up with Commander William Riker (Jonathan Frakes), Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), Hugh the Borg (Jonathan Del Arco), and even Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan). “And by the way, I am very hopeful that we shall see more of the original Next Generation crew before we say goodbye to Picard,” Stewart said. We already know that Whoopi Goldberg will return to play Guinan. Beyond that, who knows?

Stewart also assures that us that all of his new crew members are back, which presumably means we’ll see more of Isa Briones (Soji), Alison Pill (Agnes Jurati), Michelle Hurd (Rafaella) and Santiago Cabrera (Rios).

Well, almost all of the new crew is back. “Well, I think we may have said goodbye to Harry Treadaway, which I’m disappointed about because I enjoy working with him so very much,” Stewart said. Treadaway played Narek, a conflicted Romulan operative who spent the first season tricking Soji into revealing the location of the synthetic homeworld so his people could destroy it, but then having a change of heart and helping Picard and company defend it in the end. I really enjoyed the push and pull of his journey, so it’ll be a bummer if he doesn’t show up.

But the first step is probably get Picard back on the air in the first place. Hopefully we have something solid soon.

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