Could the entire cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation reunite on Picard?

There are a lot of Star Trek shows on the air right now — Discovery, Lower Decks, Prodigy — with more on the way. But the one fans seemed to have embraced the most is Star Trek: Picard, in part because it’s so tied to the franchise’s history.

Picard stars Patrick Stewart as the title character, who he played for seven seasons on Star Trek: The Next Generation. And it’s brought in a lot of other characters from Trek shows past, including TNG (we saw Data, Riker and Deanna Troi in season 1) and beyond; Jeri Ryan is part of the main cast as Seven of Nine, who she played on Star Trek: Voyager.

And we’re not done! For instance, the upcoming second season of the show will include Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan, who she played on TNG. At this rate, will we see the entire cast of The Next Generation reunited on Picard before it wraps up?

That’s the question Cinema Blend recently posed to Jonathan Frakes, who is on Picard both as an actor — he plays William T. Riker — and a director. “Oh, that’s a good question,” Frakes said. “I think that we got a taste of it on the planet that Picard visited and found Riker and Troi. So we’ve done that. So, you know, we’ve had a little bit of reunion where he comes to see how we are and where we left the business to try and save our son. That was in Season 1 of Picard. So, it’s a pretty complicated undertaking to think about revisiting all that glory. It’d be fun, though.”

Star Trek: Picard has two more seasons to go, and the third is already being filmed. It sounds like a full-scale reunion isn’t going to happen, but I’m sure what cameos they have will indeed be fun.

Q won’t be the same on Star Trek: Picard season 2

Another fan favorite Trek character making a return on Picard is Q, the interdimensional mischief maker who tormented Picard back on The Next Generation. Actor John de Lancie found it pretty easy to pick up where he left off. “Well, I play a jerk, so it’s really easy to approach that yet again, it’s not difficult,” he joked during a guest star panel for the Trek Talks Telethon. “It was nice to do. It was not difficult to bring it up again. We all play pretty close to who we are… at least I am. The material had a lot of the same vibes about it… The intentions are still the same. I’m still Picard’s main squeeze. And I’m pushing.”

All that said, de Lancie didn’t want to return to the role if he was just going to be retreading old ground. “I am very concerned about recreating, that has a lot of potential disasters attached to it,” he said. “So I said, ‘We are not trying to recreate something? We are going to move from here, forward?’ And they said, ‘Yes, yes, yes.'”

"It isn’t in fact a Q of 34 years ago. It would be unseemly to be playing it that way. He’s older, more mature, a little more focused individual, with a very strong internal motivation and a desire to get Picard to do something. But if I tried to do it the way I acted back then, I think it wouldn’t be good. It is different and it’s intended to be a little different."

The second season of Picard involves Jean-Luc and company visiting an alternate reality where the galaxy is ruled by a fascist regime, and then traveling back to our time to try and prevent it.

Star Trek: Picard season 2 premieres on Paramount+ in February.

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h/t StarTrek.com