Entertainment Weekly has posted their article about Star Trek: Picard, which we previewed last night. In it, Alex Kurtzman reveals a number of new things about the show, with some minor SPOILERS.
Picard is back in space
Everything released so far about Star Trek: Picard has shown Jean-Luc Picard firmly grounded, but executive producer Alex Kurtzman confirmed that will change:
Events began to unfold that conspire to take Picard back to the stars….He will [go to space], but not in a way that anyone expects.
…but not in Starfleet
Kurtzman also confirmed that Picard is no longer part of Starfleet:
Because he’s no longer in Starfleet, he no longer carries the weight of that behind him. In some ways, it’s easier to be [a great man] when you’re a captain. But it’s an entirely different thing when you don’t have an army behind you. When you want to get something done and fight an injustice, how do you do that when you’re really only one man?
EW exclusive preview image from Star Trek: Picard
Destruction of Romulus (and more) haunts Picard
It has previously been revealed that the destruction of Romulus seen in the 2009 Star Trek movie (in the parts set after Star Trek: Nemesis) had a big impact on Jean-Luc Picard. Alex Kurtzman gets into more details and seemingly confirms that Picard’s involvement (only seen in the Star Trek: Countdown comic book) will be a factor in the new show:
“There are many things that haunt Picard,” Kurtzman teases, adding the ill-fated Romulus mission is just one of those things.
Picard speaking to Ambassador Spock in Star Trek: Countdown
We expect to learn more about Star Trek: Picard during the Star Trek Universe panel on Saturday at San Diego Comic-Con. TrekMovie is at SDCC and will bring you all the details.
Keep up with all the news on the Picard show here at TrekMovie.com.
So Picard will be living his life as Galen a la TNG’s “Gambit”
Or X-Men’s Gambit. You know. Which ever.
The Gambit movie came out of development hell in the strangest of ways.
So, we might actually see Starfleet from a more civilian POV? That would be refreshing in Star Trek.
That would be awesome. I always liked that Jake Sisko never joined Starfleet.
They should do a Jake-focused Short Trek.
Would love to see him do a cameo on Picard.
OH MY GOD, YES!
Actually so did I
Nice, Picard wears a pin with the Picard family crest created for the Picard Family Album, seen in Generations and Nemesis. Deep continuity! :-)
I don’t like it that they use a dog with cropped ears. Animal cruelty shouldn’t be allowed in the future anymore. Cropping is already forbidden in a lot of countries today. Star Trek shouldn’t promote it.
It’s possible that the cropped ears are part of the (fictional) dog’s history. I’d expect ear cropping to be illegal in the Federation, but just as Patrick Stewart adopts abused pit bulls, perhaps Picard has adopted a dog abused by Romulan survivors.
“Poor thing, she was half-starved and they made her fight a targ every night.”
Maybe it’s actually an alien species of dog that just naturally looks like that?
Promoting it? I dunno, if someone decides to have their dog’s ears cropped because Picard has a dog like that, without understanding the real world Patrick Stewart reasons for it, they may be too stupid to watch Star Trek. Too stupid to walk around in public without a helmet, really.
It’s out-of-character, Jean-Luc Picard would never do that.
It is in character for Patrick Stewart however, who rescues dogs who have had their ears cropped by previous owners. Believe it or not, but not everything in Star Trek is about Star Trek.
The ‘out-of-character’ ship has already left space-dock. In First Contact he was swinging through the air beating holding a phasor rifle before ripping the spinal cord of a female Borg in two. In Insurrection he committed treason by loading up his personal yaucht with enough munitions to enforce Iranian nuclear sanctions. In Nemesis he crashed his ship into the front of a bigger ship for tactially obscure reasons. Now, he’s wearing a flat-cap with a dog, holding a cain. Just enjoy the ride…
I always thought it odd how Picard has been described as “out of character” in FC. In the show the Borg always affected him – member in “I Borg” where he yelled at Riker and refused to see Hugh until Guinan had a word with him? Or when he took almost the entire crew down to a planet to find Data and, upon realising that it was the Borg who were involved, did nothing to help rehabilitate them? Picard hates the Borg (see “family”). Nothing he did in FC was out of character at all IMO – if we assume the events involving the Borg in the show had a cumulative effect on Picard, then he just snaps in FC and goes off the deep end. Not out of character per se, just a more extreme reaction to what we’ve seen before.
Insurrection can be explained by the radiation making them all regress age-wise, but Picard had disobeyed orders before (“Ensign Ro” is an example of this, if he’d followed orders the Cardassians would have succeeded in wiping out a bajoran resistance cell using Starfleet without their knowledge, also “I Borg” again – Nechayev gives him a pasting for not following orders and wiping out the Borg in “Descent”).
I’ll give you Nemesis – that whole mess was a disaster.
Actually…. The thing in Nemesis that totally felt out of character for Picard (and even out of character for the entire franchise) was when Picard was beamed off the assembly without Ru’ofu. Essentially sentencing him to death without due process. There as no reason both could not be beamed yup. The forced ramming in Nemesis was tactical. They had exhausted their weapons. It was pretty much the last option before self destruct. Nemesis was pretty well made, actually.
To be fair, it was Riker who only beamed back Picard. And Ru’afo was actively trying to kill 600 people by turning on the collector and destroying the planet’s rings. Picard had destroyed ships in combat, stabbed Klingons on Qo’Nos, shot his own temporal duplicate, etc. Picard and Ru’afo were in combat in Insurrection while on the collector. The fact that Riker didn’t save him (or Picard didn’t order Riker to save him) didn’t seem out of character at all.
As for Nemesis – the fact that they flew through a nebula that cuts off contact with Starfleet (a fact Data was aware of) was a massive tactical blunder. They never should have been in the battle with the Scimitar in the first place. That was out of character for Picard – he wasn’t usually that tactically inept. Also, what purpose did the ramming of the ship serve? Shinzon still had his death ray (it nearly worked – had it not been for Data following Picard’s additional tactical blunder of beaming over to fight his own clone, the Enterprise would have been destroyed…), the Scimitar wasn’t especially damaged by the impact, and the whole situation seemed to be motivated by Picard’s “loss of self” and ego issues (“we’ve got him”) whilst facing Shinzon.
FC and INS showed Picard perfectly in character. He was very out of character in NEM (dune buggy chase on pre-warp planet notwithstanding – prime directive violation anyone?) Picard’s actions in FC and INS make sense in light of TNG. His actions in NEM don’t imo.
War time is a different matter. There was no war going on in Insurrection. The fact that Ru-ofo was in the process of killing all those people doesn’t matter. That meant that Picard was denying someone due process when it was within his power to save him. He could have easily ordered Riker to beam them both up. Riker could have done the humanitarian thing and beamed them both up regardless. However, as Captain, the responsibility for that rests with Picard.
While it may have been a mistake to head through the rift, it was obviously on the course to the rendezvous. No one thought anything of it until they were reminded by the LOS once they entered as it is unreasonable for all that to be in Picard’s head. Data, on the other hand, is a different matter. As a machine, he was the only one who could have reasonably warned against such a course. Yet he didn’t. That said, they have been attempting to make Data more human the entire time so it might be reasonable to conclude that Data was distracted by the goings on and such a thing would not have been considered. What else did they have? Self destruct would have been their only other option. Ramming the ship was the only option that would not have killed everyone aboard and still had the potential to destroy the weapon.
A lot of this depends on what is the “true” character for Picard. During the run of the show, his character was to be perfect in every way. Yet in First Contact he was out of character in that he displayed a character flaw. He was vengeful. That was TOTALLY out of character for him. That same flaw showed up in Insurrection when he decided to play judge, jury and executioner himself. In fact, in the features he was a different person. A more interesting person.
If I remember correctly, INS is supposed to be happening in the waning days of the Dominion War so technically there was a war going on – and the Son’a were allied with the Dominion (having manufactured ketracel white…) but I guess the Federation weren’t at war *with* the Son’a during INS. That being said, Picard has denied people due process before – he allowed the Baryon sweep to kill at least one of the pirates after the trilithium in “starship mine”, to name an example.
As for NEM, that’s kinda my point – Picard gives an order that is tactically unsound (fly through the rift), which is out of character for him, and nobody questions it – not Data, Riker, nor Worf. That’s also out of character for them too. The TNG crew were never that bad as tacticians on the show. As for ramming the ship, Picard tried the self destruct after the ramming itself (the impact likely took the destruct system offline – again highlighting the flaw in the ramming manoeuvre). Granted, they’d run out of torpedoes, but it’s long established in Trek (since TOS and TMP) that an antimatter explosion from a warp core overload would take an enemy ship in close range with it. Picard should have tried auto destruct before ramming the ship (he called for auto destruct a couple of times in the series).
As for FC, Think about Picard’s state of mind post-GEN.
He’s devastated by the loss of his brother. This affects him emotionally and I don’t think he ever gets over it (the fact that he apparently returns to the vineyard in ST:P would seem to be evidence of this).
From the moment Picard realises that he’s not stopped the Borg when he hears them in the Phoenix silo in Montana, he snaps.
Don’t forget, for all Picard knows at that point, they’re stuck in the 21st century. The normal rules of Starfleet are abrogated since his crew may have to live the rest of their lives in the past.
*And* Picard has direct orders to wipe out the Borg (from Nechayev – in “Descent” she explicitly orders him to wipe them out if ever he has the chance again – and that’s barely 2 years before FC, so not that long ago from Picard’s perspective).
Finally, the Borg attack Picard’s home in FC. He even tells Lily that he thinks of the Enterprise as his home. The Borg have never been so brazen to Picard and now, piece by piece, they are taking his home from him like they once took his mind and body from him.
In FC we saw Picard pushed to a limit that we never saw on the show – with the possible exception of “chain of command”, but even subject to Cardassian torture he was still in control of his mind (mostly). The Borg robbed him of that basic human right – add that to the fact that they were taking over his beloved Enterprise in FC contributed to him reacting in a similar, yet more extreme way to his initial reaction to Hugh in “I Borg”.
I still think that everything Picard did in FC was totally in character.
Plinkett was *wrong* lol
True. The Dominion war was waning. But they weren’t fighting the Sona. In fact, they had made a pact with them. I cannot speak for how often Picard has not only denied someone due process but acted as judge jury and executioner on top of that. If he did that in the course of the show then that would have gone against all the so called principles he has often orated about. Which would make him a hypocrite. As I have only seen the bulk of the episodes once some 20 years ago I cannot speak for sure about the events from them. Only that I do not recall him being so brazen about such a thing before. Overall, he has been portrayed as a paragon of virtue.
In Nem, he did not give the order to fly through the rift. He relayed his orders to rendezvous with the fleet. Not realizing the course would take them through the rift. To be honest, it is not reasonable that everyone know everything about every phenomena in the alpha quadrant. So it’s reasonable that such minutia was overlooked. It would only be a character flaw if one buys into the TV show portrayal of Picard as the PERFECT human specimen. The one that never makes mistakes or succumbs to basic human weakness. As the Picard of the films has been portrayed as more human than the Picard of the TV show, I put it to you that I consider the Picard of the films to be more in character as he is a more believable character. The failure of the ramming maneuver did not highlight the flaw in the tactic. The tactic was sound. It highlighted a flaw in the auto destruct. Even if the auto control from the bridge was severed, it seems reasonable that Laforge could have easily rigged the thing to blow from the source. Yet no one thought of that. That is more of a plot hole than character issue.
In FC, Picard is long since past the loss of his brother. How long should a man mourn? It’s been at least two years. I think Picard can move forward by then. When Picard hears the Borg he snaps into Vengence mode. Which, again, is out of character for the perfect captain of the TV show. But movie Picard seems to have a few character flaws. Which, again, to makes that version to be the more correct version of him. I’m also not arguing the act of wiping out the Borg. I’m talking about the feeling of vengeance he was harboring. Something that never really reared its head before. It was Lily who saw the gleam of revenge in his eye on the holodeck. As the borg gained a stronger foothold on the ship, Picard sank deeper and deeper into his rage. Again, out of character for the perfect man from TV. But perfectly fine for me as it made him a little more realistic.
To sum up, Picard of the movies was a different man than the one from the TV show. And I felt he was a better character for it. So if one thinks the TV version is the true character, then Picard was out of character in all 4 films. It is unreasonable to say that Picard was the TV version in some films but not others.
After he rammed the Scimitar he activated the Enterprise’s self destruct. The idea was that while Enterprise was basically inside of the Scimitar, the explosion would destroy both ships. The Enterprise’s computer then told him that the self destruct was off line, so the plan didn’t work.
Legate, if his plan was to self destruct AFTER ramming the Scimitar, my question is, “why?” They could self destruct right next to it and both ships are blown away. I think he was trying to disable the weapon without having to blow up the ship. When the ramming failed, only then did he exercise his last option. Self destruct.
I didn’t consider the psychological impact of the Borg experience in my statement and concede that you have made some good points. However, if we are talking about true post traumatic stress disorder than it’s unlikely that Picard would have returned completely to his stoic and professional self after ‘Family’. It’s a little like say that all Iraq veterens need is a ‘good cry’. And yes, when the Borg shows up again it makes sense to have him feel something, but that just isn’t how PTSD works. When I look at the movies, I actually like Picard as action hero, First Contact is my favourite movie! But again, you can’t go from diplomat to action hero because of budget. Insurrection for example, there is a big difference between a commander disobeying orders and the borderline elderly man loading up his private shuttle full of munitions and staging a 1 man coup….
Point taken. However, one could argue that suffering from PTSD might make him unfit to command the Enterprise. Even forgetting the fact that Picard was presented in the show as a perfect human specimen. To even have him suffer from that malady feels out of character for him.
Sean Healy & ML31,
Don’t forget that in the TNG finale, even though he then had advanced warning of it, Mr. Perfect will be suffering from symptoms of old-age dementia in a syndrome whose cause they never identified.
Hopefully this series will take Picard back to something more like the TV version.
If it does it will be a very boring show. In the TNG show Picard was perfect. Perfect characters are dull.
ML31, no disrespect but are the only one here who constantly repeats this. If most people felt this way we wouldn’t be getting a Picard show in the first place.
I agreebit Josiah has a point. Abuse by those outside the Federation might happen. Look at the Orion slave trade for example.
You ever think they are using one of Sir Patrick’s rescue dogs?
Maybe, though I don’t know how easy it is to just use a given dog. I think performing dogs are quite heavily trained. On the other hand if they aren’t using it much and it’s comfortable with him that may not be a problem.
There was an instagram picture with the dog and a woman which got since then deleted who I think is a dog trainer. And even if not the real life background of the dog doesn’t matter. You won’t see it on screen. It is just a 24th century dog in the series with cropped ears. If Picard doesn’t say something like “An asshole cut up this poor dog’s ears. Barbaric!”, it will appear like cropping ears is still a normal thing in the future, that there are still veterinarians around who would do it.
The USA is so backwards in this regards. Kennel Clubs even still promote cropping ears and also docking tails. Showing more dogs of certain breeds with natural ears would help to promote their natural looks. Too many people who like certain breeds think they look “wrong” with natural ears, because they are so used to cut ears that normal ears look weird and bad to them. So it would really help to show more dogs with normal ears on TV. Maybe then the pressure would also increase on Kennel Clubs to change their standards. The best thing would be of course for the government to simply forbid this animal cruelty, but as long as this hasn’t happened yet, not promoting cropped ears is the least people should do.
Patrick Stewart didn’t like the fish tank in Picard’s ready room because he thought that Picard would be opposed to keeping an animal captive like that but the producers kept it.
So I’m wondering, if Spock and Nero went back and changed history into the Kelvin timeline, but we still have this original timeline as well, that means changing history doesn’t erase the original timeline. So all those stories about preventing history being changed were for nothing?
I think I remember them saying that red matter time travel works differently or something like that back when Trek XI came out.
Ah yes, red matter – also knows as McGuffinite. :-)
They changed the laws of time travel in Trek. Every time you go back you start another divergent timeline and can never return to your original one. So if Spock wanted to return to the prime timeline by slingshotting around the sun he would be in a third new timeline and not the first one.
Instead of alternate timeline they should have simply said alternate universe since it’s been established that such a multiverse exists. An alternate timeline always implies that the original has been overwritten.
Not to me. To me it implies that both timelines exist simultaneously. In fact, there are an infinite number of timelines out there simultaneously.
It was caused by Spock and Nero going back in time and changing history, which suggests an alternate timeline.
That’s what we were calling it here for a good while, until someone came up with “Kelvin Timeline”/KT, which really should have been “Kelvin Universe”. IMHO
You can have both. For example, Prime Spock could have tried to go back to his original timeline. We just didn’t see that. In fact instead of calling it Kelvin they could have called it Spock Prime TimeLine.
it’s definitely an Avengers way of looking at time travel :) I saw an article maybe last year where someone did some CRAZY extensive research on all the instances of Trek across all series where alternate timelines were created, and which we as the audience were “viewing”. I can’t find it now but it was pretty crazy.
I think rather than a timeline per se the Kelvin verse is a bubble Universe. Something like that
The Kelvin “timeline” is an alternate universe no different from the Mirror universe. They were both preexisting things that were traveled to. This is the only thing that makes sense (and the only way I can enjoy them) because of the things that were already different before the Narada arrived there:
Ships much larger
Kirk born in space (unless they were on their way to Earth but this seems unlikely)
Khan is a white British guy
Vulcan and Earth are closer? Earth to Vulcan was a multi-day trip in TOS (minutes or hours in Kelvin)
I think there are more that I can’t remember. I think Enterprise/TOS even had the Defiant travel through both time and universes, which I believe is what happened in Star Trek (2009)
The people we see are different biological people with the same names:
Chekov is the wrong age
There’s no way Zoe Saldana and Nichelle Nichols are supposed to be the same person.
Sulu is gay
I’m in full agreement here. While events might have otherwise played out the near the same had the Narada not arrived, its arrival created an even sharper diversion.
I assume that the attack on the Kelvin caused Winona to give birth a little bit earlier than she would have otherwise.
Its not canon, but the comics explain that Khan looked like Montalban when Section 31 found him on Botany Bay, but they altered his appearance so that he wouldn’t be recognized.
Technology was more advanced after the timeline split, presumably because they were able to reverse engineer some of Narada’s 24th century technology. That explains why they were able to travel from Earth to Vulcan so quickly.
Anyone born after the timeline split probably isn’t actually the same biological person as in the original timeline. Their parents lives were probably changed enough that they weren’t concieved at exactly the same time.
All the dialogue in the movie suggests that the different realities are caused by time travel. It is an alternate timeline, not a parallel universe.
Did anyone really doubt that Picard will go to space?
That was my thinking too. Who thought the show would be stuck in a vineyard for 10 episodes?
LOL
News with nothing “new”!
Clearly there were sufficient numbers of folks making too much of the vineyard scenes that Kurtzman felt the need to make the point.
🤦♂️
“Mr. Picard, sir, the grapes are ready to be crushed!”
“Make it so!”
I wanted him to open a wine bar on Earth and have drunken adventures with Worf.
Even then, I’m sure they’d go to space sometimes.
It would be the last of the summer wine.
It was only natural he would be tending his families vineyard. In the future everyone goes to space once in a while.
But will the his dog talk?
This guy’s asking the important questions!
He’ll be voiced by Frakes. True story.
It’ll be exactly like Pixar’s “Up.” Now we just have to find Picard’s old nemesis.
Is it just me or is Jean-Luc looking a little Eric Lescher-like in that pic?
It’s all about Picard and Worf, Picard opens a Bar named the Enterprise, and everyone does a cameo… Cheers revisited
Wouldn’t that be more Guinan’s thing?
She floated him the loan for the bar, because she saw in the future that it would be a success.
This is good news, but not exactly surprising. Picard without space is like Superman without flying, it just wouldn’t feel right. I have a feeling we will probably see him back in Starfleet by the end of the season as well. This could just be setting him up for his big return as he takes on a big mission and realizes how important he is to Starfleet.
Man Saturday can’t come soon enough!!!!
Well, back in the day, Superman just leapt tall buildings in a single bound.
Too much like John Carter.
Oof, not digging those comments.
I was expecting Picard to be an ambassador, but this sounds like he’s just a winemaker they drag into the fold perhaps as an advisor or maybe he’s just a passenger when sh*t goes down.
I was never big on the Romulas fall out as a series starter, but just as bad is if they bring up Picard struggling with the Borg again. I feel that has been dealt with already.
Hope I’m wrong on my assumptions
I’m hoping you’re right. Picard the Ambassador is boring and obvious. The destruction of Romulus is the logical jumping on point. Why wouldn’t it be? You’re full of bad takes.
I feel like Picard got some Borg closure in First Contact.
I LOVE that he has a cane.
You read between the lines, that he’s no longer in Starfleet but must still fight some injustice without the Federations’s resources at his disposal, and it seems to me like another TSFS/TVH type story where our hero (or heroes) go against the wishes of Starfleet to accomplish their mission. Personally, that feels like a tired trope if it ends up being the way they go with it, but then again after 50+ years of Trek, I guess it must be hard to come up with completely original ideas.
He will be a mercenary