‘The First Duty’ SDCC Exhibition Reveals ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Details

As part of their San Diego Comic-Con promotion of their upcoming Star Trek: Picard series, CBS All Access is holding a special exhibit at the Michael J. Wolf Gallery. The exhibit consists of screen-used props and costumes related to Jean Luc-Picard both from Star Trek: The Next Generation and the upcoming Picard show, with the “in-universe” conceit being the exhibit is celebrating Jean Luc-Picard by showing off artifacts from his life.

Exhibit confirms some ‘Picard’ details

The entrance of the exhibit features a portrait of Picard along with a placard off to the side providing the in-universe description of the event, which also ends up detailing some details about his life after Star Trek: Nemesis and before Star Trek: Picard.

One of Starfleet’s most decorated officers, Admiral Jean-Luc-Picard retired from Starfleet in 2386 after more than 50 years of service, returning to a quiet life tending to his family’s storied winemaking tradition in the Chateau Picard vineyards of La Barre, France.

Many of Picard’s personal mementos and rare artifacts from his life and career are stored in the Starfleet Museum Quantum Archives located at Starfleet Command headquarters in San Francisco.

For the first time, many of these artifacts are now available for view in a special touring exhibition celebrating his career of service and lifetime of dedication to the principles of Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets.

The year 2386 is significant as it is the year before the Hobus Supernova which destroyed Romulus as depicted in the 2009 Star Trek movie, an event which has been said to have “haunted” Picard leading into the new series.

Picard’s portrait and quote greet you at entrance to the “Jean-Luc Picard: First Duty” exhibition

The exhibit features a handful of elements from the upcoming series, with the highlight being his civilian outfit featured in the previously released teaser images. Notably, the placard describes it is as “Jean-Luc Picard Civilian Attire, 2399,” confirming Star Trek: Picard is set in the year 2399 — twenty years after Star Trek: Nemesis.

The placard offers a few more details on Picard’s post-Starfleet life:

Admiral Picard’s retirement has been marked by a return to his native La Barre France on Earth. Admiral Picard has put the same dedication and resolve that exemplified his Starfleet career into the family wine-making business. The clothing seen here is representative of the attire Amiral Picard wears on a typical day on the family estate as he tends to the vines and crafting of Chateau Picard’s celebrated wines.

Jean-Luc Picard’s civilian outfit from Star Trek: Picard

The outfit also has the nice detail of a pin with Picard’s family crest.

Picard family crest pin

There were also more artifacts from Picard’s vineyard including a case of wine with the following description:

A mainstay of the French countryside for centuries, the Picard family vineyards near La Barre continue to produce Chateau Picard, one of Earth’s premiere red wines. Far from home, Admiral Picard still received shipments of the wine and shared it with friends on special occasions both joyful and solemn. Though he initially eschewed “the family business” in favor of a career in Starfleet, Admiral Picard returned to his home in 2386 to take over the care of the vineyards, carrying on the tradition previously observed by his late elder brother, Robert.

Wine from Chateau Picard

Glasses and grapes from Chateau Picard

And the placard for a model of the USS Enterprise-E also added another data point to Picard’s post-Nemesis life, identifying the year he was promoted and left the ship. It also mentions a mysterious assignment. The placard reads in part:

Admiral Picard commanded the Enterprise-E until 2381, before he was promoted to admiral and given a special assignment by Starfleet Command.

Exhibit reveals Picard left the Enterprise-E in 2381

Artifacts from Picard’s life

Most are the other artifacts are recognizable props and costumes from Star Trek: The Next Generation, although they could show up again on Picard. And there have been some additions, including this page shown from the Picard family album seen in Star Trek: Generations, which now includes a photograph of a young Robert Picard holding a model for the NX-01 Enterprise from Star Trek: Enterprise, which premiered 7 years after Generations was made. [EDITOR’S NOTE: the newer photo of the young Picard brothers is originally from David A. Goodman’s The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard released in 2017.]

Picard family album

Additional artifacts highlight key moments from Picard’s life, both professional and personal.

Picard’s Ressikan flute

Borg Queen’s skull

Captain Picard’s dress uniform

Award for the development of the “Picard Maneuver”

Captain Picard Day banner

Check back later for an update with more photos of the historic artifacts from the exhibit.

More to come from SDCC

TrekMovie is on the scene and will be providing more updates all about Star Trek (and some Orville too) from San Diego Comic-Con.

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“Admiral Picard has put the same dedication and resolve that exemplified his Starfleet career into the family wine-making business.”

I literally laughed when I read this.

He will put his life on the line to make good wine.

The wine must be drawn HERE! (points to spigot on barrel)

Goddamn it, take your gold. :) 🏆

Ha! Can totally hear his voice yelling that. Excellent.

LOL!

Well played!

Brilliant! LOL!

This one literally made my day! I was actually hearing his voice when i read it. Had a really good laugh… 😁😁😁

You broke your little wine glasses.

We have a winner!

Why? I think it’s time for you to stop posting here, if all you intend to do is mock Star Trek.

How are they mocking it?

Calm down, he was just pointing out a funny line. And it is pretty funny.

Yeah. I think that line was put there as a joke in the first place.

If anyone needs to reconsider their posts, it’s you, sir, the fan who takes it all a little too seriously.

“Make it Bordeaux”

@Afterburn – Stop trying to gatekeep. Stop getting bent out of shape over JOKES. Your posts are far more problematic around here than ML31’s. Relax.

I am in agreement with the masses. Every time that line goes through my mind I start laughing; it is that good. Well done CaesarGJ

So if the show is still set in 2399, then either they moved the date of the destruction of Romulus to 2384, or the rescue mission he lead was unrelated to the supernova

Also not pictured in this article, they had a TNG style Bat’leth and a D’k tahg on display. Not 1:1 to TNG, but the changes are very small, casual fans probably wouldn’t notice.

Hell I didn’t even notice until I went and looked up a picture of the TNG ones.

The voiceover coukd have been rounding when she said it was 15 years.

The article in Entertainment Weekly also said 15 years.

I agree, the years don’t add up.

The text of the handout (photo with dog) says that ‘about 18 years ago’ Jean Luc led the rescue mission for Romulus.

So, that puts us in 2405.

I know Kirsten Beyer is tracking this for them, but I’m wondering if the PR folks are making sure she signs off on all the messaging.

I’m not sure if the writers appreciate how irritating this is the subset of geeky fanbase that thinks, creates, tells stories and dreams in the language of math.

I don’t expect them to understand L2 spaces, but getting basic arithmetic operations right and tracking numbers is deserving of better attention.

15 years, not 18, but yeah it’s off by 3 years. Maybe it had nothing to do with the Supernova though. None of articles coming out of the show mentioned it other then asking Kurtzman if it would factor in, and all he said was basically ‘we’ll see’.

You’re right, with better magnification, the text that accompanies the picture of Picard and the dog in the vineyard (i.e. the one with quotes from Kurtzman and Chabon featured in an earlier thread talks about a doomed rescue armada to save Romulus.

But it also says ‘was it really almost 17 years ago?’…not sure what that’s referring to other than real time since the release of Nemesis.

It’s referring to the real life time passed.

“Admiral Picard commanded the Enterprise-E until 2381, before he was promoted to admiral and given a special assignment by Starfleet Command.”

Maybe the special assignment has something to do with it. But he either was promoted and put on “special assignment” two years prior to the destruction of Romulus if it was 2384, or pulled back into service in 2387 (the original stated year), a year after retirement to deal with the destruction of Romulus.
The destruction haunts him.
And now he’s fighting to right an injustice… did Starfleet have something to do with the Hobus supernova, maybe?

Just to point out the obvious, this exhibit and the placards are not canon, so I’m not going to pay too much attention to these dates and details. Seems like a fun exhibit though.

I don’t think they would have written them if they hadn’t come from the show’s backstory.
Yes technically only stuff on screen is canon, but the info here probably came from the shows writers backstory for the TV series, so they’ll be my “head-canon” until contradicted by the show.

I am very excited.

“And this is my study, kids. Over here the Stargazer and the Enterprise… and the flute… that’s a long story. Oh, and over here we have the Borg Queen skull. I snapped her neck. See, right there. By the way, have I showed the new lights I had installed? There’s FOUR of them!”

LMAO! But this post really points out the crazy life Picard has lead. And people wrongly point out Picard just sat in his ready room drinking tea, but he seen a LOT of things and suffered quite a bit through his career. Picard probably had the most adversity than any other Captain in Star Trek and yes that’s saying a lot. ;)

Indeed.

I’ve heard some people ask why Picard had a counselor sitting next to him on the bridge. I’d like to know why he didn’t have TWO counselors sitting next to him! :)

The captain’s chair converted into a couch, like a La-Z-Boy.

Interesting. This seems to decanonize the Countdown comic
It ends with the destruction of Romulus and features Picard as the ambassador to Vulcan, while Data (in B-4’s body is Captain of the Enterprise-E.

Countdown was never canon in the first place.

It was said that it was to be considered canon from the beginning.

No it wasn’t. Orci said as much. He was pressured by the interviewer to say it was canon, but he said before that it wasn’t his decision to make it canon.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Countdown#Background_information

Well it was an official tie-in to the movie. They did the same thing for Into Darkness with Countdown to Darkness. The “Harry Mudd Incident” that gets them the civilian ship they use to go down to apprehend Khan is shown in that one.

Yes, but not canon, meaning they don’t need to acknowledge anything from it.

Yeah but Kurtzman seemed to want to tie that into Picard given that it’s part of their original Kelvin Timeline story and “happened” in the prime timeline. I’m a bit surprised they aren’t adhering more closely to it

This show will destroy 17 years worth of Trek novels that have been written since Nemesis.

Wouldn’t be the first time in Trek history. Personally I don’t have a problem with it.

It was fun while it lasted, but all good things must come to an end eventually.

The novels are good. Several are excellent science fiction, not just for tie-in fiction.

And CBS permitted them to continue to develop long range story arcs that took the whole universe forward, demonstrated that the 24th century could still provide worthy and fresh stories, and kept the fan-base alive.

TPTB didn’t have to write them out of canon, and could have worked around them given they are jumping another two decades ahead.

More to the point, anything on screen will be held up against the Relaunch novels for comparison. If it’s not remarkably better, why set that up?

Books are never canon. Ever. I picked up the Picard autobiography a couple years back and knew it wasn’t canon. That’s just the way these things are.

There’s a lot of things in Star Trek Online’s timeline that will probably conflict with what’s in this show. But it’s not canon. It’s just the game.

The books aren’t canon.

As Beyer has said about both the authorized long arc books and comics, they’re canon until superseded by something on screen.

CBS allowed Simon & Schuster and IDW to play in the sandbox without putting all the toys back where they were when they started.

If the arcs weren’t really great, I’d say it’s better to let them go. But they were great, so unless they have an amazingly better history to map out, why go there?

Because it limits creativity. Same reason the Star Wars EU was ignored.

An empty field is easier to walk than a minefield.

Uhm, this is the same reasoning that made the case that there was no creative space to go forward after Voyager returned to Earth.

Writers want an empty sandbox…but some great writers created great Trek stories that are more than worthy of becoming great Trek television.

Yes, I know most people don’t read for entertainment, and many who do assume tie-in fiction will be dreck. But the Relaunch novels WERE NOT DRECK.

They were certainly more readable than The Expanse series which both my spouse and I abandoned early in reading Leviation as ‘too derivative’. A DNF from both of us is rare. But it was deemed worthy of filming and is great on screen…but better Trek will be marginalized in order to give the Picard show creative freedom.

Yah, I’m sad about it, and I wonder why in Kurtzman’s strategic plan for many niches, paying attention to those of us that love the Relaunch novels was not in the plan.

By the way, as soon as I heard that Star Wars dumped the books, I became disinterested in the JJ movies. I’d already felt burnt by the prequel movies, and didn’t see the point of investing in more Star Wars stories.

A few of the better received elements from the Star Wars EU have worked their way back into official canon. So maybe not all will be lost with Trek as well.

It was one of the Trek novel writers on staff, Kirsten Beyer, that started the initial idea for the Picard show according to Kurtzman last year. She’s also the one who was laying out the backstory.

I seem to recall CBS stating that the novels were, in fact, canon. This must have changed. I’m looking for where I read or seen this info. Anyone else know?

They said in Season One of Discovery the tie in novels would be considered canon unless there was a pressing story need to contradict them in future seasons. To be fair the back story of Burnham’s parent’s dying because they waited to see a supernova was written by David Mack and incorporated into the show, however the rest of the novel that comes from has been contradicted, Spock hadn’t seen Burnham in years in season 2 (despite having an adventure with her the year before the battle of the binaries in Desperate Hours) and the nature of Saru’s home planet and oppressors was completely different.

Saying its canon sells more books, contradicting books might make a better show. Win lose

“Saying its canon sells more books…” This^

They never said they were canon, they said they were ‘as close to canon as possible’.

They never said the Discovery books were hard canon, they said they were as ‘close as canon as possible’ because they were working directly with the authors. But they outright said they were canon.

They also said they wouldn’t go out their way to make future stories compatible with the novels.

@TG47 – “More to the point, anything on screen will be held up against the Relaunch novels for comparison.” Only by the relatively small number of fans who read those novels or who care about such comparisons. Most fans haven’t read those books, and most fans won’t care if they’re superseded by the show.

This. Precious few will hold up what’s on screen to what’s on page. The vast and I mean VAST majority will not care or even know.

No it won’t. The novels will still be their. You can still read them.

Exactly.

Besides, anything that we don’t see portrayed on screen isn’t canon anyway.

It won’t destroy them. It will merely contradict them. We can live with that.

Holy cow, you’d think a bunch of TNG fans would be able to synchronize the transporter’s annular confinement beam to the warp core frequency and shift the chroniton particles into a high state of temporal polarisation. Thus keeping the books readable in their own timeline.

@Allan – Really? This show will burn every copy of every Trek novel from past 17 years and delete very digital copy? Wow, that’s an incredible feat for a mere streaming sci-fi show. Such incredible power–make a show, eliminate texts from existence!!!!

Or, just possibly, you’re being ridiculously melodramatic about absolutely nothing. The novels aren’t canon and have never been canon. Every Trek show and movie that has come out has “destroyed” non-canon books.

Methinks you’re a bit histrionic over nothing.

Your right, never considered that before.
This must be what the Star Wars fans felt like when Disney wiped everything.
I’ve only read a few books, but it always sucks when the trek universe becomes even less cohesive

One would think that TPTB might have looked at the backlash in the Star Wars community and thought ‘Let’s not do that’.

Why not learn from others’ failures in brand management?

The backlash from the Star Wars community wasn’t annoyance at wiping out the books. It was annoyance at what they thought were less than stellar movie outings from Last Jedi and Solo. No one but the hardest of hard core fans had any issue with wiping out the novels.

Yes, ML31 the JJ SW movies were less than stellar.

But it’s all the easier for fans to critique them when there’s a more appealing and successfully executed storyline in print.

Frankly I find the Relaunch novel arc better, and the best of them are head and shoulders above the Star Wars books.

Maybe. Maybe not. But the fact is the vast majority by far aren’t even aware of the existence of Star Wars in print. Only the movies and perhaps the Disney animation.

And this matters because….?

It matters because it means that, as much as I applaud Kurtzman’s enlarged strategic vision for Trek, the vision is still too small.

GOT and The Expanse have a lot of fans here…and they are based on…BOOKS.

Discovery is rightly critiqued for lacking coherence and continuity in writing.

So, where is the broader strategic vision that says “Let’s take the very best, excellent Trek-lit and bring it to the screen”?

It would be an adaptation, not verbatim, but where is the big-picture view of the value of the franchise that crushes the value of the published literature rather than capitalizing on 17 years of great writing to make our on-screen Trek richer and more grounded.

Clearly, they are taking a few beats from Countdown for Picard…and maybe that was legally easier because Kurtzman has rights for that, but I’m not buying the ‘writers need their freedom’ argument.

So, for you it’s not so much that a number of the post Nem novels are being wiped out. It’s that TPTB opted to do their own thing and not use said novels as source material for their new TV shows. At least, that is how I read you.

It also feels disingenuous to compare Trek to GoT. As you said, those STARTED as books. Trek started as a TV show. The books only came after it got popular and were officially never meant to be canonical. Unlike the GoT source material.

What I don’t like is that this move has rendered the value of some excellent Trek IP to effectively zero.

Basic finance theory: always better to have the option.

But the option to bring these great Trek stories to the screen has now been eliminated given the high-level strategic position that anything on television will be Prime Universe.

So, a loss for CBS, a loss for the publisher and authors…

An economic externality that didn’t need to happen … and shows that, while Kurtzman is very bright, he and CBS still weren’t as yet doing the financial math at the scale of the entire property rather than just the CBS television piece.

They’re not going to lose as much money as you think. Novel readers make up a small percentage of Star Trek’s revenue, and I say this as a big fan of the books.

And the authors on twitter don’t seem to be that upset about it. David Mack tweeted saying “They have a plan”

https://twitter.com/DavidAlanMack/status/1152353227154907138

Anyways, according to one of the Devs from STO, CBS asked them for all their post-Nemesis lore for some reason, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they looked at all the books too. Maybe we’ll see some small nods in the show.

Sigh…

There’s a difference between ‘losing money’ and suboptimal investment by taking a path that destroys the value of existing investments. That is, downside losses aren’t always tangible.

It’s good to know Mack says there is a plan and is buying into it.

So you think that because TPTB opted to not use stories that you personally liked, it means that they made a financial error regarding the future of their Star Trek universe.

Pretty sure I cannot agree with that.

Unlike with Star Wars, the cool thing about Trek is how often it’s dealt with alternate universes. So you could say the novels just exist in one of those. It’s saul’good, man!

I think one issue is that there is a lot of novel continuity that most fans aren’t aware of. Talking about Tezwa, or the Borg invasion would be cool for those of us who have read the novels, but it would just be alienating for everyone else. Its best to just let the novels exist in their own continuity, but for the TV show to ignore it.

I think so too, Legate. At best the shows can pick up elements from the novels as perhaps a wink to their fans. But they really should each be their own entity.

I believe the picture in the album of the boy holding the NX-01 is from the Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard

Yeah, a user on TrekBBS has said a few pictures at the Exhibit came from that book.

interesting… a freind of mine gave me a copy of the books and always hoped they would catch some of the book in the show.

Wouldn’t be the first time this team has used stuff from the reference books.

Most of the maps seen in Discovery Season 1 and 2 are based off or copied straight from the Star Charts book released in 2002.

God, this entire exhibit just makes me giddy! We are definitely back in the TNG era again. Seeing the model of Enterprise E makes me smile and MAYBE a hint we may see her again on the new show.

And I really love they are going to tie him directly into the destruction of Romulus! I never understood people who thought they would just somehow ignore or not acknowledge probably the single biggest event in the alpha quadrant post-Dominion War. I know many just hate the Kelvin movies but canon DOES mean something. And happy its going to be a big part of the story. The Kelvin movies will oddly live on through this show if there really are no more of those movies.

Before we got details about the Picard show, I was scared that they would ignore it. As you said, that is probably one of the biggest events of the 24th century, so you can’t just ignore it. I didn’t know what they were allowed to reference from the Abrams movies because of the CBS/Paramount split though. I’m glad that they seem to be fully embracing it.

I’ve always argued anything outside of a direct crossover they should be allowed to reference whatever they want since they are giving Paramount the chance to use the prime universe in the first place. It would be bizarre Paramount is given the freedom to change whatever they want from it but then CBS couldn’t have permission to acknowledge it. In fact my guess is if anything Paramount begged them to use it and Nimoy to establish their own universe with the Kelvin. So it was always obvious (at least to me) they could use it.

But of course it doesn’t mean they would have to acknowledge it or ignore it for awhile but I’m really happy its going to directly be part of the show. Maybe if Kurtzman wasn’t creating the show and it was a completely new team altogether they may not have done it but its finally expanding the PU again. The franchise really needs this.

“The franchise really needs this.” Yes it certainly does, Tiger. And for the first time since the 09′ film, between Picard and the QT film, I’m excited to see what’s in store for Trek. DSC is going to have to go a long way to win me over, but anyway it’s a good feeling.

Yes its such a great feeling. I was certainly interested and curious when the first Kelvin movie and then Discovery were announced (after they announced the setting) but I was never that excited about either. Definitely happy to see Trek continuing but this show is what got me excited again as a genuine fan. Its a great feeling and I hope it speaks to the future of Star Trek. Just hopefully its good. ;)

I was on the other end, hoped to ignore every part of the jjverse even the supossed ‘Prime timeline’ parts. But so far it’s infected everything new coming out. Discovery’s choice to ape the kelvin universe aesthetic is one of my greatest disappointments

DSC’s aesthetic looks nothing like the Kelvin Universe other than sharing the bridge window idea.

Let’s put it this way. It looks a ton closer to the KU than it does to the PU. For me the main difference between the two is just lightning.

The split is going to be a moot point. Expect an announcement on merger discussions on August 8th.

The plaque for Data’s paintings on display mentions that Picard kept the paintings “following Data’s death”. So will B-9 not be considered Data if he appears?

Of course not. He’s a different person. Even if he has Data’s memories he wouldn’t be Data.

“So will B-9 not be considered Data if he appears?” I think you mean B-4, unless you’re expecting a crossover with the classic Lost in Space. ;)

You are right lol, I completely forgot what number he was.

It would make for a funny crossover. “Danger! Danger, Will Riker!” I can just hear Picard saying “You blithering blockhead!” :)

Holy crap! Patrick Stewart should have been cast as Dr Smith in the LiS redo!

I hope the show adopts the same attention to detail that’s on display throughout this exhibition.

Reminds me of that old Johnny Carson bit when he was make up to look like Orson Welles:

“What Paul Masson said nearly a century ago is still true today. We will sell no wine before it’s time.” (*glances at his watch*) “It’s TIME.” (rips the seal off and chugs the whole bottle)

“Quantum archives”
Lol
Throw in a space thing for the museum name. Anything will do, this is space sh*t

On another note, I am happy we’re getting solid dates. Now Off to memory alpha to see how it all fits in!!

I thought all this stuff got sold off at auction years ago?

Unless they had multiples of all these props etc and CBS/Paramount kept 1 or 2 of each?

Maybe CBS/Paramount asked to borrow them for the exhibit? It’s happened before. I also recall that some items did have clauses in the sale that CBS reserved the right to repurchase the item from the buyer.

Or, just as easily, they remade it or found a replica.

Paramount has a history of passing off replicas as screen used props. The Star Trek Experience at Las Vegas had lots of props that were replicas, including a TOS Communicator. The event guide told us that they were actual props. Maybe he didn’t know that they weren’t.

Well CBS they never claimed these are actual show/movie props, other than the Picard show ones.

This makes no sense. Why would he have already left Starfleet before the destruction of Hobus, and yet led the rescue armada? Was that the “special assignment from Starfleet?” Why the secrecy if it’s already been stated in the promo? Mismanaged PR or just screwy years? Either way it’s screwed up and the show hasn’t even aired. Great. As long as this isn’t the “Depressing Old Social Justice Warrior Picard Show” I’m okay with it. Considering how ultra political Patrick Stewart and the rest of the TNG types (and Discovery types) have become, I’m quite uneasy about how this is going to go.

So did they surgically repair the Borg Queen’s spine?