The third season of Star Trek: Picard has already been filmed and it will feature the return of the main cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Now showrunner Terry Matalas is dropping more hints about the final chapter of Picard.
Not the Stargazer
This weekend showrunner Terry Matalas shared a short video from the set of season three, which began shooting right after season two wrapped last September. The video shows the crew being informed not to sit in the bridge chairs unless their name is Terry or Doug (director Doug Aarniokoski).
And just as Season 2 ended, Season 3 began. #StarTrekPicard w/@dougaa pic.twitter.com/KqXJO8gdaD
— Terry Matalas (@TerryMatalas) May 7, 2022
From the time shooting began on season three last September, Matalas has been sharing images of the bridge and other sets of a Starfleet ship that is going to be a major part of season three. In the season two opener and closer, we saw the USS Stargazer, which has led to the assumption that the above video and all the images shared during the production of season three are also the Stargazer, with it assumed to be be the central ship for season three. However, this weekend when a fan inquired about the video from the start of shooting on season three asking, “Should we take this to indicate that the Stargazer is a part of season 3?” Matalas revealed “That is not the Stargazer.” He also added a little smirking face emoji with that little bombshell.
That is not the Stargazer. 😏
— Terry Matalas (@TerryMatalas) May 7, 2022
Clearly, the ship shown in the video uses the same bridge set built for the Stargazer and it is hard to see any major differences. Redressing sets for different ships is of course nothing new in Star Trek. This leaves the intriguing question of what ship could it be? And will the Stargazer have any role in season three?
The season two finale also sets up a question about Seven and the Stargazer. Picard gave her a field commission and put her in charge of the ship in the season two finale. This could be setting up Seven to finally be part of Starfleet for season three, but does she stay with the Stargazer, or join this other ship?
Jeri Ryan as Seven in command of the Stargazer in the season two finale
More season 3 character clues
The return of the TNG cast includes another character mystery. What role will Brent Spiner be playing? With Spiner’s TNG character Data finally being put to rest in season one of Picard, a fan suggested that Spiner could be playing “another Soong” or possibly Lore, Data’s evil twin brother. Matalas replied, indicating Spiner would be playing something else.
Or C.
— Terry Matalas (@TerryMatalas) May 6, 2022
A good guess for Spiner’s role in season three would be a return to his season one character of the cyberneticist Dr. Altan Inigo Soong, who was last seen on the Synth homeworld in 2399. So while it would be a Soong, technically it wouldn’t be “yet another Soong,” since he has already played the part. The only clue so far is Spiner’s dialog heard in voice-over in the season three cast announcement video saying “Evolution is not an act of preservation. It’s addition,” which fits with the character of Altan Soong. However, with Spiner, one never knows what role he could wind up playing in Star Trek.
Brent Spiner as Altan Soong in season one of Picard
Another fan question Matalas cryptically answered this weekend was about the possibility of seeing Laris in season three. The season two finale ended with Laris and Picard finally coming together. Picard being able to express his love was the entire point of Q’s time travel lesson for the season. Asked if we will “get to see Laris and Jean Luc together in season 3,” Matalas replied “Yes. But…”
Yes.
But…
— Terry Matalas (@TerryMatalas) May 8, 2022
As indicated in our report earlier in the week, Orla Brady indicated she wrapped up her work playing Laris early on during the production of season three. So it’s possible that Matalas is indicating Laris appears in season three, but isn’t a major part of the season.
Patrick Stewart as Picard and Orla Brady as Laris in the season two finale
ICYMI: Season 3 cast announcement
There is no word yet on when the third season of Star Trek: Picard will debut.
Sounds like an Enterprise to me.
If it is not the Stargazer, then the Enterprise is really the only thing that makes sense. Otherwise it seems like just a random starship with no meaningful ties to past Picard history in its name.
I see your Enterprise and raise you the Excelsior.
I just don’t invision them spoiling an Enterprise reintroduction set even if redressed by introducing it the way it was this season. Could be wrong. Plus having them all back on the Enterprise seems so on the nose. Not saying that I wouldn’t love it but I just don’t see it.
This is partly what bothers me about Trek and ship names…… when the Enterprise was destroyed in TSFS, the crew got a new enterprise….. when the enterprise d was destroyed in GEN, the crew got a new enterprise. When the defiant was destroyed in DS9, they got a new defiant. Can’t the crew just get another starship with a new name?
When the Defiant was destroyed, it would have been cool if they got something called the Resilient, the Adamant, or the Truculent….. “There are plenty of bad ass adjectives…..”
(I know the inworld reason for why they renamed it the Defiant so they didn’t have to redo all the CG models of the Defiant… but my point stands)
JLP is what 95 in the show?
How old is Laris supposed to be ? I know Vulcans live like 200 years …
So do Romulans. She’s Romulan
That was David’s point. Romulans ARE Vulcans. Their society only split as a society a few thousand years in the past. They’re the same species: Vulcan.
I know they started as Vulcans, but I thought the species diverged during that time? I remember Chekov saying something about their differences when trying to beam Spock off the Romulan ship in The Enterprise Incident.
A few thousand years is not enough time for speciation to occur.
Well not naturally.
If we don’t get an Enterprise next season fans will be rioting! And it will be a great not to have just one Enterprise next year but possibly three if we get one on this show and another if a Kelvin movie actually happens next year along with SNW of course. It can be a crazy year of Enterprises!
It’s nice they confirmed Laris will at least be back next season. I’m doubting it will be a big role and probably closer to what she had in season 1 unless she actually goes on the adventure this time or they meet her Mirror Universe version or something.
But it’s pretty funny, Matalas has been talking way more about season 3 than season 2 including when it was running lol. This is obviously the season he’s really passionate about and hope it turns out WAY better.
Maybe four… There have been far too many NX-01 related easter eggs in all Star Trek shows to be ignored. The snowglobe, Archer’s spacedock, young Picard playing with the NX-01 refit, the USS Archer in SNW… Something is coming. I can feel it! They kept the entire TNG cast a secret during filming Season 3… So…
I assume its only a matter of time before they do something with Enterprise again but I highly doubt it will be next year though unless you’re just talking in general. They already have five shows running next year since they all been renewed for another season and has said both the Academy show and Section 31 is (supposedly anyway) next and one of them will probably be replacing Picard first.
But yes I also think eventually something will come for the NX-01 crew! I would personally choose that over the Academy show and definitely Section 31 starring Space Hitler in a heartbeat. And I would love if we got the refit now that Picard made it canon!
Meh.
I am really finding that I have no enthusiasm for anything involving Picard now.
I probably won’t drop in on these threads teasing season three given that my cautious optimism for season two was completely unearned.
Fortunately, I have more Prodigy, Lower Decks and SNW to look forward to, and Discovery entertains more often than not.
Well you know my feelings on Picard at the moment and right there with you. Maybe in a few months and they start dropping real hints and clues I can start to get enthusiastic about it. But season 2 left such a bitter taste in my mouth I have not had since these new shows started.
I’m not even super excited about SNW right now even though I did really like the first episode; but here is the thing I’ve liked every first episode of these live action shows every season at that. It doesn’t always stay as great as Picard just proved once again. But if we are at episode 5 and its still generally decent then I can get more into that as well. I am optimistic but just cautious about everything right now, especially if Goldsman is running it. This guy is proving to be the worst.
I’m hoping “third time’s the charm”. I didn’t hate either Season 1 or 2, but neither really fulfilled the show’s potential or lived up to the legacy. Maybe Season 3 will end things on a high note.
I think the window may have closed for the time being on an Enterprise follow-up. Scott Bakula is doing a new series on NBC (and unfortunately it isn’t the Quantum Leap relaunch.)
Sure but the entire TNG cast is coming back together 20 years later and I don’t think anyone really thought this would happen again. I think one thing Star Trek has proven, until you’re dead, there is always a chance to come back. They pulled Nimoy from retirement to do the Kelvin films again and he was in his 80s.
But I’m not holding my breath either. I’m not saying it’s a guarantee but definitely possible.
And the Quantum Leap thing really bother me too.
I think I miss Bones the most :(
i think he might appear eventually. Its a sequel, not a reboot.
Maybe Section 31 is in the 22nd century…
Yeah, it sure was odd that they started promoting season three when season two was barely half over.
I think I read that when Matalas was signed up, he was going to be the showrunner for S3 only. I was surprised to see his name on the credits for S2, but this may have simply been a “courtesy” credit.
I would not be surprised to hear he in actuality had little to do with S2.
I would also not be surprised to hear his latest post is designed as some form of damage control following Sir Patrick’s latest interview.
Btw, a lot of post production can be added to the finalized version of what ends up actually on the screen in S3.
Really? OK, that’s news to me then if true. But reading and listening more from others, it sounds like Matalas main contribution to season 2 was write the first two episodes, which obviously were the two most people loved and that gives me some hope season 3 won’t be another dud. But I still think if he was named a show runner, he must outlined the season with the others. He wasn’t just given another ‘producer’ credit, he did have a lot of creative influence on the show. It was his idea to use both Q and have the season be time travel based.
What did Patrick Stewart say in the interview? I haven’t seen or read it. Did he call the season a travesty and one of the worst things ever produced in Star Trek since TATV? If so, then maybe it will be worth reading.
Haha, too funny! No, but he did make it clear S3 was not going to be all the old gang together again, flying around the galaxy.
Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah some fans really seem bothered by that statement. I’m not really worried on that end. I think Stewart just doesn’t want people think the entire season will be a bunch of member berries or a lot of ‘hey remember THIS????’. He probably just means they will show the characters having different lives today and not so focused on the past. I thought how they handled Riker and Troi in Nepenthe was perfect and it wasn’t just referencing old TNG episodes for an hour.
You are correct Tiger2 and I must have remembered incorrectly – Trekmovie did officially announce Matalas was indeed brought in for S2. My alternate reality memory must have stemmed from wishful thinking haha!!
I went back to the Trekmovie.com interview with Matalas from March 3rd and I think you will be very very happy to read his following response about S3 of Picard.
“We’ve very nearly completed production—by the time this runs, we’ll be days away from the finish line—and while I can’t say much, I will say: I think it’s shaping up to be an extraordinary season of television. It’s incredibly different from the two seasons before it…”
LOL, if I read that in March I wouldn’t look at that last sentence so cynically as I do now. I think he’s basically admitting the first two seasons sucked in a subtle way. Yeah, it sounds great, but I still remain skeptical until we get or see something more.
At least Goldsman has nothing to do with next season so that alone is very comforting. ;)
Rioting? I thin that’s a bit hyperbolic. The truth is, many fans seem to be pretty apathetic about PICARD. Plus, I’ve almost never seen anyone pushing for a new Enterprise.
I’m joking. In reality, it will just be people screaming in BIG CAPS on the internet about it. ;)
But I disagree with your second point. I’ve seen plenty of people wanting a new Enterprise or at least the E-E back.
I’m thinking that photo is from the latest Enterprise (-F?) or a ship in a similar class.
Okay, last week I finally binge-watched PIC Season 2. Since I know you and everyone else here have been waiting to hear my thoughts (j/k), here goes:
1. I’ll try not to be too negative, mainly because there’s enough real-life nasty stuff going on in the world. Frankly I also feel guilty about being too nitpicky, given Patrick Stewart’s age and the obvious effort he’d put into Season 2.
2. I didn’t hate it, because I was managing my expectations after Season 1. Mostly bemused, sometimes amused, occasionally confused. It was fine as a generic entertaining sci-fi show, like many others on TV. But not as an example of Star Trek, and it was obviously not even remotely as good as Yesterday’s Enterprise or In the Pale Moonlight (for example).
3. I may be wrong, but I got the impression that the overall “vibe/atmosphere” they were going for was similar to “Superman & Lois”, with varying levels of success. S&L is a much better show, but if you’ve seen it you can notice the tonal similarities in PIC S2.
4. Production values in PIC S2 were actually very good.
5. Quite a few plot holes and retcons.
6. I’ll admit to smiling at the “Project Khan” and “1996” thing. There are various ways to interpret that stuff, of course.
7. Orla Brady was great. Nice that she had plenty to do in this season.
8. James Callis was a fantastic surprise and he was brilliant as always. Nice to finally have him in the Trek family. Shame he wasn’t cast in a role as part of the main regular cast on one of the new Trek shows. (Also, maybe SNW should cast him as Kor. Think about it ;))
9. This is more of a humourous thing rather than something negative, but I thought Agnes Jurati (pre-Borg) often sounded/acted like someone who’d accidentally wandered over from Succession.
10. Soong and early-S2 Q acted like characters from Billions or Succession. Maybe that was intentional.
11. Picard and late-S2 Q acted like they were from a completely different universe to the TNG timeline. (In fact, by the end they came across as people from the Superman & Lois universe! Fine for S&L, but jarring for Trek, despite John de Lancie’s superb subtle acting in his final scene).
12. Young Guinan was an entertaining contrast to Whoopi Guinan. The voodoo/magic lamp thing was dodgy as hell, though.
13. Spending eons travelling through space and time seems to have turned Wesley Crusher into “Wil Wheaton from The Big Bang Theory”. It’s possible that was a deliberate in-joke, but I kept expecting Sheldon to jump out from behind a bush and say “Hey, it’s Wil Wheaton! Why aren’t you on one of the new Star Trek shows yet?”
14. I’d suspected they were building up to a Stargazer spinoff after PIC S3, with Rios as the captain. But no. Huge shame Santiago Cabrera is now out of the story — I felt he was the breakout star on PIC. The guy definitely has the charisma and acting skills to be the lead on his own Trek show.
15. Some of my predictions for S2 were sort-of right, but most of them ended up wide of the mark.
JAI!
How are you? Man, long time. I don’t think I’ve seen you here in months. Maybe you been posting in places I haven’t been though.
Anyway I share a lot of your points. And since you took the time to make so many of them, I’ll respond to some of them (not all lol) directly!
1.. I don’t like to be overly negative either. I know end of the day all of this is just entertainment/escapism, it’s not going to affect our lives much. And I know everyone has the best intentions. But when you’re paying for these shows people are going to be honest.
2.. The crazy thing is before the show started I was keeping my expectations lower too because how much I thought season one sucked. But as usual they were saying all the right things and I loved all the trailers…just like first season. I was still cautious though. But once the first episode aired, I became confident we were in for a great season and got my hopes way up after that. Big mistake lol.
3.. I’ve only seen the first half of Superman and Lois season one so far. I plan to watch all of it but yeah so backed up on time with all the content these days and I keep rewatching Star Trek lol. But can’t really comment on that end until I see more.
4.. Yeah production values are always great on these shows but I feel it wasn’t as strong as last years. Some of the effects looked a bit cheaper to me, especially when compared to Discovery.
5.. There were quite a few indeed. I wrote enough about them here and other places though so won’t go into it. And it’s all been covered.
6.. I didn’t mind it, but I am over Khan. I am hoping it’s just a cool tie in to Arik Soong and his Augment story line on Enterprise, which was ten times better than this mess.
8.. I really liked James Callis too but yeah I kind of wish they gave him a different role so we could actually see him again.
11.. Agreed. But sadly I feel like something is off about Stewart playing Picard in general. It’s probably just his age and everything. De Lancie was great but feel most of it was squandered.
12.. The bottle thing was horrible. It felt like we were watching a different show entirely. And I can’t for the life of me figure out why they would be given a direct line to a species that supposedly hated them? But the problem is you get a headache thinking too hard about anything in this season. ;)
13.. I was truly excited to see Wesley back but yeah Wheaton could’ve been stronger too.
14.. Honestly I think most of us did. They went out of their way to make Riios a Captain and then gave him a ship of Picard’s old ship name. It sort of felt like they were symbolically passing the torch to him and the rest of the characters to carry the show when Stewart left. But NOPE! It’s a little funny (and sad) now reading posts after the first episode here and other boards how everyone was predicting how each character would play a role on the ship (Raffi will be the new first officer, Elnor will be a cadet or ensign in Security, Dr. Jurati will have a role in engineering somewhere and on and on). That dream was crushed! And yeah if nothing else at least keep Rios around another season. He became a big fan favorite but they wanted the TNG crew back. So do I, but not like this.
15.. Don’t feel bad, mine are always off the mark lol. I don’t really even bother making theories these days, they are never even close. I remember coming up with ideas on what the ‘divergent’ could be that changed the timeline and of course it was based on old story lines like Picard never got assimilated or Romulus didn’t get destroyed. Or that the Bell Riots didn’t happen since they landed in the same year. Instead it was some new random story about his great ancestor not flying into space and picking up some organism or something. This is why I don’t bother making theories anymore. ;)
Wow ended up responding to more than I thought I would. Anyway, great to see you back again!
“That is not the Stargazer.”
Let’s make sure, history never forgets, the name… Enterprise!
FWIW, it appears they’re going to retcon the “window with augmented reality overlays” to past versions of the various ships.
In this link you can see a promo poster done for Round 2 models for the recent Mission Chicago event and you can see where they’ve put an obvious window on the bridge of the TOS E.
You’re incorrect about that. That white area was always there, it was part of the changes made to the Enterprise studio model between The Cage and Where No Man Has Gone Before. That’s a promo for Round 2’s TOS pilots version model kit, not the final series version.
Thanks Matt, I always laugh at the naysayers who are so certain that the Enterprise NEVER had a window for the bridge when I knew I had seen pictures of the Enterprise with just that! Of course it never made it to the finalized TOS version of the Enterprise.
Who sez it or the other odd light areas are windows? The dome on top certainly isn’t.
Also the whole not needing windows thing was something Probert even made a point with on his SURAK shuttlecraft for TMP, which also has no windows.
I love the window. It’s very organic.
I don’t have a clip, but in Catspaw, didn’t Kirk look into the tiny Enterprise through a front window? Or did I imagine that?
That was REQUIEM FOR METHUSELAH, and he was looking at the ship from the front, but seen from inside as looking directly ahead, so it gave the [wrong] impression that he was looking in.
Thank you, I couldn’t remember exactly. Interestingly, that would show it was a screen, since it was picking up a feed from the side rather than directly in front.
Still, I like the window. One of the few things I liked about the Kelvinprize.
That’s nice looking art. Paul Shipper?
That Laris news means there’s a non-zero chance she’s killed in the premiere which could suggest that the season is a revenge arc for Picard.
DaiMon Bok blows her up. Picard be raging.
“raging” lol
Or she goes to work for Starfleet to help root out any other Romulan infiltrators like Commodore Oh and Narissa and the “one last road trip” is Picard rounding up the old gang to go rescue her from the Tal Shiar, which considers her a traitor.
“Oh… my God!”
“Actually, I’m just a Commodore.”
…And lame fridging of loved ones to provide motivation or transformation is once again the go-to lazy writing hack for this show.
However, given that Matalas is tasked with salvage duty with the final season, I’m inclined to be forgiving.
The new bridge looks like a Vegas casino.
Loosest slots in the Alpha Quadrant!
Worf’s influence from his years hanging out at Quark’s casino?
I hope it is the Enterprise and Worf is the Captain and in the end Seven becomes first Officer,with supported by Janeway and Picard and Worf !
Did they raise Liberace from the dead to design that bridge? It looks like a post-modern chandelier.
Awful.
I love looking at it…a lot…
Glad to see I’m not a voice in the wilderness on this aspect. It’s like somebody colorized the AbramsVerse with a gilded spatula.
It looks as if it is from the 80’s or if not in HD then from Blake’s 7
Another example of designers on these shows just doing what they think looks “awesome”, rather than giving any logical in-universe thought at all to how people would actually fare working in such an environment day in/out. The slightest explosion and rocking would gave those three in the command area rolling down the stairs! Appallingly thought out, and looks terrible too. God I miss the era of a more common sense attitide towards scripts, how characters act and industrial design.
We’re into a phase now when Trek might well veer fully into SW territory, where you have giant pits inside the ship that characters can too easily fall lnto. Oh wait, we were already there with INTO DARKNESS, where they have circular hallways and a wide open deep space within that circle. And that’s not even getting into ID’s engineering set, which seems guaranteed to lose staff to death falls at a rate far outstripping anything seen before, even in the refit engine room.
We will see Laris played by Brent Spiner. The ship is the USS Galaxy. The ship will also be played by Brent Spiner.
This reads like it was written by AI.
That is because I am a Soong type android. I also resemble Brent Spiner.
They’ve probably had you churning out the scripts …
There’s also that picture Doug Drexler posted on Facebook after the last day on set.
I smell Enterprise-F
I do, too. I’d love to see this set up Star Trek: The Third Generation, but I question that Secret Hideout would want two concurrent series set on a USS Enterprise, especially with a fourth Bad Robot movie on the horizon. Enterprise overdose?
What would really be meta is if the main antagonist in Kelvinverse 4 are synthetics. Then it would not only be a Bad Robot movie, but also a bad robot movie.
No.
Just…no.
If an Enterprise appears, it should be the good ol’ Enterprise-E. These ships are built to last. They aren’t just disposable. Heck, there were Sovereign-class starships in Season 2 of Picard. The class is still perfectly viable and there is no reason Starfleet would replace the Enterprise unless she was hopelessly damaged or destroyed. And, if that is the case, then that calls into question how safe it is to serve on an Enterprise.
Consider:
That means that three of the previous 5 ships before the Enterprise-E were destroyed or retired after less than 10 years of service. The original Enterprise was destroyed. The only Enterprises we don’t know the fate of are the Enterprise-B and the Enterprise-E. It begins to narratively stretch credulity if the Enterprise-E also doesn’t last long (Picard takes place 20-ish years after the last time we saw the Enterprise-E in Star Trek: Nemesis).
We have seen other Excelsior-class ships and Oberth-class ships last 80 years in TNG, but we can’t have an Enterprise that lasts that long?
As I said above: Just no.
To be fair though, I do believe that if we see an Enterprise in Season 3, it will be a new Enterprise. The creators of modern Trek just can’t help themselves with that type of thing. If an explanation for the new ship is given in an episode, it’ll probably be something along the lines the new Enterprise continues the great legacy of the ships that came before it. Or, that the Federation always wants its flagship to be an Enterprise, which means naming the latest and greatest ships, or some such.
But, I really hope not.
The Enterprise is usually meant to be the flagship of the Federation so its not out of the realm of possibility that a new class of ship is built and it is named the Enterprise and the old Enterprise just gets a different name.
NX-01 played a huge role in the founding of the Federation, and the original 1701 in its expansion and consolidation. It makes sense, from a PR standpoint, that Starfleet would want to keep an Enterprise front and center. (The US Navy even does it, to a lesser degree.)
First scene in season 3 is a flash back to Worf in command of the E in battle, which then gets blown up. Flash forward to Picard touring the newly built Enterprise-F.
Sure, fine with me.
If not the Enterprise-E? At least tell us what happen to the E so we know why we get an F.
That bridge is regal as fuck. I love it.
If Par + had done something in the vein of Lynch’s DUNE, this is how it would have turned out (blah)
It really is. I really really wanted more of it in season 2.
In fact, we didn’t get any of it in season two, per this article. The bridge I’m referring to is the bridge that Terry Matalas revealed is NOT the Stargazer like we all thought it was. The topic of the pic in question in season three entirely.
well, we’ve see the Titan’s bridge in Lower Decks and it’s not that
Spiner could be play B-Gone, B-Low, B-Dazzle – any number of long lost soong-droids there could be
Or Holodeck Data like how he played Holodeck Soong in Inheritance.
In the words of Rupaul, don’t fuck it up, Terry.
That has to be the tackiest set — this side of the emperor’s pipe organ throne room in dscs1 — so far this century in trek. How the hell can you walk down the steps safely, and how many are going to be falling down them from a phaser attack. The color scheme is PIMPMOBILE!
Seriously. That number of steps on a bridge would be a safety hazard. That setup is gaudy.
This was actually the bridge they used for the Stargazer in season 2. Go back to the first episode. The steps are right there. You can clearly see them around the 28 minute mark. As far as I remember the bridge was very well received.
Haven’t seen any of s2, or I’d’ve mentioned it already.
Every time there’s a new set, I automatically check for how ridiculously high the ceiling is, how trippable things seem, and the level of idiocy with respect to having lights shining in your face as you try to do your job at any given workstation.
I assume you could tune down the pimpmobile aspect by just changing the light color — if all those lights are LED and programmable, which given current trends, is almost certain — so if you dialed the steps down and turned them more toward the blue end, it may well be it looked more E-e like, but you’ve still got a crazy number of steps and what seems like a steep and dangerous placement.
The lighting in the picture above is definitely very different from the lighting they actually used on the show.
Enterprise F. That’s all she wrote.
Enough Spiner. He is one note. Not a great actor with range. Good as Data. Annoying as everything else. It may explain why he has never been cast in much outside Trek. Just being blunt. The story of Picard did not need him playing his absurd Bond villain.
Who has confidence in the team behind Picard? Very few people. They took a great opportunity with a great cast and wrote it into a dumpster. It was not just bad Trek. It was cringe-worthy bad TV. So disappointing. We don’t need to be thankful for abhorrently armature and asininely absurd Trek content that tarnishes the legacy of these characters.
Maybe place the team behind prodigy in charge of the franchise? They have demonstrated that they can make compelling television. The Picard team should be booed online and at conventions for the injury they have inflicted with their well meaning but mediocre talents.
Hopefully when the P+ numbers are looked at for Picard and the show has low rewatch metrics, this team of disappointing people will not be invited back on other projects. Let market forces speak.
Market forces seem to ‘favor the foolish,’ so I wouldn’t put so much hope in that. Seems like once there is a show that sucks, people still rewatch it in the hope it will seem better the next time through (admittedly, that is how I viewed most the movies, trying to find something of value even in the ones I found to be turkeys.)
Plus, going by Trek history, there are new trekkie suckers born or transformed every minute in addition to the ones who just seem to worship most anything with the brand slapped on. Those numbers probably make all these remain viable, regardless of their actual entertainment value. Otherwise they wouldn’t be so up for extending the contracts on Kurtzman et. al., much as was the case with Berman/Lauritson in decades past when Trek floundered creatively with Voy/Ent (and I’m no fan of TNG either.) And VOY is somehow practically a hit on streaming in recent years, so to again quote Kirk as I started this post, ‘there’s no accounting for taste.’
Whoever/Whatever Spiner plays, I hope he tones down the scenery-chewing. .
So. Many. Steps. Fly out of your chair during a battle and you’re done for.
Love it! Lol!
Gonna get your cardio on that bridge.
Can’t Data be brought back pretty easily? I don’t understand his death. Soong-type androids seem to be able to be made easily on the Synth homeworld. Data’s “soul” is kept in a hard drive. Why not plug that drive into a USB slot in a new body and CTRL + ALT + DEL him?
Couldn’t Spiner be playing B-4 from Nemesis?
B-4 was last seen in a drawer (hey, it rhymes!)
I think Jurati said he shutdown, positronic failure, something like that. But there’s no reason someone couldn’t fix him, I guess.
The makeup and VFX to make Brent look like Data in Picard season 1 weren’t very convincing. Unless the technology has improved considerably (and become cheaper), I’m not sure they’ll try again.
If they did end up having a Data or Lore appearance, they will have hopefully hired this person. https : // youtu . be / 1W0Ut5gFn0E
It’s simple – Spiner plays as the long lost sister Soong. Can’t wait.
Yeah, that’ll be good. Like the Adam Sandler film ‘Jack and Jill’ which was very well received.
I’ll bet the old school Starfleet officers are irritated that carpeted bridges went out of style.
At least the old-school hippies, who preferred going barefoot (wonder what they thought of TMP’s bridge, which looks like it could have caused corns to form with the swiss-cheese’style metal grating.)
Please let it be Enterprise e
I liked, when they actually had to build a physical model of the ship, which was so much work, that you really had to think about if you do it and how you execute the design.
It meant that Starfleet only had a handfull of classes and you got some diversity in there by just using older models from the past.
That’s pretty much how modern Navys work. Theres only new types of ships every few decades and if you have different ones of the same class it’s because the old ones are still in service. In the original Star Trek shows you allways got exactly that feeling (even though it actually was for budgetary reasons). It even was a huge deal when there were two (!) ne ship classes in the First Contact Battle.
Now with CGI they can just throw stuff against the wall which is what they do.
And it doesnt have to be this way. Over on the Orville they clearly thought about Earths navy. There’s three classes: Destroyer, Explorer and a Support Ship. I’m not saying that’s perfect either but at least it lokks like someone put actual thought into creating the Universe …
Actually, of the sixteen or so versions drawn by ILM art director Alex Jaeger for FC, four new designs were selected and included in the film’s battle, not two.
I could tell you the names of the four classes if I had a copy of my Cinefex article handy, but … well, whatthehell, Steamrunner and Akira (the latter an unofficial though occasionally acknowledged inspiration for the NX-01) were two of them … I’m gonna cheat and look things up — the other two styles were Saber and Norway. They were realized only through CGI, as was FC’s Defiant, though in the battle, Enterprise-E and a Nebula-class starship were done with physical miniatures (The E-e was digital for just a few shots, going to warp and through the time vortex, the latter being one of the only times in the film where the VFX quality on ship shots drops a bit.)
Although I never was really able to enjoy the film until about ten or twelve years back (it takes me awhile to reconcile my disappointment with most new Trek), I do think that the ship miniature shots are excellent, and the CG ships are also very very good, one of the few occasions from that era when that proved to be the case. For the most part I don’t rank ILM’s TREK fx all that highly (especially when they apply some questionable designs created internally for TSFS and for their stylization when shooting the refit most of the time, until they for the most part got things right on TUC), not compared to the really good stuff in TMP that is, but I’d say that parts of TWOK are very good along with most of FC. Not getting into the non-ship stuff, because the jello fire in engineering always looked like a joke and some of the other stuff like the Queen-joining never looked all the way there to me.
That’s the E bridge.
They’re going to find some sort of remnant of Data, which they’re going to upload into an AI that will serve as the ship’s computer (Enterprise-F or whatever) in something similar to the way they did with Zora on Discovery. Then, Spiner can play a holographic version of Data a few times when the budget allows for it.
Maybe not that, exactly. But frankly, if it isn’t some form of Data, this series can f–k right off even more than it already can.
I’m fairly confident that given they didn’t revive Data at the end of season 1 and instead re-did his death, they aren’t going to do it now.
I think killing him off was the wrong move, but honestly I would prefer they just rolled with the decision and moved on rather than going back over it.
Killing him off made absolutely no sense at all, when the planet was full of synths, and a ‘gollum’ body etc. Keeping him confined almost as a prisoner in his pseudo holodeck-like world made even less sense.
Can’t miss it’s the USS Enterprise NCC 1701-F bridge, unless I’m mistaken here.
I wonder if they will go with the Odyssey-class design from STO for the Ent-F (with it’s own bridge style, not the one seen in the game) or it will be something completely different.
Star Trek and Star Wars fans are never happy. They are worse than soap opera fans with all the constant whining.
So in the words of the inhabitants of Beta Iotia IV, ‘what’s your beef?’
Perhaps they merely have high standards, befitting the across-the-creative-board quality levels of how both used to be…
Totally non functional bridge, stairs everywhere that can’t communicate with crew or see monitors check.
Blinky non informative hard drive monitors check.
Set that leaves everyone watching some old dude rant to aliens in front of a door. Check.
Must be TNG but can’t be sure without a holodeck episode, a nonsensical political analogy, some ex deus machina to save the day, senior officers crying their eyes out with deep psychological issues or a time loop plot that makes no sense.
This is 20 seconds of combat and a warp core breach that needs to happen.
There is a good analogy here (and some comedy) – When the ship is hit and senior officers fall down the completely nonfunctional stairs, that is a good analogy for TNG.
It’s like somebody saw YESTERDAY’S E had steps instead of a ramp and decided to cube that effect and then cube it again. Nothing exceeds like excess (facepalm, excuse, knock self silly, have to ramp that up too.)
It’s also terrible to depict a starship that would be so inaccessible to people with a mobility impairment (and claims about 25th century medicine is a moot point, I’m talking about real world audiences being able to imagine themselves there, plus it’s canonical anyway with Pike and Worf that not all immobility is treatable (Worf gets lucky)). The Enterprise-D design was excellent in this respect and I’m not sure any other Star Trek ship has been on par.
What I’d like to see is the Enterprise-D design (obviously on another ship) given a visual uplift like that of the NCC-1701 on Strange New Worlds. It doesn’t appear to be what we’re getting though.
I’m just amazed they had an “ok” bridge (pretty great for a TNG set with displays) with the Stargazer and then appear to cast it aside for stairs and a door.
It’s the like decolorification of the SNW bridge and no TOS bridge background music, it’s like there is a saboteur working on Trek that even when someone does something right, the saboteur comes in to spend more money to wreck/TNGize it that it totally doesn’t blow the “new” nonsensical TNG/Discovery sets out of the water.
My thought is that they need a TOS set, but with full mobility ramps / larger displays. That would be an improvement.
It looks ridiculous, honestly. Feel like it’s in a casino.
I does!!! I know TNG often associated the ENT-D with a hotel… but that is taking the analog to an extreme!
Pretty easy to explain a lot of it. Pure speculation but start with…
Stargazer is re-christened for some reason tied to Seven becoming her Captain.
Laris dies.
They probably were shooting a close up scene of someone in a Captain chair with a blue screen behind them to fake in another ship…..think Frakes in PIC S1 on the Discovery pretending he was on the Zhe He
This could be the USS Titan. If I recall correctly, they acknowledged that Riker was on a sabbatical from the Titan, but returned briefly to command the Zheng He? Didn’t quite make sense at the time, but that applies to just about everything on Picard.
If this is the Enterprise F, that would be more fun obviously. I don’t think the ship is that important to the season however, seems like it would have been mentioned already. I get a sense that Season 3 is a clandestine mission. Unless one of them is already in command of the Enterprise, it seems unlikely that they would be given the keys to a new one. But then again, this show has a habit of just making things happen regardless.
As for Orla Brady, it seems likely we’ll see her and Picard at the Chateau at some point. But since this is a space mission, she most likely would have to sit this season out anyway.
We’ve already seen the Titan on Lower Decks, this looks nothing like it.
A lot of stairs and platforms to fall down the first time the ship takes a hit…. And in real life, a lot of stairs to ask Patrick Stewart to go up and down to get to the Captain’s chair. I mean that in all seriousness, my parents are almost 80 and they had trouble this weekend going up and down the stairs in our house. It might look pretty, but this design (like most things in these new Trek shows) doesn’t make a whole lot of practical sense.
Well at least he will have a swivel chair so he can check out if the hard drive light is blinking, who is having a conference or who is going to shoot him in the back. Just think of the drama when he falls forward and down all those stairs when the ship is hit. Might not be able to talk to helm, navigation or science, but at least the shrink is right there for all his psychological issues and the first officer can get shot in the back at the same time saving any invader valuable time and energy.
Is THAT the bridge of a space ship, or the set of “The Voice in space ” or some glitzy intergalatic game show?
So it’s the Stargazer bridge but NOT the Stargazer? I wish we could see the Enterprise-E again but I guess this will be the F. I guess I just hope its an Enterprise.
Need a moment at the beginning of season 3 where Picard looks at Riker and says, “Where’s my ship?” ….. the Riker takes him to the refitted Enterprise E. I know thats not happening but it would be cool. (OR) The original crew hatches a plan and someone says, “We are going to need a ship…
” Then LaForge, now head of Startfleet Corp of Engineers says, “I’ve got just the one….we’ve been working on her as a testbed for new systems and technology.” Next shot is the Enterprise F
“Data is dead. Like thoroughly. They’ve killed him twice.” is the funniest thing I’ve heard all week. (Keep in mind it’s only Monday but this is a great start)
This bridge is ridiculous. Tacky, gaudy… As others have said, it looks like something out of a Las Vegas Casino. Stairs make no sense. And what’s with this shine everywhere? Looks like the inside of a 1985 Buick, vinyl seats and all…
Yep. Not designed with ANY other thoughts other than, does it look kewl… (no, no it really doesn’t). The stairs to the comnand chairs are visually and logically ridiculous. And why do all the current bridges have to overdo it to ridiculous extremes with lights and displays and shiny surfaces? Too busy! You couldn’t serve on that thing for an hour let alone an entire mission! No thought given to practical considerations of what a crew would need visually for comfortable long-term working aboard ship, unlike the consultants they often used for the TV series and movie Trek.
C….oh god….Brent is gonna play B4 and Data will be resurrected in him with some expensive CGI de-aging that will cause 3/4s of this show to be a shoe string budget…..’Will we have to get the band i mean crew back together for B4, i mean Data’. my hope is that season 3 will end with Riker getting command of the newly commissioned Enterprise-F…..it would and wouldn’t be worth the 2, soon to be 3, seasons’ worth of frustration with this show to see that….to me thats a proper send off for Riker
I honestly think that they could just make a holographic Data with a mobile emitter – some elements of Data are “again” saved from either B4 or restored after he “died” in Picard season 1. He would look human though and “older”. Sorted (and saving Deep Fake expenses). “Computer, activate Holo Data”
I don’t know why they didn’t go that route in S1, using the ‘gollum’ for Data instead of Picard, whose illness could be cured with more inventive scripting, or a gift from Q in S2. Instead Picard’s life changing ordeal was brushed under the carpet completely. It’s just mind blowing how many important story threads they continually drop. Seeing Brent play the next phase of Data’s life, looking 100% human and aging would have provided FAR more satisfying drama than two more Soongs. His deciding to perhaps fully embrace his synth role instead of trying to act more human, and possibly being a father to Soji would have been fantastic to see.
We all have that one friend or family member who we know just cannot keep a secret, and who continually provides bits of information that is suppose to be confidential, and which ends up spoiling things way too early. In the Star Trek production world, that dude is Terry Matalas.
I mean, this dude kept saying stuff on S3 all during S2, kind of overshadowing S2 in my opinion.
I really hope his S3 delivers after this S2 disappointment (and I actually loved S1).
Getting mad “N.S.E.A. Protector command deck” vibes from that bridge design… Not saying it’s a bad thing, just immediately very noticeable (to me, anyway).
In the event of a ship impact, bridge crew have been lurching out of their seats and “starship acting” across sets for over half a century.
Why place the three highest-ranking officers three feet away from a 5-foot drop? They’re just one inertial damper failure away from a trio of concussions, likely during a battle when they’re needed the most.
What a very Cardassian move, putting the bosses above the rest of the crew. A reflection of the sterner, sheer-frakking-hubriser Starfleet of the 25th century, perhaps.
Do we get to see Robot Picard behind the center seat of the Enterprise and have him say engage. I hope so or this whole endeavor was for nothing. If they don’t get the whole cast together on the bridge its a waste. I guess i could always just watch all good things, or First Contact again.
Unless the new ship is the USS Picard?