Season 3 Of ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Is 100% Certified Fresh + More Images And Behind-The-Scenes Details Revealed

| February 22, 2023 | By: TrekMovie.com Staff 60 comments so far

Before we move on to the second episode of season 3 of Star Trek: Picard (coming on Thursday), there are a few more bits worth sharing, starting with the overwhelmingly positive critical response to the season. We also have some behind-the-scenes details, cool new artwork, and a bit of hype for episode two.

Season 3 is Certified Fresh

Critics agree, season 3 is the best season yet of Star Trek: Picard, garnering the show a 100% Fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes. This is currently the best rating for any modern Trek show, just beating out the 98% fresh rating for season 1 of Strange New Worlds.

CBS Studios (which produces Picard) was very proud of the rating and shared it on social media.

New ship named for Shran and more revealed

Once again production designer Dave Blass has shared details on all the ships seen in the latest episode, inside and outside of spacedock. His two Instagram slideshows detail each ship’s name, designation, and class. This includes a new USS Thy’lek Shran, yet another connection to Star Trek: Enterprise.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Dave Blass (@dave_blass_photography)

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Dave Blass (@dave_blass_photography)

Ever the resourceful production designer Blass said that on M’Talas prime if you look closely you can see his wife Michelle in advertisements for Romulan Ale.

Join the Titan

Back on the subject of cool ship images, check out this poster for the USS Titan shared by Terry Matalas.

Concept artist and model maker Bill Krause also revealed details on how the new USS Titan is based on a design of his from 2014.

Krause also revealed an image of the ship’s roster which included himself, along with a number of other behind-the-scenes contributors.

Trek vets gave up credit slots

A number of Star Trek veterans are working on Picard season 3 (like season 2 before it), including Doug Drexler, Mike Okuda, and John Eaves. Those three gave up their spots to make room for other artists in the credits for episode one, as revealed by Dave Blass.

No, that’s not a changeling on the bridge

One of the characters seen on the bridge of the USS Titan in episode one had a bit of a resemblance to Odo or the Female changeling on DS9, but that’s mostly due to the lighting. Showrunner Terry Matalas shared a nicely lit image along with details on the character revealing she is a new race called Nonnikcam, named for Emmy-winning makeup artist James Mackinnon

Gates broke her shotgun

One little detail in episode one was Dr. Crusher’s pump-action phaser shotgun. Responding to a tweet about it, actress Gates McFadden revealed she actually broke the prop on her first try.

Gates McFadden as Dr. Beverly Crusher with her replacement phaser shotgun

Writer hype for episode two

Terry also shared a tweet today praising the work of writers Christopher Monfette and Sean Tretta, who wrote episode two “Disengage,” saying they “CRUSH it.” Monfette said he “couldn’t be prouder” of the episode, saying it was a “blast” to write.

And to get a picture of the writers, Monfette shared a selfie with himself and Tretta, writers Christopher Derrick and Matt Okumura, along with actor Todd Stashwick from the premiere after party.

The third and final season of Picard premieres on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023, exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., and Latin America, and on February 17 Paramount+ in Europe and elsewhere, with new episodes of the 10-episode-long season available to stream weekly. It also debuted on Friday, Feb. 17 internationally on Amazon Prime Video in more than 200 countries and territories. In Canada, it airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave.

Keep up with news about the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.

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Oh okay, wasn’t a Founder. Good to know.

The series should be lit like that Nonnikcam image! We can actually see faces and uniforms now!

About that, I was curious to see what it would look like, so I took a still image from the show and dropped it in Photoshop. What a difference a little contrast makes!

Strange that they settled on this dark, smoky look, but oh well.

coming to say that exact thing. You can actually see the work that everyone is doing on the series. It’s sad that they don’t trust the audience to be able to enjoy something that doesn’t look like every sci-fi show that’s been done in the past decade.

I’ve never played Star Trek Online but some of the shots in the episode had a pretty video gamey look. Do they just share general designs or does the show literally re-use existing 3D assets from the game?

Assets from STO would not be suitable — they have a very low polygon count and the textures and colours wouldn’t match. They have borrowed STO designs, however.

I thought they said last season that they did get the models from the game and upgraded them?

They do look video gamey. I also don’t care much for the blurry haze either.

Hmm, on my TV this morning I was thinking that they look clear for the first time. Past seasons of modern Trek have all had a sort of weird fuzzy haze for me, but to my eye this isn’t video gamey, just visibly discernable. I’m not much of a gamer though so maybe my take on that doesn’t have the strongest foundation haha.

Some of the shots have extreme haze, such as inside the spacedock. Others are clear, but some look flat and and kind of low-res.
Anyway, I’ve enjoyed shows with much worse-looking VFX so it’s not a dealbreaker by any means.

All comes down to the VFX artists who light the scenes. I was talking about this with a friend of mine the other day. Would any of the current VFX artists have had any experience with lighting physical models like the guys transitioning from physical to CGI did back in the day? Probably not. Same thing I see happening with the MCU movies and shows. Everything is a very poorly blended CG mess. Nobody seems to have an eye for natural lighting anymore when it comes to constructing scenes. If anything, there should be some physical models on their desks to at least get a vague sense of the natural lighting.

To be fair, critics only view the first few episodes, hence the disparity between the critic and audience scores for previous seasons.
Season 1 – Critics 86% / Audience 52%
Season 2 – Critics 85% / Audience 28%

Yeah that’s why I don’t pay attention to critic reviews for shows, they usually just review the first 2 or 3 episodes. But most reviews got 6 episodes so that’s a big difference too

Same, and I don’t pay attention to what the audience says either. I don’t depend on other’s people’s opinions on what I may or may not enjoy.

Audience scores on a internet review site are the worst due to most of them being mostly sheep who just hate bomb reviews on shows because ‘insert internet influencer name’ told them to.
Can’t trust critics as some may not understand the series history of a franchise or simply don’t get it or are biased.

trust your own eyes, if you like a show you like if you don’t, then don’t force yourself watch a show anymore.

internet reviews are worthless to your own judgment.

Well if CBS Studios is so proud it got 100% rating to highlight it, then maybe they should think about rehiring the guy who created this season for the next show after it. I hear he’s open to making more. ;)

Maybe he can salvage what’s left of Discovery too.

I was originally going to say something really snarky lol, but you know I would actually like to see that. I doubt he has any interest of being anywhere near that show, but yeah he couldn’t do any worse at this point.

I said the snarky things for you!

Well, Mr. Martin, as it happens regarding Picard ep #2 I will have a snarky thing or two to say myself. 🙁

I stand by my assertion that 2 was better than 1, and 3&4 (esp 4) were way better than 1 & 2. (I think they could have split the season into two installments and left off ‘part 1’ at the end of 4 and gone out on a high note.)

I don’t remember particulars on 5 except that I liked it a whole lot, and I loved most of 6, but every bit of what I liked would be spoilerific.

Apropos of nothing, I just found out the Cronenberg film DEAD RINGERS has been revamped into a TV series with Rachel Weisz playing the twins. I never really connected with the feature film version, despite making a couple of efforts, but the showrunner on this is some kind of noted playwright, which sounds like something a departure.

I thought 2 was worse, honestly, given the chockablock cliches and it lacking the saving grace of the dinner scene, which I agreed was well-done.

Still hoping for better to come, though. Just yesterday I watched a retro review of TNG’s “Chain of Command” while I was putting away the Costco goods. Now *that* was some real Star Trek, which asked some hard questions and pushed the characters into uncomfortable places without outright subverting the Enlightenment idea that our lot can be improved, if never perfected. Otherwise, what is Trek for, exactly?

As for Cronenberg, I liked DEAD RINGERS and THE FLY well enough, but hated his adaptation of THE DEAD ZONE, in which Martin Sheen was hideously miscast.

Who would you have cast in TDZ? Just askin’, cuz when I first heard about it, I figured Walken was playing Stilson.

If you were going for a Trump-like presence way back then, I guess you could have tried Shatner, but he already had too much baggage from TV to really make that work. I can’t hear Trump open his mouth without thinking his whole image and speaking styel is based on Shatner (and yeah, that sentence could have just been shorter, as in ‘I can’t hear Trump open his mouth.’)

ZONE is special for me largely because there are only three love story movies that ‘get’ me every time, and Brooke Adams is in two of them (this and BODY SNATCHERS.)

Come on! He’s not a magician … and I wouldn’t wish that task even on one of those :-D

Maybe it is mean for me to say, but salvaging DSC would mean finding out the whole thing is a fever dream of young Saavik shortly after Spock rescued her from Hellguard, one where she mixes stuff Spock has spoken of to her with her own tortured memories and brilliant psyche.

Then go from there and give us a Captain Saavik series in my strongly-preferred era for storytelling, the turn of the century separating c23 and 24. There’s already tons of political paranoia on display in TSFS and TUC, all you need is to add a Putin type taking over the Klingon Empire and we’re in business.

Tiger – As I’ve pointed out before, Paramount + hasn’t commissioned any new ST series or renewed existing one’s for about a year now!

SNW appears to be renewed although there doesn’t seem to be any official announcement as yet.

As I mentioned in another thread, las Friday the Ontario guilds sheets began to list preproduction underway in Mississauga under the show’s pseudonym.

Actual production is planned to start in May and run through September.

Some YouTubers are saying that season two has been formally greenlit, but there is nothing official as far as I can find. Certainly,?Paramount has let preproduction get ahead of announcements previously.

Discovery doesn’t need fixing my friend. Heck Terry has mentioned on Twitter in the past that he enjoys watching all the other current shows and enjoys them all including Discovery.

Heck all the show runners of the current shows are good friends and according to Terry and Michelle Paradise they get together every so often to talk to each other about the new seasons they are working on.

Season 4 has a 20% audience rating on RT. That’s the lowest I’ve seen for any Trek show ever. It needs something. Michelle Paradise needs to be fired.

Agreed! Her dismissal is way overdue. Paradise is pushing her own agenda with Discovery. Star Trek is not hers to use to heavy-hand her views and opinions.

Silvereyes, we have to believe that Michelle Paradise was promoted to showrunner in part because she is able to respond to the younger Gen-Z and Millennial audience. She’s also there because she can keep that writers room healthy and not toxic after abusive behaviour that led to high profile firings.

While I agree the way the representation is done is heavy handed, the show has had its loyal audience. And I am happy to see the values and representation it’s profiling in Star Trek even if I wish that it would give its excellent cast less clunky and (at times) luridly melodramatic moments.

I will still be watching S5 when it runs, and hope that it will be better.

I have to say again to Tiger2, that both IMdB and Rotten Tomatoes audience scores are subject to campaigning and self selection bias.

Even without that, they are known to be overly slanted to voting by older men in the United States. So the 20% score tells us that Discovery season four is still subject to campaigning by older guys who want it cancelled and. It much else. I really find it surprising that he and others here keep citing them.

TG47, as usual the voice of calm and reason. I do agree, and I will be watching S5 as well. I just can’t shake the feeling that M. Paradise is “doing her thing”, even though I’m well aware that she doesn’t have carte blanche to that extent. They should present differing views of topics, and let the audience decide, not yelling in our faces that THIS IS THE WAY TO THINK! This is just my opinion as Discovery has its audience and surely they do not have this impression.

I don’t have even have an issue with that, my issue is that the show fails to tell a compelling story season after season. You want to have a political POV, fine. you still have to make the story engaging regardless.

I thought season four started out OK, got much stronger by the middle of the season but ran out of gas by episode 9. It was obvious they were just stretching a very thin story to fill time and just had a lot of ridiculous plots with a lot of touchy feely nonsense. I see some people say it’s better if you binge it, but I’ll just have to take their word for it because I have no desire to watch that season ever again.

Discovery just feels like a rudderless show and probably why every season feels like a soft reboot. It’s rumored it’s changing course yet again in season 5. Maybe this one will finally be good.

No offense, but I’m just not really buying this. It’s not just RT alone, it’s pretty much everywhere, including here that people generally season 4 sucked overall. I mean there were constant complaints about it in the second half. And READ what a lot of those 1-2 star reviews actually says. This is the other problem, the assumption it’s just a bunch of hateful men targeting the show and trying to tear down is obvious you and others never bothered to read a lot of those reviews. I did and it’s the same complaints on a lot of them: the season was boring, over-sentimentality, plot holes galore, filler episodes, immature characters, a weak villain and overall just bad writing which obviously colors the overall issues stated. All of that was stated here over and over again as well, especially in the second half of the season where it felt like you were getting five minutes of plot in 50 minute episodes. So what am I missing? It’s thee same complaints over and over people complained about it here and other places.

You can certainly disagree with all of that, but it’s disingenuous to believe it’s just a bunch of old white guys who just have immense hate for the show and review bombing it when most of the reviews actually spend time discussing their complaints about the season and most of them never bring up the show is too diverse or they hate it because a black woman is the lead. There is also a black bisexual woman leading Lower Decks as well and yet somehow its latest season managed to have an 80% rating.

Dude, just click on the reviews and read them for yourself then. Then come back and tell me if the overwhelming majority of people there is just unfairly picking on the show or not.

And BTW, you can find someone to target Generation Z and still actually make a good show on top of it. The two isn’t mutually exclusive.

I just think Discovery is a bad TV show overall. You definitely see the amount of production values and energy they put into making it, but it’s still pretty bad four seasons in.

Of course he’s going to say he likes DIS, what else do you expect him to say?

I don’t think he’s just towing the company line when he says that there can and should be different Star Trek shows for different audiences.

What he is clearly and implicitly saying though is that he felt strongly that there was a major gap in not going forward into the 25th century and that it was important for that show to have visual and soundscape continuity with the Berman era.

He’s making Trek for his own niche. He’s not saying that the franchise should be gatekept from doing other things. In fact, if you watch the IGN interview, it’s clear that he and the TNG ensemble find a certain ironic humour in the fact that they are the ‘old guard’ and the standard that older fans are calling for after being so relentlessly criticized by old TOS fans in the 90s.

I would say this rating is very premature. The 2nd season also got a very high score, which was based (like this) only on the first episode or two. That turned out to be very misleading indeed!

The majority of critics have seen more than half the season.

That is why 6 out of 10 screener episodes were sent to a wide range of professional critics and YouTubers this time.

They knew that they would have to overcome reviewers’ cynicism, and two episodes wouldn’t cut it after the previous seasons dropped severely in quality.

Last season, most reviewers were sent the first 3 episodes.

It’s also important to remember how RT actually works. A 90/40% split doesn’t mean that critics like it twice as much as fans. It doesn’t even mean that 90% of critics loved it.

If 10 people give a movie/show a 5.5/10 rating (ie: it’s mediocre at best), it gets 100%, because RT will round that up to 6, and anything 6/10 or better is considered a FRESH review.

It doesn’t distinguish how much critics liked something, only whether they totally hated it or not.

In most instances, RT can be used as a decent gauge: 70% of critics or audiences felt the movie was worth watching.

The problem is, in today’s world where fans just hate things uncontrollably with every fiber in their being if it isn’t nearly perfect, that kind of scale isn’t really helpful.

What I suspect when it comes to PIC is that critics (who are far more reasonable than today’s knee-jerk reactionary audiences) felt it was good, not great, or even just OK. As a result, it gets labeled with a FRESH).

As for why I believe this is? Well, years ago, most critics tended to agree with audiences, because audiences were less discerning: there was less content to watch, and far less great content. Today, with so much INCREDIBLE television and movies out there, audiences get mad if something isn’t perfect, because every mediocre show they watch is one less GREAT show they COULD be watching.

Critics however aren’t guided by those emotions. They are strictly there to watch movies and shows and deliver an opinion on its quality.

They gave out a lot of preview Screeners but RT should really differentiate if a “professional” review is of the whole Season or just the first or the first couple of episodes. I would’ve given Picard a pretty good rating for both seasons so far just based on the first and maybe the second episodes. But after those it went downhill HARD.

Now this Seasons feels like it’s written by people who actually like (and have watched) Star Trek. But that’s after one episode that did have it’s problems with being a little too much ub its own … you know :-P

But I’ll at least I want to watch the rest of it … that’s somthing

The pro critics were sent 6 out of the 10 total episodes.

They had enough this time to make a reasonable assessment. And several say the episodes get stronger through what they have seen.

They absolutely do.

Great to see S3 get a 100% score from Critics. Unlike some people i trust the critic scores though i don’t trust the audience scores as it’s prone to review bombing by people who really have to much time on their hands.

I remember the likes of the former so called ‘fandom meance’ a group made of Youtubers like Mecharandom 42, Doomcock, Nerdrotic and Midnight Edge etc.. (who all hated the new Trek shows well before any of them first aired) organizing review bombing groups.

For example they made it a mission for themself and their fans to get Picard/Discovery’s audience scores low as possible as they believed that would get the shows cancelled (and their mission was a complete failure).
It goes to show that companies like Paramount don’t pay any attention to audience scores.

Anyway looking at the critic scores for all the seasons of the newer Trek shows so far

Picard
S1 – 86%
S2 – 85%
S3 – 100%

SNW
S1 – 98%

DSC
S1 – 82%
S2 – 81%
S3 – 91%
S4 – 88%

LDS
S1 – 68%
S2 – 100%
S3 – 100%

PRO
S1 – 94%

It goes to show how well received the newer shows are and that each of them have been a success for Paramount and Trekkies worldwide.

You honestly think that S2 of Picard (just one example) was well received by fans?

I think it was watched and enjoyed by way more people than you’d think. It may not be the best Trek of all time, or even great TV, but that doesn’t mean everyone hated it and thinks it’s pure garbage.

Have you watched it a second time? Try binge-watching it. It is much more coherent. I liked it the first time around and liked it even more watching a second time.

Of course you’re going to use the critics scores. How convenient. Can you at least try to show some objectivity?

Relax there, pal. He may be using skewed data, but I agree with him that the newer shows are all well-received. They wouldn’t keep making them in people weren’t watching and enjoying. Or are you one of those conspiracy nuts who has been saying since 2017 that Discovery is being canceled any day now, and Nick Meyer is replacing Alex Kurtzman?

The fact is, we diehards are only a small portion of Trek viewers. I’ve also found that the internet in general is no longer a good cross section of the populace, but is heavily skewed towards the negative opinions of anything.

Used to be the other way around: only the most positive, upbeat, and passionate fans would voice their pleasure by running online and posting on the internet.

Today, it’s the reverse. The web has become a cesspool of nonsense, so most people who are positive about things largely stays out of the discourse.

So while critic scores are heavily biased as you say, I wouldn’t ever put money on audience scores being an accurate reflection of anything either. It’s likely somewhere in the between.

I’m not your pal, but I agree. My comment to the poster was also referencing his exuberant gushing he often displays when describing DIS, as the best written, acted and best Star Trek series ever… but that’s his opinion and I’m sure many share it, as you may do. I don’t dislike Discovery. There are things that I find very annoying about it, but it has its qualities as well. I’m not one to hold back on my posts when I find something that I really disagree with, and this is not the best thing but it is what it is. However I don’t resort to personal insults, as I have see you do occasionally.

So you’re happy when fans flood comments sections with negativity, but positivity is too much? Very interesting, my good, close, personal friend.

Didn’t you read what I said? I said I agree…

Yes, I read it that your initial critical response was in reaction to “gushing he often displays when describing DIS.” Seems you have a problem with that, which I question.

That’s ok, I question your sometimes bullying reaction to people expressing their opinion. You’re going to break a tooth on me my predator friend… IDIC and let’s move on.

Fan scores are neither objective not representative though. When it’s well established there are guys (and they are statistically male) of an older age group, primarily located in the United States, who log in and post a 1/10 without even having watched, how can you call that objective?

That’s why I look to whatever viewership statistics and other audience demand metrics are out there. These at least have some statistical validity.

Discovery is no longer carrying Paramount+, but it does contribute to the streamer having a much better balanced demographic than HBO Max and Amazon.

There still idiots that actually still listen to those fandom idiots?

In all fairness, in my experience the RT review samples are highly selective, both for things I like and dislike. As a true aggregator, the site is pretty useless.

I definitely think over the years the schism in audiences has made it harder for most people to trust. For me, I can still use it as a general guidepost, because my opinion seems to generally align with critical consensus.

And “align” is the operative word: I don’t always necessarily agree, but if something is well reviewed by critics, for me it’s a good sign that it’s not a waste of my time. And really, that’s all i’m looking for.

I’m not someone obsessed with media, I don’t get mad if I watched a bad movie, I laugh it off and move on. I don’t know about you, but I grew up in the days before streaming, so I fully accept and understand that not everything has to be great to be enjoyable.

You and your younger generation may feel differently.

Starfleet sure seems to be leaning into the Reliant class. On the one hand, it’s obviously fan service, but on the other hand, I kind of like it. If Starfleet is **really** supposed to be about science and exploration, then they need more ships like that running around, rather than galactic battle tanks

The reliant class is the replacement for the Miranda class so it makes sense that there is a great number of them