Terry Matalas Drops More ‘Star Trek: Picard’ S3 Hints, Says “Safety Not Guaranteed” For TNG Characters

| October 5, 2022 | By: TrekMovie.com Staff 147 comments so far

After the Star Trek: Picard teaser trailer release on Star Trek Day, showrunner Terry Matalas has been actively hyping the third and final season of the series. Beyond his deep dive interview with TrekMovie, he has kept the conversation going on Twitter, revealing even more about what to expect when the show returns in February 2023. We thought we would catch up on some of Terry’s Twitter highlights ahead of the big Star Trek Universe panel at New York Comic-Con on Saturday.

He just might kill off a TNG character

The biggest change for season 3 is the return of the main cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation for what Matalas has called a “proper send-off” for their characters. This got one fan concerned that maybe not all of the beloved TNG characters are going to make it through the season and perhaps we will see a character die. Matalas wasn’t ready to offer any comfort, replying “safety not guaranteed,” and when another fan followed up by saying that killing off a character would be “risky,” Matalas replied by posting the famous Kirk “Risk is our business” speech from TOS. So Picard season 3 may indeed be the ultimate send-off for one of these characters.

Starship action

In his September TrekMovie interview, Matalas went into a lot of detail on the Titan and Beverly Crusher’s ship. Even though the USS Titan-A is the main ship for the season, he hinted the USS Stargazer will also appear, and the first episode will explain why it isn’t the main ship. On Twitter, he has promised that we will see other ships as well, both “new and retro.”

About that destroyed building

There is a moment in the trailer showing a building being destroyed. Some fans have noticed the building has a TOS movie-era Starfleet symbol on the roof.

From the Star Trek Day trailer

Some speculate it is a museum on Earth but Matalas has confirmed it is neither. The only clue he would offer is that it’s an “older building on an older planet.”

An early soundtrack release?

Matalas has talked about how important the music for the final season is to him, and he has brought in new composer Stephen Barton to help create a cinematic score that evokes the music of legendary Trek composers like Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner. Recently on Twitter, he revealed that he’s working on a way to get the soundtrack released ahead of the season.

And for last week’s 35th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation, he posted a video of composer Stephen Barton leading the orchestra performing Jerry Goldsmith’s TNG theme, which will be used in season 3.

No time travel and more quick confirmations

Here are a few other things Terry has confirmed for season 3:

The kid gets in the picture (again)

Finally, Terry has put a bit of himself into the season. He revealed on Twitter “I kinda make a cameo” in season 3. Matalas is a big fan of the classic Star Trek movies, so he is following in the footsteps of producer Harve Bennett, who appeared as an admiral in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. This will actually be Matalas’ second Trek cameo as he appeared as an Enterprise-D crewman in the series finale of Star Trek: Enterprise when he was working as a production assistant.

Coming February 2023

Star Trek: Picard season 3 arrives Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023, exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S. Following its premiere, new episodes of the 10-episode long final season will be available to stream weekly on Thursdays. Picard streams exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S. and is distributed concurrently by Paramount Global Content Distribution 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 for the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.

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Not really buying his whole disguised PR and marketing for his show after the season 2 debacle. The man so far has been all hype no substance, let’s see what he can deliver for s3

Disguised?

Matalas was only responsible for the first half of season 2. While I myself enjoyed the rest, most folks’ issues were with the back half, which was run by Akiva Goldsman. If anything, that should encourage you for season 3, assuming you enjoyed the first half of PIC season 2.

Nah, the first half also stunk. Nice try though. :-)

HEY! The first ~1/5th of it was good…. Err.. would be good if it payed off

LOL, OK, I’ll agree with that.

More like 1/11th of it was good.

You can tell the show was very uneven from beginning to end in S2. From Q’s loss of powers to suddenly getting them back to his intentions with Picard (did he want him to travel back in time or didn’t he?). Nothing in the season ended up adding up or paying off.

Terry wrote 2 episodes in Season 2 and then moved on to take command on Season 3. He wrote the opening episode, which in my opinion was the best of the bunch. The first episode gave me hope. I really enjoyed that one. Felt like Trek.

He may have wrote that episode but he was still partly responsible for the way the season was planned and played out. His hands were still all over it even though he shifted focus to S3 in the middle of it.

In all farness I believe Terry was only co-showrunner for season 2. Nevertheless, surly time will tell. If it’s all just hype it’s working on me because I had all but given up on the show after season 2 until they started the season 3 promos. And who’s not down from a Next Gen mini series as a final good bye. I mean do we really want to leave it with Star Trek: Nemesis?

Well said. I really don’t need any more weekly minor reveals and/or tweets at this point until we get closer to the season.

Talk is cheap

Says the guy who comments here roughly every five seconds.

Well, there is that! :-)

Sadly this is where I’m at too. I am cautiously optimistic and so far I have liked everything I’ve seen and heard. Buuuut, it was the exact same thing for seasons 1 and 2 and second season was worse than the first for me. So we’ll see but I don’t blame anyone for feeling this way if they didn’t like last season. And I was the one praising the guy before it started although I did love the first two episodes a lot.

That’s why he showed the raw footage from season 3 to Robert Meyer Burnett. RMB has been the PR machine for S3, ironically

Yes and I think that was a great tactic because EVERYONE who knows Burnett knows how much he has hated all of the modern stuff beginning with the 2009 movie through even SNW. And he was brutal on the first two seasons of Picard. So for him to go from the critic he was to now singing the seasons praises has given even me more hope and I generally like the new stuff, but ironically out of all of it, Picard has been the hardest for me to like. The Kelvin movies have been OK and I been wildly up and down on Discovery but Picard I have not been satisfied with most of it.

So I’m crossing my fingers, but not holding my breath yet either.

What debacle? Are you drunk?

The people who have already seen season 3 have said it’s so good it’s like a completely different show and as good as the golden age.

I’m still cautiously excited.

Thanks for sharing his tweets, since I can no longer see them.

How did you manage that?

Don’t you know? Remco is actually Trump.

Lol

I went to go see his tweet about the Stargazer and discovered I’m blocked.

Either he enacted block sweeps or he can’t handle criticism (I called the Titan-A anachronistic).

Considering how many discussions I’ve seen placing bets on which TNG character gets offed for angst, pretty sure the notion that not everyone is making it out alive occurred early on to a lot of folks.

Of course one (or more) of the TNG crew dies. My take, in order of probability are Riker, Troi, Crusher or Picard who’s synth body is supposed to have a normal lifespan (and again possibly more than one). The only two who are safe are Seven and Raffi, given the talk of spinning them off.

I’m leaning toward Riker as the frontrunner too; Frakes is looking dangerously heroic in some of those shots. ;) Thinking Troi is on the safer end of things, but that Worf might get his “good day to die” at last.

I would think Picard dying is at least 50% if not more. Just seems like with the vibe of the end of Picardy story it makes sense. Riker or Worf, while could make storyline sense, would then limit any future shows. I would think they would like to keep the door open for a potential Captain Riker or maybe Captain Worf based series.
I think a Riker lead show following the formula of TNG or SNW would be a huge hit.

There was some quote floating around that amounted to Sir Patrick not being keen on Picard dying at the end of S3, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we get another “dead, but only on a technicality” situation, which, for my money doesn’t really count.

I agree that it’s quit likely Picard.

Matalas is very vocal about providing the TNG crew an appropriate send off.

Given Patrick Stewart’s age and willingness to work on this project, it would seem that the best place for the franchise to get closure on Picard’s character is in the last season of the show where he is the title character.

They already ‘killed’ him in the first season though….sigh.

Stewart has been dropping very minor hints about maybe wanting to return for an actual movie after the show wraps up so I’m not sure it would be him.

If Worf does die I hope his final words are of Jadzia.

This is supposed to be the end of Picard’s story, so it would make sense for Jean-Luc to die at the end. Patrick Stewart may well have asked for a heroic death scene; even great actors have egos, and his wanting Picard to do “more fighting and f*cking during the movie era is telling. :-)

That would be funny if Picard died on a bridge with William Shatner (CGI’d younger) doing a cameo as Kirk by his side. Lol

It was already a lousy death for Kirk; I really don’t want to see it again for any other character.

I hope that’s not the case. If we have learned anything from Captain Kirk’s death its that just because you want to go out with a bang doesn’t mean you will.

Stewart is an executive producer on the show; I imagine he’ll go out however he wants to. :-)

True enough. And when this all first started I thought he was only in it for a 3 season run. But IIRC he has made some cryptic remarks about not being opposed to returning for a new TNG movie. That alone makes me think Picard will be OK.

Please, just tell me that he goes out.

Data died. and died again. If they off a TNG character, they’ll be reincarnated as Shax…

Bridge crew always comes back…at least once. ;)

They’ve all been in the Nexus the last three years. The reset button from hell….

I hope they don’t Last Jedi Picard again. Once was enough.

Right? I know canon disagrees with me but as far as I am concerned Picard died at the end of S1 and the gollum we have now isn’t really Picard. In my own head canon, that’s why the memories of his family are so different in S2 from TNG

Last Jedi was a good movie.

I just hope they don’t kill off a character gratuitously, or just for shock value, or simply because “Hey I’m the writer, I can do what I want!” Doing it just to do it is a cheat.

All the mentions here of Stewart having dropped various hints here and there about possibly maybe appearing again notwithstanding, I kind of figured before this series even began that it would end with Picard’s death. I’ll actually be far more surprised if it ends with him still alive.

I’m open to other TNG mainstays dying, but I kind of don’t want it to happen in this show.

There is a TOS era shuttle next to the exploding building.

No time travel but perhaps a flashback.

Museum perhaps?

It is the only ship outside the building and matallas said it isn’t a museum.

My guess is something happens in the 23. that will have effects in the the 25.

Did you even read the article above?

I missed that part of the article, but thanks for being classy about it. Ah… the internet…

I would place my bets on Picard. From the beginning, it just seems that this show has been about being a swan song for the character of Picard, as well as for the actor, Sir Patrick Stewart, from the Star Trek franchise.

Yup.

This seems an obvious and strategic choice.

Maybe, but how many times has Professor X died in the movies only to return? I hope they won’t give us the Trek version of that.

patrick has implied Picard isn’t going to die.

Agreed…

(Season 1 Spoiler Alert!)

At the end of the day, it’s still Star Trek: Picard. It’s the darkest Trek show ever. In the first season they killed off Picard (and quickly brought him back) and then they re-killed Data for a second time, oh, and Icheb and Hugh both got the axe almost literally. Did we really think everyone was coming home at the end on the mission? Should probably start placing your bets now. 

I was kind of hoping the Iconians would be a part of the season. I’ll settle for the season actual taking place in space again.

Honestly I kinda thought they would all be home safe. I mean Matalas is on record multiple times saying what a fan he is of the TOS movies and Star Trek 6 saw everyone live to happily see another day (till Generations messed that all up).

I don’t long for it but it’s a good bet that there will be blood and death. We should all prepare ourselves now. I think Terry is preparing us for it like Gene Roddenberry did back in the day when he leaked Spock’s death in Star Trek II.

True. after reading this article I’m betting it’s coming too.

Next time Shatner complains that he doesn’t talk like-each-word-is-its-own-sentence, have him listen to that “risk is our business” clip.

That scene takes top prize for the hammiest acting I’ve ever seen on Trek.

Well it’s certainly right up there with Christopher Plummer’s Shakespeare lines in Trek VI.

Plummer certainly nailed it! It may have been over the top, but it was among my favorite Star Trek moments in history! I did not think there was any way they (Enterprise & crew) were going to survive that.

Hammy, but still a great speech!

True but still love it .

I adore Kirk’s speeches, from “Risk is our business” to “We’re not going to kill … today.” I write TOS fan fiction (under another name), and Kirk is such a useful character, because he’s always willing to make a stirring speech when needed. :-)

HA! This was exactly what I thought :)

In my opinion, if it isn’t Picard that dies, it will either be Crusher or Geordi. I don’t see Riker or Troi dying because they are enjoying the guest cameos on the other shows too much. I see it a fitting closer to Crusher since Gates wanted more to do, and it would give her a way to have that. And I don’t count out a cameo from Wheaton if that happens. I also think Geordi, having a family, would have a great impact if he died. And, of course, as others have stated – being a show called Picard and having everyone together again, it would be a fitting ending to have Picard die while surrounded by his friends.

Killing off any of the TNG cast in PIC S3 wouldn’t cut them off from appearances in LDS or Prodigy, though.

But it would from future projects that are after that time period.

Of course, but even so, it means Paramount can have it both ways, to an extent – the big emotional good-bye for PIC3, but also cameos and adventures in happier times elsewhere.

I don’t think so. They wouldn’t make such a big deal about it and then cheapen it later. My guess it is the end of Picard. There could very well be a show about Riker in the future. There could always be a Work show in the future. I think Patrick Stewart is done with the role and this would be a good end for it.

Picard is the farthest out in the timeline right (25th century) next to Discovery which in now set in the 32nd century so they could kill off Riker or Troy and they could still do there cameos in Lower Decks

The furthest out for now. Until they make a Seven series or one with Riker or Worf.

A Captain Seven series would be great, if they actually do it right of course.

I really hope it’s not Geordi. I mean after all the bad luck he had in TNG, esp with women, I want him to live happily ever after. Esp now that he is married with a daughter.

Sometimes writers kill off characters unnecessarily, to add effect and emotion that’s lacking in a bad script. There’s no reason why killing off a TNG character would make sense. This is supposed to be a ST 6 kind of sendoff, like they’re riding into the sunset kind of thing (isn’t it?). How is killing a beloved character off for no reason going to achieve this? Haven’t they learned from Kirk’s death in Generations and even Pike’s death in, was it Into Darkness or Beyond?

Pike’s death was for Kirk to lose his father figure because he had already lost his real father. To drive him to vengeance and to lose his moral center. Making him open to being manipulated by Admiral Marcus. Of course eventually he figures something is off and his colleagues convince him to not fire those torpedoes, or kill Khan. Kirk in Generations on the other hand was a debacle on Veridian 3. A garbage movie. His death on the Enterprise B saving the day was fine. The whole nexus thing was ridiculous.

Thanks for your views on Pike’s death. Maybe it wasn’t as uneccessary as I first thought…

Yeah, “Bridge on the Captain” was a disgrace to Star Trek and it’s fans. Shatner should have objected. Heck, Malcolm McDowell thought it was a really bad scene and would have backed Shatner up if Shatner had pushed back.

I love Shat, but he’s always been too willing to “cash the check” for whatever is asked of him.

Good point on Pike’s death — I agree and hadn’t really thought of it that way. Maybe I need to rewatch that move with fresh eyes.

You are so right about Shatner and cashing the check. But I kinda don’t blame him after he had to literally live out of his truck when TOS was cancelled. It’s never like he has found continued ongoing success in TV or the movies since. He had TJ Hooker and Boston Legal in addition to Trek but there were long gaps in between those.

You took the words right out of my mouth. That was EXACTLY my thought! Has no one learned from Generations?

Or Nemesis. ;)

Exactly!

The reality is though that Star Trek characters do rarely die. And when they do, 90% of the time they been brought back. On DS9, there was an entire war happening for years and not one major character died over it. Yes Dax died, but those circumstances were different and only because the actress was leaving. If she stayed, she would’ve lived.

But I do think it’s funny, over 55 years in all the classic shows and only two main characters were killed off for story reasons, Kirk and Trip. That’s it lol. And look how angry fans were over both of those.And even those were out of very special circumstances. But everyone else was killed off because they wanted out of the show basically like Tasha Yar, Spock. Data and as mentioned Dax. And of course Spock was brought back in the next movie and Yar came back several times and there are hints we may see her again on this show (but still probably dead at least). Data has also, by some miracle, stayed dead. But they still found a way to have him on Picard.

In other words, it’s very very hard to really kill off a character in this franchise. It’s so hard Lower Decks made an entire joke about it with Shaxs story arc.

In the new shows, it has been more characters dying off for story but most of those were planned from the start like Georgiou, Lorca and more recently Hemmer. But again they are a bit different because they were always meant to be killed off. And then you have the usual fake out deaths like Culber and as mentioned Shaxs but in common Trek fashion they both showed up again the next season.

This whole dead Data thing is rather sad. They should have just found a “get old” switch and watch him age quickly. I mean, in SF babies grow up overnight.

I agree but I think Spiner was very convinced he was just too old to keep playing Data even though fans have pointed out the line Geordi references in TNG that Data does in fact ages.But I guess Spiner just didn’t like that idea.

It’s funny how he was trying to ‘Han Solo’ the character and wanted him dead after Insurrection, but TPTB knew how popular there characters were in the fanbase and fought it as long as possible.

I mean lets be honest, the TNG movies were always the Picard and Data show with the rest of the cast being bit players. Even Generations which had Kirk still had the B story of Data and his emotions chip. Even tho Spiner wanted to die earlier I don’t think they were ever going to have a Nemesis without data.

They should do a Star Trek where Data meets Gapetto as played by Roberto Bengni. That’s it. The whole movie is just them.

Picard already died in season 1, and season 2 was bad fanfiction. At this point they could do pretty much anything with season 3 and i wouldn’t care. Already had my expectations subverted.

He certainly talks (and talks and talks and talks) a good season.

We’ll see.

Maybe they all die..

Maybe they were in purgatory the whole time.

Star Trek meets 12 Monkeys meets Lost … I mean that’s a show I’d watch

TNG Deadpool!! Pick the episode a character dies and win an autographed script..

IMO, no TNG character has ever had a good death. Tasha, Data, and Picard himself have all died in one form or another and none of them were satisfying. *if* there is a death in season 3, I hope it is earned.

Here here!

I don’t agree i think Data’s first death was poignant. Being willing to die for his friends. He finally became human. Data’s second death ruined that. Tasha had a fine exit in Yesterday’s Enterprise. Picard’s death was a disgrace though. And having everyone acting like the robot who looks like and thinks he is Picard is Picard is bizarre. Why would he want that anyway to be preserved in a golem since he was a Borg. Horrifying. And in season 3 apparently all the TNG crew are going to pretend the robot is Picard.

Species we haven’t seen in a while? How about:

Ferengi
Hirogen
8472
Xindi
Denobulan
Telaxian
Ocompan

Xindi might make sense given those clicking noises we heard from that part of the trailer with Crusher. But I would have thought by now they were Federation members.

Clicking noises? I didn’t know about those. those. Your descriptions sounds suspiciously like the aliens from “Schisms.” Like “Conspiracy” and “Q-Who,” and the Vadawaur from VOY, these episodes had the potential to usher in long-term arcs with new adversaries. Only “Q-Who” delivered.

I’d like to see one of these forgotten nemeses return, although I’d prefer it to be the “Conspiracy” parasites.

Hmmm, maybe I was hearing things and I have to go back and watch again but I coulda sworn they were there!

When I first watched the full S3 trailer, I thought of “Schisms” when we briefly see the aliens.

Oh please no… Not Telaxian or Ocompan!

Horta. Beverly hooked up with one after Jean Luc dumped her…

Giving ‘tunneling’ a bad name …

With the exception of three of those, the rest are in the Delta Quadrant. It would be odd to see them show up in the Alpha Quadrant unless of course that is part of the story. If I only had to pick one though I would love to see the Xindi back, especially since we know they eventually join the Federation. And its been 200 years since we saw them in the timeline.

And we have seen Ferengi quite a few times in both Prodigy and Lower Decks. And in Discovery, although none of them talk on that show for some odd reason. But Ferengi have been well represented in the last year alone in the animated shows and we just got Quark again.

We know that PIC takes place post Prodigy so Starfleet did make their way back out to the Delta quadrant. Maybe some species out there got hold of some slipstream tech and got to Alpha?

But out of all of these I agree with Xindi. I know at some point they join the Federation but specifically the insectoids always seemed like a long shot to me.

The insectoids are utter A-holes but maybe they lightened up in the last two centuries.

Speaking of the Xindi … I always wanted to know MORE about the Sphere Builders.

It would be cool if they showed up on Discovery

One can only hope!

In the destruction photo, I think that is a statue of a famous Trek character. It kind of looks like Janeway, but really hard to tell — plus I think this might be more of an TOS reference given the shuttlecraft, so I am not sure if Janeway’s timeframe fits…but it looks like her shape?

The surrounding city is mostly very low tech — 20th/21st century construction, a rail yard, etc.

The explosion is centered on the presumably old Enterprise bridge. Is that something of value on that bridge that someone wants?

Another thought, could these be a planet contaminated by the violation of the Prime Directive, with a Starship that crashed, and they have been building up their tech by researching the leftover components, including the bridge?

I was hoping if this was a return to a pre-warp civilization from Picard’s past it would have been Mintalka. It would even make sense if the Romulans, given the destruction of their system, wanted to absorb a species of Vulcanoids who do not suppress their emotions.

Deneva?

They had me at “no time travel.”

Agreed. So many people seem to like time travel. I’m so done with it, that and the Mirror Universe.

The Mirror universe used to be a fun little distraction. Then Discovery took it to a whole new level and squeezed all the life out of it.

I am sold too (time travel stories are always nonsense to me apart from time line fix stories). I also love the Titan-A. This might actually be good (and I am no TNG fan).

Don’t get to excited. They’ve all been stuck in the Nexus since the end of Nemesis…..

Considering they just did a season long time travel story, yeah it would feel pretty redundant to do it again. It’s exactly why I knew it wasn’t going to happen when people kept saying Discovery would travel back to the past in season 3, it would’ve felt waaay too soon for another one.

totally. I got so excited about a “Voyage Home” season last time around and look what they did with it? Lets just stay in our own lane this time

They can do something cool and action packed with time travel. Something incredibly cinematic and what we got with season 2 wasted time travel. At best maybe Picard learned something about himself and learned to be kinder thanks to Q. But still it was so weak a thread to spin ten episodes off of.

It seems obvious to assume Picard will die in the finale, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we get some unexpected deaths to throw us off. Beverly Crusher would be my first alternative guess since they are hyping up her roll and she has been the face of the Season 3 press tours, possibly to soften the blow to fans and to make sure we understand that Gates McFadden is happy with her story.

I don’t think Patrick Stewart can play this roll any further, but he was receptive to the idea of appearing in a TNG Movie when asked in one of his recent interviews alongside Gates McFadden. I’m not sure he would say that if he was dead this season, but then again Stewart may have misunderstood.

I am cautiously optimistic, I appreciate Terry Matalas tremendously, but I will admit that the teaser left me concerned by the ship stuff since none of it looked like it came from the TNG era, and for me TNG’s visual language is almost everything and why I fell in love with it in the first place.

I really have my doubts they will kill off Picard, especially if they think they can possibly use him in another movie some day, but we’ll see.

And we saw plenty of TNG era stuff in season 2 with the various ships, so I don’t think that’s all gone especially since the same people were on both seasons.

Harve Bennett now he was a great Trek producer!! Harve & Nick Meyer saved modern Trek as we know it otherwise nothing much would have followed STMP!

The Genesis arc + VI was the best Trek ever outside some TOS episodes (Doomsday machine, etc).

Definitely agreed! I love those movies and especially at a time we had no other Star Trek on.

They couldn’t have done it without Leonard Nimoy. They needed him for Spock in Star Trek II. They needed him to direct Star Trek III and IV. They needed his mind and creative vision. I think nearly everything he did was genius except for hiring Leonard Rosenman to do the score on Star Trek IV. I’ve always thought that should have been Horner.

I wonder… Mr. Matalas has done a lot of interesting promotion of PIC-S3. Far more than many other Trek TV directors / producers have, I think. In any case, I am thankful for his sneak peaks. I’ve enjoyed them.

The trailers – to me – have had a very cinematic quality to them. Everything – again, to me – seems really polished in a cinematic way.

So I wonder… is he positioning himself as an option for the director spot for ST-Kelvin Film #4?

If PIC-S3 rocks and redeems S1 & S2, I think the “P+ Powers That Be” will think about him as a strong option for ST-KF #4.

Honestly, I think that this (selecting amongst the more proven, successful and qualified directors already in the stable @ DISCO / PIC / SNW / LDS / PROD) would be the best course to get ST-KF #4 back on track. The reason is that the best of the existing Trek stable of directors will be cheaper to hire; they already know how to operate within P+ budgetary and operational constraints; they know how to best use existing Trek TV production tech and tools to deliver cinema quality output without spending millions on extravagant set pieces and CG which the typical non-Trek director might lean heavily upon; they already know how to pull more out of Trek casts / prior narrative history / Other Trek IP than a non-Trek director; etc.

Perhaps, this is one reason that P+ is OK with the churn that has thus far taken place regarding both the director’s chair and the script for ST-KF #4. Perhaps they are waiting to see what Matalas delivers and how the fans accept it. If his script rocks and directing sucks, they can have him write ST-KF#4 and get Frakes to direct it. If his directing rocks and his script sucks, they can get him to direct ST-KF#4 and have the SNW-LDS writers do the script. If his script and directing rock, they can have him take over the whole film. And if his film output is well-received, he would likely work with Kurtzman to chart future ST Film content & direction (a la Kevin Feige and the MCU), but with direct and obvious connections and crossovers with the TV shows as needed.

That said, I know… I know: Matalas’ PIC S3 output is vaporware until we see it. And the quality of his PIC S3 is not to be prejudged as good until it is proven definitively to be so. I know that.

And I am not promoting him. I never watched his Monkeys. I really have no clue whether he is good or not at what he does. I am just trying to put 2 and 2 together to get 3.141592653589793238462 as it relates to the embarrassing story of this 4th film and why P+ has taken certain actions, or failed to take certain actions.

Just some thoughts.

Death is neither the most interesting endpoint for a character nor the most dramatic thing that can happen to a character in a story, so let’s hope that the journey for whoever it is winds up being compelling in its own right.

And for all the suspicions about Matalas being out there talking up season three, it makes sense that he’s doing this, whether or not season three itself winds up being good/popular. The first two seasons are not good, and it’s skillful damage control by mostly ignoring them to get people excited or at the very least interested in the new and final one. Frankly, I’m sick of all the callbacks. I think Star Trek can be better than just rehashing things we’ve seen and heard over and over again in some variation over the past 40+ years, but in a situation where they’re basically doing a reunion movie with senior citizens that’s strictly going to be of interest to an older set of television viewers (who only know Star Trek a certain way), that’s unavoidable.

At the very least, he’s talking up all of those connections to canon and fidelity to the lore and not coasting on generic marketing pablum used by these writer-producers who are only involved to cynically manage an IP they don’t really care about. Maybe this season will wind up being all about the Enterprise-D crew’s traumas, and maybe exploring those traumas might actually be compelling and emotional, but at least he’s not acting like that should be the selling point of a Star Trek season.

Probably Picard will die

i’m not too concerned of killing off TNG characters, we did it with DATA already, Twice!

Janzia dax , Charles “Trip” tucker, Spock twice, Kirk so really is it not a surprise

…and don’t forget Harry.

I’ve been disappointed too, yet I think we have only rosy memories of all our fave ST shows,etc. I know growing up with Wesley I was actually helped quite a lot by some of the episodes episodes and their ability to teach me how handle the unexpected. And I’m not being negative but I try to be unbiased I like All Star trek and if you remember do you remember in the next generation originally the episodes aired they were really good great in fact however like All Star trek series and movies there are some really really really stupid bad stinkers of episodes so I said so just enjoy, It’s OK. Rich K

My guess is that Riker might be the one to die and maybe Worf. Riker in the sense that he is the character that has the quite tragic background now and writers love offing tragic characters and in terms of Worf I don’t think Michael Dorn really wants to put on that make-up again especially when he is getting older. Another thing I speculate is that I know they said John De Lancie isn’t involved in this season but maybe they might have a one final scene where Q is actually the guardian of the afterlife now and when the characters die they’ll meet Q there.

Honestly, I doubt that no TNG character would die. Although, I consder the final season of Star Trek: Picard to be an OK one for me, that new recording of Jerry Goldsmith’s Motion Picture theme tune gave me chills up and down my spine. How priceless…and timeless.

In the world of Star Trek, you are only dead until you are alive again!

As I killing one off makes any difference, they’d just bring them back as an android copy.

Great news about the music, but about killing off a character, that only ever creates negative feelings, so just dont.

Bringing back beloved characters after decades only to kill them off (like han solo) is a phenomenal idea! 😒

.. Killing of established charakters is just senseless! Think about it – What does that do to fans:
It brings:
1) Sadness
2) Anger
3) Shock
4) Lost interest in the show

And what does it do to people who don’t care about the characters:
They don’t care ANYWAYS.

So it’s just a stupid idea to do that in every ways.

Picard is the obvious character to bite the dust. Especially since it already kinda happened.

To be fair, no character’s death is going to carry the same weight as when they aced Spock in WoK.