CBS All Access’s untitled Star Trek Jean-Luc Picard spinoff series is moving forward swiftly, and it's been revealed that it'll a...
It looks like the series won't be chock-full of standalone adventures for the former Captain, when it finally lands on our screens. In an interview with Yahoo! Entertainment, Patrick Stewart, who will be reprising the role of Picard at CBS AA, has said that the writing team on the new show "are writing a ten-hour movie" adding that they're all hoping for more than one season to transpire.
This could be a matter of phrasing from the actor, but the idea that the series will be one long arc for the character is delightfully appealing.
Producer Alex Kurtzman recently chatted about the new series at the Paleyfest panel for Star Trek: Discovery (via IndieWire) where he revealed that he'd just sat down with Stewart to read the first episode.
“I had an amazing experience yesterday. I sat at Patrick’s kitchen table and I heard him read the first episode, and I almost cried,” he told the audience. “It was quite something. He’s at an amazing place in his life. He’s so excited.”
But not excited enough to share the finer details of the plot with even his foster dog, Emma! Stewart teased his current rehearsal scenes with his followers over on Instagram:
Some character breakdowns emerged via That Hashtag Show a while back. You can read those right here. They appear to be legit af because Deadline has revealed that Santiago Cabrera (Salvation) and Michelle Hurd (Blindspot) have now joined the cast.
Cabrera will play "the pilot of Picard’s ship who also is a skillful thief. Hurd is playing a former intelligence officer who is a brilliant analyst with a terrific memory that has not been affected by her drug and alcohol abuse."
That seems pretty bang on with the aforementioned breakdowns!
Evan Evagora has also joined the cast in a mysterious role, according to Deadline. The young actor will also feature on next year's Fantasy Island movie, but this will be a big first role for him on TV.
Star Trek: new Picard series release date
We'll see the first episodes appear at the end of 2019!
CCO of CBS, David Nevins, rolled up at the 46th Annual UBS Global Media and Communications Conference, where The Wrap got confirmation that we won't be waiting until 2020 to see Captain Picard back in the Star Trek saddle.
“In 2019, it’s not one ‘Star Trek,’ it’s two ‘Star Treks.’ ‘Discovery’ at the beginning of the year, and Picard will start at the end of the year,” Nevins confirmed.
Star Trek: new Picard series behind the scenes
A pic from the newly-launched writers room from star Patrick Stewart revealed that work on the new series was well underway.
Stewart, who made the official announcement of the Star Trek: The Next Generation follow-up series back in August, tweeted a photo of the former-and-soon-to-return Picard actor’s proverbial ready room, joined by a creative coalition consisting of Kirsten Beyer (Star Trek: Discovery), Michael Chabon (Spider-Man 2), Akiva Goldsman (Star Trek: Discovery), Diandra Pendleton-Thompson (Awakening Love) and James Duff (Major Crimes). Indeed, Stewart’s accompanying caption, “The journey has begun,” is enough to stoke excitement amongst even the most lapsed of Trekkies.
Star Trek: new Picard series plot
The untitled Star Trek Picard series will manifest as the franchise’s first visit to the Star Trek: The Next Generation time period since the 2002 movie, Star Trek: Nemesis, which was the last time Stewart played the iconic captain of U.S.S. Enterprises D and E. The upcoming series will chronicle a storyline set during Picard's golden years, which were famously teased in an alternate-timeline setting in the 1994 Star Trek: The Next Generation series finale, "All Good Things," living a peacefully idyllic existence working his family's famous vineyards in France.The good folks over at Trek Movie had a chance to catch up with producers Alex Kurtzman and Heather Kadin after their recent NYCC panel appearance, garnering a few interesting details.
Firstly, they both confirmed that filming is due to start in April, 2019, which doesn't seem that far away at all. The pair also revealed that this Picard-centric project is not set to be a limited series! There are multiple seasons of this new show apparently in the offing, which is terrific news.
Kurtzman also talked to EW about how Discovery and this new series will compare in terms of their vision and tone, and also what these new Picard adventures will retain from the Next Generation era.
“It’s an extremely different rhythm than Discovery,” Kurtzman said. “Discovery is a bullet. Picard is a very contemplative show. It will find a balance between the speed of Discovery and the nature of what Next Gen was, but I believe it will have its own rhythm.”
Kurtzman was nervous that Stewart wouldn't be keen on doing the new series initially, but after he read what the team were planning to do with the Picard story, he was more than happy:
"He walked into the room and he had a huge smile on his face and said, 'This is wonderful'. What he understood at that point … was that he was with people who desperately wanted to collaborate with him, that we weren't trying to exploit him," Kurtzman explained. "He knew if he was going to go back to Picard, it needed to be for the greatest reason ever."
“Without revealing too much about it, people have so many questions about Picard and what happened to him, and the idea we get to take time to answer those questions in the wake of the many, many things he’s had to deal with in Next Gen is really exciting," Kurtzman explained. "‘More grounded’ is not the right way to put it, because season 2 of Discovery is also grounded. It will feel more… real-world? If that’s the right way to put it.”
Kurtzman also chatted with THR about where we'll find Captain Picard in the Trek timeline when we rejoin his story later this year.
What you're about to read may be a little confusing if you haven't been keeping up with the newer Star Trek movies, but we'll try to break it down as best we can.
In the 2009 Star Trek film, starring Chris Pine, we were taken forward in time to the year 2387 during old Spock's mind meld with the younger Kirk. Spock showed the rebellious future Captain a plan that he'd concocted to use red matter to create a black hole that would avert a forthcoming disaster - a star that was going supernova was set to destroy Romulus. Unfortunately, Spock didn't manage to carry out his plan in time, and Romulus was destroyed. Kurtzman co-wrote this story, so it kinda makes sense that he's taken this event and merged it with the new Picard series, using it to catch up with the timeline 12 years after the destruction of Romulus.
"Picard's life was radically altered by the dissolution of the Romulan Empire," Kurztman told THR, and the Romulan connection, featured in many stories that followed Picard through The Next Generation and into Nemesis, appears to be the hook that tempted Patrick Stewart back to the role. "What we tried to convey in [a first meeting with Stewart] was how desperately we loved him and the character and how much we wanted to see what happened to Picard. It turned into a 34-page document — with no way to shorten it. We were going on all in and he was going to read it or not read it, love it or hate it. It was our best attempt at trying to get him to say yes."
He added "This is going to be a very thoughtful, psychological portrait in a lot of ways. We all know what Picard means to the world and why he, like so many legendary characters on Star Trek, has endured and what he’s represented. He in some way has to go through a gauntlet to find that again. Things have changed for him and changed him in some ways, and yet he is so deeply and fundamentally still Picard."
Kurtzman also confirmed to IW that "in many ways, [Picard] is slower [than Discovery], it’s more meditative. I think it honours what is best about ‘Next Gen[eration].’"
COMMENTS