“It wouldn’t have been that.”
Terry Matalas doesn’t mince words on the difficulty of reuniting the “Next Generation” band for the third season of “Star Trek: Picard.” In fact, when he came aboard as showrunner ahead of Season 2, there were no plans for a reunion of the beloved Enterprise-D crew (nor an appearance from the ship itself).
“Because that wasn’t the show they set out to make,” he added in a new interview with IndieWire, along with production designer Dave Blass. “‘Picard’ was the deconstruction of Jean-Luc Picard, and he had a new cast, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Matalas knew, however, that bringing the entire “Next Generation” cast back for one last adventure — after their journeys concluded with 2002’s “Star Trek: Nemesis” — would be thrilling if that happened.
He did it like this.
Fans have greeted the third season of ‘Picard’ with what can only be described as an euphoric response. Matalas and his army of craftsmen pursued one goal, as Blass states: “’Let’s find an updated version of what we’ve already loved.’ Our idea was not to change (“Trek”) but to update. And I think that simple difference from changing it to updating it was fundamental to our ideas.
Unlike many nostalgia-fueled re-teams, this didn’t mean simply redoing what they’d done before: it meant that, since we hadn’t seen these characters in 20 years, we should see the changes in their lives that those decades brought. To deliver a true reunion, Matalas needed to bring back more than just ’90s on-camera talent. Although that alone was quite a task.
“‘It’s going to be up to you, Terry, to go into all these rooms and convince all these parties that it’s possible,'” Matalas recalled franchise executives Alex Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman saying. “’But how are you going to do it?’ And both Alex and Akiva were lovely about that support, but they were very much like, “It’s up to you to do it.” They were great, but I didn’t get much sleep.
Months of phone calls and meetings later, not only is Patrick Stewart back as the lead, but Gates McFadden as Beverly Crusher, Michael Dorn as Worf, Jonathan Frakes as Riker, Marina Sirtis as Troi, Brent Spiner as Data (yes, Data, that’s died twice before this) and LeVar Burton as Geordi. Matalas was especially eager to present Burton with a vision of Geordi in a more fulfilled place – as a father of two daughters in a healthy relationship – than he was sometimes presented as in “Next Gen”. There wasn’t much they felt really needed to be redone from “Next Gen,” but the showrunner said “it was a big deal,” and Burton agreed.
To truly make the world of “Next Gen” some 20 years later, Matalas and Blass also brought back a dozen craftsmen who worked on the show and other “Trek” series and movies in the ’90s. Among them were Denise and Michael Okuda, who designed the LCARS computer interfaces for the bridge set and turbolifts in the 1990s shows, concept designer and VFX artist Doug Drexler, visual effects producer Dan Curry, the starship designer John Eaves and computer and video reproduction specialist Todd A. Marks. The goal was to build organically on what had come before.
As a conceptual exercise, Blass challenged his artists to think, “’OK, what does an elevator look like in our world? What did an elevator look like 20 years ago? How many changes actually take place in our architecture during that time frame?’ And it’s not like that, stuff Not change so much. So we really went back to what we’d seen of the latest releases of ‘Voyager’ and ‘Deep Space Nine’ and the ‘Next Generation’ movies and said, ‘OK, that’s what we’re going to do, and then we’re going to elevate it a little bit. ‘, we will improve the technology and merge it with our own technology.’”
For example, LCARS computer interfaces that were once pastel decals stretched across bright displays could now be replaced with real-life animation appearing on high-definition monitors thanks to Marks, who previously worked on “Star Trek: Nemesis. Where before they had a subdued glow, they’ve now popped up, especially on the sets of the new ship, the USS Titan, which is supposed to be the state of the art and the best in Starfleet technology at the dawn of the 25th century.
Similarly, Blass added, “Worf gets a brand new weapon, and instead of having someone make it, he’s like, ‘No, let’s call Dan Curry, who designed the (Klingon weapon) bat’leth, and let’s make him create it because he’s in a relationship with Michael. Even the design of the villain’s spaceship, the Shrike, was inspired by an old work: Hollywood master knifemaker Gil Hibben’s blade for Tom Hardy’s character in “Nemesis,” with its protruding side spurs they curve forward like pincers.
“One of the things I said to my team was, ‘Star Trek’ is not a fantasy show,’” said Blass. “It’s not a science fiction show. It is a historical drama that takes place in space. But there are 60 years of history that we must be faithful to.”
There was one thing that needed not an update but a meticulous recreation: the bridge set of the Enterprise-D, which appeared in the penultimate episode of Season 3, as if it were the last character needed for the meeting was indeed complete. And indeed it was.
For just two days of filming, Blass and his craftsmen spent more than three months recreating the bridge, with its 1990s muted beige and brown hues and curved wooden arch that surrounds the captain, first officer and the adviser and supplies the elevated console where Tactical Officer Worf stands. Nothing is left of this except the original blueprints and records of the changes made to the season-to-season set of the original show. It wasn’t just a set; it was an atmosphere. With its much-discussed carpet, the Enterprise-D’s bridge conveyed not just a vehicle, but a place of comfort.
“There’s the arch where Worf is, and the painters got exactly the right number of grains in the wood and the knot is in the exact spot it was originally,” Blass said. “Because (his craftsmen) were like, ‘Oh, no, we looked at the picture. We took it from this and it’s this type of wood with this grit tool. We bought the same grain tool to get that effect. The set, a veritable museum piece for which you could charge admission tickets, has been preserved this time around.
But from the bridge, where the ’90s were brought back to life, to DP Jon Joffin trying to marry ’90s TV lighting style with today’s techniques (this season is filming in 2021), have been made some subtle updates. LCARS decals in the 1990s were blue but appeared to viewers with a greenish tint due to the way they were filmed; so Marks added some green to those animations for his HD video playback version of the buttons and indicators.
For Matalas and Blass none of these things were about “fan service.” As Blass said, “The things people call Easter eggs, it’s like, ‘No, we’re just doing it accurately.'”
And so they did.
