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Star Trek: Picard

Star Trek: Picard features Patrick Stewart reprising his iconic role as Jean-Luc Picard, which he played for seven seasons on Star Trek: The Next Generation and follows this iconic character into the next chapter of his life.

In the epic, thrilling conclusion of Star Trek: Picard , a desperate message from a long-lost friend draws Starfleet legend Admiral Jean-Luc Picard into the most daring mission of his life, forcing him to recruit allies spanning generations old and new. This final adventure sets him on a collision course with the legacy of his past and explosive, new revelations that will alter the fate of the Federation forever.

In addition to streaming on Paramount+ , Star Trek: Picard also streams on Prime Video outside of the U.S. and Canada, and in Canada can be seen on Bell Media's CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave. Star Trek: Picard is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

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PIC Season 1

• View history

This page contains information specifically pertaining to the first season of Star Trek: Picard , whose episode premieres were consecutively streamed on CBS All Access (USA) and CraveTV (Canada) from 23 January 2020 through 26 March 2020 for North America, with the rest of the world following suit with one day delay through Amazon Prime .

• 3 Background information
• 5.1.1 Special guest star
• 7 External links

Episodes [ ]

Summary [ ].

At the end of the 24th century , and fourteen years after his retirement from Starfleet , Jean-Luc Picard is living a quiet life on his vineyard , assisted by his two Romulan friends and housekeepers Laris and Zhaban . After Dahj Asha comes to him for help, Picard finds reason to believe Dahj is connected to Data and feels compelled to help her, but she is killed by a mysterious force.

On an abandoned Borg cube known as the Artifact , Soji Asha (twin sister of Dahj) works for the Borg Reclamation Project . Like her sister, Soji is being followed and endangered by Romulan forces, namely Narek .

Without Starfleet's support, Picard is left to recruit a crew of his own: Dr. Agnes Jurati , estranged former colleague Raffi Musiker , pilot and former Starfleet officer Cristóbal Rios , the young Qowat Milat -trained martial artist Elnor , and a rescued Fenris Ranger Seven of Nine . Picard and his team, aboard the civilian freighter La Sirena , track Bruce Maddox to Freecloud , believed to be key to finding and protecting Soji. Their fight to protect Soji takes them to the Artifact, Nepenthe , and Coppelius , where Picard and his crew come head to head with the mysterious forces threatening Soji and other forces threatening the galaxy .

Background information [ ]

• Characters which ' cross over ' from other incarnations of Star Trek : Jean-Luc Picard and Data (" Remembrance "), Hugh (" The End is the Beginning "), Seven of Nine (" Absolute Candor "), Icheb (" Stardust City Rag "), and William T. Riker and Deanna Troi (" Nepenthe "). Worf appears in a photograph and B-4 's remains are seen in (" Remembrance "), and both Locutus of Borg and the Borg Queen are shown in stock footage in (" The Impossible Box ").
• While the television franchise was on hiatus after the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005, the development of digital visual effects (VFX) – aka CGI – production continued unabated to make great strides in the intervening decade and a half. This became unambiguously evident when the first season of Picard went into post-production; were the last three seasons of Enterprise able to make do with a single CGI vendor ( Eden FX ), the lead CGI vendor for Picard , Pixomondo (its Picard team headed by CG Supervisor Dan Smiczek ), required the assistance of no less than eight additional CGI houses on top of CBS Studios ' own in-house digital effects team (which was not employed by CBS for Enterprise ), whose senior staff consisted of VFX Supervisors Jason Michael Zimmerman and Ante Dekovic as well as VFX Producer Aleksandra Kochoska . The additional effects houses concerned Double Negative (its team headed by VFX Producer Molly Pabian ), Crafty Apes , Ghost VFX , Mackevision , FX3X , Filmworks/FX , Technicolor VFX , and Twisted Media (its team headed by Creative Director Chris Keifer and Motion Designer Noah Schloss [1] ). The in-house effects team was responsible for approximately 500 effects shot under the aegis of Lead VFX Artist Charles Collyer , while the remaining 2,500 VFX shots or so, required for the first season, were handled by the nine outside effects houses. ( Cinefex , issue 171, p. 16)

Reception [ ]

The critical review site Rotten Tomatoes has given the first season of Picard a score of 87%. However, it has also recorded a much lower audience score of 56%, with an average rating of 3.2 out of 5, indicative that the rift between critics and viewers/fans has not been mended after the even worse performance of Star Trek: Discovery ' s first two seasons. [2] Rotten Tomatoes' audience findings though, were not corroborated for this season by the customer reviews on Amazon.com , which showed a substantially higher audience rating of 4.3 out of 5, as well as a much higher rough 80/20 like/dislike divide within the viewership/fanbase itself. [3] Nonetheless, a certain amount of caution is required in the case of Amazon, as Amazon Prime is the streaming service of the series it had paid for, and Amazon is known for occasionally padding audience ratings by redacting these to more favorable ones through the removal of some of the most negative reviews without any form of justification. [4]

The critical review site Metacritic though, did corroborate Rotten Tomatoes' critical findings to some extent by quoting the lower 76% critics' rating score for the first season – against Tomatoes' 87% average rating – and also reported an even worse viewership rating of 4.1 out of 10, with the like/dislike divide showing a rough 40/60 split. [5]

This was not the reception showrunner Alex Kurtzman and his team had hoped for, as this season performed even worse than Discovery 's first season , which was hitherto the worst received season of Kurtzman-era Star Trek . Fully expecting that the principal character of arguably the most beloved Star Trek series would be enough to win back the hearts and minds of fans disenchanted by Discovery , the first two episodes started out well enough due to the fan's high expectations, [6] but fan appreciation for the season dropped sharply after episode three. Customer reviews on a multitude of social media platforms and internet blogs, including those of the abovementioned review sites, showed that critical fans continued to have issues with perceived ( Roddenberry ) philosophy violations, the show considered too dystopian in their view, just like they had with Discovery . Perceived canon / (visual) continuity violations on the other hand, which had also played a major part in the critical fan assessment of Discovery , no longer constituted a role of note due to the series' premise as a sequel.

As it did for the first season of Star Trek: Discovery – to no avail as it turned out for that occasion – CBS Broadcasting , encouraged by the intially better (fan-)reception of Picard , shortlived though it may have been, again embarked in early May 2020 on substantial efforts in the form of an elaborate mailer, online videos, social media, outdoor campaign and multiple events, in order to gain traction for their 2020 Emmy Awards nomination chances, yet again trying to get a nomination in the coveted, but elusive "Outstanding Lead Actor" category for Patrick Stewart. [7] If nominated, this would have been a first for Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard, as he has never been nominated for one in the Star Trek: The Next Generation -era – nor has anybody else in the history of televised Star Trek for that matter. Stewart was nominated though for his role as Captain Ahab in the 1998 mini-series Moby Dick , but did not win the award.

Still, when the nominations were announced on 28 July, it turned out that a "Best Performer" nomination remained an elusive one for the Star Trek franchise since the three Leonard Nimoy had received in 1967-1969 for "Supporting Actor." The five nominations that the season did pick up, were all yet again in the usual technical categories, and of which only the prosthetic makeup nomination was won, [8] a category Star Trek traditionally excels at. Star Trek however, was soundly beaten at the Creative Emmys by franchise rival Star Wars , whose very first live action television series, The Mandalorian , picked up no less than five of the most prestigious technical Emmy awards on its Emmy debut for its first season, constituting yet another bitter disappointment for Kurtzman-era Star Trek considering the substantial lobbying efforts undertaken by Kurtzman and associates for not only Picard , but previously for Discovery as well.

The Golden Reel Award win concerned a tie with the acclaimed Netflix series The Queen's Gambit , whose episode "End Game" also won the award in the same category. [9]

The Johnny-come-latelies in the award season were the 2021 Saturn Awards which were only awarded on 26 October 2021, having been postponed for nearly two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic , and which therefore covered the genre films and television seasons of both 2019 and 2020. Picard lost out to franchise sibling Discovery (whose 2020 third season was nominated for the same award) in the most prestigious television category, "Best Science Fiction Television Series". Still, Patrick Stewart won the award in the category he was not considered for at the Emmys, that of "Best Actor in a Television Series". [10] Stewart incidentally, had already won the exact same, then-called "Best Genre (TV) Actor" award back in 1990 for the same role, that of Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation , apart from being nominated for it again in 1997 for his performance as such in Star Trek: First Contact . [11]

Credits [ ]

Starring [ ], special guest star [ ].

• Andrew Coutts (4 episodes, 2020)
• Steve Haugen (3 episodes, 2020)
• Sarah C. Reeves (3 episodes, 2020)
• Louis Joseph Comeau IV (10 episodes, 2020)
• Iain McFadyen - supervising art director (10 episodes, 2020)
• Dylan Bocanegra (1 episode, 2020)
• Lisa Alkofer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Alexei Dmitiew - key makeup artist (10 episodes, 2020)
• Silvina Knight - assistant makeup department head (10 episodes, 2020)
• James MacKinnon - Dept head Prosthetics and Special Makeup Effects / makeup department head (10 episodes, 2020)
• Maxine Morris - hair department head (10 episodes, 2020)
• Cristina Patterson - contact lens designer/painter (10 episodes, 2020)
• Richard Redlefsen - key prosthetic makeup artist (10 episodes, 2020)
• Maria Sandoval - assistant hair department head (10 episodes, 2020)
• Vincent Van Dyke - prosthetic designer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Cody J. Wilkins - VVDFX Operations Foreman (10 episodes, 2020)
• Robert Smithson - contact lens technician (uncredited) (8 episodes, 2020)
• Chandra M. Alexander - additional second assistant director (10 episodes, 2020)
• Jesse Bellis - second second assistant director (10 episodes, 2020)
• Matt G. Sheets - first assistant director (6 episodes, 2020)
• Alison Troy - Key 2nd AD (6 episodes, 2020)
• David Gross - second assistant director (1 episode, 2020)
• Jason Bartolone - general foreman (10 episodes, 2020)
• Jason Bedig - Lead Man (10 episodes, 2020)
• Laurent Ben-Mimoun - illustrator (10 episodes, 2020)
• Dylan Bocanegra - assistant art director (10 episodes, 2020)
• Anthony Cafaro - assistant property (10 episodes, 2020)
• Louis Joseph Comeau IV - concept artist (10 episodes, 2020)
• Daren Dochterman - concept artist (10 episodes, 2020)
• John Eaves - concept artist (10 episodes, 2020)
• Stephanie Feinerman - set decoration coordinator (10 episodes, 2020)
• James Isaacson - props (10 episodes, 2020)
• Andrew Jarvis - graphic artist (10 episodes, 2020)
• Noelle King - set designer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Igor Knezevic - concept artist (10 episodes, 2020)
• Nicholas Leiting - property department coordinator (10 episodes, 2020)
• Angran Li - Art Department Assistant (10 episodes, 2020)
• Jeffrey Lombardi - property master (10 episodes, 2020)
• Nathan Longest - props (10 episodes, 2020)
• Jim Meyer - stage foreman (10 episodes, 2020)
• Thomas Pringle - concept artist (10 episodes, 2020)
• Scott Schneider - concept set designer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Sondra Thorpe - buyer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Michael Vines - assistant property master (10 episodes, 2020)
• Shannon Walsh - assistant art director (10 episodes, 2020)
• Patrick Barrett - storyboard artist (7 episodes, 2020)
• John J. Bradley - buyer (7 episodes, 2020)
• Michael Faretta - decorator/painter (7 episodes, 2020)
• Lexi Andross Fry - assistant property master (6 episodes, 2020)
• Joseph Avilez - Greens Foreman (5 episodes, 2020)
• Michele Faretta - decorator/painter (4 episodes, 2020)
• Alan Farkas - set designer (2 episodes, 2020)
• J. Bryan Holloway - lead sculptor / sculptor (2 episodes, 2020)
• Stacey S. McIntosh - construction coordinator (2 episodes, 2020)
• Melissa McSorley - food stylist (2 episodes, 2020)
• Brandy Taylor - construction pa (2 episodes, 2020)
• Marina Abramyan - Art Department Coordinator (1 episode, 2020)
• Sandra Doyle Carmola - set designer (1 episode, 2020)
• Duncan Crawford - sculptor (1 episode, 2020)
• Robert Andrew Johnson - concept set designer (1 episode, 2020)
• Josh Morris - gang boss (1 episode, 2020)
• Steven M. Saylor - set designer (1 episode, 2020)
• Blair Strong - graphic designer (1 episode, 2020)
• Ron Yates - set designer (1 episode, 2020)
• Kil Won Yu - set designer (1 episode, 2020)
• Ed Carr - re-recording mixer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Peter J. Devlin - sound mixer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Tim Farrell - sound designer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Todd Grace - re-recording mixer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Chris Hall - 2nd Boom Operator (10 episodes, 2020)
• Brandon Loulias - production sound mixer: 2nd unit (10 episodes, 2020)
• David Raymond - boom operator (10 episodes, 2020)
• Matthew E. Taylor - Supervising Sound Editor (10 episodes, 2020)
• Sean Heissinger - dialogue editor (4 episodes, 2020)
• Lawrence Decker - special effects foreman (10 episodes, 2020)
• Jeff Khachadoorian - special effects coordinator (10 episodes, 2020)
• Andy Weder - special effects coordinator (10 episodes, 2020)
• Sam Dean - supervising pyrotechnician (9 episodes, 2020)
• Brandon Kachel - matte painter (10 episodes, 2020)
• James William Visconti III - lead computer playback engineer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Fernando Ferreyra - Previs Artist (7 episodes, 2020)
• Zach Hamelton - visual effects coordinator: crafty apes (7 episodes, 2020)
• Ryan Harpole - visual effects editor: Technicolor VFX (6 episodes, 2020)
• Ryan Walton - previsualization artist: Pixomondo (6 episodes, 2020)
• Jack Van Nuis - digital compositor (5 episodes, 2020)
• Richard S. Lee - digital matte painter (4 episodes, 2020)
• Dustin McKamie - digital compositor (4 episodes, 2020)
• Doug Spilatro - visual effects artist (4 episodes, 2020)
• Lycee Anaya - digital compositor (3 episodes, 2020)
• Ryan Purnell - digital compositor (3 episodes, 2020)
• Edward Fanning - motion graphics artist: Technicolor VFX (2 episodes, 2020)
• Cathy Shaw - visual effects artist (2 episodes, 2020)
• Patrick L. Almanza - digital compositor: Technicolor VFX (1 episode, 2020)
• Ndosi Anyabwile - digital compositor (1 episode, 2020)
• Niall Booker - Senior Environment Artist (1 episode, 2020)
• Neal Bradshaw - 3D scan technician: Gentle Giant Studios / photogrammetry 3D scan artist: Gentle Giant Studios (1 episode, 2020)
• Kathryn Brillhart - visual effects production manger: Gentle Giant Studios (1 episode, 2020)
• Laura Dochtermann - division digital production manager: Pixomondo (1 episode, 2020)
• Omar Hesham - cg artist: Pixomondo (1 episode, 2020)
• Adam Pere - visual effects producer: Crafty Apes (1 episode, 2020)
• Bjorn Blaaberg Sorensen - visual effects artist (1 episode, 2020)
• Prapanch Swamy - division cg supervisor: Pixomondo (1 episode, 2020)
• Guy Fernandez - stunt rigger (10 episodes, 2020)
• Tim Storms - Stunt double: Patrick Stewart (8 episodes, 2020)
• Natalie Diaz - stunt rigger / stunt performer (3 episodes, 2020)
• Kevin Arnold - stunt performer (2 episodes, 2020)
• Cort Rogers - stunt actor (2 episodes, 2020)
• Keisha Tucker - stunt performer (2 episodes, 2020)
• Peter Wallack - stunt performer (2 episodes, 2020)
• Morgan Benoit - stunt performer (1 episode, 2020)
• Solomon Brende - stunt performer (1 episode, 2020)
• Katelyn Brooke - Stunt Double: Jeri Ryan (1 episode, 2020)
• Tim Connolly - fight coordinator (1 episode, 2020)
• Julius Denem - Stunt performer (1 episode, 2020)
• Alyma Dorsey - stunts (1 episode, 2020)
• Mike Estes - stunts (1 episode, 2020)
• Jessi Fisher - stunt double: Orla Brady (1 episode, 2020)
• Janell Haney - stunt double: Peyton List (1 episode, 2020)
• Lance Jemison - stunts (1 episode, 2020)
• Linda Kessler - stunts: Bjayzl's Bodyguard (1 episode, 2020)
• Trevor Logan - stunt double: Harry Treadaway (1 episode, 2020)
• Chris Sean Reid - stunts (1 episode, 2020)
• Petra Sprecher - stunt actor: Ariel (1 episode, 2020)
• Eric Watson - stunt fighter (1 episode, 2020)
• James Barela - first assistant camera (10 episodes, 2020)
• Kenny Brown - a camera/steadicam operator (10 episodes, 2020)
• Buzzy Burwell - Best Boy Electric (10 episodes, 2020)
• Scott Crabbe - key hd video assist / hd video assist (10 episodes, 2020)
• Ross Dunkerley - gaffer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Michael-Ryan Fletchall - Aerial Camera Operator (10 episodes, 2020)
• Trish Herremans - Set Lighting Techinician (10 episodes, 2020)
• Sean Higgins - rigging gaffer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Kyle Jacobs - digital utility (10 episodes, 2020)
• Samar Kauss - loader (10 episodes, 2020)
• Michael Kennedy - fixtures technician (10 episodes, 2020)
• Chris Kieffer - video graphics supervisor (10 episodes, 2020)
• Lorne MacDougall - DMX Technician (10 episodes, 2020)
• Brian Minzlaff - lighting technician (10 episodes, 2020)
• Casey Muldoon - second assistant camera (10 episodes, 2020)
• Brent Studler - lighting technician (10 episodes, 2020)
• Joshua D. Thatcher - lead lighting console programmer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Mike Visencio - fixtures design supervisor: set lighting (10 episodes, 2020)
• Bradley Everett Wilson - camera supporter (10 episodes, 2020)
• Eric Zucker - A Dolly grip and crane operator (10 episodes, 2020)
• Maxwell Thorpe - best boy grip (9 episodes, 2020)
• Jessica Lakoff Cannon - camera operator (8 episodes, 2020)
• Brandy Taylor - fixtures pa (8 episodes, 2020)
• Martin Torner - grip (8 episodes, 2020)
• Westley LeClay - Digital Utility (6 episodes, 2020)
• Josh Christopher Walter - rigging electrician / Rigging electrician (5 episodes, 2020)
• Bryan DeLorenzo - focus puller: day player (4 episodes, 2020)
• Leonidas Jaramillo - camera operator (4 episodes, 2020)
• Tim Dolan - b camera operator / additional Steadicam operator (3 episodes, 2020)
• Nick Zeigler - lamp operator (3 episodes, 2020)
• Kevin Britton - digital imaging technician: 2nd unit (2 episodes, 2020)
• Adam Camacho - rigging grip (2 episodes, 2020)
• Aaron Epstein - still photographer (2 episodes, 2020)
• Leo Ibanez - grip / rigging grip (2 episodes, 2020)
• Matt Kennedy - still photographer (2 episodes, 2020)
• Rex Kenney - Grip (2 episodes, 2020)
• David Leite - key grip (2 episodes, 2020)
• Christopher Mably - director of photography: 2nd unit (2 episodes, 2020)
• Oytun Ahmet Sahan - Telescopic Crane Technician (2 episodes, 2020)
• Dana Baker - Drone Pilot (1 episode, 2020)
• Jorge Devotto - first assistant camera: second unit (1 episode, 2020)
• Justin M. Lubin - still photographer (1 episode, 2020)
• Walter "Bud" Scott - key grip (1 episode, 2020)
• Tina Thorpe - still photographer (1 episode, 2020)
• Jordan C. Kadovitz - additional hd video assist (uncredited) (3 episodes, 2020)
• Önder Yetiskin - model and prop designer (10 episodes, 2020)
• John Eaves - concept artist (9 episodes, 2020)
• Victoria Murphy - casting assistant (10 episodes, 2020)
• Kendra Shay Clark - casting associate (5 episodes, 2020)
• Jennifer Brooks - casting associate (3 episodes, 2020)
• Julie Knapp - casting associate (2 episodes, 2020)
• Amy Arnold - key costumer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Dorothy Bulac - key specialty costumer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Chrissy Callan - key costumer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Alexandra Casey - assistant costume designer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Samantha Dewey-Gartner - specialty costumer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Heather Hybbert - costumer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Anders Jansson - Costume Production Assistant (10 episodes, 2020)
• Matthew Jerome - set costumer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Mitchell Ray Kenney - costume supervisor (10 episodes, 2020)
• Marilyn Madsen - costume manufacturing foreperson (10 episodes, 2020)
• Natasha Romanow - set costumer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Anthony Tran - assistant costume designer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Cesha Ventre - set costumer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Erin Wenrick - costumer (10 episodes, 2020)
• Caroline Skubik - costumer (9 episodes, 2020)
• Greg Hopwood - costume concept artist (8 episodes, 2020)
• Ivory Stanton - Key Textile artist (8 episodes, 2020)
• Tyra Youland - Head dyer and Textile artist (8 episodes, 2020)
• Michael Uwandi - costume concept artist (7 episodes, 2020)
• Laura Wong - buyer (7 episodes, 2020)
• Vicente Parada - costumer / set costumer (6 episodes, 2020)
• Yen Do - set costumer (4 episodes, 2020)
• Tina Pogosian - costumer (2 episodes, 2020)
• Hannz Mulligan - costumer (1 episode, 2020)
• Anna Seltzer - buyer (1 episode, 2020)
• John St. Laurent - colorist: dailies (10 episodes, 2020)
• Nick Van Damme - Dailies Operator (5 episodes, 2020)
• John Mullin - additional editor / assistant editor (3 episodes, 2020)
• Brian Santistevan - assistant editor (3 episodes, 2020)
• Preston Rapp - assistant editor (1 episode, 2020)
• Jimmie Lee Acre - key assistant location manager (10 episodes, 2020)
• Nick Carr - key assistant location manager (10 episodes, 2020)
• Philip Fracassi - key assistant location manager (10 episodes, 2020)
• William Jorgenson - key assistant location manager (10 episodes, 2020)
• Jun C. Lin - key assistant location manager (10 episodes, 2020)
• Peter Martorano - location manager / supervising location manager (10 episodes, 2020)
• Guy Morrison - key assistant location manager (10 episodes, 2020)
• James Parker - key assistant location manager (10 episodes, 2020)
• Scott Trimble - supervising location manager / location manager (10 episodes, 2020)
• Tommy Woodard - key assistant location manager (10 episodes, 2020)
• Melissa Downing - key assistant location manager (8 episodes, 2020)
• Jonny Ramos - assistant location manager (8 episodes, 2020)
• Jimmy Hang - additional key assistant location manager (2 episodes, 2020)
• Cary Heckman - additional key assistant location manager (2 episodes, 2020)
• Jeffrey A. Hunter - additional key assistant location manager (2 episodes, 2020)
• Morgan Patterson - key assistant location manager (2 episodes, 2020)
• Nathan Polatin - assistant location manager (2 episodes, 2020)
• Jeff Russo - Conductor / composer: main title (10 episodes, 2020)
• Gina Zimmitti - music contractor (10 episodes, 2020)
• Ayana Haviv - singer: soloist (2 episodes, 2020)
• Stan Jones - music editor (1 episode, 2020)
• Charles Dewey - script coordinator (1 episode, 2020)
• Benoit Fiset - script translation (1 episode, 2020)
• Danny Bress - driver (10 episodes, 2020)
• Jeremy Morgan - facility driver / production driver / talent transportation (10 episodes, 2020)
• Rick Kelleher - transportation captain (1 episode, 2020)
• Jerry Smith - transportation coordinator (1 episode, 2020)
• Collin Baker - assistant to: T. Roth (10 episodes, 2020)
• Martin Garner - computer playback supervisor (10 episodes, 2020)
• Eamon Hartnett - writers' p.a. (10 episodes, 2020)
• Pearce Lawrence - production assistant (10 episodes, 2020)
• Joanna Monfreda - Office Production Assistant (10 episodes, 2020)
• Justin Nickels - office production assistant (10 episodes, 2020)
• Skylar Ojeda - Assistant to A. Goldsman (10 episodes, 2020)
• Nicole Orefice - production coordinator (10 episodes, 2020)
• Monica Shapiro - assistant: Alex Kurtzman (10 episodes, 2020)
• Jimmy Vasquez - assistant payroll accountant (10 episodes, 2020)
• Matt Hughes - production accountant: Pixomondo (8 episodes, 2020)
• Daniel Eubanks - set production assistant / production assistant (6 episodes, 2020)
• Ralph Lucchese - production assistant (4 episodes, 2020)
• Richard Creighton - fire safety advisor (2 episodes, 2020)
• Claire Doré - animal trainer (2 episodes, 2020)
• Benoit Fiset - dialect coach (1 episode, 2020)
• Casey Oliver - production assistant (1 episode, 2020)
• Natalie Pickens - production assistant (1 episode, 2020)
• Jeff Steck - first assistant accountant (1 episode, 2020)
• Sandra J. White - construction accountant (1 episode, 2020)
• Patrick Zapata - set production assistant (1 episode, 2020)
• Matthew Rhode - voice-over (uncredited) (10 episodes, 2020)

See also [ ]

• PIC Season 1 performers
• PIC Season 1 Blu-ray
• PIC Season 1 DVD

External links [ ]

• Star Trek: Picard season 1 at Wikipedia
• Star Trek: Picard season 1 at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• Star Trek: Picard season 1  at Ex Astris Scientia
• 1 Daniels (Crewman)
• 3 Calypso (episode)

Star Trek: Picard - Season 1

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Streaming, rent, or buy Star Trek: Picard – Season 1:

Currently you are able to watch "Star Trek: Picard - Season 1" streaming on Paramount Plus, Paramount+ Amazon Channel, Paramount Plus Apple TV Channel or for free with ads on CTV. It is also possible to buy "Star Trek: Picard - Season 1" as download on Apple TV.

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Star Trek: Picard is available to watch for free today. If you are in Canada, you can:

• Stream 10 episodes online with ads on CTV

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At the end of the 24th Century, and 14 years after his retirement from Starfleet, Jean-Luc Picard is living a quiet life on his vineyard, Chateau Picard. When he is sought out by a mysterious young woman, Dahj, in need of his help, he soon realizes she may have personal connections to his own past.

10 Episodes

S1 e1 - remembrance, s1 e2 - maps and legends, s1 e3 - the end is the beginning, s1 e4 - absolute candor, s1 e5 - stardust city rag, s1 e6 - the impossible box, s1 e7 - nepenthe, s1 e8 - broken pieces, s1 e9 - et in arcadia ego (1), s1 e10 - et in arcadia ego (2), where does star trek: picard rank today the justwatch daily streaming charts are calculated by user activity within the last 24 hours. this includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as 'seen'. this includes data from ~1.3 million movie & tv show fans per day..

Streaming charts last updated: 1:16:13 a.m., 2024-06-03

Star Trek: Picard is 2448 on the JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts today. The TV show has moved up the charts by 839 places since yesterday. In Canada, it is currently more popular than Midsomer Murders but less popular than Race Against the Tide.

Streaming Charts The JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts are calculated by user activity within the last 24 hours. This includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as 'seen'. This includes data from ~1.3 million movie & TV show fans per day.

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‘Picard’ Season 1 Recap: The Refresher You Need Before Season 2

The Patrick Stewart-led “Star Trek” series returns this week

“Star Trek: Picard” Season 2 finally premiered on Paramount+ on Thursday, nearly two years — and a whole pandemic — since we last saw Patrick Stewart as intrepid explorer and uncompromising idealist Jean-Luc Picard.

The first season of the “Star Trek” series caught up with the retired Starfleet Admiral living peacefully at his château in France, but even a casual viewer of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” could’ve known that Picard wouldn’t be the type to fade into quiet obscurity during his golden years. Sure enough, “Picard” Season 1 saw the Admiral take to the stars again for one last adventure, this time to save a young woman with a mysterious past, and uncover the long-buried secrets of an old friend. 

With such a long gap between seasons, it’s only natural to need a refresher before plunging into Season 2 (the first episode of which is now streaming on Paramount+). So we’ve put together a “Star Trek: Picard” Season 1 recap to help you recall all the surprising twists and turns of the sci-fi series. 

Retired with Romulans

“Picard” Season 1 opens on a retired — and terminally ill, although he refuses to admit it — Picard living comfortably on his beautiful French estate in the year 2399, kept company by a pitbull named “Number One” and a small staff of loyal Romulans. It turns out that Romulus was destroyed by a supernova around 2385, and while Jean-Luc had petitioned to lead an evacuation effort to save the people of Romulus, the initiative was abandoned by Starfleet after Mars was attacked by a group of synthetic lifeforms known as “Synths.” 

The attack on Mars also prompted the Federation to place a ban on all synthetic lifeforms, over the ardent protests of Picard. In a last-ditch effort to convince Starfleet to rethink its course, Picard threatened his resignation — only to have his bluff called, and his commission taken away.

While Picard’s principled stance didn’t convince the Federation to reinstate the rescue mission to Romulus or reconsider the synthetic ban, it did endear Picard to many of the Romulan refugees, explaining the presence of his Romulan associates in France.

But Picard’s reluctant retirement is upended when a young woman named Dahj (Isa Briones) arrives on his doorstep, seeking his help after an attempt was made on her life. Although the two have never previously met, Dahj explains that she was experiencing visions of Picard, while Picard recognizes her from a painting, titled “Daughter,” created long ago by his android friend, Data (Brent Spiner). Intrigued, Picard attempts to protect Dahj, but is ultimately unsuccessful; assassins eventually find and kill her. Picard’s assistant theorizes that they may be members of the Zhat Vash, a secret Romunlan organization with the mission of ridding the world of all synthetics. 

Still, Picard can’t let go of the idea that Data may have created a daughter, especially one with an organic body who didn’t realize her synthetic origins. Upon confirming with Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill) that a procedure does exist that could have allowed a synthetic being to reproduce — and that the procedure always results in twins — Picard sets out to find Dahj’s twin sister, fearing that her life may be in danger too. 

Picard Assembles a Crew

In order to get to her, Picard assembles a ragtag new crew, recruiting his former first officer Raffi Musiker (Michelle Hurd), who then puts him in touch with a pilot named Chris Rios (Santiago Cabrera), who allows Picard to commission him along with his ship, La Sirena. Dr. Jurati also convinces Picard to let her join the expedition, and the group picks up a young Romulan refugee named Elnor (Evan Evagora) while en route to Freecloud, the home of Dahj’s creator, Bruce Maddox (John Ales). Elnor was raised by a group of warrior nuns called the Qowat Milat, after being put into their care by Picard as a child, who taught him formidable fighting skills. 

Immediately after Elnor joins the crew, La Sirena is attacked by local ruffians, but are saved by a mysterious ship that turns out to be captained by Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), former Borg drone and main cast member on “Star Trek: Voyager.” Seven now works with the vigilante group the Fenris Rangers, but joins Picard’s crew after her ship is destroyed. 

On Freecloud, Picard’s crew rescues Maddox from the black market dealer who has taken him captive, while Raffi makes a private side trip to visit her estranged son Gabriel, who cut ties with her years earlier due to her beliefs that Synths were not the true instigators of the attack on Mars. When Raffi still insists that her theory is correct, Gabriel refuses to allow her back into his life. 

After bringing Maddox back to La Sirena, the scientist reveals to Picard that Dahj does indeed have a twin sister, Soji, who is working aboard an abandoned Borg Cube, now known as the “Artifact.” He explains that he split Soji and Dahj up as part of a plan to uncover the truth behind the Starfleet ban on synthetics. Like Raffi, Maddox believes that there is more to the attack on Mars than meets the eye, and he suspects some sort of large-scale conspiracy and cover-up. However, soon after Picard leaves the sickbay, Maddox is murdered by his former lover Jurati, having received a vision before departing on La Sirena from Federation Commodore Oh (Tamlyn Tomita) — a Zhat Vash spy — warning of dire consequences if synthetic life is allowed to exist. 

A Familiar Enterprise

Meanwhile, on the Artifact, Soji is a scientist working on a project to help rehabilitate former Borg drones, removing as much of their Borg implants as possible and helping them reintegrate into society. Not realizing that she is synthetic herself, Soji forms a romantic relationship with a Romulan agent named Narek (Harry Treadaway), who is secretly a member of the Zhat Vash and is attempting to gain Soji’s trust in order to learn if there are more synthetics out there, and where they might be. With Narek’s guidance, Soji gradually realizes that her memories of her own history are false, and begins working to uncover her true origins. Once Narek believes he has enough clues to track down Soji’s birthplace, he attempts to kill her, but Soji’s latent synthetic programming kicks in, enabling her to survive. As she flees from Narek, she runs into the recently-arrived Picard.

Picard takes Soji to the planet Nepenthe, where his former Enterprise colleagues and friends Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) have settled. The couple, along with their daughter Kestra (Lulu Wilson), help Picard earn the traumatized Soji’s trust, and use the clues from her memories to identify the location of her creation. Meanwhile, a guilt-ridden Jurati decides to neutralize the Zhat Vash tracking device she agreed to ingest, allowing Picard and Soji to safely return to La Sirena. 

Upon meeting Soji, Rios is shocked to realize he’s met someone who looked just like her before, as visitors that came aboard his former Starfleet ship shortly before his captain murdered them on orders from Commodore Oh, then killed himself. Rios’ story helps Soji access her own memories of her homeworld, to which she plots a course, not realizing the ship is being followed by Narek. 

While La Sirena heads for Soji’s homeworld, Elnor and Seven of Nine remain behind on the Artifact to fight Narek’s Romulan allies, led by his sister, Narissa (Peyton List). Seven decides to establish a connection with the Borg cube to ask the remaining drones for their assistance, only to be shocked by Narissa’s callousness when she opens the Artifact’s airlocks, venting the drones into space. Still, after killing the drones, Narissa and the Romulans depart, and Seven is able to pilot the Artifact to follow La Sirena. 

Secrets Revealed

At the same time, Raffi gradually pieces together the motivation behind the Zhat Vash’s determination to exterminate all synthetic life: she learns that hundreds of millennia ago, eight sons were brought together around a central planet, and gave the ancient people of that world a vision of a horrific catastrophe that Romulans later called the “Admonition,” serving as a warning against ever allowing synthetic life to evolve. Since then, the Zhat Vash has done everything in its power to prevent this scenario from occurring by attempting to stop the development of synthetic life at every turn — including engineering the attack on Mars, so that the Federation would have to implement the synthetic ban. 

Upon reaching the synthetic homeworld, called Coppelius, Picard and his crew meet Maddox’s partner, Altan Inigo Soong, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Data’s creator, Noonian Soong, who turns out to be his father (all three characters are played by Brent Spiner). Soong gives Picard and his colleagues a tour of his colony of synths, inhabited by many sets of twins, several of whom are identical to Soji and Dahj. One of those twins, named Sutra, uses a mind meld to witness the vision of the Admonition that Oh showed Jurati, and interprets it as a message not about synthetic life, but to synthetic life. She believes that higher synthetic beings created the Admonition to communicate their intent to destroy all organic life, and that by creating a beacon to summon those beings, the inhabitants of Coppelius can thwart the incoming Romulan fleet. 

Picard obviously opposes Sutra’s plan, and is taken prisoner, but is rescued by Jurati, who returns with him to La Sirena while Raffi, Rios, and Elnor — joining forces with Narek — set out to destroy the beacon. But Soji, swayed by the other synthetics, decides to side against her friends and activate the beacon. Meanwhile, Narissa attempts to destroy La Sirena, but is killed by Seven of Nine. 

A New Beginning

Onboard La Sirena, Picard begins to succumb to the illness that has been plaguing him throughout the series, but Jurati buys him enough time to distract the Romulan fleet long enough for a Starfleet armada to arrive, led by none other than Will Riker. Picard’s delay grants Soji enough time to reconsider her choice, and she turns off the beacon, stopping a gigantic, tentacled synthetic lifeform from coming through the portal that had been opened by the beacon. Soji’s actions convince the Romulans that it is unnecessary to destroy all life on Coppelius as they’d intended, and they retreat. 

Unfortunately, while most of the organic life in the universe receives a reprieve, the same cannot be said of Picard himself, who finally dies of his illness. However, Jurati and Soong are able to transfer his consciousness to a new synthetic body, allowing him to “live” on. Following the events on Coppelius, the Federation lifts the ban on synthetics, and Picard is able to reunite with his crew — which now includes Soji — on La Sirena.  

“Star Trek: Picard” Season 2 is rolling out new episodes weekly on Paramount+, and has already been renewed for a third season.

• Cast & crew
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The End Is the Beginning

• Episode aired Feb 6, 2020

After reflecting on the past with Raffi, Picard hires her partner, Cristobal Rios, to help him in his search for Bruce Maddox; Soji's work on the Borg cube catches the attention of the execu... Read all After reflecting on the past with Raffi, Picard hires her partner, Cristobal Rios, to help him in his search for Bruce Maddox; Soji's work on the Borg cube catches the attention of the executive director. After reflecting on the past with Raffi, Picard hires her partner, Cristobal Rios, to help him in his search for Bruce Maddox; Soji's work on the Borg cube catches the attention of the executive director.

• Hanelle M. Culpepper
• Gene Roddenberry
• Akiva Goldsman
• Michael Chabon
• Patrick Stewart
• Alison Pill
• Isa Briones
• 63 User reviews
• 21 Critic reviews

• Jean-Luc Picard

• Dr. Agnes Jurati

• Raffi Musiker

• Cristóbal Rios

• Lieutenant Narissa Rizzo

• Commodore Oh

• Tal Shiar Operative

• (as Son of Lee)
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Did you know

• Trivia Laris describes Zhaban as a "stubborn Northerner", while tapping the Romulan assassin's forehead. This may be a reference to the Romulan forehead ridges, which Zhaban has but Laris doesn't. This may be an attempt to explain why, throughout the franchise, Romulans have sometimes had ridged foreheads, and other times not. It would seem only Northerners have them. It also seems to be referring to Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry 's similar explanation for the more elaborate Klingon makeup in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) .
• Goofs After Rios argues with the ENH on board La Sirena (in orbit), a falling star is seen out the window, against a background of stars. Falling stars are actually meteors, which only light up while they are passing through the atmosphere, which means the meteor must be between Earth and La Sirena. The background directly behind the meteor should be Earth itself, not stars. The only way to see a meteor against a background of stars is if the observer is inside the atmosphere, looking up at the meteor.

[last lines]

Jean-Luc Picard : Engage.

• Connections Featured in re:View: Star Trek: Picard Episodes 2 and 3 (2020)
• Soundtracks Theme from 'Star Trek: The Motion Picture' Composed by Jerry Goldsmith

User reviews 63

• Feb 11, 2020
• February 6, 2020 (United States)
• Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park - 10700 W. Escondido Canyon Rd., Agua Dulce, California, USA
• Roddenberry Entertainment
• Secret Hideout
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

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• Runtime 42 minutes

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Star Trek: Discovery 's Final Epilogue Was Almost Its Next Season Arc

If discovery had gotten a sixth season, the wild set-up it used as its final coda would've been a major storyline..

Star Trek: Discovery ended this week , with an episode that, perhaps in true Discovery style, threw some wild curveballs and equally wild pacing together to give us a bumper episode of ups and downs. But it really did save its weirdest moment for last: and even weirder, it’s what might have been Discovery ’s next big story if it had made it to another season.

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The final act of “Life, Itself,” the hour-and-a-half-long ending to Star Trek: Discovery , gives way to a flash-forward well after the events of the rest of the finale have come—and arguably, been rushed—to end. Picking up with now-Admiral Michael Burnham, living an idyllic life of semi-retirement with her husband Book, and with a son who’s just been promoted to captaincy, life is good for Discovery ’s ever-put-upon hero . But we find she’s been tasked with one last mystery mission from Agent Kovich: dump Discovery at a distant spot in space, abandoned, and re-fitted back into its original 23rd century design, leaving the ship and its sentient computer Zora untouched, given nothing to go on but a single word, “Craft.”

It’s a peculiar way for the series to end, but it’s made even more peculiar by context: this is in fact setting up the events of a mini-episode released as part of Star Trek: Short Treks in 2018 between seasons one and two of Discovery . That short, “Calypso” , written by former Star Trek: Picard showrunner Michael Chabon, is set approximately a thousand years after the end of Discovery , and sees a lone, stranded soldier named Craft (played by Aldis Hodge) come across the long-abandoned Discovery and build a connection with Zora. It’s absolutely insane as the last note Star Trek: Discovery goes out on, retroactively squaring the circle on a timeline discrepancy—arguably not even a discrepancy, given the vast swaths of time between the show’s end and the events of “Calypso”—spurred on by a six-year-old short that was, at the time , infamously difficult for viewers to access outside of the United States (they’re still kind of awkward to find on Paramount+ right now, unless you’re actively searching for them). But it was, apparently, something Discovery showrunner Michelle Paradise was insistent the series tackle before it ended.

“We always knew that we wanted to somehow tie that back up,” Paradise recently told Variety about the decision to make the show’s epilogue what it was. “We never wanted ‘Calypso’ to be the dangling chad.” And if Discovery had been renewed for a sixth season, apparently the road to setting up where the ship is left off by the time of “Calypso” would’ve served as the season’s major story arc. “The story, nascent as it was, was eventually going to be tying that thread up and connecting Discovery back with ‘Calypso,’” Paradise confirmed.

Instead, we got what was an already a peculiar choice of ending for Discovery , which left so many doors open as it rushed to close this one in particular. But for Paradise, at least, it was a door that needed to be closed before Discovery was no more. “I truly don’t feel like we missed out on something by not having one more day [to shoot],” Paradise concluded. “I feel like it ends the way it needed to end.”

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV , and everything you need to know about House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power .

‘Star Trek: Discovery’ is over. Now Alex Kurtzman readies for ‘Starfleet Academy’ and ‘Section 31’

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In “Star Trek” terms, and in the real world of “Star Trek” television, Alex Kurtzman, who oversees the 21st century franchise, might be described as the Federation president, from whose offices various series depart on their individual missions. Indeed, to hear him speak of it, the whole enterprise — honestly, no pun intended — seems to run very much on the series’ ethos of individual initiative and group consensus.

The first series to be launched, “ Star Trek: Discovery, ” has come to an end as of Thursday after five seasons on Paramount+. Others in the fleet include the concluded “ Picard, ” which brought “The Next Generation” into a new generation; the ongoing “ Strange New Worlds, ” which precedes the action of what’s now called “The Original Series,” from which it takes its spirit and several characters; “Lower Decks,” a comedy set among Starfleet service workers; and “Prodigy,” in which a collection of teenage aliens go joyriding in a starship. On the horizon are “Starfleet Academy,” with Holly Hunter set to star, and a TV feature, “ Section 31, ” with Michelle Yeoh back as Philippa Georgiou.

I spoke with Kurtzman, whose “Trek” trek began as a writer on the quantum-canonical reboot movies “ Star Trek ” (2009) and “ Star Trek: Into Darkness ” (2013), at Secret Hideout, his appropriately unmarked Santa Monica headquarters. Metro trains glide by his front door unaware. We began the conversation, edited for length and clarity here, with a discussion of his “Trek” universe.

Alex Kurtzman: I liken them to different colors in the rainbow. It makes no sense to me to make one show that’s for everybody; it makes a lot of sense to make a lot of shows individually tailored to a sect of the “Star Trek” audience. It’s a misnomer that there’s a one-size-fits-all Trekkie. And rather than make one show that’s going to please everybody — and will almost certainly please nobody — let’s make an adult drama, an animated comedy, a kids’ comedy, an adventure show and on and on. There’s something quite beautiful about that; it allows each of the stories to bloom in its own unique way.

Do you get pushback from the fans?

Absolutely. In some ways that’s the point. One of the things I learned early on is that to be in love with “Star Trek” is to engage in healthy debate. There is no more vocal fan base. Some people tell you that their favorite is “The Original Series,” some say their favorite is “Voyager” and some say their favorite is “Discovery.” Yet they all come together and talk about what makes something singularly “Trek” — [creator] Gene Roddenberry‘s extraordinarily optimistic vision of the future when all that divides us [gets placed] in the rearview mirror and we get to move on and discover things. Like all great science fiction, you get to pick your allegory to the real world and come up with the science fiction equivalent. And everybody who watches understands what we’re talking about — racism or the Middle East or whatever.

What specific objections did you find to “Discovery”?

I think people felt it was too dark. We really listen to our fans in the writers’ room — everybody will have read a different article or review over the weekend, and we talk about what feels relevant and what feels less relevant. And then we engage in a healthy democratic debate about why and begin to apply that; it seeps into the decisions we make. Season 1 of “Discovery” was always intended to be a journey from darkness into light, and ultimately reinforce Roddenberry’s vision. I think people were just stunned by something that felt darker than any “Trek” had before. But doing a dark “Star Trek” really wasn’t our goal. The show is a mirror that holds itself up to the times, and we were in 2017 — we saw the nation fracture hugely right after the election, and it’s only gotten worse since then. We were interpreting that through science fiction. There were people who appreciated that and others for whom it was just not “Star Trek.” And the result, in Season 2, Capt. [Christopher] Pike showed up, Number One showed up, Spock showed up, and we began to bring in what felt to people more like the “Star Trek” they understood.

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You’re ending the series after five seasons. Was that always a plan?

You know, we were surprised we didn’t continue, and yet it feels now that it was right. One of the things that happened very quickly as streaming took off was that it radically changed watch patterns for viewers. Shows that used to go 10, 12 seasons, people would tap out after two — like, “I got what I want” — so for any show to go five seasons, it’s a miracle. In ways I don’t think we could have predicted, the season from the beginning feels like it’s the last; it just has a sense of finality. The studio was wonderful in that they recognized we needed to put a button on it, we needed a period on the end of the sentence, and so they allowed us to go back, which we did right before the strike, and [film] the coda that wraps up the series.

“Discovery” is a riot of love stories, among both heroes and villains.

There’s certainly a history of that in “Star Trek.” Whether or not characters were engaged in direct relationships, there was always a subtext of the love between them. I believe that’s why we love the bridge crew, because it’s really a love story, everyone’s in a love story, and they all care for each other and fight like family members. But ultimately they’re there to help each other and explore the universe together. If there’s some weird problem, and the answer’s not immediately apparent, each of them brings a different skill set and therefore a different perspective; they clash in their debate on how to proceed and then find some miraculous solution that none of them would have thought of at the outset.

One of the beautiful things about the shows is that you get to spend a long time with them, as opposed to a two-hour movie where you have to get in and out quickly and then wait a couple of years before the next one comes along. To be able to be on their weekly adventures, it affords the storytelling level of depth and complexity a two-hour movie just can’t achieve in that way.

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It’s astonishing how much matter you got into these things. Some storylines that only lasted an episode I remembered as seasonal arcs.

The sheer tonnage of story and character we were able to pack into “Discovery” every episode was kind of incredible. The thing to keep in mind is that “Discovery” was made as streaming was exploding, so what I think you’re also seeing there is a lot of writers who were trained in the network world with an A, B and C story applying it suddenly to a very different kind of storytelling in a much more cinematic medium. And when you have that kind of scope it starts to become really, really big. Sometimes that works really, really well and sometimes it was too much. And we were figuring it out; it was a bunch of people with flashlights in the dark, looking for how to interpret “Star Trek” now, since it had been 12 years since it had been on a television screen.

Are you able to course-correct within a season?

Sure. You get people you really trust in the room. Aaron Baiers, who runs Secret Hideout, is one of my most important early-warning systems; he isn’t necessarily in the room when we’re breaking stories, but he’s the first person who’ll read an outline and he’s the first person who’ll read a script. What I value so much about his perspective is that he’s coming in cold, he’s just like, “I’m the viewer, and I understand this or I don’t understand it, I feel this or I don’t feel it.” The studio executives are very similar. They love “Star Trek,” they’re all die-hard fans and have very strong feelings about what is appropriate. It then goes through a series of artists in every facet, from props to visual effects to production design, and they’re bringing their interpretations and opinions to the story.

Did “Strange New Worlds” come out of the fact that everybody loved seeing Christopher Pike in “Discovery?”

I really have to credit Akiva Goldsman with this. He knew that I was going to bring Pike into the premiere of the second season of “Discovery,” and said, “You know, there’s an incredible show about Capt. Pike and the Enterprise before Kirk takes over; there’s seven years of great storytelling there” — or five years, depending on when you come into the storyline. I said, “We have to cast a successful Pike first, so let’s see if that works. Let’s figure out who’s Number One, and who Spock is,” which are wildly tall orders. I hadn’t seen Anson Mount in other things before [he was cast as Pike], and when he sent in his taped audition it was that wonderful moment where you go, “That’s exactly the person we’re looking for.” Everybody loves Pike because he’s the kind of leader you want, definitive and clear but open to everyone’s perspective and humanistic in his response. And then we had the incredibly tall order of having Ethan [Peck] step into Leonard [Nimoy’s] and [Zachary Quinto’s] shoes.

He’s great.

He’s amazing, just a delight of a human being. And Rebecca Romijn‘s energy, what she brings to Number One is such a contemporary take on a character that was kind of a cipher in “The Original Series.” But she brings a kind of joy, a comedy, a bearing, a gravitas to the character that feels very modern. Thank God the fans responded the way they did and sent that petition [calling for a “Legacy” series], because everybody at CBS got the message very quickly. Jenny Lumet and Akiva and I wrote a pilot, and we were off to the races. Typically it takes fans a minute to adjust to what you’re doing, especially with beloved legacy characters, but the response to “Strange New World” from a critical perspective and fan perspective and just a viewership perspective was so immediate, it really did help us understand what was satisfying fans.

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What can you tell me about “Starfleet Academy?” Is it going to be Earth-based or space-based?

I’m going to say, without giving anything away, both. Right now we’re in the middle of answering the question what does San Francisco, where the academy is, look like in the 32nd century. Our primary set is the biggest we’ve ever built.

So you’re setting this —

In the “Discovery” era. There’s a specific reason for that. As the father of a 17-year-old boy, I see what my son is feeling as he looks at the world and to his future. I see the uncertainty; I see all the things we took for granted as given are not certainties for him. I see him recognizing he’s inheriting an enormous mess to clean up and it’s going to be on his generation to figure out how to do that, and that’s a lot to ask of a kid. My thinking was, if we set “Starfleet Academy” in the halcyon days of the Federation where everything was fine, it’s not going to speak to what kids are going through right now.

It’ll be a nice fantasy, but it’s not really going to be authentic. What’ll be authentic is to set it in the timeline where this is the first class back after over 100 years, and they are coming into a world that is only beginning to recover from a cataclysm — which was the Burn, as established on “Star Trek: Discovery,” where the Federation was greatly diminished. So they’re the first who’ll inherit, who’ll re-inherit, the task of exploration as a primary goal, because there just wasn’t room for that during the Burn — everybody was playing defense. It’s an incredibly optimistic show, an incredibly fun show; it’s a very funny show, and it’s a very emotional show. I think these kids, in different ways, are going to represent what a lot of kids are feeling now.

And I’m very, very , very excited that Holly Hunter is the lead of the show. Honestly, when we were working on the scripts, we wrote it for Holly thinking she’d never do it. And we sent them to her, and to our absolute delight and shock she loved them and signed on right away.

And then you’ve got the “Section 31” movie.

“Section 31” is Michelle Yeoh’s return as Georgiou. A very, very different feeling for “Star Trek.” I will always be so grateful to her, because on the heels of her nomination and then her Oscar win , she just doubled down on coming back to “Star Trek.” She could have easily walked away from it; she had a lot of other opportunities. But she remained steadfast and totally committed. We just wrapped that up and are starting to edit now.

Are you looking past “Starfleet” and “Section 31” to future projects?

There’s always notions and there are a couple of surprises coming up, but I really try to live in the shows that are in front of me in the moment because they’re so all-consuming. I’m directing the first two episodes of “Starfleet Academy,” so right now my brain is just wholly inside that world. But you can tell “Star Trek” stories forever; there’s always more. There’s something in the DNA of its construction that allows you to keep opening different doors. Some of that is science fiction, some of it has to do with the combination of science fiction and the organic embracing of all these other genres that lets you explore new territories. I don’t think it’s ever going to end. I think it’s going to go on for a long, long time. The real question for “Star Trek” is how do you keep innovating, how do you deliver both what people expect and something totally fresh at the same time. Because I think that is actually what people want from “Star Trek.” They want what’s familiar delivered in a way that doesn’t feel familiar.

With all our showrunners — Terry Matalas on “Picard,” the Hagemans on “Prodigy,” Mike McMahan on “Lower Decks,” Michelle Paradise, who has been singlehandedly running “Discovery” for the last two years, and then Akiva and Henry Alonso Myers on “Strange New Worlds” — my feeling is that the best way to protect and preserve “Star Trek” is not to impose my own vision on it but [find people] who meet the criteria of loving “Star Trek,” wanting to do new things with it, understanding how incredibly hard it is to do. And then I’m going to let you do your job. I’ll come in and tell you what I think every once in a while, and I’ll help get the boat off the dock, but once I hand the show over to a creative it has to be their show. And that means you’re going to get a different take every time, and as long as those takes all feel like they can marry into the same rainbow, to get back to the metaphor, that’s the way to keep “Star Trek” fresh.

I take great comfort because “Star Trek” really only belongs to Gene Roddenberry and the fans. We don’t own it. We carry it, we try to evolve it and then we hand it off to the next people. And hopefully they will love it as much as we do.

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June 2, 2024

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Star trek: discovery’s incredible scott bakula enterprise twist explained.

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Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Returning Cast & New Character Guide

Star trek: discovery proved burnham’s starship is better than uss enterprise in 1 big way, i agree with captain burnham's decision about star trek: discovery season 5's treasure.

Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Discovery's Series Finale - "Life, Itself"

• Doctor Kovich's true identity as Agent Daniels connects Star Trek: Discovery to Enterprise in a jaw-dropping twist.
• Kovich's office is filled with Star Trek memorabilia, hinting at his long life and deep ties to the Federation across centuries.
• Discovery's creative team decided early in season 4 that Kovich is Daniels, planting subtle clues leading up to the big reveal in season 5.

Star Trek: Discovery 's series finale dropped a bombshell twist, revealing the true identity of Doctor Kovich (David Cronenberg) that ties the series back to Star Trek: Enterprise and Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula). Written by Kyle Jarrow and Michelle Paradise, and directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi, Star Trek: Discovery 's series finale, "Life, Itself", saw Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) find and decide the fate of the ancient technology used by the Progenitors to create life, itself. Afterward, Burnham reported to Doctor Kovich and asked who he really is. The bespectacled mystery man obliged with his jaw-dropping real name and rank.

Doctor Kovich was introduced in Star Trek: Discovery season 3 as an official from the 32nd century United Federation of Planets. Kovich personally interviewed the crew of the USS Discovery, who were time travelers from the 23rd century. Kovich took a particular interest in Emperor Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), who is from the Mirror Universe, and Kovich also revealed information about Star Trek 's Temporal Wars, which crossed not just timelines but other realities, like the alternate Kelvin timeline of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek movies. In Star Trek: Discovery season 5, Kovich oversaw Captain Burnham's top-secret Red Directive mission to acquire the Progenitors' technology. These were all clues as to who Doctor Kovich really is.

As Burnham seeks the universe's greatest treasure in Star Trek: Discovery season 5, she'll need help from a host of new and returning characters.

Discovery’s Doctor Kovich Is Daniels - Star Trek: Enterprise’s Time Traveler Explained

"agent daniels, uss enterprise... and other places.".

As Captain Burnham assumed, "Doctor Kovich" is a Red Directive codename. Kovich introduced himself as "Agent Daniels, USS Enterprise... and other places." This canonically establishes Kovich as the older version Daniels (Matt Winston) from S tar Trek: Enterprise . Daniels was a temporal agent from the 31st century who recruited Captain Jonathan Archer due to his importance to Federation history. Daniels was apparently killed by a Suliban named Silik (John Fleck), but the time traveler returned to solicit Archer and the NX-01 Enterprise's help in fighting Star Trek 's Temporal Cold Wa r, making 8 appearances in Star Trek: Enterprise 's 4 seasons.

Star Trek: Enterprise 's Temporal Cold War was a story by executive producer Brannon Braga, who found it difficult to write.

Agent Daniels identifying himself from the USS Enterprise could mean he sentimentally still considers himself a member of Captain Archer's crew, as he posed as one of the original NX-01 Enterprise's personnel. It could also mean Daniels served on a later iteration of the USS Enterprise . But Kovich revealed as Daniels is a jaw-dropper that also makes sense, since it explains his secrecy, his vast knowledge of Star Trek 's timelines, and Kovich's vested interest in preserving the Federation from existential threats. As a fellow time traveler himself, Daniels' interest in the USS Discovery and Captain Burnham, who both impresses and aggravates him, also ingeniously tracks.

Daniels’ Star Trek Easter Eggs In Discovery’s Finale Explained

Doctor kovich has a lot of starfleet memorabilia..

Star Trek: Discovery' s series finale, "Life, Itself" , saw Captain Burnham visit Doctor Kovich's office at Federation HQ for the first time, and his walls were filled with Star Trek Easter eggs . Among the historic artifacts Kovich collected and displayed are the VISOR formerly worn by Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) on Star Trek: The Next Generation , a vintage bottle of Chateau Picard wine, and a baseball that was once the prized possession of Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine . Kovich's memorabilia denote a life well-lived across a thousand years of travel.

Star Trek: Discovery 's creative team decided in season 4 that Doctor Kovich's true identity is Daniels from Enterprise .

Amusingly, Star Trek: Discovery showrunner Michelle Paradise told Screen Rant that David Cronenberg didn't know who Daniels from Star Trek: Enterprise was. But once Cronenberg understood the reference, he thought it was "really, really cool." Star Trek: Discovery began planting the seeds for Kovich's reveal as Daniels early in season 5, showing the Federation official's preference for writing with paper and pen , which is unusual for a man living in the 32nd century. Star Trek: Discovery revealing Doctor Kovich as Agent Daniels from Star Trek: Enterprise also satisfyingly ties the two farthest points of the Star Trek timeline together, uniting the thousand-year history of the Federation in the form of Daniels, who has seen it all.

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Why Star Trek: Voyager's First Season Never Got A Proper Finale

The final episode of the third season of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" was called "The Best of Both Worlds" (June 18, 1990), and it is often celebrated as one of the best episodes of the series. Notably, the episode ended on a humdinger of a cliffhanger, revealing that Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) had been assimilated by the Borg. Trekkies had to wait until September 24 to see the conclusion.

This two-parter kicked off a long-standing "Star Trek" tradition of ending every season of every show with a notable cliffhanger. The remaining "Next Generation" seasons always left viewers with something to anticipate through the summer. There was an exception at the end of the first season of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," which ended on a usual note, but the show's second season opened with an unprecedented three-part episode, so it feels like it counts.

The finale of the first season of "Star Trek: Voyager" was nothing to write home about. The episode was called "Learning Curve" (May 22, 1995), and it was about several Maquis officers who had been conscripted into the Voyager crew after their ship was destroyed. Tuvok (Tim Russ), who used to live with them undercover, has to train them to be better Starfleet officers. Also, the ship's environmental controls go haywire after Neelix (Ethan Phillips) tries to make cheese (!) and accidentally infects the ship's organic computer components with a virus. It's nothing special or notable.

It turns out that the finale ... wasn't a finale. It was merely the final episode of the season by a fluke of programming. The schedule of the first season of "Voyager" was detailed in the oral history book "Captains' Logs Supplemental: The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages," edited by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross.

Voyager season 1's final episodes were held back by UPN

"Star Trek: Voyager," it should be noted, began with a truncated season of only 15 episodes. Most pre-streaming "Star Trek" shows ran a whopping 26 episodes a season. It was considered very usual at the time (at least among Trekkies) to have so few Treks at once. "Voyager" was the flagship series for the UPN, a network that launched at the same time as the then-new "Star Trek" show, and it seemed that the network had a lot more control over how the series was exhibited. "Voyager" co-creator and writer Jeri Taylor recalled working on four additional episodes for the first season, only to learn that the UPN had decided to hold them back for season 2:

"It's very important to note that we didn't hold back any of the episodes, UPN did. [...] It's important that people start understanding that there is a significant difference at this point between the network and the studio. The studio produces the television series, and the network buys it and runs it as they would from any other studio. The network has control over when and how they schedule the episodes. We and Paramount and the studio were not in accord with that decision to hold back episodes, but it was UPN's right to do so."

UPN did have a reason for scheduling "Voyager" the way they did, but it didn't make sense to Taylor. In fact, Taylor hated the decision to end season 1 with "Learning Curve." Not because of the content of the episode, but because that would be four additional weeks the network would need to lean on reruns.

UPN wanted Voyager season 2 to premiere early

Taylor noted:

"... [B]y summer we were having the third run of some shows, giving the impression that people are seeing the same shows over and over again and that there is no fresh programming. I would much rather they had used those extra four episodes to provide more fresh programming so the audience wouldn't feel the show had gotten stale in its first season. Also, we had planned those for shows as a build that would take us out of the first season on a triumphant, uplifting note. As it was, the season just ends."

Lucy Salhany, the head of UPN, was also quoted in "Captains' Logs Supplemental." She explained that premiering "Voyager" season 2 early was more important that concluding season 1 in a meaningful way. The first episode of the second season, "The 37s," aired on August 28, 1995, whereas all the other major networks waited until mid-to-late September to start their respective seasons. In her own words:

"I didn't want to wait until the middle of September, when all the other networks –- the 'big' networks –- are premiering. [...] In order to do that, we needed to hold some episodes back. The shows that we held back would have run two in June and two in July. They would not have run earlier because they wouldn't have been done to go on in May. So, we've had some reruns. We knew that was going to happen."

Which makes sense. "Voyager" co-creator Michael Piller was okay with Salhany's release schedule and noted that Salhany had great success with it when she worked for Fox. Also, "Voyager" only had a total of 20 episodes when it began airing, so holding a few back made everyone's lives easier.

The reruns were a little annoying, though.

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'Star Trek: Discovery' ends as an underappreciated TV pioneer

Eric Deggans

Sonequa Martin-Green as Michael Burnham. Michael Gibson/Paramount+ hide caption

First, an admission: Though this column will offer a lot of discussion and defense of Star Trek: Discovery as a pivotal show, it won’t spend much time talking up the series’ current, final season or its finale episode, “Life, Itself,” dropping Thursday on Paramount+.

That’s because, for this critic, the last few seasons of Discovery have been a bit bogged down by the stuff that has always made it a tough sell as a Trek series: overly ambitious, serialized storylines that aren’t compelling; new characters and environments that don’t impress; plot twists which can be maddening in their lack of logic; big storytelling swings which can be confusing and predictable at once.

'Star Trek: Picard' soars by embracing the legacy of 'The Next Generation'

The show’s finale features the culmination of a sprawling scavenger hunt which found the crew of the starship Discovery bounding all over the place, searching for clues leading to a powerful technology pioneered by an alien race which created humanoid life throughout the galaxy. Their goal was to grab the technology before another race, ruthless and aggressive, could beat them to it, laying waste to everything.

It's no spoiler to reveal that Discovery ’s heroes avoid that nightmarish scenario, wrapping its fifth and final season with a conclusion centered on Sonequa Martin-Green’s ever-resourceful Capt. Michael Burnham and fond resolutions for a multitude of supporting characters (there’s even a space wedding!)

Still, this good-enough ending belies Discovery ’s status as a pioneering show which helped Paramount+ build a new vision for Star Trek in modern television – breaking ground that more creatively successful series like Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds would follow years later.

And it all began with a singular character: Michael Burnham.

A take on Star Trek for modern TV

Discovery debuted in 2017 on CBS All Access — the streaming service which would become Paramount+ — facing a serious challenge.

As the first new Trek series in a dozen years, it had to chart a path which offered a new vision of the franchise without going too far — carving out a new corner in the universe of Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock not long after the release of Star Trek Beyond , the third feature film produced by J. J. Abrams featuring rebooted versions of those classic characters.

Producers set Discovery ’s story 10 years before the days of Kirk and Spock (originally depicted on NBC for three seasons starting way back in 1966). The new series wouldn’t be centered on a starship captain, but its second in command: Burnham, a Black woman who also happened to be the hitherto unknown adopted daughter of Vulcan ambassador Sarek, Spock’s father (she would get promoted to captain of Discovery much later).

A Black human woman who was raised among the emotionally controlling, super-intellectual Vulcans? Who Trek fans had never heard of over nearly 60 years? Before I actually saw any episodes, my own feelings ranged from cautiously intrigued to cynically pessimistic.

But then I saw the first episode, which had an amazing early scene: Martin-Green as Burnham and Michelle Yeoh as Discovery Capt. Philippa Georgiou walking across an alien planet – two women of color marking the first step forward for Star Trek on a new platform.

People once sidelined in typical science fiction stories were now centerstage — a thrilling, historic moment.

Michelle Yeoh as Captain Philippa Georgiou and Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham in the very first episode of Star Trek: Discovery. Jan Thijs/CBS hide caption

And it got better from there. Back in the day, Trek writers often felt hamstrung by creator Gene Roddenberry’s insistence that, in the future depicted by the show, humans were beyond social ills like greed, prejudice, sexism, war, money and personal friction. The writers chafed, wondering: How in the world do you build compelling stories on a starship where interpersonal human conflict doesn’t exist?

But Discovery found a workaround, putting Burnham in a position where logic led her to mutiny against her captain, attempting a strategy which ultimately failed — leaving humans in open combat with the legendarily warlike Klingons. Discovery also featured a long storyline which played out over an entire season, unlike many earlier Trek shows which tried to offer a new adventure every week.

'First, Last And Always, I Am A Fan': Michael Chabon Steers Latest 'Star Trek'

The show’s first season had plenty of action, with Harry Potter alum Jason Isaacs emerging as a compelling and unique starship captain (saying more would be a spoiler; log onto Paramount+ and check out the first season). Fans saw a new vision for Trek technology, leveraging sleek, visceral special effects and action sequences worthy of a big budget movie, with design elements cribbed from several of the franchise’s films.

Later in its run, Discovery would debut Ethan Peck as Spock and Anson Mount as Christopher Pike, classic Trek characters who eventually got their own acclaimed series in Strange New Worlds . So far, five other Trek series have emerged on Paramount+ from ideas initially incubated on Discovery – including a critically acclaimed season of Picard which reunited the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation .

Not bad for a series one TV critic eventually called among “the worst in the [ Trek ] franchise’s history.”

Discovery’s unappreciated legacy

Unfortunately, Discovery has taken some turns which didn’t work out quite so well. At the end of Discovery ’s second season, the starship jumped ahead in time nine centuries – perhaps to remove it from Strange New World ’s timeline? – placing it in an environment only distantly connected to classic Trek .

And while Discovery initially seemed cautious about referencing classic Trek in its stories, later series like Strange New Worlds and Picard learned the value of diving into the near-60-year-old franchise’s legacy – regularly tapping the show’s longtime appeal, rather than twisting into knots to avoid it.

There are likely fans of Discovery who would disagree with this analysis. But I think it helps explain why the series has never quite gotten its due in the world of Star Trek , initially shaded by skeptical fans and later overshadowed by more beloved products.

Now is the perfect time to pay tribute to a show which actually accomplished quite a lot – helping prove that Roddenberry’s brainchild still has a lot of narrative juice left in the 21st Century.

Inside the ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Series Finale: The Last-Minute Coda, the Surprise Easter Eggs, and What Season 6 Would Have Been About (EXCLUSIVE)

SPOILER WARNING: This story includes descriptions of major plot developments on the series finale of “ Star Trek : Discovery,” currently streaming on Paramount+.

Watching the fifth and final season of “ Star Trek: Discovery ” has been an exercise in the uncanny. Paramount+ didn’t announce that the show was ending until after the Season 5 finale had wrapped filming — no one involved with the show knew it would be its concluding voyage when they were making it. And yet, the season has unfolded with a pervasive feeling of culmination. 

Popular on Variety

“I think there’s more to it than just, ‘Oh, it was a coinkydink!’” the actor says with a laugh, before explaining that she’s thinking more about subtext than direct intent. “I’ve gotta give Michelle her flowers. She has always asked the deeper questions of this story and these characters. Those questions of meaning and purpose led to questions of origin and legacy, and, yes, that is quite culminating.”

Martin-Green and Paradise spoke exclusively with Variety about filming the finale and the coda, including the surprising revelation about the origins of one of “Discovery’s” most memorable characters and what Paradise’s plans for Season 6 would have been.

“It’s the Most Complicated Thing I’ve Ever Seen”

Once the “Discovery” writers’ room decided the season would be organized around a search for the Progenitor’s technology, they also knew that, eventually, Burnham would find it. So then they had to figure out what it would be.

“That was a discussion that evolved over the course of weeks and months,” Paradise says. Rather than focus on communicating the intricate details of how the technology works, they turned their attention to delivering a visual experience commensurate with the enormity and complexity of something that could seed life across the entire galaxy.

“We wanted a sense of a smaller exterior and an infinite interior to help with that sense of power greater than us,” Paradise says. Inspired in part by a drawing by MC Escher, the production created an environment surrounded by towering windows into a seemingly endless procession of alien planets, in which it’s just as easy to walk on the walls as on the floor. That made for a daunting challenge for the show’s producing director, Olatunde “Tunde” Osunsanmi: As Burnham battles with the season’s main antagonist, Mol (Eve Harlow), inside this volume, they fall through different windows into another world, and the laws of gravity keep shifting between their feet.

“It’s the most complicated thing I’ve ever seen, directorially,” Paradise says. “Tunde had a map, in terms of: What did the background look like? And when the cameras this way, what’s over there? It was it was incredibly complex to design and shoot.”

Two of those planets — one in perpetual darkness and rainstorms, another consumed by constant fire — were shot on different parking areas on the Pinewood Toronto studio lot.

“The fire planet was so bright that the fire department got called from someone who had seen the fire,” Paradise says. “It should not be possible to pull those kinds of things off in a television show, even on a bigger budget show, with the time limitations that you have. And yet, every episode of every season, we’re still coming in on time and on budget. The rain planet and the fire planet we shot, I believe, one day after the other.”

Martin-Green jumps in: “Michelle, I think that was actually the same day!”

“It Felt Lifted”

The last time a “Star Trek” captain talked to a being that could be (erroneously) considered God, it was William Shatner’s James T. Kirk in 1989’s “Star Trek: The Final Frontier.” The encounter did not go well.

“I had my own journey with the central storyline of Season 5, just as a believer,” Martin-Green says. “I felt a similar way that Burnham did. They’re in this sort of liminal mind space, and it almost felt that way to me. It felt lifted. It really did feel like she and I were the only two people in this moment.”

It’s in this conversation that Burnham learns that while the Progenitors did create all “humanoid” alien species in the galaxy in their image, they did not create the technology that allowed them to do so. They found it, fully formed, created by beings utterly unknown to them. The revelation was something that Martin-Green discussed with Paradise early on in the planning of Season 5, allowing “Discovery” to leave perhaps the most profound question one could ask — what, or who, came first in the cosmos? — unanswered.

“The progenitor is not be the be all end all of it,” Paradise says. “We’re not saying this is God with a capital ‘G.’”

“There’s Just This Air of Mystery About Him”

Starting on Season 3 of “Discovery,” renowned filmmaker David Cronenberg began moonlighting in a recurring role as Dr. Kovich, a shadowy Federation operative whose backstory has been heretofore undisclosed on the show.

“I love the way he plays Kovich,” Paradise says of Cronenberg. “There’s just this air of mystery about him. We’ve always wanted to know more.” When planning Season 5, one of the writers pitched revealing Kovich’s true identity in the (then-season) finale by harkening back to the “Star Trek” show that preceded “Discovery”: “Enterprise,” which ran on UPN from 2001 to 2005.

In the final episode, when Burnham debriefs her experiences with Kovich, she presses him to tell her who he really is. He reintroduces himself as Agent Daniels, a character first introduced on “Enterprise” as a young man (played by Matt Winston) and a Federation operative in the temporal cold war. 

This is, to be sure, a deep cut even for “Star Trek” fans. (Neither Cronenberg nor Martin-Green, for example, understood the reference.) But Paradise says they were laying the groundwork for the reveal from the beginning of the season. “If you watch Season 5 with that in mind, you can see the a little things that we’ve played with along the way,” she says, including Kovich/Daniels’ penchant for anachonistic throwbacks like real paper and neckties.

“I didn’t know that that was going be there,” Martin-Green says. “My whole childhood came back to me.”

“We Always Knew That We Wanted to Somehow Tie That Back Up”

Originally, Season 5 of “Discovery” ends with Burnham and Book talking on the beach outside the wedding of Saru (Doug Jones) and T’Rina (Tara Rosling) before transporting away to their next adventure. But Paradise understood that the episode needed something more conclusive once it became the series finale. The question was what.

There were some significant guardrails around what they could accomplish. The production team had only eight weeks from when Paramout+ and CBS Studios signed off on the epilogue to when they had to shoot it. Fortunately, the bridge set hadn’t been struck yet (though several standing sets already had been). And the budget allowed only for three days of production.

Then there was “Calypso.” 

To fill up the long stretches between the first three seasons of “Discovery,” CBS Studios and Paramount+ greenlit a series of 10 stand-alone episodes, dubbed “Short Treks,” that covered a wide variety of storylines and topics. The second “Short Trek” — titled “Calypso” and co-written by novelist Michael Chabon — first streamed between Season 1 and 2 in November 2018. It focuses on a single character named Craft (Aldis Hodge), who is rescued by the USS Discovery after the starship — and its now-sentient computer system, Zora (Annabelle Wallis) — has sat totally vacant for 1,000 years in the same fixed point in space. How the Discovery got there, and why it was empty for so long, were left to the viewer’s imagination. 

Still, for a show that had only just started its run, “Calypso” had already made a bold promise for “Discovery’s” endgame — one the producers had every intention of keeping.

“We always knew that we wanted to somehow tie that back up,” says Paradise, who joined the writers’ room in Season 2, and became showrunner starting with Season 3. “We never wanted ‘Calypso’ to be the dangling Chad.”

So much so, in fact, that, as the show began winding down production on Season 5, Paradise had started planning to make “Calypso” the central narrative engine for Season 6. 

“The story, nascent as it was, was eventually going to be tying that thread up and connecting ‘Discovery’ back with ‘Calypso,’” she says.

Once having a sixth season was no longer an option, Paradise knew that resolving the “Calypso” question was non-negotiable. “OK, well, we’re not going to have a season to do that,” she says. “So how do we do that elegantly in this very short period of time?”

“I Feel Like It Ends the Way It Needed to End”

Resolving “Calypso” provided the storytelling foundation for the epilogue, but everything else was about giving its characters one final goodbye.

“We want to know what’s happening to Burnham, first and foremost,” Paradise says. “And we knew we wanted to see the cast again.”

For the latter, Paradise and Jarrow devised a conceit that an older Burnham, seated in the captain’s chair on Discovery, imagines herself surrounded by her crew 30 years prior, so she (and the audience) could connect with them one final time. For the former, the makeup team designed prosthetics to age up Martin-Green and Ajala by 30 years — “I think they were tested as they were running on to the set,” Paradise says with a laugh — to illustrate Burnham and Book’s long and happy marriage together.

Most crucially, Paradise cut a few lines of Burnham’s dialogue with Book from the original Season 5 finale and moved it to a conversation she has with her son in the coda. The scene — which evokes the episode’s title, “Life Itself” — serves as both a culminating statement of purpose for “Discovery” and the overarching compassion and humanity of “Star Trek” as a whole.

To reassure her son about his first command of a starship, Burnham recalls when the ancient Progenitor asked what was most meaningful to her. “Do you know how you would answer that question now?” he asks.

“Yeah, just being here,” Burnham replies. “You know, sometimes life itself is meaning enough, how we choose to spend the time that we have, who we spend it with: You, Book, and the family I found in Starfleet, on Discovery.”

Martin-Green relished the opportunity to revisit the character she’s played for seven years when she’s reached the pinnacle of her life and career. “You just get to see this manifestation of legacy in this beautiful way,” she says. “I will also say that I look a lot like my mom, and that was that was also a gift, to be able to see her.”

Shooting the goodbye with the rest of her cast was emotional, unsurprisingly, but it led Martin-Green to an unexpected understanding. “It actually was so charged that it was probably easier that it was only those three days that we knew it was the end, and not the entirety of season,” she says.

Similarly, Paradise says she’s “not sure” what more she would’ve done had there been more time to shoot the coda. “I truly don’t feel like we missed out on something by not having one more day,” she says. “I feel like it ends the way it needed to end.”

Still, getting everything done in just three days was no small feat, either. “I mean, we worked ’round the clock,” Martin-Green says with a deep laugh. “We were delirious by the end — but man, what a way to end it.”

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