Crossovers between different eras of Star Trek have long been a popular strategy for the franchise, with time travel and parallel dimensions affording many opportunities to create team-ups. And now, according to our sources – the same ones who said Ewan McGregor would return as Obi-Wan in a Disney Plus show, and that a Scream reboot was in development, both of which have since been confirmed – Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Discovery may well overlap at some point in the future, with time travel as the reason that Picard gets to interact with the crew of the Discovery.
How and when a crossover could pan out is still unclear, however. After all, at the moment, Discovery is firmly stuck in the 32nd century, while Picard takes place towards the end of the 24th century, and both have a lot of contemporary questions to answer before any sort of meeting between the two crews could take place. But again, our sources have told us that it’s something that CBS would like to do at some point.
That being said, with Picard‘s producers emphasizing that the new series will stand on its own terms, and even surprise fans, it’s unlikely that a crossover is a priority for the show right now. In the same way, Discovery‘s time jump for its third season was presumably a solution to what was becoming an increasingly complex relationship to the events of the original Star Trek shows. Still, we’d love to see an older, grizzled Picard team up with Michael Burnham and co. and it’d certainly raise some intriguing narrative possibilities if the experiences of the USS Discovery in the future are influenced in some way by Picard.
Of course, the Star Trek universe is nothing if not flexible, with time travel giving the franchise the ability to deliver a shared setting without necessarily upsetting individual series’ trajectories. With Star Trek: Picard debuting on CBS All Access on January 23rd, 2020, and more Trek shows and movies on the horizon, we remain optimistic about the chances of there being a lot more crossover opportunities in the future.
