Patrick Stewart will make his long-awaited return to the world of Trek very soon in his own self-titled TV series, Star Trek: Picard. From the marketing so far, it seems the show will be less of a straight follow-up to The Next Generation and more of a bold reimagining of the former Starfleet officer. That said, it would surely be doing the character’s long history in the franchise a disservice if Picard’s old Enterprise-D crew didn’t reappear.
Thankfully, one star of the long-running 80s/90s series fully expects the whole TNG cast to turn up on Picard. CNN caught up with LeVar Burton – who played the visor-wearing Geordi LaForge – at The Lion King premiere and he explained that he thinks it just makes sense for the gang to return alongside their old captain at some stage.
“Each of us, I would say certainly, right? It is unreasonable to assume that he doesn’t know those people anymore, or that he stopped talking to them. And if he did there’s good storytelling in why.”
Having said that, Burton admitted that he can’t see the entire crew reuniting as one on-screen as that would be quite a big logistical feat and might not even be what the producers of Picard are interested in doing.
“Are you gonna see all of us together, again, in a scene or episode? I don’t know. There’s a lot of paper that needs to be papered, before we get there.”
We’ve previously had some conflicting info on the likelihood of more of the TNG cast returning in Picard. The actors themselves said that they hadn’t been approached as of last fall, but EP Alex Kurtzman has mentioned that Picard could reunite with an old friend or two on the show. Lastly, Jonathan Frakes’ role as director has spawned theories that he might be hopping in front of the camera as well to reprise the role of Cmdr. Riker.
For now, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens, but what we do know is that Star Trek: Picard is currently in production and the 10-episode debut season is expected to arrive on CBS All Access later this year.