As every Star Trek fan this side of Qo’nos knows by now, Patrick Stewart will shortly be making his return as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in a new TV series coming from CBS All Access. The shocking news was first announced last summer and folks have been waiting for details on the vehicle for the iconic Starfleet captain ever since.
With season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery arriving any day now, showrunner Alex Kurtzman is finally beginning to come clean about the other Trek show on the horizon. For instance, he’s spoken a little about what ultimately convinced Stewart to return to the character he played from 1987 to 2002, across The Next Generation and its numerous movie spinoffs.
First off, it was an in-depth story breakdown of what Kurtzman and his co-writer Michael Chabon had planned that clinched the deal.
“It turned into a 34-page document — with no way to shorten it. We were going on all in and he was going to read it or not read it, love it or hate it. It was our best attempt at trying to get him to say yes. He walked into the room and he had a huge smile on his face and said, ‘This is wonderful.’”
Having become hooked on their ideas, the British thespian was keen to make his own wishes clear: that this new Picard show would be something that fans won’t forget as it won’t be what they expect.
“He threw down an amazing gauntlet and said, ‘If we do this, I want it to be so different, I want it to be both what people remember but also not what they’re expecting at all, otherwise why do it?’”
This same interview also gave us our first hint at the show’s story. It’s been revealed that the series will follow the destruction of Romulus and the dissolution of the Romulan Empire. This is fascinating, as the event occurred at the beginning of the 2009 Star Trek reboot – co-written by Kurtzman – when the villainous Nero’s attempt to go back in time caused history to diverge into what’s known as the Kelvin timeline. So, we’ll finally find out what happened in the Prime universe after Nimoy’s Spock disappeared.
But before Picard makes it so once again, Star Trek: Discovery returns to CBS All Access on January 17th.