Alex Kurtzman Talks Canon And Patrick Stewart’s Influence On Star Trek Picard Show
| JANUARY 3, 2019 | BY:
TREKMOVIE.COM STAFF 34 COMMENTS SO FAR
It’s 2019, which means the new CBS All Access Star Trek series featuring Patrick Stewart’s return to the role of Jean-Luc Picard is
coming this year. We still don’t know a lot about the show, but we are now learning more about how it came to be and how involved the star of the show is in his return to the 24th century.
Stewart wants to protect Next Genlegacy
In a new interview with
DigitalSpy, executive producer Alex Kurtzman acknowledged that it wasn’t easy to convince Sir Patrick to return to the role, saying, “…getting him to say yes was its own amazing thing.” The man in charge of expanding Star Trek for television also gave some details on what motivated Stewart’s change of heart:
“Patrick needed to make sure that we were coming from the right place and that we wanted to protect what Next Gen means to so many people, and what his character, specifically, means to so many people. And that was really about several conversations back and forth, exploring his instincts, our instincts. Ultimately our job is to make him feel comfortable and safe and to protect the show and shield it from anything that would break it in the wrong way.”
Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard in
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Stewart is hands-on
Sir Patrick is also an executive producer on the new show, and from the way Kurtzman describes it, the star is very much involved in crafting this
Star Trek: The Next Generationfollow-up series.
“He was there [in the writers’ room] for two weeks at the beginning of the experience, sitting with the writers. Everybody was talking together about what they wanted this show to be, and that’s very special. Patrick will send us beautifully written emails about what he feels about Picard and where he feels Picard has been. That’s so inspirational.”
Patrick Stewart and the Picard show writers’ room in September (Photo: Twitter/Patrick Stewart)
Exploring how to connect new show with established canon
The new series is expected to be set 20 years after the events of
Star Trek: Nemesis, which would put it in the year 2399. Getting a continuation of the Star Trek story after
Voyager and
Nemesis is something many fans have been hoping to see. It is an open question as to what the new show will be like, especially in relation to what was established in 27 seasons and four feature films set in the 24th century. Kurtzman spoke briefly about how they are approaching this issue:
“It’s fun to think about how to connect to canon while freeing yourself from it technologically. We’re still exploring that, that’s a deep dive. That takes literally a year to figure out.”
