Patrick Stewart, Reuniting With Q on New Season of Star Trek: Picard

In the first season of the new season, Star Trek: Picard, Jean-Luc Picard is thrust into an alternate timeline where he’s a fascist, genocidal leader on a barbaric version of 24th-century Earth. Q, an all-powerful, omnipotent being (played by John de Lancie, a veteran actor) is one of the first voices that he hears. He has been playing with him for the whole run of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The two Trek veterans hadn’t been face-to-face since that show ended back in 1994.

“Oh dear, you’re a bit older than I imagined,” says Q, who — thanks to CGI — initially looks just as he did when we last saw him. “Let me catch up.”He snaps his fingers, and instantly ages to 30 years. “There now,”He says. “We’re even.”

It’s a stark reminder that original world of Star Trek: The Next GenerationIt is long past us, recreated but never again. The passage of time affects everything, even the supposedly immortal demigods. It was clear throughout the first season. Picard, where our frail hero — played, of course, by Patrick Stewart — reluctantly leaves retirement life in his French vineyard, days after learning he has a potentially lethal neurological condition, to save a young android very much like his former TNGData for colleagues

And it’s evident in the second season of the show, which debuts March 3 on Paramount Plus, where Picard and his new ragtag crew (which includes Star Trek: Voyager‘s Seven of Nine) travel back to Earth in 2024 to prevent the timeline from going hopelessly askew. “This was all challenging and exciting new stuff for Picard,” says Stewart. “I have the same name as before, but everything else, I think, is different.”

“Season One is about resurrection in a bunch of ways,”Additions Star Trek: Picard showrunner Akiva Goldsman. “Season Two is about redemption.”

Part of that redemption involves a new look at Picard’s childhood, and his inability to find lasting love. “We wanted to tell a story about Picard’s heart,” says Goldsman, before adding, in a reference to the character receiving an artificial heart during his cadet years at Starfleet (and his consciousness being transferred into an android’s body in this series’ first season), “Or his spiritual heart, since God knows he’s had several versions of his actual heart. We came across this space, and thought: ‘Wow, no one has shined a light on that.’ You always say, ‘What happened with him and Beverly [Crusher]? Why doesn’Does a romantic relationship ever last? He’s interesting, smart, and cool. He’s handsome. He is the captain of a starship. What’s going on there?’ “

Just a few years ago, Stewart couldn’t have imagined letting any creative team, no matter how inventive, attempt to answer such a question. He hadn’t played Jean-Luc Picard since 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis — a nearly unwatchable entry that caused Paramount to stop making Next GenerationMovies and turn back to Captain Kirk crew in their three last movies Star Trek films. He truly thought he would never done the captain’s uniform again.

“I felt that after 176 hours of television, which is what the Next Generation was, and four feature films, that I had nothing more say,” says Stewart. “It would be best now to just let the thing become a part of history.”

This changed when he met Alex Kurtzman and Goldsman. All of them sold him an idea for a show like it was. TNG. Picard would no longer be a part of Starfleet; he’d initially be living on Earth; and most of his old Enterprise buddies wouldn’t be a part of the action. “Because 20 years had passed, they wanted to approach Picard, and others in the series we may have met before, after they had been affected by those 20 years,” says Stewart. “It wasn’t just that Patrick Stewart was 20 years older. So was Jean-Luc.”

He’d just finished work on the X-Men movie LoganHe appeared in the movie Charles Xavier: A Broken Old Man with Dementia. “I loved Logan, which will be perhaps dismaying to the X-Men fans, but it was my best experience with any of those movies,” says Stewart. “I said to them, ‘I don’t want to remake Logan, but I think we could take the approach to Logan as a concrete basis for taking a different approach, but with the same benefits, if we were to revive Jean-Luc.’”

One of his first rules was that he didn’t want to wear a Starfleet uniform at any point on the show. The producers were initially horrified, since it’s almost as iconic as Superman’s cape, but Stewart knew leaving it off would make very clear that this was a new Picard for a new time. “It was almost as if they felt nobody would would believe I was Jean-Luc unless I was wearing a communicator and four little pins, or however many pins an admiral has, but I stayed away from that,” says Stewart. “It was not what Star Trek: Picard was intending to be about. Not at all.”

Although Data (Brent Spiner), William Riker(Jonathan Frakes), Deanna Troi and Deanna Troi made appearances in the first season, the main focus of the second season was on Picard’s new team. This included android expert Agnes Jurati (“Alison Pill”), former Starfleet officer Raffi Muzicer (Michelle Hurd), former Starfleet Captain Chris Rios (“Santiago Carbera”) and Elnor (Evan Evagora)

The producers planned a three-season arc from the beginning. “But we didn’t know we were going to get three seasons,”Goldsman. “We just knew we were going to get one. Had we face-planted, CBS would have been like, ‘Thanks so much for trying that little thing. Move along.’”

While some fans and critics may find the plot of Season 1 a little confusing, it is still a great show. PicardQuickly, the renewal for seasons two- and three was granted to the team. Once they decided to make the second season about Picard’s heart, they knew it would make sense to bring back Q and Whoopi Goldberg’s character, Guinan.

“If you think about it, two of Picard’s most abiding relationships, his two most longstanding ones, are his relationships are Q and Guinan,”Goldsman. “They are deep, they are profound, and they are complex. Guinan has cross-temporal awareness. She doesn’t know what the divergences [in the timeline] are, but if you go back to [the classic Next Generation episode] ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise,’ she knows that Tasha [Yar] ain’t supposed to be there.” [The character died in the first season of TNG.]

“Q is a genie,”Goldsman continues to be a Goldsman. “Q can create an environment for us that is the canvas on which we can lay out the drama of Picard’s inner life, because Q is the closest thing that Star Trek has to magic. Their relational connectedness to Jean-Luc and their powers made them the ideal bookends for this story.”

Q’s role in the Star Trek universe goes all the way back to the pilot episode of The Next GenerationPicard was forced to defend the nation when he tried all mankind. “The character is basically a God,” says de Lancie. “When it started, I thought to myself, ‘OK, he’s a God. But then what does he do?’ So I thought, ‘I’m an omnipotent being that’s too stupid to know it. I’m a God with clay feet.’”

Q was Q’s playful clown as well as an icon of doom and terror, switching between them with little warning. “My feeling was he couldn’t just be one thing,” says de Lancie. “I wanted to break it up. There’s the seltzer-down-your-pants stuff and then the dangerous stuff. That means you in the audience are never quite sure what you’re getting.”

Initialy, de Lancie believed Q would never see again after the incident. Next Generation pilot. He’d spent most of his career guesting on shows like The Six Million Dollar Man Barnaby JonesAnd MacGyverThis seemed like another one-shot deal. On the third day of filming, he heard something behind him as he stood around the set. “It said, ‘You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into,” says de Lancie. “And it was [Star Trek creator] Gene Roddenberry with a big smile on his face. I said, ‘Gene, what are you talking about?’ He said, ‘You will find out.’”

In the ninth episode, he was brought back to Q. The Next GenerationAnd then again one more time in each of six seasons, including series finale “All Good Things…”He played a key role in the series. In three episodes of Q, Q also starred. Star Trek: VoyagerOne episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

However, the last time Q was called was in 2001. “They had done movies and nobody called,” says de Lancie. “They had done Picard [Season One] and nobody called. Without sounding disingenuous, this call kind of felt out of left field. When [Picard showrunner] Terry [Matalas] reached out and said, ‘I’m sure you were expecting this call.’ I said, ‘No. I wasn’t expecting this call. But I’m delighted to be here.’”

Three episodes of Picard screened for the press, Q’s role is relatively minimal, though extremely important to the overall plot of the season. “I want to tamp down on expectations” says de Lancie. “I want fans to know that I’m a catalyst in this season. This is different from the Q episodes that I did in years past, where each one of them was kind of the Q show.”

Stewart had previously seen de Lancie at several Star Trek conventions in the past 20 years, but this was their first shooting together in almost 30 years. “I’m very fond of John,” says Stewart. “He’s a dear man and a friend. When we played our final scene together, John went to make speeches, as did I, but we both ended up having to cut it short because we had tears in our eyes. It was a very, very deep relationship.”

He is the same with Whoopi Goldberg. Up until this season, she hadn’t played Guinan since the 1994 movie Star Trek: Generations. Stewart invited Stewart to invite her back on the show When he first appeared The ViewJanuary 2020 “I knew that it was very important to bring Guinan back,” says Stewart. “I think she’s living much much slower than everyone else is. Jean-Luc Picard’s one year is equivalent to Guinan’s two days. This season was filled with some very important scenes.

“When you have strong feelings about a person you’re acting with, so long as they’re positive feelings, it introduces a new element into the relationship and the interconnection of the two characters,”He continues. “That’s always what has happened when I’ve been in front of the camera with Whoopi. I wish it was happening more often.”

This season’s action takes place largely on Earth in 2024. It feels a bit like the 1986 movie. Star Trek IV, The Voyage HomeKirk and his crew go to Eighties San Francisco to save the future. “The Voyage Home spoke very much to this season,”Goldsman. “There are a couple of very specific homages to it, which I will not tell you about.”

As with most shows over the years, shooting was difficult due to the pandemic. They were forced to start Season Three several months later than planned, and right after they had finished Season Two. “We wrapped season two at 7 p.m. one night and we started the next season the following morning,” says Stewart. “It’s been, as you may be able to hear from my voice, an intense experience.”

Stewart stated that he was only five days away from wrapping Season Three, after 13 months of hard work. He’s unwilling to even hint at where the story goes, but he does say that working with writers and directors that grew up with The Next GenerationThis has been a very rewarding experience.

“The head of the writing room and the man who is currently directing this episode I’m shooting has been a devoted enthusiast from the very beginning,”He says. “You can see in their faces what the franchise has meant to them. And then to be finding themselves directing an episode with Jean-Luc Picard and… who knows who else? I’m not allowed to mention who else, but it’s an extraordinary situation to be in. It’s one I have relished in these past few years.”

Stewart is not willing to talk about his possible role as a superhero in the Marvel movie. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of MadnessHowever, his voice can be clearly heard in this trailer. Does that mean he’s returning as Professor Xavier? “This is a very delicate area,”He says. “All I can say to you is we’ll have to see. But bear in mind that Professor Xavier has already died twice. I think he must have some sort of Superman quality.”

Return to Star TrekGoldsman claims that Season Three of land is underway PicardThis will probably be the last, unless there is something else. “miraculous”Stewart cannot be certain that it will happen. “With something like this, I never say never,”He says. “I did for a long time, but my experience with filming Picard has shifted my prejudices a little. I don’t know. All I know right now is I need a break. In 10 days’ time I’m going to have one. Then we’ll see. I’ll think about it.”