Season 3 of the American TV series Star Trek: Picard follows Jean-Luc Picard as he reunites with the original cast of the USS Enterprise. CBS Studios, Secret Hideout, Weed Road Pictures, and Roddenberry Entertainment are all involved in the season’s production, with Terry Matalas serving as showrunner.
Star Trek: The Next Generation and other Star Trek media feature Patrick Stewart in the role of Picard. LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, and Brent Spiner all reprise their roles from The Next Generation, and Jeri Ryan and Michelle Hurd join them as regular cast members.
It was decided informally to film Season 3 in tandem with Season 2 in January of 2020. Production on the second season kicked off in California in February 2021 and continued through the summer until the full switchover to filming the third season in September. Soon after, Stewart made the season official, saying that shooting would wrap in March of 2022.
A month later, it was confirmed that other Next Generation cast members would be returning, and Matalas hoped that the season would serve as a fitting conclusion to Picard’s story and the Next Generation cast’s collective journey.
Season 3 will likely debut on Paramount+ sometime in early 2023.
Contents
Cast
- Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard
- LeVar Burton as Geordi La Forge
- Michael Dorn as Worf
- Jonathan Frakes as William Riker
- Gates McFadden as Beverly Crusher
- Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi
- Brent Spiner
- Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine
- Michelle Hurd as Raffi Musiker
Episodes
| No. overall |
No. in season |
Title | Directed by | Written by | Original release date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 | 1 | TBA | TBA | Terry Matalas | 2023 |
Writers for subsequent episodes include Cindy Appel, Christopher Monfette, Jane Maggs, Matt Okumura, Sean Tretta, Kiley Rossetter, Terry Matalas, and Sean Tretta and Kiley Rossetter. Deborah Kampmeier, Doug Aarniokoski, and Matalas all directed episodes, while Jonathan Frakes directed multiple episodes again.
We’re deeply saddened to report the passing of Nichelle Nichols – a trailblazer, an inspiration, and so much more. She will be deeply missed. https://t.co/iBwyOPaxTP
— Star Trek (@StarTrek) July 31, 2022
Design
Matalas promised that the visual differences between each season of Picard would be distinct, but he and production designer Dave Blass preferred that the show’s second and third seasons return to the aesthetic of the Next Generation era. In April 2022.
Blass revealed that several crew members from the Next Generation era of Star Trek had rejoined the design team for Picard: computer graphics engineer Ben Betts, visual effects producer Dan Curry, set designer Daren Dochterman, concept designer and visual effects artist Doug Drexler, starship designer John Eaves, graphic designer Monica Fedrick, graphic designer Alan Kobayashi, production designer Geoffrey Mandel, video engineer Larry Markart, compute graphics engineer Ben Betts, and compute graphics engineer Alan Kobayashi
The Klingon actor Dorn’s prosthetics for the role of Worf in Star Trek: Discovery, according to Kurtzman, would maintain his Next Generation appearance.
Curry, who also created various Klingon weaponry for The Next Generation including the bat’leth, created a new weapon that Worf utilises in the season dubbed a “kur’ leth.”
The USS Stargazer sets from the second season were redecorated for the third season to represent a different vessel. Although Matalas claimed that this wasn’t the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-F), the season does feature that ship. Twisted Media, a visual effects studio, developed the starship user interfaces based on the LCARS computer system. They made use of the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual (1991) reference manual by Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda, as well as the designs from that generation’s movies and television shows.
Drexler and Okuda both advised on the LCARS designs for the corporation, and Drexler also contributed digital models that were incorporated into the interface screens.
For two episodes in the second season, Todd A. Marks and his video playback business Images on Screen displayed the user interfaces on set during filming using a combination of LG OLED panels and Screen Innovations’ FlexGlass projection screens (coupled with rear screen projectors). The third season saw a significant increase in the employment of the FlexGlass projection technology as a result of its success.
Filming
On February 16, 2022, filming for the second season got underway, with certain third-season scenes being shot concurrently. The show was being produced in California, where it secured tax breaks to keep shooting there after the first season. With more than 450 crew members, the second and third seasons had one of the largest television series crews at the time.
The COVID-19 outbreak necessitated the implementation of stringent regulations on set and the routine testing of cast and crew personnel. On September 2, the second season’s principal photography came to a close, and the third season’s filming began in earnest.
According to Matalas, Doug Aarniokoski, Deborah Kampmeier, and Jonathan Frakes would all be serving as directors for the upcoming season. By the end of December, all of Frakes’ episodes had been shot. Production began on January 3, 2022, after a break for the Christmas holidays, however, more than 50 members of the cast and crew tested positive for COVID-19 on that day.
Filming for the season was stopped right away however it started up again on January 7. By February 28, Matalas was in charge of the show’s direction and made it clear that he would also be in charge of the series finale with the series’ filming winding up on March 8.
Marketing
On April 5, 2022, “First Contact Day,” the fictitious occasion when the first contact between Earthlings and aliens occurred in the Star Trek universe, a teaser for the upcoming season was shown. The teaser featured footage of Picard examining an old uniform along with the announcement of the returning Next Generation cast members with voiceovers from those actors.
Another teaser, featuring the returning Next Generation cast members in costume, was unveiled during the Star Trek Universe panel at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2022. There were also character posters made available for Hurd, Ryan, Stewart, and the returning Next Generation performers.
Follow serveupdate.com for more latest updates.