Patrick Stewart was a hard sell for Star Trek: Picard since he believed that Jean-Luc Picard’s arc was finished after Star Trek: Nemesis. However, Alex Kurtzman, Akiva Goldsman, and other creators of the series convinced him to take on the role in the series. He put a lot of consideration into committing to the project, as evident from a list of three conditions he presented to the creators.
They were obviously not thrilled about the conditions and tried to reason with the X-Men actor, who stuck to his guns. While the creators agreed to them, they did one thing that Stewart asked them specifically not to do in the conditions during the third season of the series.
Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Broke One Of The Conditions Set By Patrick Stewart
Patrick Stewart took some necessary steps before committing to Star Trek: Picard and one of them was to set a bunch of conditions for the creators. He shared this list of conditions in an article for Time and one of the conditions was not to treat the series as a reunion of sorts for Star Trek: The Next Generation stars.
Stewart explained that his rule was not to disrespect his Star Trek co-stars but because he wanted Picard to work with new characters in a new setting. He was okay with featuring the characters of the 1987 series in cameo appearances possibly in the second or third season.
However, he wanted these appearances to be chance encounters and not forced ones. He wrote about his first condition in his article for Time:
The series would not be based on a reunion of The Next Generation characters. I wanted it to have little or nothing to do with them. This was not at all a mark of disrespect for my beloved fellow actors.
Rather, I simply felt it was essential to place Picard in entirely new settings with entirely new characters. Perhaps Picard might encounter Riker or Dr. Crusher in the second season, but such encounters were not to be the series’ raison d’être.
Stewart’s first condition was followed throughout the first two seasons. The series did bring back Brent Spiner’s Data and Jonathan Frakes’ Riker in the first season and Marina Sirtis’ Deanna in the second season. But they were separate appearances and Stewart admitted that he had softened on his hard-line conditions by then.
However, Star Trek: Picard showrunner Terry Matalas approached Stewart before the filming of the third season. He shared Paramount’s insistence that they wanted a proper reunion of The Next Generation stars. Luckily, Stewart had grown comfortable with the series and allowed the reunion to happen. He wrote in the Time article:
For season 3, our last, Terry Matalas, by then Picard’s showrunner, told me that the studio wanted a full Next Generation reunion. Ugh, just what I had firmly said I didn’t want. But that had been three years ago. Now I was less resistant, having enjoyed working with Jonathan, Brent, Marina, John, and Whoopi.
Stewart had one condition to make the reunion happen. He suggested that rather than bringing back all characters at once he wanted to “trickle them back in.”
How Did The TNG Reunion Come About In Star Trek: Picard Season 3?
In the season’s premiere episode, Picard gets a distress call from Dr. Beverly Crusher, his former lover. She and her son are being pursued by an unknown enemy, who is trying to abduct the child. The child is revealed to be Picard’s son. Picard plots to rescue them with the help of his old Enterprise gang.
Stewart reunites with LeVar Burton as Geordi La Forge, Brent Spiner as Data, Gates McFadden as Dr. Beverly Crusher, Michael Dorn as Worf, Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi, and Jonathan Frakes as Will Riker.
The season also broke Stewart’s other rule of no uniforms. The showrunner allowed Patrick to wear outfits that looked like everyday clothes, but some of his old gang wore black and gold uniforms. His third condition was to end the series after three seasons.
Star Trek: Picard is now available for streaming on Paramount+.
