Posted in: Paramount+, Star Trek, streaming, TV | Tagged: paramount, patrick stewart, Star Trek Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Terry Matalas, walter koenig

Star Trek: Picard Showrunner on How They Made Enterprise-D a Reality

Star Trek: Picard EP & showrunner Terry Matalas discusses how the team was able to bring Enterprise-D back to life and back onto our screens.

With Star Trek: Picard wrapping its third and final season, there's certainly plenty to discuss and unload on. The final episode, "The Last Generation," represents The Borg's last-ditch episode to conquer humanity and Earth as the ones tugging at the strings of the vengeful Changelings also looking for revenge. Showrunner Terry Matalas made the episode as cinematic and, naturally, epic as possible, breaking down some of the biggest shots with The Hollywood Reporter. The following contains major spoilers.

Star Trek: Picard: Showrunner Terry Matalas on Finale's Biggest Moments

"The Last Generation" finds the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise-D discovering the Borg cube that housed not only the Borg Queen with First Contact's (1996) Alice Krige reprising the role lending her voice with Jane Edwina Seymour providing the physical presence in the character's emaciated state in elaborate prosthetics and makeup. With the Enterprise taking out the Death Star reactor core…err, Borg beacon, the ship scrambles to find the away team in Jean-Luc (Patrick Stewart), Riker (Jonathan Frakes), and Worf (Michael Dorn) along with their target of interest, Jack (Ed Speleers). Troi (Marina Sirtis) uses her Betazoid abilities to locate them and navigates the Enterprise to beaming range before escaping the cube explosion.

"I didn't think we would pull it off," Matalas said. "But when the visual effects came in, and once Stephen Barton's incredible score was added, seeing the Enterprise appear above the characters like that, that's when I let myself consider the possibility that, 'Hey, I think maybe we did it.'" The showrunner received full support when it came to seeing the original Next Generation cast back on the restored Enterprise-D originally lost during the events of 1994's Generations. "The studio was all for it," Matalas explained, "but it just came down to time and money. They were like: 'You have to find a way to pay for it.' But it was one of the first ideas I had; it was part of my initial pitch to Patrick. The appearance of the ship was part of the pitch to LeVar and to the rest of the cast, in that during the last two hours, we would be on the Enterprise-D. So right from the moment that the season started, we were figuring out how to build that in time for the finale."

To recreate the original bridge from TNG, Star Trek veterans Michael and Denise Okuda worked with production designer Dave Blass and his team. "The schedule didn't allow a lot of time for all that, unfortunately," Matalas said. "There was so much to do – we only had two days to shoot on it for both the last two episodes. I know it was amazing for the cast to see it for the first time. But for me, as a director, whose job is to keep the train moving, to get everything shot in a very compressed timeframe, the ticking clock was very much on my mind."

For more, including Matalas recreating the opening sequence of TNG, salvaging Pavel Chekov actor Walter Koenig's cameo playing his The Original Series character's son Federation President Anton Chekov (as a nod to the late Kelvin Timeline actor Anton Yelchin), Enterprise's "trench run," bridge scenes, Borg Queen plans, you can check out the interview here.

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