Posted in: Paramount+, Star Trek, TV | Tagged: Gates McFadden, Jonathan Frakes, paramount, patrick stewart, star trek, Star Trek Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Terry Matalas

Star Trek: Picard Showrunner Talks Season 3 Opener, Compares Seasons

Star Trek: Picard Showrunner & EP Terry Matalas compares the three seasons, discusses Gates McFadden's Dr. Beverly Crusher, and more.

All three seasons of Star Trek: Picard had a different showrunner, with season one's Michael Chabon, season two's Akiva Goldsman, and tasked to close the series is Terry Matalas. The EP and 12 Monkey's creator's mission was clear: to bring Jean-Luc Picard's journey back full circle to his original U.S.S. Enterprise-D crew back with a Star Trek: The Next Generation reunion. Matalas broke down his journey to make season three happen along with the opening of the premiere episode "The Next Generation."

"I think Season 1 is Michael Chabon's beautiful arc of reintroducing us to Picard and these characters," Matalas told Variety. "Then the second season is Akiva Goldsman, digging deeper into what makes Captain Picard Captain Picard, and going back into his past trauma and telling this beautiful story with Q. And this is a different kind of story because it's going back to the beginning. It's the 'Next Generation.' It's back out into space. It's much more nautical." One reliable and stout figure in the Star Trek universe as an actor and director that made Matalas' vision possible reprised his role as William Riker. "There's no better collaborator than Jonathan Frakes," he said. "I say to him over and over that I think Episode 4 [of Season 3] is the best thing he's ever directed. There's so much emotion, and he nailed all those reveals." While Frakes was accessible from day one, given his regular involvement, at least behind the camera in the Paramount+ era, Matalas recalled the way he pitched the journey of the other TNG characters to the remaining cast.

When we find Gates McFadden's Dr. Beverly Crusher, we find her in an isolated part of space, asking for help from her former captain but not before showing her badass abilities with a phaser rifle. "I always had this idea to meet her in a way that felt totally unexpected," Matalas told The Hollywood Reporter. "You'd see [Beverly] sort of waking up, popping into frame, but not being in a traditional Starfleet uniform," he explained. "She would be on a kind of older, rundown ship — having to grab a phaser rifle and defend her property."

Matalas described Beverly as more of a "Doctors Without Borders" type of doctor on the edge of the Final Frontier outside of Starfleet. "We still count phaser shots. The visual effects industry is overwhelmed right now," he said on how production budget limitations. "There's just so much content between feature films and television, and the demand is exactly the same for them as far as quality. So we're all overwhelmed in terms of time and money, so, yeah, you're counting each beam." The EP wanted to make up for how underutilized McFadden was in the films.

"Beverly was the least explored character in all of the feature films, especially in Nemesis," Matalas said. "And certainly [the writers and I] knew what the big overarching story was going to be this season, and it begins with her. So she would be the very first person you see this season." For more, including Matalas' efforts to recruit the remaining TNG cast and fill in the shortcomings of the cast's original run on TNG, and get the VFX together, you can check out the whole THR interview here. New episodes of Star Trek: Picard stream Thursdays on Paramount+.

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