History Trivia / StarTrekPicard

* ActorInspiredElement: Creator/BrentSpiner suggested that Altan Soong's full name be Altan Inigo Soong so his initials could be A.I. as a reference to artificial intelligence.

* ExecutiveMeddling: Writer Creator/MichaelChabon mentioned that he wanted to include explicit references and {{Continuity Nod}}s to the Dominion War and explore the damage it did to Starfleet and the Federation, and how it played a large part in shaping their more isolationist and markedly less idealistic attitude as seen in the show. However, he was asked to tone these references down to more implicit ones by the higher-ups, who believed that his plans would risk causing ContinuityLockOut for new viewers.

** Fans hoping for an appearance from the ''U.S.S. Enterprise'' herself guessed that, if it wasn't the ''E'' from ''First Contact'', it would be the ''Odyssey'' class ''F'' from ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline''. The Season 3 trailer confirmed that she would indeed be making the jump to television.

* LyingCreator: The showrunners initially said that Picard would be the only ''TNG''-era character to appear in the series. The San Diego Comic Con trailer and panel revealed that not only would Riker, Troi and Data return but so would ''Voyager'''s Seven of Nine. Season 2 added Guinan, Q, the Borg Queen and, in a 30-second cameo, [[spoiler:Wesley Crusher]]. And finally the 3rd season added on everyone who hadn't already appeared (which by this point was only Geordi and Worf).

** Season 3 will bring back Creator/MichaelDorn as Worf, Creator/LevarBurton as Geordi [=LaForge=], and Creator/GatesMcFadden as Dr. Crusher. Spiner will also return, but this time as his other role of Lore, while Creator/DanielDavis will return as the holographic version of Professor Moriarity.

* IKnewIt: Fans hoping for an appearance from the ''U.S.S. Enterprise'' herself guessed that, if it wasn't the ''E'' from ''First Contact'', it would be the ''Odyssey'' class ''F'' from ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline''. The Season 3 trailer confirmed that she would indeed be making the jump to the series proper.
* LyingCreator: The showrunners initially said that Picard would be the only ''TNG''-era character to appear in the series. The San Diego Comic Con trailer and panel revealed that not only would Riker, Troi and Data return but so would ''Voyager'''s Seven of Nine. And then Season 2 adds Guinan, Q, and the Borg Queen.

* DawsonCasting: 34-year-old Ed Speelers plays Jack Crusher who cannot be much older than 20 [[spoiler: given that he was supposedly born to Jean-Luc Picard and Beverly Crusher shortly after the events of ''Nemesis''.]]

** Unsurprisingly Creator/JonathanFrakes directed a number of episodes. "Absolute Candor", "Stardust City Rag", "Fly Me to the Moon", and "Two of One".

* RealitySubtext: The first episode's references to the Dunkirk evacuation, and Picard's impassioned speech ending on the note that "it's not so easy for those who died, and it's not so easy for those who were left behind" directly nod at the fact that Patrick Stewart's father was one of the British soldiers rescued from Dunkirk, to which Stewart attributes the PTSD and violence that plagued his father's later life.

** In the Japanese dub, Creator/{{Mugihito}}, Creator/AkioOtsuka, Creator/HochuOtsuka, Creator/GaraTakashima and Creator/YokoSoumi also reprise their roles as Picard, Riker, Data, Deanna Troi and Seven of Nine respectively from the dub of ''TNG'' and ''VOY''.

** Diane Duane's ''Literature/{{Rihannsu}}'' novels took the secrecy of the name of the Romulan Commander in "[[Recap/StarTrekS3E2TheEnterpriseIncident The Enterprise Incident]]" and made it a cultural quirk, where they have a private name for themselves that they only reveal to people they deeply trust. "[[Recap/StarTrekPicardS1E06TheImpossibleBox The Impossible Box]]" establishes this practice is canonically part of Romulan culture, despite the Rihannsu novels' other major discrepancies with the canonical portrayals of the Romulans. The importance of swords also has roots in ''Rihannsu'''s "honor blade" concept, with the Vulcan swordsmith S'harien, a convert to the intended-to-be pacifist ways of Sarek, having given his last three swords to the Romulans before they left.

* AuthorsSavingThrow: Season Three in relation to ''Film/StarTrekNemesis''. Both [[https://trekmovie.com/2022/04/06/picard-season-3-showrunner-on-tng-sendoff-more-starships-worfs-makeup-and-other-star-trek-cameos Terry Matalas]] and [[https://trekmovie.com/2022/06/08/marina-sirtis-tng-cast-cherished-in-star-trek-picard-season-3-after-being-discarded-in-nemesis/ Marina Sirtis]] have expressed their dissatisfaction with the final TNG film and the popular sentiment that it failed to give the TNG characters a proper sendoff the same way ''The Undiscovered Country'' did for their predecessors. So, Season Three was conceived and developed as an opportunity to finally give the franchise's second most famous crew a fitting and deserved farewell.

* AuthorsSavingThrow: Season Three in relation to ''Film/StarTrekNemesis''. Both [[https://trekmovie.com/2022/04/06/picard-season-3-showrunner-on-tng-sendoff-more-starships-worfs-makeup-and-other-star-trek-cameos Terry Matalas]] and [[https://trekmovie.com/2022/06/08/marina-sirtis-tng-cast-cherished-in-star-trek-picard-season-3-after-being-discarded-in-nemesis/ Marina Sirtis]] have expressed their dissatisfaction with the final TNG film and the popular sentiment that it failed to give the TNG characters a proper sendoff the same way ''The Undiscovered Country'' did for their predecessors. So, Season Three was conceived and developed as an opportunity to finally give the franchise's second most famous crew a proper and deserved farewell.

* AuthorsSavingThrow: Season Three in relation to ''Film/StarTrekNemesis''. Both [[https://trekmovie.com/2022/04/06/picard-season-3-showrunner-on-tng-sendoff-more-starships-worfs-makeup-and-other-star-trek-cameos Terry Matalas]] and [[https://trekmovie.com/2022/06/08/marina-sirtis-tng-cast-cherished-in-star-trek-picard-season-3-after-being-discarded-in-nemesis/ Marina Sirtis]] have expressed their dissatisfaction with the final TNG film and the sentiment that it failed to give the TNG characters a proper sendoff the same way ''The Undiscovered Country'' did for their predecessors. So, Season Three was conceived and developed as an opportunity to finally give the franchise's second most famous crew a proper and deserved farewell.

** In the Japanese dub, Creator/{{Mugihito}}, Creator/AkioOhtsuka, Creator/HochuOtsuka, Creator/GaraTakashima and Creator/YokoSoumi also reprise their roles as Picard, Riker, Data, Deanna Troi and Seven of Nine respectively from the dub of ''TNG'' and ''VOY''.

* TalkingToHimself: Creator/SantiagoCabrera plays Cristóbal Rios and his lookalike holograms with a variety of accents.

** Creator/AnnieWersching replaces both Alice Krige and Susan Thompson as the Borg Queen in Season 2, in spite of Krige only reprising her role just recently on ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekLowerDecks''.

** Annie Wersching replaces both Alice Krige and Susan Thompson as the Borg Queen in Season 2, in spite of Krige only reprising her role just recently on ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekLowerDecks''.

** Season 2 saw Kirk Thatcher reprise his role as the Bus Punk from ''Film/StarTrekIVTheVoyageHome''.

** Season 3 will bring back Creator/MichaelDorn as Worf, Creator/LevarBurton as Geordi [=LaForge=], and Creator/GatesMcFadden as Dr. Crusher. Spiner will also return, but this time as his other role of Lore, while Daniel Davis will return as the holographic version of Professor Moriarity.

* AuthorsSavingThrow:
** In her returning role as Seven of Nine, Creator/JeriRyan gets to wear normal, comfortable-looking clothes instead of the skintight catsuits she had to don on ''[[Series/StarTrekVoyager Voyager]]'' (the first iterations of which made her faint more than once because they ''cut off the arterial flow to her brain'').
** "Endgame", the finale of ''Voyager'', also ended with the strong implication that the entire Borg Collective had been wiped out once and for all, which at best seemed contrived, and at worst could be seen as the ''Voyager'' crew committing genocide for the sake of a quicker trip home. The second episode of ''Picard'' indicates that the Collective has been active in some way, shape or form at least as recently as the destruction of Romulus, and is apparently still enough of a threat that the team working on a derelict Borg cube are worried about the possibility and consequences of them showing up again.
** Two regarding ''Film/StarTrek2009'':
*** The film took a lot of heat for Nero nonsensically wanting revenge on an organization that did all they could to help his people, and it unfortunately just wasn't enough. Here, it turns out the Starfleet higher-ups did, in fact, abandon the Romulans to their fate after [[Recap/StarTrekDiscoveryShortTreksE10ChildrenOfMars a sudden attack on Mars]] changed their priorities.
*** A common complaint from that film is that a supernova somehow threatened to "[[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale destroy the galaxy]]."[[note]]The tie-in comic ''Star Trek: Countdown'', which is explicitly de-canonized by ''Picard'', had previously tried to depict the supernova as a subspace anomaly that behaved atypically for an exploding star.[[/note]] ''Picard'' retcons it into a localized disaster; it was the Romulans' own sun that was about to blow, and it apparently only posed a threat to the surrounding (albeit heavily populated) solar systems. Spock's plan to collapse the supernova using red matter was evidently a last-ditch effort that he simply didn't have time to execute properly after Plan A failed, beyond stopping the supernova from causing even more damage than it already had. The TieInNovel further implies that the supernova may have been artificially induced (''a la'' what ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'' had previously shown with the Hobus star), explaining [[ArtisticLicenseSpace how a Sol-like main sequence star could possibly have gone supernova in the first place]].
** After the controversial visual re-imagining of the ''[[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries TOS]]'' period in ''Series/StarTrekDiscovery'', much of the design aesthetic of ''Picard'' shows greater continuity with that of the ''[[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration TNG]]'' era.
*** On a similar note, many fans reacted badly to the ''Discovery''-style redesign of the Klingons. Worf's return has him still looking like TNG Worf.
** This is the first ''Star Trek'' series to address the physical differences in the appearance of the Romulans. Here, it is stated that Romulans with ridges on their foreheads are "Northerners," and Romulans with pronounced ridges, mild ridges and none at all appear. In addition, there are several of these northern Romulans with hair similar to their style depicted on ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', and several others who clearly riff on ''TOS''-era Romulans.
** And then there's the overall conceit of the first season and particularly how it ends, which is more or less [[spoiler:the chance to give Picard and Data the proper goodbye so many felt they deserved in ''Film/StarTrekNemesis''. Toward the end, the two have a conversation within Data's preserved mind, and this also gives Picard some degree of agency in his friend's final end.]]
** The non-canon TieInNovel to the series addresses the contentious and underutilized secessionists elements by given them more nuanced motivations. They were from newer members and colonies who were angry that the Federation was investing such resources in evacuating a traditional enemy when their own worlds were severely underdeveloped compared to, for example, Earth. The use of synth labor mollified them under the grounds that the robots could then be used to improve their own planets afterwards, but the Utopia Planitia attack and subsequent BanOnAI drove the last nail into that coffin.
** A continual criticism of Picard in the TNG series was, Borg trauma aside, he came off as an IdealHero with captains before and after him being messier. This series gives him the FatalFlaw of {{pride}} mixed in with HonorBeforeReason (as well as genuinely feeling his age, not just [[Film/StarTrekInsurrection a few mentions of missing exploring]], really thinking that Starfleet would think they couldn’t do without him).
** After the "copy and paste fleet" debacle in season 1, the trailer for season 2 brings back the fan-favorite ''Nova''-class and ''Steamrunner''-class starships and shows them in action. The season premiere then debuts a new USS ''Stargazer'' that's clearly designed after the ship that Picard once commanded, plus several other ships, including a few hailing from ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline''. Season 3 will even throw in ''the'' big ship from ''STO''--the ''U.S.S. Enterprise-F'' herself!

** Creator/BrentSpiner does triple duty as Data, Altan Soong, [[spoiler: in Season 2 as yet another Dr. Soong, [[AdamAndOrEve "Adam".]]]]

** Season 3 will bring back Creator/MichaelDorn as Worf, Creator/LevarBurton as Geordi [=LaForge=], and Creator/GatesMcFadden as Dr. Crusher. Spiner will also return, but this time as his other role of Lore.

** Season 3 will bring back Creator/MichaelDorn as Worf, Creator/LevarBurton as Geordi [=LaForge=], and Creator/GatesMcFadden as Dr. Crusher.

** Creator/LeaThompson has a brief cameo as Dr. Diane Werner in 2.5 "Fly Me To The Moon". She also directed 2.3 "Assimilated".

** Although it wasn't explicity stated onscreen in Season 1, showrunner Creator/MichaelChabon [[https://i.imgur.com/IgObV67.jpg confirms]] that Rios is Chilean, like his actor Creator/SantiagoCabrera.