Six for Santiago Cabrera, who plays Captain Cristóbal Rios and (as of "Broken Pieces") five holograms based on him.
Five for Isa Briones, who portrays Soji, Dahj and Sutra, is used as the image of Jana, Sutra's twin, and in Season 2 she plays another character, Kore, this time the human daughter of the progenitor Dr. Adam Soong.
Brent Spiner does quadruple duty as Data, Altan Soong, in Season 2 as yet another Dr. Soong, "Adam", and a Golem android with the personalities of Data, Lore, B-4, Lal and Altan in Season 3.
Orla Brady plays Laris, the Romulan bodyguard/caretaker and in Season 2 as "The Supervisor", who was speculated to be a time-shifted Laris but appears to be a simple Romulan who just happens to look exactly like her.
Brent Spiner suggested that Altan Soong's full name be Altan Inigo Soong so his initials could be A.I. as a reference to artificial intelligence.
Worf's Character Development was the suggestion of Michael Dorn, who had originally written a spinoff for the Klingon as his personal hopes for where Worf would go after Nemesis.
Geordi having a family was done at the initiative of Levar Burton, who wanted to move the character past the idea of him being in love with the Enterprise itself to the detriment of his social life.
Picard admits, just as Patrick Stewart has, that he isn't a fan of science fiction. He also has a pet pit bull, a breed Stewart has spent much of his later years rescuing and rehabilitating. Season 2 also implies that Picard's father Maurice was very abusive towards his family, with Stewart having similar experiences with his own father as a result of PTSD stemming from WWII to the point that he's a well known advocate for treating veterans afflicted with it.
Evan Evagora shares a lot in common with his character Elnor, as he explains in this interview:
Evagora: Art was imitating life in a way with certain aspects of my character. Elnor grows up in a house around all women, but in real life, I'm the youngest of seven kids, and I have five older sisters. My house was filled with women all the time growing up. Elnor's favorite book is Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers. My favorite book is Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo. I came to L.A. to film this, and I'd never been here before. I'd never set foot here before. It was a new experience for me. Just as leaving his home is new for Elnor.
The article also mentions that "Evagora says the mentor relationship Elnor has with Picard on the series mirrors his own interactions with Patrick Stewart on set."
Although it wasn't explicitly stated onscreen in Season 1, showrunner Michael Chabonconfirms◊ that Rios is Chilean, like his actor Santiago Cabrera. In Season 2, Rios confirms that he is from Chile, but works in outer space.
Fan: So... Cristóbal Ríos is Chilean? Chabon: Claro que sí (Yes, of course).
Captain Shaw is from Chicago, just like his actor Todd Stashwick.
Approval of God: Doug Drexler, who had designed numerous ships for the Trek franchise, was quite pleased when he saw that his design for the refit NX-01 from Star Trek: Enterprise had made it on screen.
In "Remembrance", a Betazoid logo created by a fan for the 2007 fan-work called "Birth of the Federation 2" showed up on a Betazoid trophy in Picard's storage, thus becoming canon.
Prior to Star Trek: Enterprise providing a canon explanation for why Klingons in TOS looked different from those in the movies and TNG-era, one of the popular fan theories was that there were two different types of Klingon. This was picked up by some Expanded Universe literature, although ultimately refuted in Enterprise. However, Picard revisits this very same theory... with the Romulans. Episode 3 canonically establishes that Romulans with heavier brow ridges — as appeared most frequently in the 24th century series and films — were from the northern part of Romulus, as opposed to ones without ridges that appeared in TOS and the Kelvin Timeline films.
Rihannsu by Diane Duane did a lot of early worldbuilding on Romulans that then fell victim to Canon Marches On in TNG. While linguist Trent Pehrson was specifically told not to use Duane's Conlang Rihan for the show, season 1 references the novels more subtly in several other ways:
My Enemy, My Ally took the secrecy of the name of the Romulan Commander in "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. "The Impossible Box" establishes this practice as canonically part of Romulan culture.
The importance of swords has roots in Duane's "honor blade" concept, with the Vulcan swordsmith S'harien, a convert to the intended-to-be pacifist ways of Surak, having given his last three swords to the Romulans before they left.
The Rihan author Lai i-Ramnau tr'Ehhelih is said to have practiced Brutal Honesty to a fault: he offended the wrong people and was killed and his books banned on Romulus and Remus. This is similar to the "Way of Absolute Candor" practiced by the Qowat Milat.
Patrick Stewart admitted that he had a particular idea of how the show needed to be, specifically he didn't want to be captain of the Enterprise, be in a Starfleet uniform or make it a TNG Sequel Series / Reunion Show. He even had a dinner with his former castmates to let them know there was no intention to bring them aboard at that time. The writers had to convince him to allow some cameos and lean more into the Star Trek iconography, and by the third season he deferred to the showrunner to allow it to be a Fully Absorbed Finale to TNG.
Season Three serves as a more proper cap to the TNG crew than Star Trek: Nemesis. Both Terry Matalas and Marina Sirtis have expressed their dissatisfaction with the final TNG film and echoed 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 much more fitting and deserved farewell.
One aspect that Levar Burton didn't like about TNG was that Geordi's love life on the ship was horribly unlucky. When discussing his return to the character on The View with former castmate Whoopi Goldberg, he mentions that the first thing he discussed with the show runners was giving Geordi a family, leading to the character having two daughters (one of whom is played by Burton's real daughter) and an as-yet unseen wife.
Jonathan Frakes discussed that one grip he had with TNG was Gene Roddenberry's infamous "No Conflict" rule, which he felt was depriving the show of a lot of drama. He was particularly grateful for Season 3 giving Riker and Picard an opportunity for conflict in "Seventeen Seconds", adding in an aspect to the characters he was very eager to play with.
Awesome, Dear Boy: Patrick Stewart initially declined the opportunity to reprise the role of Picard, but when he went to meet the team developing the show in person, he was intrigued by the idea of exploring the character's traumatic past, and changed his mind.
Billing Displacement: Evan Evagora has by far the least amount of screen time among the main cast, yet his name is listed before Michelle Hurd's in the opening credits.
An actual subversion of this trope happens in the second episode, in an affectionate Mythology Gag. Star Trek has frequently used the Vasquez Rocks as a filming location to stand in for countless alien worlds throughout the decades, but in this series its one usage is a scene where Picard flies out to the in-universe Vasquez Rocks (i.e. in California, on Earth, complete with caption identifying them) to meet with Raffi.
Creator Breakdown: Jonathan Frakes admitted that he had an anxiety attack returning to his role as Riker because, unlike the rest of the returning TNG alumni, he hadn't acted in over a decade, having spent the intervening years as one of the most respected TV directors in the industry. (His concerns were ill-founded: his performance was lauded by critics and audiences alike.)
Creator's Favorite: Todd Stashwick sites "No Win Scenario" as his favorite episode, mainly for the emotional speech revealing Captain Shaw was a Wolf 359 survivor.
Dawson Casting: 34-year-old Ed Speelers plays a character who is at max about 21 and could even be a teenager. (Jack Crusher was supposedly born to Jean-Luc Picard and Beverly Crusher shortly after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis, which took place 22 years prior to the season in which Jack is introduced. To illustrate the point, Ed Speelers is two years younger than Allison Pill, who on this very series plays a woman old enough to have earned a doctorate.)
This featurette contains an action sequence which wasn't included in "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2" where Narek uses a capoeira-like Romulan martial arts to single-handedly take on five Soong-type androids.
Another scene was cut from "Bounty" where Worf discusses with Riker how his experiences during the Dominion War played a role in his more zen-like persona seen in this series. This scene was included in the Season 3 home video release.
Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: Inverted; the title theme quotes a passage of diegetic music (the song Kamin's son plays on the flute) from TNG's "The Inner Light," a major Picard episode.
Unsurprisingly Jonathan Frakes directed a number of episodes. "Absolute Candor", "Stardust City Rag", "Fly Me to the Moon", "Two of One" and "Seventeen Seconds."
Lea Thompson has a brief cameo as Dr. Diane Werner in 2.5 "Fly Me To The Moon". She also directed 2.3 "Assimilation" and 2.4 "Watcher".
Doing It for the Art: Although the initial budget didn't allow for it, Terry Matalas wanted to include the Enterprise-D in the finale to ensure the entire TNG cast was back. Thus, the crew went the extra mile to perfectly recreate the bridge set of the Enterprise-D for the final two episodes, going so far as to recruit the surviving design staff to make sure they got everything as accurate as possible.
Writer Michael Chabon mentioned that he wanted to include explicit references and Continuity Nods 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 Continuity Lock-Out for new viewers. That said, he was able to eventually included those references in Season 3 upon the revelation that a splinter faction of the Dominion were the Big Bad for the show.
Terry Matalas's original plan for Season 2 was to have a time travel story involving the Romulans, with a heavy focus on Guinan's bar as a hidden refuge for aliens, but the studio intervened and said it was "too Star Trek", resulting a complete rewrite. The high cost of making of Season 1 didn't help matters.
Terry Matalas wanted to feature Admiral Janeway, but the higher-ups wouldn't allow it, having reserved the Voyager's old Captain for Star Trek: Prodigy exclusively, though the show wound up being cancelled just a few months later.
Similarly, a visual effects artist attempted to include a few California-class and Parliament-class starships from Star Trek: Lower Decks in certain fleet shots as a nod to that series, but was ordered to remove them by "a certain eagle-eyed executive producer" for unknown reasons.
Just like in his previous appearances as Picard, Englishman Patrick Stewart plays the French Captain (now retired Admiral) with a distinct British accent.
Like in her previous appearances, the British Born Marina Sirtis inflicts an Eastern European accent for Deanna Troi.
Not a "fake nationality" in the exact sense, but the American Peyton List plays Romulan baddie "Narissa Rizzo" with a British accent.
Lying Creator: 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, Wesley Crusher. And finally the 3rd season added on everyone who hadn't already appeared (which by this point was only Geordi, Worf, and Dr. Crusher).
An example of Lying by omission took place in Season 2. There was a lot of discussion regarding Wil Wheaton "not being in Season 3". Since this was long since casting news had come out around Season 2, everyone assumed that it obviously included Season 2 since no-one was talking about him showing up there. He does show up in the finale as one of the Travellers who use the Supervisors to protect the timeline.
Never Trust a Trailer: The trailers and public interviews released before the show's premiere make it seem that Dahj is one of the main protagonists of the show next to Picard. She was offed in the first episode, and then revealed to have a twin sister.
Annie Wersching replaces both Alice Krige and Susanna Thompson as the Borg Queen in Season 2, in spite of Krige only reprising her role just recently on Star Trek: Lower Decks. Alice Krige ends up reprising her role as the main timeline Borg Queen for the final two episodes of Season 3.
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 Patrick Stewart's father was one of the British soldiers rescued from Dunkirk. The second season shows Picard dealing with his perception of his father as an abusive man while idolizing his mother, with him reconciling the truth that his mother had mental illness problems and took her own life and his father's apparent abuse behavior was not as it seemed. Stewart had similarly struggled with his father's rage and violence against his family, and it was 60 years later he learned his father likely had PTSD which was not as well understood at the time.
When Zhaban suggests Picard get his old crewmates back to help him, Picard shoots down the idea, not unlike how Patrick Stewart was against having the show be a TNG reunion to start with.
In on such case, literally. The Enterprise NX-01 was supposed to get a refit that made her look closer to her Constitution class successor, including the addition of a secondary hull, before Enterprise was cancelled after four seasons. "The Bounty" formally shows the refit was applied to her before she was retired to the Fleet Museum.
When Star Trek III: The Search for Spock was being made, Gene Roddenberry suggested that, instead of destroying the Enterprise, her saucer gets destroyed and the secondary hull adds on a new saucer, but they sadly destroyed the old gal whole-hog. The Enterprise-D does a similar, but opposite concept; attaching her old, refurbished saucer onto a new secondary hull.
One of the original plans for "All Good Things" was for Picard, Riker, and Geordi to steal the Enterprise-D from the Fleet Museum in the future timeline. "Vox" sees the whole crew take the resurrected Galaxy class ship from the Museum, albeit thanks to Geordi being the curator of said museum and having access to take her.
Will Wheaton returns as Wesley Crusher in the Season 2 finale.
Season 3 brings back Michael Dorn as Worf, Levar Burton as Geordi LaForge, and Gates McFadden as Dr. Crusher. Spiner also returns, playing a new Soong type android that has the mixed personalities of Data, B-4, Altan Soong, and even Lore, while Daniel Davis returns as the holographic version of Professor Moriarty. Michelle Forbes is back as Ro Laren for the first (and last) time in the twenty-nine years since "Preemptive Strike". Elizabeth Dennehy returns as Shelby for the first time since "The Best of Both Worlds".
Tim Russ reprises his role as Tuvok from Star Trek: Voyager in "Dominion" (though it turns out it's really a Changeling impersonator).
Majel Barret Roddenberry reprises her role as the Enterprise-D's computer systems via archived audio.
In the Japanese dub, Mugihito, Akio Ōtsuka, Hōchū Ōtsuka, Gara Takashima, Yoko Soumi and Miyuki Ichijou also reprise their roles as Picard, Riker, Data, Deanna Troi, Seven of Nine and Dr. Beverly Crusher respectively from the dubs of TNG and VOY.
The Latin American Spanish dub also brings back Blas García, who already voiced Picard in the last seasons of TNG and also from the dubs of First Contact and Generations, being the only voice actor from the TV series who returns here.
Sequel Gap: Picard debuted in 2020, nearly 26 years note May 1994 — Jan. 2020 after Star Trek: The Next Generation ended and just over 17 years note Dec. 2002 — Jan. 2020 after the eponymous character was last seen in Star Trek: Nemesis.
Teasing Creator: Prior to the trailer revealing that the Enterprise-F was going to be making her canon debut in Season 3, showrunner Terry Matalas coyly tweeted out that the F was going to be the show's new Enterprise, and that the E wouldn't be involved. The latter ship got an off-hand mention as being unusable because of something Worf did, though Matalas left that plot threat open ended.
The Man Hug between Hugh and Picard in "The Impossible Box" wasn't part of the script. Jonathan Del Arco wanted to include it because, "I kept thinking of my dad who's been gone some 17 years and what I would do if he were standing in front of me."
According to Evan Evagora in this interview, Harry Treadaway ad-libbed the line "I do. I very much choose to live" in "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2."
Wag the Director: Patrick Stewart revealed in interviews that he was given quite a bit of final say over parts of the writing process, especially in how Picard should be portrayed as a character. Among his initial demands for returning, he explicitly stated he didn't want to wear a uniform, be in command of the Enterprise, or have his TNG costars brought back until later.
Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Bits of interviews with the writers and actors seems to indicate that they lacked a firm plan for the story's arc at the time filming began. The biggest example is Patrick Stewart first discovering some ways into the production that Picard would die and get resurrected, because "that final episode wasn't written yet, and I didn't know it was part of the storyline." He also added that "I remember the writers worked on that up to the evening before we shot it."
Writer Michael Chabon has confirmed that much of the Federation's isolationist streak is a lingering effect of the damage the still fairly recent Dominion War did. However, Executive Meddling has so far prevented the show from exploring this in any greater detail due to fears of Continuity Lock-Out.
According to Michael Chabon, the Romulan words on Elnor's belt are Sem n'hak kon, which means "Now is the only moment."
According to show runner Terry Matalas, the third season of the series also took place in 2401.
Todd Stashwick, who played Shaw in season 3, played Talok in the Enterprise episode "Kir'Shara".
Assorted Trivia
Picard currently holds the record for having the most starships named Enterprise featured in one episode, with the presence of the NX-01 and A at the Fleet Museum, the F as Starfleet's primary flagship, the D being unexpectedly restored to active service and the G assuming the F's place as the bearer to the name.
Evagora: Art was imitating life in a way with certain aspects of my character. Elnor grows up in a house around all women, but in real life, I'm the youngest of seven kids, and I have five older sisters. My house was filled with women all the time growing up. Elnor's favorite book is Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers. My favorite book is Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo. I came to L.A. to film this, and I'd never been here before. I'd never set foot here before. It was a new experience for me. Just as leaving his home is new for Elnor.
