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Trivia / Star Trek: Picard

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  • Acting for Two:
    • 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.
  • Actor-Inspired Element:
    • 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.
  • Actor-Shared Background:
    • 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 Chabon confirms◊ 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.
  • Ascended Fanon:
    • 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.
    • Diane Duane's Rihannsu novels 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 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 Surak, having given his last three swords to the Romulans before they left.
    • "Broken Pieces" brings mention of Deep Space 12, which was the setting for most of Star Trek: Hidden Frontier and its spin-offs.
  • Author's Saving Throw:
    • 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 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 seen wife.
  • 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.
  • California Doubling:
  • Channel Hop: Outside the US and Canada, Picard streams on Prime Video as an original, in contrast to Discovery, which streams as a Netflix original.
  • Character Outlives Actor: René Auberjonois, who had played Odo on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, died from lung cancer on December 8, 2019. Odo though apparently is still alive in 2401.
  • 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.)
  • Dawson Casting: 34-year-old Ed Speelers plays a character who is not much older than 20. (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 Speleers is two years younger than Allison Pill, who on this very series plays a woman old enough to have earned a doctorate.)
  • Deleted Scene: 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.
  • 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.
  • Directed by Cast Member:
    • 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".
  • Dyeing for Your Art: Harry Treadaway dyed his hair black for the role of Narek; the actor's actual hair colour is brown.
  • Executive Meddling:
    • 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 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.
  • Fake Nationality:
    • Just like in his previous appearances as Picard, Englishman Patrick Stewart plays the French Captain (now retired Admiral) with a distinct British accent.
    • Not a "fake nationality" in the exact sense, but the American Peyton List plays Romulan baddie "Narissa Rizzo" with a British accent.
  • I Knew It!:
    • 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 Star Trek Online. The Season 3 trailer confirmed that she would indeed be making the jump to television (albeit as an Enterprise class and not an Odyssey).
    • In the third season, Given Beverly's motivation-less ghosting of the 1701-D crew 20 years ago, the Unresolved Sexual Tension between her and Picard at the time, and the fact that the only new face in the lead cast plays her twenty-something son Jack Crusher, it wasn't difficult to guess that Picard would turn out to be his father. The show, to its credit, only hid it for two episodes.
  • 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.
  • The Other Darrin:
  • Playing Their Own Twin: Isa Briones plays twin sisters Dahj and Soji Asha.
  • Promoted Fanboy: Evan Evagora identifies himself as a big Trekkie in this interview, so it was a dream come true for him to share scenes with Patrick Stewart and to be directed by Jonathan Frakes.
  • Reality Subtext: 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.
  • Recycled Set: The bridge set for the USS Zheng He is a redress of the USS Discovery bridge.
  • Real-Life Relative:
  • Role Reprise:
  • Sequel Gap: Picard debuted in 2020, nearly 26 years note  after Star Trek: The Next Generation ended and just over 17 years note  after the eponymous character was last seen in Star Trek: Nemesis.
  • Throw It In:
    • 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."
    • Del Arco also improvised Hugh's Manly Tears in "Nepenthe."
      Del Arco: It wasn't scripted for me to sob at all at that point, but I did it — and every single time we had to shoot that scene, I lost my shit.
    • As a result of seven hours of crying, Del Arco felt so numb afterwards that it naturally led to Hugh's Thousand-Yard Stare.
    • 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.
  • What Could Have Been: Enough for its own page.
  • 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."
  • Word of God:
    • 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.
  • Word of Saint Paul: Jonathan Del Arco stated in a since-deleted tweet that that Hugh is in love with Elnor despite Word of God refuting that Hugh is gay.
  • You Look Familiar:

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