‘Star Trek: Picard’ EP Akiva Goldsman Teases a ‘Rock And Roll’ Second Season

When Star Trek: Picard returns later this week to Paramount+ for a second season, it will boldly go where only a few episodes of a Star Trek show have gone before: into the depths of Jean-Luc Picard’s (Patrick Stewart) heart. Not literally, of course, this isn’t The Magic School Bus. But per the title of the series, the show is very much about delving into areas of the former Enterprise captain’s life that Star Trek: The Next Generation wasn’t able to hit in the same way, even over seven seasons. And for Season 2 of Picard, that’s all (well, mostly) about Picard’s lack of romance.

“In our view, the only reason to do the show is to get to know Picard more closely, more deeply,” EP and co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman told Decider. “And the truth is, we know Picard well. That is part of the gift of having so many hours of entertainment that have been written about him, and also Patrick who creates an intimacy across the television. For us, we looked for a place where there was still growing to be done. Where do we not know things about Picard? What is the story with him? He seemed like he was really close to Beverly [Crusher, played by Gates McFadden], why doesn’t it ever work out? And for us that was an interesting place to explore because, A) it’s really interesting, the human heart is essential to storytelling, and B) because it was unexplored.”

Picard is also in a unique position in the Star Trek universe because it’s not strictly about a crew, at least in the same way as fellow Paramount+ shows Discovery, Lower Decks, and Prodigy, or classics like Next Generation, Voyager, Enterprise and the original series. In Season 1, we met a Picard willing to let time pass him by, and only through a series of coincidences and alliances was brought in contact with the rest of the cast of characters. The logical next step that any viewer might have intuited from this was that Picard was gathering a new crew, on a new starship, and would learn once again how to take the lead.

Instead, the “crew” on Picard has taken on a more democratic structure, with the storied Admiral often deferring to his fellow crew-members, and rarely taking the helm. But just because Picard isn’t barking out orders, according to Goldsman, you shouldn’t assume he isn’t still in charge. Even when Season 2 picks up with the cast scattered, in very different places than we last found them, it’s all about Picard, on Picard.

“The show is ultimately still a show about a leader,” Goldsman said. “What we connect to about Jean-Luc Picard is, he is inspirational even when he is not feeling that way about himself, he is to others. So Picard alone, or Picard only, or Picard most centrally, deprives us of that and deprives the other characters of that. So what is great about Picard always is not just Picard’s journey but how Picard informs other people’s journeys. So we put him at the center.”

That story they’re putting him at the center of? It’s mostly shrouded in secrecy, but viewers who have spied the season’s trailer can certainly tell that elements seem to include a dark alternate timeline, time travel to the “present” day, the return of villain the Borg Queen (now played by Annie Wersching), and most ominously, the return of Picard’s arch-enemy, Q (John de Lancie). Without spoiling too much, Goldsman did explain that at least one of the elements mentioned took up a greater chunk of the episodes, but was ultimately downsized to focus more squarely on the story they wanted to tell. That leads to a rollercoaster ride in the first two episodes, and then once episode three hits it will be clear where the rest of the season is heading. “We wanted to get there in a way that was sort of a little bit rock and roll,” Goldsman explained.

But as Goldsman is teeing up Picard Season 2’s rollercoaster, he’s also getting ready for the May debut of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which he’s showrunning. While Picard is heavily serialized, Goldsman and company have promised that Strange New Worlds will be much more episodic — something that’s let the veteran writer flex multiple muscles at the same time.

“It’s really been fun to do episodic, I never thought I’d say that,” Goldsman said. “I haven’t been around episodic television in any close, intimate way since Fringe. And even then, all we were doing was battling for more mythology episodes. ‘No, no monster of the week! Can’t we just connect up another cortex event story?’ And now, there’s a real pleasure in going back to one-offs, to doing that thing that the original series did, the O’Henry-esque or Twilight Zone-like conversion at the end. The switch in tone that you can do three episodes in, that stuff is fun.”

Star Trek: Picard premieres Thursday, March 3 on Paramount+.

Where to watch Star Trek: Picard