Star Trek: Picard Showrunner Says Season 3’s New Direction Meant Cutting Significant Characters – Looper

Any “Star Trek” fan has learned over the years that every bold mission sometimes comes with a big change in how things are done but also sometimes results in some less-than-ideal sacrifices along the way. Unfortunately, that is precisely what happened when it came to putting together the Paramount+ series’s final outing. “It’s really about real estate, right? You want every character to have its due and it was a very specific story we wanted to tell… in order to do that you have to have the room to do it,” Terry Matalas told Digital Spy. “And so for those reasons, you needed to, you needed to have the room. So we sort of had to reinvent the show a little bit. And go a different direction.”

Making concessions with certain personalities and changing things up direction-wise was probably the right move, especially since, in addition to it being the last season, it also had the arduous task of bringing back “The Next Generation” cast as well, which for Matalas proved to be another pressure-filled challenge. “The second I had the story in my brain as sort of a final ‘Next Generation’ story — the moment it became a reality — I didn’t sleep for about nine months straight. Matalas said to Variety. “I was just too terrified of screwing it up.”

Managing a large cast is no easy endeavor, and considering how many big-name franchise players are in the mix for this monumental occasion, it makes sense that there was a substantial amount of pressure involved and that, ultimately, sacrifices were made when the game plan had to change for Picard to get one last glorious ride with “Star Trek” fans.