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When director, writer and producer Terry Matalas (12 Monkeys) was working on Star Trek: Picard, he was pushing 18-hour days easily. At GalaxyCon Columbus, Matalas, Todd Stashwick (Shaw), Jonathan Frakes (Riker) and Brent Spiner (Data, Lore, Adam Soong, Dr. Altan Inigo Soong) shared stories about doing season three.
Getting the series right was important to Matalas as a longtime Star Trek fan. Other writers agreed with his approach. Matalas said, “It didn’t feel like we could do an ‘of the week’ [episode] because we had to catch up with all of these characters and where they were in their lives. There was going to be a serialized story…The challenge was making sure that episodic identity existed but we were telling a full-length final goodbye.”
Caution: There are some spoilers below.
On New ‘Picard’ Characters
While Star Trek: Picard brought in many familiar characters from The Next Generation, there were new characters for Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and his former crew to contend with. One difficult character was Captain Liam Shaw, played by Todd Stashwick (12 Monkeys).
Stashwick felt comfortable portraying the abrasive character because the scripts were like “butter” to him, for starters. “From day one when I got to play this character, I felt like I’d been playing him for years. There was such an ease to the writing and an ease on the set.”
He went all in with how Shaw treated Riker and Picard like they weren’t anything special. As to that table read and on-camera performance, Matalas said, “I’ve seen amazing actors when that moment comes and they’re sitting around icons like Jonathan and Patrick, they can freeze up where they don’t go quite as far as they want. Not Todd!”
On Scheduling Challenges
With any TV production, scheduling can present a challenge. However, a simple cast reunion would have robbed the story of its drama and buildup. And fan service wasn’t what Matalas was aiming towards. “As much as I’d love to see them all together very quickly, it wouldn’t be very satisfying if you open the first episode and they’re back on the Enterprise.”
“Marina [Sirtis, who plays Deanna Troi] was in London and unavailable. We knew actually the season mystery she would be able to solve very quickly with her abilities. That actually worked out for us to have her [only] towards the end.”
Frakes agreed with the staggered entrances, saying that his wife loved watching the series. “All the characters as they are introduced earn their entrance because they help to solve the puzzle of the story.”
On Trying New Things
Star Trek: Picard was also an opportunity for the cast to try new things. Frakes was enthusiastic about one confrontational scene. “I’d never [had] any writing for Riker that had been anything nearly this exciting and nuanced and filled with conflict. The old Riker never would have kicked Picard off the bridge.”
He added later, “I don’t know that Picard liked it much, but Patrick enjoyed it! I enjoyed it. The fans enjoyed it.”
Not giving away too much, Spiner expressed thoughts about his scenes, too. “It was an interesting thing that Terry came up with because I had all those years trying to become Data, and in the final season, suddenly Data is becoming me. It was a nice kind of a flip in the journey.”
During the final card game scene, Malalas let the cast improvise for 45 minutes. While only a few minutes made it into the episode, there is a lot more footage in the Blu-ray for fans to watch. “What you saw is all genuine. All those smiles, all those laughs, all those jokes: that is what it’s like to hang out with them.”
Frakes said, “It was a big deal for us, by the way. We were never [before] allowed to improvise!”
Visit the GalaxyCon Columbus website for more information.
