Star Trek: Picard’s remaining season goes all in on the nostalgia, bringing again the Subsequent Technology forged for one final massive journey. But it surely’s rapidly confirmed itself to be nostalgic for extra than simply TNG in terms of Star Trek’s previous… together with with its main villain, who was virtually changed by one other acquainted foe.
Talking to Collider at this time about this week’s episode of Picard, showrunner Terry Matalas mentioned the choice to make the key risk of season 3 a reasonably literal acquainted face from the franchise’s previous: a rogue faction of shapeshifting Changelings from the Founders, the leaders of the Dominion that menaced Starfleet and the remainder of the Alpha Quadrant within the latter half of Deep Area 9.
“They had been the right villain as a result of they’ll appear to be any anyone, and there’s an episode across the midpoint [of Season 3] the place it’s completely essential, the place you’re unsure if the particular person sitting throughout from you is a changeling or not,” Matalas mentioned. “And the one approach you can know is to have an emotional catharsis with that particular person. It offers you such unbelievable drama.”
However whereas the Changelings had been an early a part of Matalas’ plans for season 3, for a quick second they had been virtually changed by one other hidden Star Trek villain, this time instantly from Picard’s roots in TNG—the parasitic bugs from the notorious season 1 episode “Conspiracy.” In that episode, Picard and Riker uncover a plot by a race of alien bugs to infiltrate Starfleet command, burrowing into their unlucky hosts and killing them, puppeting them in secret. Which was, for Matalas, the issue with bringing them again.
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“I do just like the conspiracy bugs, I did take into account for a scorching minute, the conspiracy bugs,” Matalas continued. “The problem with the conspiracy bugs is that they kill their host. So that may imply anybody that you simply noticed with a bug in them was lifeless, and also you wouldn’t be capable of do the paranoia thriller that you simply needed to do if it was someone you really liked, that meant they had been lifeless. So there [were] about three storylines I couldn’t do with out killing legacy characters.”
And so, Picard traded one hidden enemy for one more—and fortunately it looks like none of our faves will want their chests being burst open by phaser-fire due to it.
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