Star Trek: Picard Season 2 Had To Be Rewritten For A Weird Reason
"Star Trek: Picard" became nothing short of a nostalgic small-screen sensation during its debut season. The set of episodes served as a fine addition to the "Star Trek" canon, successfully building on Captain Jean-Luc Picard's (Sir Patrick Stewart) already expansive timeline in interesting ways, and brought along no shortage of callbacks and references to the beloved "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Thus, it's no surprise that two more seasons came to fruition in short order. However, the second season turned out a bit differently than originally planned, with the minds at Paramount+ requesting rewrites for a rather odd reason.
"We wrote nine episodes at one point and the network was like, 'No, we don't really understand this, it's a bit too sci-fi, it's a bit too in-Star Trek,'" shared "Picard" co-showrunner Terry Matalas during a conversation with the Master Replicas Collectors Club. He shared that the supposedly too-"Star Trek"-for-Paramount+ version of "Picard" Season 2 featured Romulans, as well as Guinan's (Whoopi Goldberg, Ito Aghayere) Los Angeles bar serving as a front for aliens of all kinds to arrive on Earth in secret. Sadly, the higher-ups thought such ideas were a step or two too far (via TrekMovie.com).
As it turns out, "Picard" Season 2 went through several versions and revisions, and not just because of Paramount+'s demands.
COVID-19 also impacted the story of Picard Season 2
As Terry Matalas explained in his interview with the Master Replicas Collectors Club, "Star Trek: Picard" Season 2 underwent several changes before the team settled on its final form. He explained, "There's actually many, many different versions of Season 2. I think you can kind of feel when you watch Season 2 that there's a lot of different ideas here." While several factors led to these sweeping changes in the second batch of episodes, among the biggest was the virus that changed the film industry forever, COVID-19.
"COVID beat us up. We had to rewrite [Season 2]. We had to try to find ways to make things cheaper," Matalas recalled, noting that the pandemic and its effect on Season 2 even adversely impacted the production of Season 3. According to union rules and general health guidelines, if one person on set got sick, production halted in the blink of an eye and wouldn't resume until they were cleared. The "Picard" team eventually split to work on the remainder of Season 2 and start up Season 3 simultaneously. "It wasn't until very late in the game after we had shot the first half of Season 2 before we split off [to work on Season 3], you're running out of time," Matalas said.
Thankfully, both Season 2 and Season 3 of "Star Trek: Picard" reached the finish line and concluded the titular science fiction icon's story in grand fashion. Then again, "Star Trek" movie rumors make Picard's return seem more possible than once thought, so perhaps his tale isn't over just yet.