Star Trek: Picard Will Return to Space in a Way No One Expects

Star Trek: Picard will boldly go where man has gone before, but “not in a way that anyone [...]

Star Trek: Picard will boldly go where man has gone before, but "not in a way that anyone expects," producers tease.

"Events began to unfold that conspire to take Picard back to the stars," executive producer Alex Kurtzman told EW when asked if the series, which has shown the retired Picard (Patrick Stewart) on his family vineyard in France, will take place in space.

"He will [go to space], but not in a way that anyone expects."

Kurtzman teased the longtime Starfleet captain seeks to fight an injustice, but he'll have to do it without his usual resources.

"Because he's no longer in Starfleet, he no longer carries the weight of that behind him," Kurtzman said. "In some ways, it's easier to be [a great man] when you're a captain. But it's an entirely different thing when you don't have an army behind you. When you want to get something done and fight an injustice, how do you do that when you're really only one man?"

Picard's freshman season is serialized, unlike his adventures in the episodic The Next Generation — something that "isn't necessarily new for Star Trek, but that is new for Picard," added showrunner Michael Chabon — and this coming first season will unveil some of the "many things that haunt Picard," Kurtzman said, including a disastrous mission to Romulus.

The spinoff explores an aged Picard during a different time in his life, but maintains the integrity of the celebrated character put forth in The Next Generation.

"He's a lot older and we're not shying away from that at all — we're dealing with a man who's in a very different place in his life," Chabon said.

Added Kurtzman, "It was terribly important to us that he remains fundamentally Picard. You will not see a version that betrays the man we loved from Next Generation. We're not doing that. But we wanted to put a character with that level of morality and leadership and who always does the right thing no matter how hard the circumstances … we wanted to put that to the test."

Star Trek: Picard is expected to premiere on CBS All Access later this year.

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