Star Trek: Picard Featurette Teases a Changed Universe

CBS All Access has released a new featurette for Star Trek: Picard ahead of the show's premiere on Thursday. The featurette features footage from the show peppered between interviews with the show's star, Patrick Stewart, and the show's director and producers. The featurette suggests that the Star Trek universe has changed since audiences last saw Picard in Star Trek: Nemesis. "The show is called Star Trek: Picard," Stewart says. "It's not Next Generation. Almost 20 years have passed. Things have become more complex. The world of Starfleet, the world of the Federation is not quite what it was the last time Jean-Luc Picard was seen in that world. It's different and it's not all good.

"What is so fascinating about playing this role now is that I can bring my aging, my experience, the way my life has continued to change and grow and allow all that to simply infiltrate the character of Jean-Luc."

"One of the first things that Patrick wanted to make sure of is that we were paying homage to and respecting what came before but doing something entirely different," says executive producer Alex Kurtzman. "Our mission was really to figure out how to build a show that did honor Next Gen and many other Trek shows, but that really had its own unique identity."

"It was important to establish this different tone for Picard because we are ultimately building a series around his character," says Hanelle M. Culpepper, who directs the first three episodes of the series.

"So what could we do with this character, it's 20 years later, to really focus on him emotionally, internally, what is he going through? And kind of that was the jumping-off point," says executive producer Heather Kadin.

"The ability to work character with arguably the single greatest captain and actor in Star Trek was really a delightful opportunity," says executive producer Akiva Goldsman. "I mean, whose internal and external struggles would you want to see more than Captian Picard's 20 years on from Nemesis?

"It's the story of Picard. It is the title. It is his character journey that is the actual journey of our show, and we get to take the time to do it, which is not to say we're without plot or many things blowing up now and then or daring-do but they do take a back seat to the story of this man and this chapter of his life."

Star Trek: Picard premiers Thursday, January 23rd on CBS All Access.