Are Star Trek: Picard and Discovery Already Headed for a Major Crossover?

A whole new era of Star Trek has now begun, thanks to Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Discovery bring the franchise back to the small screen. The storylines of Discovery and Picard occupy opposite ends of the Star Trek timeline: Discovery is set in the years before The Original Series, while Picard picks up more than a decade after The Next Generation era ended. However, both series have introduced some pretty radical sci-fi notions that not only make their eventual meeting possible, but increasingly likely that they are headed for some kind of major crossover.

So are Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Discovery already headed for a major crossover? Scroll below to see all the clues pointing in that direction:

The Techpocalypse

The first thing that sticks out clearly to anyone watching both Discovery and Picard is that both series have been building up the same kind of overarching threat, which is some form of “Techpocalypse” that threatens organic life. In Discovery Season 2 we got the mysterious antagonist from the 28th century, who awakened and corrupted Starfleet’s A.I. battle strategy system Control, and nearly caused Galactic calamity. Picardintroduced the Synthetic Alliance of artificial beings so highly evolved the exist beyond the known scope of the universe, watching over the machine race like gods. 

Time & Space Don’t Matter

Both these threats (the 28th century antagonist and Synthetic Alliance) are unique enough to carry each new Star Trek series – but also have enough in common to have them easily be revealed as a common threat. It’s already been made clear that time and space are irrelevant to the Synthetic Alliance, which would easily explain the time-travel chess game Discovery has been laying out. From that perspective, the fact that these two series are playing in very different time periods doesn’t really hinder their crossing over. 

Discovery Jumps

Star Trek: Discovery season 2 had the Discovery’s unique spore drive (able to transport across space in an instant) make the jump across time. Michael Brunham led the crew to the 32nd Century (3187 to be exact), to keep critical knowledge from the Sphere life form away from the mysterious 28th century foe. With Discovery now in a desolate universe, and needing to move on evntually, the ship could potentially land in any era of Star Trek – including Picard‘s 24th century setting. 

Eternal Picard

Star Trek: Picard season 1 ended with Jean-Luc Picard having to trade his organic body for a new synthetic one. We’re told Picard’s new body is only set for a normal human lifespan – but that’s a detail easily changed. If the Discovery doesn’t travel to Picard’s era, it’s just a possible to have Android Picard live on until Discovery arrives in the 32nd century – at least, a very broken and shell-shocked version of Jean-Luc Picard. With Discovery already playing in alternate timelines, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch.

Theme: Past is Future

Not only are the story threads and overarching threats of Star Trek: Picard and Discovery aligning nicely – their respective thematic arcs are, as well. Each series borrows a bit from either TOS (Discovery) or TNG (Picard) and as such, each series has had a definite “Past is Future” thematic arc running through it. Well, with the way things have been built up, storywise, Discovery and Picard crossing over would literally be a ‘past is future’ meeting of the franchise, that also explored literal notions of past/future through time travel. If that’s not peak Star Trek, what is? 

New Kind of TOS & TNG Crossover

The other cool thing about Discovery and Picard meeting is that it would very much be an echo of The Original Series and Next Generation eras once again meeting – but in a very novel and cool new way. For better or worse, these new Star Trek TV series have (respectively) put new edgier modern spins on each of the classic series, so seeing ‘new era TOS’ and ‘new era TNG’ have their first meet-up would be something worth getting excited about. 

Star Trek Needs An EVENT

…And let’s just put this out there: Star Trek needs an EVENT. Both new series have their fare share of acclaim, but their exclusive availability on the CBS All Access streaming service has get the dedicated fanbase tight in size. If the modern Star Trek franchise really wants that next big PR push to get the zeitgeist focused on it, this crossover would be the way. 

Burnham, Spock, Pike, Picard, Seven of Nine, and even Philippa Georgiou in one big Star Trek story? Yes please!