Star Trek: Picard returns for its second season this March, following retired Starfleet Admiral Jean-Luc Picard as he is drawn into an adventure that spans space and time. After a successful first season, the stakes grow even higher as Picard is confronted once again by his old, omnipotent frenemy Q. Q's tampered with the timeline, creating an alternate vision of reality and a drastically different trajectory for humanity. Picard leads his friends on a time-bending voyage to the year 2024 to prevent the alterations to the space-time continuum from becoming permanent. While saving humanity, Picard also explores his more vulnerable, emotional side as he settles into his twilight years.

In a roundtable interview attended by CBR, Picard series co-creator, Season 2 co-showrunner, and executive producer Akiva Goldsman revealed the narrative themes driving Picard this season. He also teased how several familiar Star Trek faces will challenge Picard personally in upcoming episodes, and provided an update about the series' possible future beyond Season 2.

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Star Trek: Picard Season 2

Picard Season 1 ended with its eponymous protagonist receiving a new, synthetic body to help cope with the decline of his organic one. Goldsman explained that this new body wouldn't drastically change Picard's physical capabilities, clarifying that "there's nothing enhanced here." The synthetic body simply gives Picard a slightly extended lease on life free of his genetic disorder. Rather than give Picard secret abilities thanks to his new body, Goldsman observed that the decision to change Picard's physical form was done to give Season 1 "a resurrection arc" for the character. Goldsman then addressed rumors that a Star Trek anthology series was in development based on prior idle comments he had made and whether Picard had a future beyond its planned three-season run.

"The anthology show is sadly not a real thing. It was me riffing. There are zero plans for an anthology show," Goldsman confirmed before addressing the possibility of fourth season of Picard. "The door is always open for a Season 4 but, as of now, it's just three seasons. It was always planned to be three seasons. If some combination of CBS, Patrick [Stewart], and the world [asked for] Season 4, I'm sure we'd all engage it but, no, it remains a three-season show."

Goldsman noted that setting the time-travel portion of Picard Season 2 in the year 2024 helps juxtapose the idealistic future of Starfleet's 24th century with the foibles and culture of the present day. Regarding thematic changes between seasons, Goldsman observed that "if Season 1 was resurrection, Season 2 is redemption." The time-travel aspect of Season 2 allowed the story and characters to look back on relationships -- or lack thereof. "What we're exploring are the relationships people have with intimacy and connection," Goldsman hinted regarding Season 2's overarching story.

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Guinan and Picard in a new trailer for Star Trek: Picard Season 2

Goldsman pointed out that Picard, as a character, hadn't really delved fully into the more intimate nature of his personal life, prompting Picard Season 2 to include Guinan and Q in the story to host this vulnerable exploration of the retired admiral. "They would also be characters in the Star Trek Universe that could help us render, visually, the world and some of the themes we're talking about because one is almost magical and the other has immense wisdom and cross-temporal awareness."

One character's approach to interpersonal connectivity and how it relates directly to Picard in Season 2 is a bit more complicated now that the Borg Queen has resurfaced. "The Borg Queen... This is a reductive way of saying it, [but] her relationship to connectivity is binary -- she's either connected to all things or completely disconnected," Goldman explained. "When you're talking about intimacy and relationships, she's unique in that way. The closest partner she has is Jurati because she's isolated in her world too. What you'll see, as the season emerges, is that it's a lot about pairs of people and how we form those pairs off."

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With Q and Picard squaring off again in Picard Season 2, Goldsman found it "interesting" to revisit the Star Trek: The Next Generation series premiere episodes "Encounter at Farpoint" and observe Stewart's performance as Picard facing Q for the first time. Goldsman appreciated telling a serialized story throughout Star Trek: Picard, compared to TNG's more episodic approach, which allowed them to tell a larger story. The narrative trick in including Q, a nigh-omnipotent character, is that the story "had to create guardrails otherwise there's no story." This was particularly apparent in creating a season-long story for Q rather than a single-hour episode. Even though a three-season series was always the ideal plan, Goldsman admits there weren't concrete plans beyond Picard Season 1 if the show was not renewed.

"There was a thematic set of ideas for [Seasons] 2 and 3 but no real plan because we didn't know whether we were going to get Seasons 2 or 3," Goldsman recalled. "Once Season 2 started going we [knew] this was working and we were probably going to get to the end. We were a show that would or wouldn't work, like every show, so we didn't really delve into anything concrete until it really felt like Season 1 landed and the show was going to be welcomed enough to get a Season 2."

"One of the things Star Trek does as well as any show that has a lot of white people in it is speak to inclusion and diversity. We are not value-neutral about that and Star Trek has never been value-neutral about that," Goldsman confirmed. Picard Season 2 continues to include a diverse cast of characters and a story that reflects the values of such a diverse society. "Star Trek states loudly that those of us that make it are proponents of a widely diverse and inclusive galaxy, which is our way of saying a widely diverse present. You can be sure that we would not bring our folks back here [to the present-day setting] without acknowledging what's going on here today."

Created by Akiva Goldsman, Michael Chabon, Kirsten Beyer, and Alex Kurtzman, Star Trek: Picard Season 2 premieres March 3 on Paramount+.

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