‘Star Trek: Picard’: For Patrick Stewart, LeVar Burton and the old ‘Next Generation’ crew, together again means a chance to break new ground

For those of you fanboying and girling over the fact that the new season of “Star Trek: Picard” features most of the major characters from “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” Todd Stashwick and Michelle Hurd can relate.

New York actor Hurd has played ex-Starfleet intelligence officer Raffi since Season 1 of “Picard,” which portrays former Starfleet captain, now retired admiral Jean-Luc Picard (British actor Patrick Stewart) some two decades after he served on the starship Enterprise. Chicago actor Stashwick is one of the newest additions to the cast, playing Captain Liam Shaw of the USS Titan in this third and final season, which debuts Thursday.

In a Zoom interview, Stashwick recounted the thrill he got when he was sitting in the captain’s chair on set between takes, “and Patrick was sitting next to me, and Brent (Spiner) came over and started horsing around with Patrick. And Patrick was, ‘Oh, have you met Todd Stashwick?’ And then conspiratorially leans in and goes, ‘He’s one of us.’

“And I was like, ‘OK, I can just walk into the sea, like I’m done. This is so good.’”

Hurd had her own pinch-me moment meeting Michael Dorn, the Texas actor who returns in “Picard” as Klingon warrior Worf.

“Michael knows I tried to be cool and calm when I first met him and just like, ‘Yeah, hey, sure, let’s do this.’ And he knew right there that I was just freaking out,” Hurd said.

“You were like, ‘I’m such a big fan of yours,’” said Dorn, smiling, as he sat beside her during a Zoom interview.

“I know, I couldn’t hide it,” she laughed.

For anyone who remembers “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987 to 1994), the last “Trek” series that franchise creator Gene Roddenberry had a direct hand in, it is indeed a very big deal that Dorn, Spiner (android officer Data), LeVar Burton (engineer Geordi La Forge), Gates McFadden (doctor Beverly Crusher), Jonathan Frakes (first officer Riker) and Marina Sirtis (counsellor Deanna Troi) are together again in “Picard” alongside Stewart and Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine), who first joined the fold in 1997’s “Star Trek: Voyager.”

But Stewart wanted to make one thing very clear: “It wasn’t a reunion.”

“The idea of having them as colleagues once more was very welcome,” Stewart said about his “Next Generation” cast mates in a Zoom interview. “But what I did not want was that ‘Picard’ should be a reunion series because that would just be covering old ground and maybe the same jokes and, oh, I couldn’t face that. I was content with what I’d done on ‘Next Generation.’”

For showrunner Terry Matalas, however, it was important to give a proper farewell to the cast of “The Next Generation,” who last appeared all together in the 2002 film “Star Trek: Nemesis.”

“The original series cast got a final send-off with the movie ‘Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country,’” said Matalas, who’s been a fan of the franchise since he was a kid and whose first job on moving from New Jersey to L.A. was production assistant on “Voyager.” “And this cast never did get a final goodbye. It felt like they deserved one,” he said in a Zoom interview.

“When I took over for Season 3, it felt like this was the right thing to do and, if we could accomplish telling a final ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ story, it could be really satisfying for fans everywhere.”

It’s not just fans who are digging the callback to a beloved series.

“It’s a treat. It’s a pleasure. It’s a gift. It’s a blessing,” said Frakes in another Zoom interview.

“It’s an unexpected joy, right, because this was not supposed to happen,” said Burton, sitting next to him. “We got another bite at the apple and this has been so satisfying on a personal and professional level. And God bless Terry Matalas.”

It’s not that the “Next Generation” cast hadn’t seen each other for 20 years. They have remained friends and, in some cases, worked together on other projects. But “Picard” presented a chance to not just revisit characters they loved but to do so in newly satisfying ways.

“I felt she was a complete woman,” McFadden said of portraying Crusher in “Picard.” “She wasn’t just a doctor, she was many things. She was someone who could fly her own ship and go to very dangerous places and (who) picks up a very big phaser if she has to, in order to save her life or someone else’s.

“I think we also see how much she loves science and medicine, and how she also can make mistakes. Those things I don’t think we saw in Crusher before.”

For Frakes, it was satisfying bringing “the wisdom of experience, and the additional 20 years on our bodies and minds … that inform us as human beings and therefore inform us when we’re doing our work as actors.”

“LeVar used to say that we’d caught lightning in a bottle,” added Frakes. “I think that’s exactly what happened with (‘The Next Generation’). It happened with ‘M*A*S*H.’ It happened with ‘Friends.’ They have a life of their own.”

“You can’t orchestrate it. It’s either there or it’s not,” continued Burton. “And I think it has everything to do with the attachment that the audience begins to develop for the characters that they are inviting into their homes week after week.

“I felt it with Kirk (in the original ‘Star Trek’), with Bill (Shatner) and with Jimmy Doohan and with DeForest Kelley, with Nichelle (Nichols). They were the pinnacle. They were ‘Star Trek.’ And now, 35 years later, we’ve become those icons. We are ‘Star Trek’ for a whole generation of fans …

“The opportunity to come back together and put on those space suits and relate to one another as these characters, it became an experience that was just more rich and deeper than I anticipated.”

Debra Yeo is a deputy editor and a contributor to the Star’s Entertainment section. She is based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @realityeo

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