Patrick Stewart Reveals What Storyline He Wants To Avoid For Star Trek: Picard Season 2
The finale is already over a week behind us and Sir Patrick Stewart already knows what kind of story line he doesn’t want to engage with when it comes to the second season of Star Trek Picard.
Patrick Stewart On What He Wants To Avoid For Season 2
The actor spoke with the CBC’s The Current about quite a few things related to Star Trek Picard; one of which of course relates to a story-line idea he does not want to tackle in the second season. While the franchise has often addressed current issues in subtle ways through the use of alien lifeforms and other science fiction tropes, the actor made clear that idea of a pandemic isn’t in the cards if he can help it.
Stewart stated:
“I would not encourage that. This is a disturbing and frightening and sad time for many thousands of people. I would feel uncomfortable if we were to make this a theme of the second season of [Star Trek: Picard]. It is too sensitive, too upsetting, too frightening, than some of the other issues that we have dealt with, which are much more of a political nature.”
While Stewart indicated he doesn’t want Picard Season 2 to cover coronavirus, he did elaborate on how Jean Luc Picard would deal with the current pandemic. He detailed that “Picard would have acted very much quicker than either the U.S. government or the U.K. government did.”
He added, “There were good examples around the world of how best to handle this dangerous and difficult situation and it wasn’t taken up.”
“I think that Picard would not have hesitated in finding, if not solutions, at least ways of minimizing the risk and the danger to individuals,” stated Stewart. “It’s all profoundly disconcerting, worrying. But little by little there seems to be now a window that could help one to believe that the situation is now being handled as it should have been from the beginning and taken seriously and not just something to make political points with.”
Stewart Explains Picard Is About Trump and Brexit
This is an interesting pivot from other political issues that the franchise currently has embraced both in Picard and Discovery over the last three years. Everything from refugees as seen with the Romulan story-line in Picard, to Klingons as a not so subtle metaphor for Trump supporters.
I find it strange that the line is being drawn with disease pandemics due to the current coronavirus outbreak.
This is a striking departure from what the actor told Variety where he said that Picard was “responding to the world of Brexit and Trump and feeling, ‘Why hasn’t the Federation changed? Why hasn’t Starfleet changed?’ Maybe they’re not as reliable and trustworthy as we all thought.”
Alex Kurtzman Reveals Discovery Was Affected By Donald Trump’s Election
In fact Star Trek head honcho Alex Kurtzman stated that the election of President Donald Trump played directly into their casting for Star Trek: Discovery.
Kurtzman told Vanity Fair:
“And one thing I remember very clearly was that we were still casting the morning Trump was elected and somehow in the casting conversation this question came up like, okay, do we have to reconsider this? And we doubled down and said, this is exactly why we have to do this right now.”
Star Trek and Pandemics
Star Trek has also not shied away from covering pandemics. In fact, the official Star Trek website published an entire watch list in March that includes “Miri” from The Original Series, “Resolutions” from Voyager, and “Genesis” from The Next Generation.
You can watch Star Trek: Picard free over the enxt few weeks if you’re willing to offer up your credit card information. Production for Season two of Star Trek Picard hasn’t been announced as of yet.
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