Picard Season 3’s Villains Had been Virtually One other Previous Trek Alien

Star Trek: Picard’s closing season goes all in on the nostalgia, bringing again the Subsequent Era solid for one last big adventure. But it surely’s rapidly confirmed itself to be nostalgic for extra than simply TNG with regards to Star Trek’s previous… including with its major villain, who was nearly changed by one other acquainted foe.

Talking to Collider right this moment about this week’s episode of Picard, showrunner Terry Matalas mentioned the choice to make the key menace of season 3 a reasonably literal acquainted face from the franchise’s previous: a rogue faction of shapeshifting Changelings from the Founders, the leaders of the Dominion that menaced Starfleet and the remainder of the Alpha Quadrant within the latter half of Deep Space Nine.

“They had been the right villain as a result of they will appear like any anyone, and there’s an episode across the midpoint [of Season 3] the place it’s completely crucial, the place you’re unsure if the particular person sitting throughout from you is a changeling or not,” Matalas stated. “And the one manner you could know is to have an emotional catharsis with that particular person. It offers you such unbelievable drama.”

However whereas the Changelings had been an early a part of Matalas’ plans for season 3, for a quick second they had been nearly changed by one other hidden Star Trek villain, this time instantly from Picard’s roots in TNG—the parasitic bugs from the infamous season 1 episode “Conspiracy.” In that episode, Picard and Riker uncover a plot by a race of alien bugs to infiltrate Starfleet command, burrowing into their unlucky hosts and killing them, puppeting them in secret. Which was, for Matalas, the issue with bringing them again.

“I do just like the conspiracy bugs, I did take into account for a sizzling minute, the conspiracy bugs,” Matalas continued. “The difficulty with the conspiracy bugs is that they kill their host. So that might imply anybody that you simply noticed with a bug in them was lifeless, and also you wouldn’t be capable to do the paranoia thriller that you simply needed to do if it was any person you really liked, that meant they had been lifeless. So there [were] about three storylines I couldn’t do with out killing legacy characters.”

And so, Picard traded one hidden enemy for an additional—and fortunately it looks like none of our faves will want their chests being burst open by phaser-fire due to it.

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