Paramount+ Star Trek: Picard - Season Three (1 Viewer)

[Nelson Au]

Adam, that would be telling!

 

[Sam Favate]

Maybe it’s a film for Paramount +.

You know, that would actually be the perfect way to make the film a back door pilot for ST: Legacy. And with Michele Yeoh lending her talents to the first P+ ST movie, the talent will obviously be there. Plus, it’d probably have a shorter production and post.

 

[Sam Favate]

It was a big night for Picard Season 3 at the Saturn Awards. The show won best science fiction series, Patrick Stewart won for best actor, Jonathan Frakes for best supporting actor and Jeri Ryan for best supporting actress. The cast of TNG also won a lifetime achievement award.

Hopefully someone at Paramount saw it and will green light Star Trek Legacy.

 

[TJPC]

Season 3 was a wonderful recovery after the incredible bore of season 2 which I forced myself to watch out of a sense of duty.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Hopefully someone at Paramount saw it and will green light Star Trek Legacy.

It took about a year from Discovery Season 2 until the announcement of Strange New Worlds, so if that timeframe held, we’d hear about it soon.

But I think reading between the lines, total speculation on my part, Paramount isn’t interested and they may even resent that Terry Matalas has been going to the general public asking them to demand a show that Paramount declined to pursue. I don’t blame Matalas for trying but normally showrunners and producers are in radio silence with the public when they’re in the process of making deals. The very fact that Matalas mentioned his proposal to the public always sounded to me like a last ditch effort to force Paramount’s hand after they declined the pitch. I think if they were even moderately interested, they would have signed him to a short term development contract and told him to formalize a pitch, and they haven’t.

I would very much like to be wrong about all of this and to see them move forward. It’s the best idea for a Trek project they have in the wings. But they also know what Picard cost to produce and what their return on investment was, and that there’s been silence on this for a year suggests to me that they don’t think the math works.

 

[Sam Favate]

They have to know how much the fans love P S3 and how much they want Legacy. They’re going to debut something like Starfleet Academy (a pitch that’s been around almost as long as TNG) and get lukewarm response from fans. Meanwhile, they’re letting Matalas, Stewart, Ryan and the rest get away.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I don’t disagree with you on any of that. These things always come down to money in the end. And they don’t release viewership numbers for streaming, or how the existence of these shows affect their membership numbers, so we have very little to go on.

The thing with a potential Legacy show is that it’s going to cost more than the Starfleet Academy show. All of the returning cast would command bigger salaries than a bunch of unknowns in the academy show would. Production insurance costs for a show led by senior citizens will cost more than it would for a show of youngsters. The magic number that would make the academy show financially viable is surely smaller than what it would be for Legacy.

And for better or worse, TNG has arguably underperformed with paying audiences for the past couple decades. The last couple TNG movies didn’t do much theatrically. The remastered Blu-rays failed to recoup their costs. There has been a long history of a small number of vocal TNG fans asking for projects and then the larger fandom not showing up to support them.

I want this show but I think Paramount has probably concluded they wouldn’t recoup their investment on it. It shouldn’t be a hard sell but with Trek it often is.

 

[Sam Favate]

Michelle Hurd recently said that the show would happen if the fans want it. Kurtzman said the studio has heard the fans “loud and clear.”

However, the fate of Paramount is very much up in the air right now. I don’t think much will happen until we see what happens with the parent company.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

But I think reading between the lines, total speculation on my part, Paramount isn’t interested and they may even resent that Terry Matalas has been going to the general public asking them to demand a show that Paramount declined to pursue.

I think it's more that times in the streaming space are a lot leaner than they were when "Picard" was originally greenlit. "Discovery" is the stamp that Kurtzman put on the Star Trek franchise, and "Starfleet Academy" is a continuation of that. Accordingly, he has a lot more personal investment in that than he does in a continuation of Picard.

The thing with a potential Legacy show is that it’s going to cost more than the Starfleet Academy show. All of the returning cast would command bigger salaries than a bunch of unknowns in the academy show would. Production insurance costs for a show led by senior citizens will cost more than it would for a show of youngsters.

That would be true if we were talking about a "Picard" S4/TNG S9. But it seemed like "Legacy" would be built around Seven of Nine, Raffi, and Jack Crusher with the TNG stars only making special guest appearances.

One advantage that "Legacy" would have over "Starfleet Academy" is that they could reuse the Titan-A sets built for "Picard" S3.

The most expensive thing about "Picard" was probably Patrick Stewart's insistence that they film in southern California. Would Jeri Ryan be willing to relocate to Toronto so they could consolidate shooting to one central home base? I don't know.

Michelle Hurd recently said that the show would happen if the fans want it. Kurtzman said the studio has heard the fans “loud and clear.”

However, the fate of Paramount is very much up in the air right now. I don’t think much will happen until we see what happens with the parent company.

I agree with this as well. Star Trek is a valuable enough franchise that it will have a future in some form or another no matter what. But I doubt they'll want to make any big swings until they know what the future of Paramount (and by extension Paramount+) is going to be.

If Paramount does get gobbled up by Warner Bros. Discovery, there's no way that David Zaslav is going to be willing to spend as lavishly on the franchise as CBS/Paramount has in recent years.

 

[Jason_V]

If Paramount does get gobbled up by Warner Bros. Discovery, there's no way that David Zaslav is going to be willing to spend as lavishly on the franchise as CBS/Paramount has in recent years.

This is a lot of it right there, for me. WBD has been cutting everything, so if they buy Paramount, Trek won't be safe. Disney is cutting, so if they buy Paramount, Trek isn't safe. Universal hasn't been in full on cut mode, so this might be okay IF Universal has any interest. Apple and Amazon spend money like there's no tomorrow, so sure...a possibility if they were interested.

We know Discovery is ending with Season 5. We know Prodigy got offloaded to Netflix. We know Lower Decks Season 6 might not happen. We know Strange New Worlds Season 3 will happen (but nothing beyond that). We know they started filming the Section 31 movie. We haven't heard a word about the Starfleet Academy casting or any updates (it was announced almost a year ago).

The one thing Paramount+ has done right with these shows is continue to release them weekly. No binge drops of 10 episodes at a time so the season gets forgotten in a heartbeat. We'll see whatever is currently in production; I'm highly dubious of anything else.

 

[Jonathan Perregaux]

In a way, Raffi reminds me of Saavik only done better... a great character that slotted right into a classic cast as though she belonged there. It was a pity they nosedived the character of Saavik back in the day. I thought that sucked. They should have allowed the crew to expand, as you do in the Navy.

So yeah, Michelle Hurd, you have a fan. And I want it. Make it so.

 

[DaveF]

My guess is four to five simultaneous Star Trek shows was a ZIRP phenomenon. If Paramount is sold off in pieces, then as a production studio could be making one or two Star Trek shows and likely for different services.

 

[NeilO]

We are going through the Blu-ray set (one episode each Tuesday). Just watched Episode 3 last night. So, I'm up to page 15 in this discussion forum. It is great to see all your comments and theories and so forth. Also thanks for the mentions of The Ready Room which I've also been trying to watch on YouTube. If no one here had mentioned it, I would be missing out on that extra content.

 

[NeilO]

Just watched Episode 5 "Imposters" last night and read comments through that episode (page 22). There were some comments referring to previous roles of Kirk Acevedo. One key role that wasn't mentioned was him playing Jose Ramse in 12 Monkeys and that his speech as Krinn in this episode was right out of that show. It was describing Ramse's and Cole's relationship in 12 Monkeys - they were scavengers who considered themselves brothers. So, a big 12 Monkeys Easter egg there. And it becomes even bigger when you find out that under all those Sneed prosthetics and makeup was Aaron Sanford, who played James Cole. Once we finish the series I'll circle back to listen to the commentaries and I'm looking forward to what they say when Sneed appears in Episode 4 "Disengage."

 

[Josh Dial]

Just watched Episode 5 "Imposters" last night and read comments through that episode (page 22). There were some comments referring to previous roles of Kirk Acevedo. One key role that wasn't mentioned was him playing Jose Ramse in 12 Monkeys and that his speech as Krinn in this episode was right out of that show. It was describing Ramse's and Cole's relationship in 12 Monkeys - they were scavengers who considered themselves brothers. So, a big 12 Monkeys Easter egg there. And it becomes even bigger when you find out that under all those Sneed prosthetics and makeup was Aaron Sanford, who played James Cole. Once we finish the series I'll circle back to listen to the commentaries and I'm looking forward to what they say when Sneed appears in Episode 4 "Disengage."

I clocked that when I watched the episode. Additionally, the planet was M'talas prime, after showrunner Terry Matalas, and the crew operated out of District 7, which was an homage to the West VII scavenger group.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Additionally, the planet was M'talas prime, after showrunner Terry Matalas

Which was actually introduced in "Enterprise", when Matalas was Brannon Braga's assistant. The only thing I found a bit strange here is that a planet close enough for the NX-01 to reach with its Warp 5 engines still hadn't joined the Federation nearly a quarter of a millennium later.

I'd always thought of the Federation as a contiguous thing, but I suppose it wouldn't be. It's more of a supranational political and economic union of sovereign members like the European Union than a federal republic like the United States or Germany. And given that it's an alliance that expands through peaceful diplomatic negotiations rather than through violent conquest like the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Star Empire, or the Dominion, it makes sense that there would be holdouts.

At the same time, there are clearly agreed upon boundaries between the Federation and the other major powers in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. The Maquis discovered the limits of the Federation's tolerance when its settlements threatened the Federation's peace with the Cardassians.

 

[NeilO]

We finished watching the series on Wednesday night. That was great. I've read all your comments through page 36 so far. I'll read more later.

I started watching the special features on the Blu-ray. I am glad I waited until after watching the whole series as there definitely are "spoilers" for later episodes in the special features on Disc One. I thought there might be since I was surprised when watching the first season of Discovery. The special features on early discs gave away some things for later.

Still, some nice features there and I do plan on listening to the commentaries in the weeks ahead. There a bunch of those. They should be entertaining.

By the way, assuming there are no cancellations, I'll be seeing Todd Stashwick and Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut at the Shore Leave convention at the end of July. I am psyched for that.

 

[Wayne Klein]

I don’t disagree with you on any of that. These things always come down to money in the end. And they don’t release viewership numbers for streaming, or how the existence of these shows affect their membership numbers, so we have very little to go on.

The thing with a potential Legacy show is that it’s going to cost more than the Starfleet Academy show. All of the returning cast would command bigger salaries than a bunch of unknowns in the academy show would. Production insurance costs for a show led by senior citizens will cost more than it would for a show of youngsters. The magic number that would make the academy show financially viable is surely smaller than what it would be for Legacy.

And for better or worse, TNG has arguably underperformed with paying audiences for the past couple decades. The last couple TNG movies didn’t do much theatrically. The remastered Blu-rays failed to recoup their costs. There has been a long history of a small number of vocal TNG fans asking for projects and then the larger fandom not showing up to support them.

I want this show but I think Paramount has probably concluded they wouldn’t recoup their investment on it. It shouldn’t be a hard sell but with Trek it often is.

The best thing to do to mollify the fans would be a movie or just to do a pilot, air it and see how it flies. I think Paramount also has looked at some of the issues surrounding Marvel and don’t want to spread their IP too thin. Add in the fact that Picard might not have reached the heights they wanted, and it does explain their reluctance to focus on newer Trek properties and not legacy.

 

[Wayne Klein]

Which was actually introduced in "Enterprise", when Matalas was Brannon Braga's assistant. The only thing I found a bit strange here is that a planet close enough for the NX-01 to reach with its Warp 5 engines still hadn't joined the Federation nearly a quarter of a millennium later.

I'd always thought of the Federation as a contiguous thing, but I suppose it wouldn't be. It's more of a supranational political and economic union of sovereign members like the European Union than a federal republic like the United States or Germany. And given that it's an alliance that expands through peaceful diplomatic negotiations rather than through violent conquest like the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Star Empire, or the Dominion, it makes sense that there would be holdouts.

At the same time, there are clearly agreed upon boundaries between the Federation and the other major powers in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. The Maquis discovered the limits of the Federation's tolerance when its settlements threatened the Federation's peace with the Cardassians.

I always pictured the Federation As akin to NATO.

 

[Wayne Klein]

I think it's more that times in the streaming space are a lot leaner than they were when "Picard" was originally greenlit. "Discovery" is the stamp that Kurtzman put on the Star Trek franchise, and "Starfleet Academy" is a continuation of that. Accordingly, he has a lot more personal investment in that than he does in a continuation of Picard.


That would be true if we were talking about a "Picard" S4/TNG S9. But it seemed like "Legacy" would be built around Seven of Nine, Raffi, and Jack Crusher with the TNG stars only making special guest appearances.

One advantage that "Legacy" would have over "Starfleet Academy" is that they could reuse the Titan-A sets built for "Picard" S3.

The most expensive thing about "Picard" was probably Patrick Stewart's insistence that they film in southern California. Would Jeri Ryan be willing to relocate to Toronto so they could consolidate shooting to one central home base? I don't know.


I agree with this as well. Star Trek is a valuable enough franchise that it will have a future in some form or another no matter what. But I doubt they'll want to make any big swings until they know what the future of Paramount (and by extension Paramount+) is going to be.

If Paramount does get gobbled up by Warner Bros. Discovery, there's no way that David Zaslav is going to be willing to spend as lavishly on the franchise as CBS/Paramount has in recent years.

Zaslav is a putz.