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STAR TREK SHOWRUNNER ALEX KURTZMAN ON BRINGING THE NEXT GENERATION BACK AND WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS

- DARREN SCOTT

A REUNION THAT WAS decades in the making, the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation are back and breaking the internet with season three of Star Trek: Picard. “It was very clear, when we talked about Terry [Matalas] taking over the show, that what he really wanted to build to was the Next Gen movie he had never seen,” Star Trek’s big boss Alex Kurtzman tells SFX. “The minute he said that I was like, ‘Amazing. Let’s do that.’

“What’s great about that is we can do that in 10 hours instead of two. That means that we can really marinate in each character and get to know each character before we bring them all together. That’s the way to make it a satisfying reunion.”

SFX has to get serious for a minute, and put in a formal request: can Kurtzman please keep Matalas on staff forever? He laughs loudly. “I love Terry. If it’s up to me, he’s not going anywhere.” He says that he’s feeling “extraordinary relief and gratitude” about the response to the third and final season of Picard.

“We all knew that in tackling this particular beast, the bar was so high because expectations were so impossibly high. The last thing any of us wanted to do was screw up what people love so much about that cast and the promise of what it means to return them to the screen together. There were literally years and years’ worth of conversations about it.