Star Trek: Picard boss: Enterprise’s return was a 'financial nightmare'

Recently, episode 9 saw an integral part of the series revealed, with Enterprise-D finally making a re-appearance. The iconic Galaxy-class starship made its first appearance onscreen in 1987 and was destroyed in 1994's Star Trek: Generations.

So it's safe to say that fans have been overjoyed with the return of Enterprise, something that the Picard team anticipated but also knew came with its own burdens.

Speaking about the iconic re-introduction of Enterprise in Picard season 3 episode 9, executive producer Terry Matalas told Variety: "Everyone tried to talk us out of doing this, because financially it’s a nightmare, and the timing was tight. To the moment we started filming, we were still gluing pieces together.

"But you can’t have a Star Trek: The Next Generation reunion without one of its major characters, which is the Enterprise."

In the episode of Picard, it was also revealed that Geordi La Forge's LeVar Burton had rebuilt Enterprise to make Enterprise-D, with some old flourishes included.

Speaking about reconstructing it for the modern TV show, graphic designer Mike Okuda said: "The first thing we did was to go in the garage and dive into boxes and see what we still had. We had some original drawings and art, but large chunks of it disappeared. You realise you’re going to have to reconstruct a lot of this from scratch."

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He continued: "We took advantage of the huge advances in real-world computer display technology to make a few subtle upgrades to the displays.

"In a scene where one of our officers is using the science equipment, if the director wanted to show the scan itself, we would have had to insert the animation in post-production, back in the day. Now, it’s easy to do the animation and have it play back on the set, so the cast could see it in real-time."

The penultimate episode of season 3 continues in the same vein of nostalgia as the rest of the series, which has marked the return of numerous characters including the surprise cameo of Tuvok (Tim Russ).

While this season of Picard is the series's last, fans won't have long to wait for another fix of Star Trek action as both Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: Lower Decks are set to premiere this summer on Paramount Plus, with both also having been renewed for season 3 and 5 respectively.

Star Trek: Picard season 3 airs on Paramount Plus in the US, and on Amazon Prime Video in the UK – try Amazon Prime Video for free for 30 days.

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