Star Trek Mixes Past and Future at San Diego Comic-Con Panel

The San Diego Convention Center’s main stage was rebranded as Starbase H for a brief while on Saturday, as Paramount + beamed in representatives from three of the five current Star Trek shows that are “boldly going” at different points in the timeline.

Most breathtaking was the reveal of character portraits and a teaser trailer for Picard’s third and final season. Sir Patrick Stewart (Admiral Jean-Luc Picard) and, back in the fold after a long interval, Gates McFadden (Dr. Beverly Crusher), reunited onstage, alongside the President of the United Federation of the Franchise, producer Alex Kurtzman. When Picard was first announced, all involved managed fan expectations, telling them not to expect a full-blown Star Trek: The Next Generation curtain call. With season three, though, it looks like that’s exactly what’s happening.

Though not all made it to the stage, nearly everyone from the old days is back on board, including, like McFadden, long-time-coming veterans LeVar Burton (Geordi LaForge) and Michael Dorn (Worf). Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi), Jonathan Frakes (Will Riker, and Picard’s forever Number One), and Brent Spiner (Data), who have all made short appearances in Picard thus far, are also involved in the adventure, as is Trek alum Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine). Michelle Hurd (Raffi Musiker) appears to be the only new-to-Picard character still on the show. 

The teaser rips lines of dialogue out of context, against brooding imagery of our ol’ pals wandering around the set of The Charlie Rose Show with some digital lens flares. The biggest takeaway is that Worf, the mighty Son of Mogh, of the House of Martok, who rose from Discommendation to restoring the Klingon Empire after defeating the wicked Chancellor Gowron, is now an interplanetary silver fox.

Hair and makeup to Michael Dorn: Today is a good day to dye!

Showrunner Terry Matalas also teased fans about what the fan-favorite might be up to in the new season.

“I think we took two seasons to earn the return of the [“TNG”] crew,” Kurtzman said, but then dodged any specifics, other than to say the primary villain of season three is female. Stewart also hinted that the ship that made Picard a legend, the USS Enterprise, designation NCC-1701-D, will be back. Somehow. (It was replaced by the Enterprise-E in the film Star Trek: First Contact.)

Moving back a few years in the timeline (and into two dimensions), Star Trek: Lower Decks debuted its third season trailer. This animated series, created by Solar Opposites co-creator and Rick and Morty-alum Mike McMahan bends (but does not break) Trek lore for the sake of comedy, and hardcore fans (you’ve heard of them, right?) have been gobbling it up. 

After McMahan and voice actors Tawny Newsome, Jack Quaid, Noel Wells, and Dawnn Lewis traded zings with the crowd, representatives from the newest show (though earliest in the timeline) Strange New Worlds came out.

While the panelists, Anson Mount (Captain Christopher Pike), Ethan Peck (Spock), Christina Chong (La'an Noonien Singh), Celia Rose Gooding (Nyota Uhura), Paul Wesley (James T. Kirk, in his younger years), and producer Henry Alonso Myers didn’t have any footage to share, things did get weird when Newsome and Quaid “crashed” their panel to announce that there would be a crossover episode between the two series. 

While this has happened before (the highs, the Deep Space Nine crew going back in time to visit “The Trouble With Tribbles”; the lows, Riker putzing around on the holodeck in the Enterprise finale) it has never involved Star Trek animation before. And yet, sometime soon, we’ll see what Ensigns Beckett Mariner and Bradward Boimler “really” look like.  

After this announcement, the regularly scheduled panel resumed, which included jokes about Anson Mount’s hair.