Star Trek: Picard is an American science fiction television series created by Akiva Goldsman, Michael Chabon, Kirsten Beyer, and Alex Kurtzman for the streaming service CBS All Access (later rebranded as Paramount+).

Alison Pill, Isa Briones, Harry Treadaway, Michelle Hurd, Santiago Cabrera, and Evan Evagora also star in the first season, with Jeri Ryan, Orla Brady, and Brent Spiner joining for the second.

The series was designed to be slower and more character-focused than previous franchise installments, with each season exploring different aspects of Picard in his advanced age.

[37] Kurtzman and Goldsman contacted the actor before January 2018 to discuss this idea, and met with him along with Discovery writer Kirsten Beyer at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

[3][37] Stewart took the meeting with the intention of turning the project down, but after Beyer convinced him to reconsider he agreed to read a four-page document outlining their ideas.

[38] While deciding whether to join the project, Stewart asked Kurtzman that the series be "so different" from previous Star Trek stories, "both what people remember but also not what they're expecting at all, otherwise why do it?

[40] Kadin revealed in October that it was intended to be ongoing rather than a limited miniseries and said that its release dates would not overlap with Discovery or any other new Star Trek series.

[43] Stewart revealed a month later that the series would consist of 10 episodes, and reiterated that the intention was for it to continue for multiple seasons,[38] adding in February that "we are set up for possibly three years of this show".

[51] CBS officially announced the second season a month later and revealed that Terry Matalas had joined the series as an executive producer to fill the void that would be created by Chabon's departure.

[5] Stewart was assured by the creative team that the series would not be "jokey",[38] and compared Picard to when he reprised his X-Men role of Professor X in the film Logan (2017), where he was the same character but the franchise's world and tone was "blown apart".

[59] The first season finds Picard deeply affected by the death of his android colleague Data in Nemesis,[4] and Kurtzman saw it as a redemption story for the character, who must face the consequences of his choice to abandon Starfleet and the Romulans following the destruction of the planet Romulus in the film Star Trek (2009).

[64] Characters for the new cast members were announced in July, with Pill as Agnes Jurati, Cabrera as Cristobal "Chris" Rios, Hurd as Raffi Musiker, Treadaway as Narek, and Evagora as Elnor.

[19] While developing the series, the creative team discussed not bringing back any other characters from The Next Generation to allow Picard to stand alone and not become reliant on nostalgia.

However, the writers wanted to be respectful to longtime fans of Star Trek and felt they were missing opportunities by not including certain characters, so they decided to add some returning guests who organically served the new story.

[26] That July, Voyager's Robert Duncan McNeill said he had been in discussions to reprise his role as Tom Paris for both seasons of the series, but scheduling conflicts had prevented this.

[70] In April 2022, the main cast of The Next Generation were confirmed to be starring in the third season with Stewart: LeVar Burton as Geordi La Forge, Dorn, Frakes, Gates McFadden as Beverly Crusher, Sirtis, and Spiner.

[77] Filming for the first season took place from April to September 2019,[78][79] with location shooting around California, including at Sunstone Winery in Santa Ynez Valley to depict Picard's French vineyard,[80] at long-time Star Trek filming location Vasquez Rocks in the Sierra Pelona Mountains in Los Angeles County for Raffi's home,[81] and in the Malibu area for the planet Coppelius.

[95] It is bookended with a piccolo, which Russo felt sounded similar to the fictional Ressikan flute that Picard plays in the Next Generation episode "The Inner Light".

The website's critical consensus reads, "Anchored by the incomparable Patrick Stewart, Picard departs from standard Starfleet protocol with a slower, serialized story, but like all great Star Trek it tackles timely themes with grace and makes for an exciting push further into the final frontier.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Picard gets some backup from franchise fan favorites in a sophomore season that charts a course towards recapturing more of the classical Star Trek spirit and makes it so.

[123] In September 2019, CBS announced a novel written by frequent Star Trek author Una McCormack to be published by Simon & Schuster in February 2020.

[154] A three-issue comic book titled Star Trek: Picard – Countdown was also set to be released beginning that November by IDW Publishing.

[155] A second novel, Dark Veil by James Swallow, was published in January 2021 and follows Riker and Troi aboard the USS Titan a year after Picard retires from Starfleet.

Published by IDW beginning in August 2022, it features art by Angel Hernandez and tells a story in which Picard returns to helm the USS Stargazer.

[160] In January 2020, CBS All Access announced that The Next Generation actor Wil Wheaton would host a new season of the Star Trek aftershow The Ready Room, to stream after the release of each Picard episode.

[164] At the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con, Kurtzman announced that the second group of Short Treks would include a teaser for Picard set 15 years before the start of the series.

[170] In June, Stewart said he still thought a film would be an appropriate way to end his time as Picard, but there had been "no eager response" from the studio about the idea and he had been asked to stop talking about it.

[173] The next month, Matalas said he was open to making a television film that could serve as a backdoor pilot for his proposed Star Trek: Legacy spin-off series, as long as he could hire the cast and crew that he wanted.

However, the spin-off was considered unlikely to be ordered in the near future due to Paramount+'s recent cost-cutting measures and the fact that multiple Star Trek series were already in development.

[184] Matalas said Worf's son Alexander Rozhenko from The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine would appear in the potential spin-off series,[185] and he wanted Todd Stashwick, who portrayed Captain Liam Shaw in the third season of Picard, to return despite his character's death.