The season was produced by CBS Studios in association with Secret Hideout, Weed Road Pictures, and Roddenberry Entertainment, with Terry Matalas serving as showrunner.

The season features guest stars who also reprise their roles from previous Star Trek media, including Stewart's Next Generation co-stars Jonathan Frakes (Riker), Gates McFadden (Crusher), LeVar Burton (La Forge), Michael Dorn (Worf), Marina Sirtis (Troi), and Brent Spiner (Data).

[20] Matalas brought several creatives from his series 12 Monkeys to work on the third season, including writers Christopher Monfette and Sean Tretta, editor Drew Nichols, composer Stephen Barton, and several actors.

[26] Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) was a "major touchstone" for the season, which features mind games between Picard and a new villain.

[20] When originally 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.

[36] In April 2022, members of the Next Generation cast were confirmed to be starring in the third season with Stewart: LeVar Burton as Geordi La Forge, Michael Dorn as Worf, Jonathan Frakes as William Riker, Gates McFadden as Beverly Crusher, Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi, and Brent Spiner.

[30] Burton said he would be happy if he did not portray La Forge again after getting to "put a period at the end of this sentence and close the book" on the character with this season.

[6] Wil Wheaton, who starred as Wesley Crusher in The Next Generation and made a cameo appearance in the second-season finale, was not included in the season.

After the second-season finale was released in May 2022, series regulars Santiago Cabrera, Alison Pill, Evan Evagora, and Isa Briones revealed that they did not return for the third season.

[2][7] Matalas said budget and time limitations meant some "hard choices" had to be made about which characters to bring back for the season, especially with the need to sign on all of the returning Next Generation actors.

The writers considered including a grown-up version of the Star Trek: Voyager character Naomi Wildman for a specific sequence that was ultimately deemed too expensive to film.

[7] Also that month, Denise Crosby said her Next Generation character Tasha Yar would appear in the season, despite the actress previously stating that she was not involved in the series during filming.

Additionally, Daniel Davis was announced to be reprising his Next Generation role as a sentient hologram of Arthur Conan Doyle's literary character Professor Moriarty, Mica Burton's casting as La Forge's youngest daughter Alandra was confirmed, and Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut was revealed to be portraying La Forge's oldest daughter Sidney.

They decided that some older design elements from before the Next Generation era could be brought back for the new period of scientific exploration, which led to them creating the USS Titan-A, a new version of the ship that was refit to feature Constitution-class design elements (based on the starships from the Original Series era) after the original was retired.

[50] The last Enterprise to appear in the official timeline was the USS Enterprise-E in Nemesis; the Enterprise-F is an Odyssey-class starship that was designed by Adam Ihle for 25th-century stories in the Star Trek Online video game.

[67] The user interfaces for the starships were created by visual effects company Twisted Media, based on the LCARS computer system.

Okuda consulted on the company's LCARS designs, as did Drexler who also provided digital models that were integrated into the interface screens.

[34] Matalas said the music for the season was strongly influenced by the work of composers Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner for the Star Trek films.

[28] He added that themes from four different iterations of Star Trek would be used together in the score,[30] which Barton described as a "6 1/2 hour love letter in music" to Goldsmith, Horner, and the Next Generation composers.

[70] Craig Huxley contributed performances on the blaster beam, an instrument that he invented and previously played on the soundtrack of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).

[77] All music by Stephen Barton and Frederik Wiedmann:[76][77] Unusually for a television showrunner, Matalas was able to collaborate with the Paramount+ marketing department and editor Drew Nichols on the trailers for the season so he would be happy about how much information was released early.

The teaser included the announcement of the returning Next Generation cast members with voiceover from those actors and footage of Picard looking at an old uniform.

[1] Another teaser was released during the Star Trek Universe panel at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2022, giving a first look at the returning Next Generation cast members in costume.

[79] On September 8, Stewart, Ryan, and Hurd promoted the series at a "Star Trek Day" event where the season's premiere date was announced and a new teaser introducing the USS Titan was revealed.

[51][80] A month later, at New York Comic Con, the season was promoted during a Star Trek Universe panel with Stewart, Sirtis, McFadden, Dorn, Burton, Frakes, Spiner, and executive producers Matalas, Roddenberry, and Kurtzman.

[6] James Whitbrook at Gizmodo praised the trailer for teasing what will happen in the season beyond the nostalgic returns of the Next Generation cast that the previous teasers focused on.

[83] Ben F. Silverio at /Film said the trailer "shines some light on the mission that brings this iconic group back together",[84] and Whitbrook said the season looked "apocalyptic".

The release includes all 10 episodes as well as more than two-and-a-half hours of special features, including deleted scenes, a gag reel, audio commentaries, a discussion panel with cast and crew, the raw footage of the final poker scene, and behind-the-scenes featurettes on the Next Generation cast, reconstructing the Enterprise-D set, and Vadic.

They said Plummer was "deliciously evil as Vadic" and the first memorable villain of the modern Star Trek series, while Forbes was a "jaw-dropping blast from the past" who let the audience see "the decades of pain buried deep inside Ro" in her scenes with Stewart.