The current third season of “Star Trek: Picard” is nothing if not a nostalgia overload, bringing together a ton of fan service callbacks and references even though it feels decidedly forced at times. Yet it works, in part, because it is so reverential and respectful of what came before.
SPOILERS AHEAD FOR PICARD S3 EP. 9 “VOX”
The most recent ninth episode, which was released this past Thursday, took that nostalgia trip to the ultimate extreme – putting its reunited crew back on the bridge of their iconic Galaxy-class starship, the U.S.S. Enterprise-D from “Star Trek: The Next Generation”.
Speaking with Variety, showrunner Terry Matalas spoke about resurrecting the Enterprise bridge set saying it was financially expensive and the timing was so tight “we were still gluing pieces together” the moment filming began.
The ship, of course, was half-destroyed and half-crashed in “Star Trek: Generations”. The return is explained way as Levar Burton’s Geordi La Forge being the one responsible for restoring it for the Starfleet Museum.
Nothing much from the old set had survived beyond some art and many reference photos. Production designer Dave Blass and art director Liz Kloczkowski, with help from consultants and “Star Trek” legends Mike Okuda and Denise Okuda, set out to recreate the bridge and finding the source materials proved difficult.
Ultimately it took three months and a team of around 50 people to completely rebuild the bridge, which was a physical build (no VFX) and measured the same as the original set – 50 feet wide and 100 feet long.
They did all that whilst building every other set for Seasons 2 and 3 shot back to back, including the various Titan starship rooms, Shrike sets, Daystrom Station and Borg elements.
Some elements were improved, such as the LCARS displays, which were able to do the animation on the screens in real-time on-set instead of being added in post-production.
Others were tough to recreate, including the giant wooden curve of the tactical station, the command chairs (which consist of four different materials), and even the carpet with the pattern out of stock for decades.
One change was the lighting, as they had to find a hybrid of the old lighting and filming style and the new one used on “Picard”. Ultimately they only had two days to shoot on that set, and they did it with Patrick Stewart even pulling off the Picard maneuver.
All the restoration work reportedly remains intact and now has a home in the Star Trek archives.
