“These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.” The Star Trek franchise may be filled with beloved characters, who serve on a wide range of ships and stations, but it always comes back to the Enterprise. Even the sequel series Star Trek: Picard, which has kept the titular Captain away from the ship he commanded for seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation and four feature films, will feature the Enterprise-F in its third and final season.
First introduced in the video game Star Trek Online as the Enterprise of the 2400s, the ship’s inclusion in Picard season 3 will finally make it part of the Star Trek universe’s main canon. As you might expect, the arrival of the Enterprise-F to live-action has certainly filled TNG fans with the hope that they’ll finally see their beloved captain and crew back on an Enterprise bridge.
But in an interview with Trek Central, showrunner Terry Matalas clarified the ship’s role in the show and cautioned that fans should adjust their expectations accordingly. “I would caution fans [that the] season does not take place on the Enterprise-F,” Matalas explained. “It is important, I will say,” he clarified. “But it’s not the focus of the season.”
According to Matalas, the focus of the season will be on the lives of the many returning TNG crew members. In addition to Will Riker, Deanna Troi, Data, and Wesley Crusher, all of whom showed up in the first two seasons of Picard, season three will bring back more of Jean-Luc’s friends: Worf, Geordi LaForge, and Dr. Beverly Crusher. But they won’t be in quite the same place where we left them in 2002 as the credits rolled on Nemesis.
