star trek picard easter eggs

All the Easter Eggs We Spotted in STAR TREK: PICARD Season 3

The first two seasons of Star Trek: Picard had their share of Easter eggs for longtime fans to spot. But season three blew the previous two out of the water in this regard. With the final season a swan song for the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew , the producers stuffed these episodes full of fun winks and nods for fans. Here are a few of the best ones we spotted in Picard ‘s episodes.

Jump to Easter Eggs From: Episode One // Episode Two // Episode Three // Episode Four // Episode Five // Episode Six // Episode Seven // Episode Eight // Episode Nine // Episode 10

Picard episode one “the next generation” easter eggs, the opening title card.

The opening title card says “In the 25th Century…” This didn’t just tell us when the show took place, but it’s a direct homage to how the title card from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan appeared. Only in that film, it said “In the 23rd Century…” Even the font is the same.

Aboard the S.S. Eleos

Among Dr. Crusher’s belongings we saw aboard her medical vessel the Eleos was the Comedy and Tragedy masks, which represented Beverly’s time running an acting class on the Enterprise -D. This was something we saw in the TNG episode “The Nth Degree.” She and Lt. Barclay even did a production of Cyrano de Bergerac together.

We also see her orchids, which we once saw in her Enterprise quarters in “Cause and Effect.” There’s also a large case with the belongings of her deceased husband Jack Crusher, which she brought out of storage on Earth in the episode “Family.”

We also see a plaque honoring her service in saving the planet Cor Caroli V from a deadly plague. We saw the aftermath of that event in the third season TNG episode “Allegiance.” Most importantly, there’s an old Enterprise -D computer console, which is playing Captain Picard’s log entry from the episode “The Best of Both Worlds,” where t he crew faced off against the Borg Collective .

Inside Picard’s Office

Hanging in his office was Picard’s painting of the Enterprise -D, which we saw displayed in his Ready Room on TNG . On his office desk was the Ressikan flute he learned to play when he lived another lifetime in the episode “The Inner Light.” Also on his desk was an ancient artifact given to him by his mentor and archaeology professor Dr. Galen. It was a Third Dynasty Kurlan naiskos, something Galen gave him in the sixth season TNG episode “The Chase.”

In Ten-Forward

At Guinan’s bar Ten Forward in Los Angeles, we found the bartenders selling souvenirs for the upcoming Frontier Day. This is a day celebrating the founding of Starfleet. They had an overstock of Enterprise -D models at the bar, as the bartenders said “nobody wants the fat ones.” Riker doesn’t care for this Enterprise -D shade, and we don’t either. Show some respect, young lady. That was the Federation flagship once.

Starfleet Spacedock

The massive Earth-orbiting Starfleet Spacedock was shown, now expanded with extra levels. The Spacedock first appeared in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock , and then appeared in the following three movies . The model was also used a few times on TNG . However, there it was meant to represent a different spacedock, one not in orbit of Earth. This is the first time we’ve seen it in the era of Jean-Luc Picard.

On Board the Titan

The newly retrofitted U.S.S. Titan is itself an Easter egg of a sort on Picard . The ship was given to the newly minted Captain Riker at the end of Star Trek: Nemesis to command, but we never actually saw her. It finally appeared on Star Trek: Lower Decks , which takes place almost 20 years before Picard season three . But this Titan has been retrofitted to the new Constitution Class model, and is now considered the Titan -A.

When Admiral Picard and Captain Riker board the Titan for their inspection, we hear the classic nautical boatswain whistle upon their entrance. This recalls Admiral James T. Kirk’s arrival on the Enterprise for his inspection in Wrath of Khan .

When the crew of the Titan stands in formation for the arriving Picard and Riker, we see officers from various classic alien races. There’s a green Orion, a Vulcan, a Trill, and perhaps the deepest cut, what looks like a Chalnoth . We first saw this usually savage alien race in the TNG episode “Allegiance”

When Picard and Riker have their extremely awkward dinner with Captain Shaw on board the Titan , Jean-Luc hands him a bottle of wine from his own vineyard, Chateau Picard.

Raffi’s Mission

When we first meet Raffi Musiker (Michelle Hurd) this season, she’s on the planet M’Talas Prime. This is a cute little Easter egg nod to Picard showrunner Terry Matalas. Raffi’s under deep cover on a mission for Starfleet Intelligence, searching for a deadly weapon stolen from the Daystrom Station. The Daystrom Institute was first named-dropped on TNG , and referenced scientist Richard Daystrom . He first appeared in the TOS episode “The Ultimate Computer.” Daystrom Institute in Okinawa, Japan was first seen in Picard season one.

Captain Rachel Garrett

Raffi is looking for something or someone called “The Red Lady.” She’s not sure if it’s a person, a ship, or something else. It turns out, it’s a statue. We then see that there’s a red statue in front of a Starfleet recruitment center of Captain Rachel Garrett. She was in command of the Enterprise -C , and she gave her life to save a Klingon base on Narendra III. This took place 25 years prior to The Next Generation . This act cemented the peace treaty between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. We met her in the classic TNG episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”

Beverly in Cryofreeze

This one’s not a reference relating to the Star Trek franchise, but another classic sci-fi franchise, Alien . When Riker and Picard board the Eleos , they find Beverly in cryofreeze, in what seems like a nod to how they discovered a frozen Lt. Ellen Ripley at the beginning of James Cameron’s Aliens .

Closing Credits Sequence

Even the end credits sequence for Picard season three is one giant Easter egg. There are close-up shots of LCARS interfaces from a starship, potentially teasing future episodes. One has a readout for a Holodeck program for Guinan’s Ten-Forward bar in Los Angeles.

Another mentions the destruction of a ship called the Constance , cited as “War Damage.” The only ship by that name in the franchise was a Constellation Class vessel from the TNG game Birth of the Federation from 1999.

A readout for the Starfleet museum shows that as the final resting place for Voyager , Kirk’s Enterprise -A, and Captain Sulu’s Excelsior . Another ship, Pioneer, is from the Star Trek Online game.

The music used for the closing credits is Jerry Goldsmith’s theme from Star Trek: First Contact , which segues into his classic theme from Star Trek: The Motion Picture , which also doubled as the Star Trek: The Next Generation theme.

Picard Episode Two “Disengage” Easter eggs

Here are some of the Easter eggs we spotted in Picard episode two, titled “Disengage.”

Romulan Ale

In the episode’s opening flashback, we saw the S.S. Eleos going through an inspection. Among Jack Crusher’s (Ed Speleers) contraband onboard the Eleos were several bottles of Romulan Ale . The drink is illegal in Federation space, but that has never stopped Starfleet officers from imbibing frequently.

An Old-School Music Cue

When the enemy starship Shrike appears in front of the Titan , the score sounds a lot like the original music cue when the Romulans first appeared in the classic TOS episode “Balance of Terror.” That would make two references in modern Trek to that episode recently. Strange New Worlds also paid homage to it .

An Homage to an Underappreciated Vulcan

The Titan’s destroyed shuttlecraft bore the name Saavik . That’s the name of the Vulcan officer introduced in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , played by Kirstie Alley. Robin Curtis continued the role in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home . Recent data files released for Picard season three show that Saavik was the captain of the first U.S.S. Titan . The shuttle’s red script font is the same one from the shuttlecraft Galileo in the sixties TV series. It’s a very clever Easter egg that Picard left for us to find.

Transporter Inhibitors Return

The transporter inhibitors used to keep Jack Crusher from beaming onto an enemy ship were first introduced in Star Trek: Insurrection . In that film, Data used them to prevent transporting off a Starfleet shuttle. He later used them to keep the citizens of the planet Ba’ku from beaming away.

The Synthetic Man

When Vadic (Amanda Plummer) appears on the view screen and meets Picard face to face, she refers to meeting him “in the synthetic flesh.” This refers directly to the end of Picard season one, where the Jean-Luc Picard we knew died, and was reborn in a new synthetic flesh and blood body .

New Ferengi with an Old Name

Raffi meets with a Ferengi crime lord named Sneed on M’Atalas Prime. Although Sneed is a new character, he was possibly named for a Starfleet officer from the novel The Long Night . His appearance was very reminiscent of a Ferengi crimelord from The Next Generation named Omag, who we first met in the episode “Unification.”

A Familiar Space Station?

When Raffi (Michelle Hurd) meets with her ex-husband to get information, we see what looks like Deep Space Nine on a background monitor. Although we suppose it could be another Cardassian space station with a similar design, it sure does seem like Picard planted this Easter egg for our enjoyment.

Starship Collision Course

When the Shrike used its tractor beam to literally throw another starship at the Titan , thus crashing into her spectacularly, it recalls similar “two starships ramming into each other” moments from the franchise’s history. We saw this first in the TNG episode “Cause and Effect . ” Later, in the Voyager episode “Year of Hell.” Most famously, the Enterprise -E rammed itself into the warbird Scimitar in the film Nemesis.

Jack Crusher’s Shady Past

As Captain Shaw (Todd Stashwick) went through Jack Crusher’s record, he discovered one of his aliases was “James Cole.” That’s a character from Terry Matalas’ series 12 Monkeys . When Jean-Luc also later goes through all of Jack’s arrests and citations, he names drops well-known Trek planets like Andoria. However, he also mentions Bynar III, home of an alien race not seen since TNG’s first season episode “11001001.”

Sneed name-drops Section 31, Starfleet’s off-the-books intelligence agency. The agency first appeared in Deep Space Nine , where it played a big part in many episodes. It later popped up in Star Trek: Into Darkness and Discovery . The agency’s existence was more like an urban myth. Now it seems even the Ferengi know about it in this Picard Easter egg.

An Entrance Worthy of a Warrior

When Worf (Michael Dorn) first appears to rescue Raffi, we hear Jerry Goldsmith’s Klingon theme music. It was first introduced in the opening moments of Star Trek: The Motion Picture . Later, it became Worf’s defacto theme music by Star Trek: First Contact , which Goldsmith also scored.

Jack Crusher’s Daring Escape

Jack Crusher’s escape from the Titan’s brig was a callback to the Angosian soldier Roga Danar from the third season TNG episode “The Hunted.” In that episode, Danar leaned on his ingenuity and combat experience to get out of a jail cell surrounded by a force field.

The Titan’s Doctor Hails from a Familiar World

The doctor on board the Titan is a Trill, the same species as Jadzia and Ezri Dax on DS9 . The joined species were first introduced in the TNG episode “The Host,” with a very different alien appearance.

Enemy Ship with a Familiar Name

Vadic’s ship, the Shrike, was also the class of a Romulan vessel. We saw it in the TNG video games Starfleet Command , Armada , and Armada II. Could this be a hint at a Romulan connection?

Hiding in the Nebula

The final moments of episode two saw the Titan going into a nebula to hide from the Shrike . This is a direct callback to the Enterprise hiding from the Reliant in Wrath of Khan .

Picard Episode Three “Seventeen Seconds” Easter eggs

The birth of riker and troi’s son.

In the flashback opening scene, which takes place in 24th-century Los Angeles at the Ten Forward bar, we see Riker and Picard having a toast to Will’s newborn son Thaddeus. Riker mentions that it was a difficult birth, and he was afraid he was going to lose him. This foreshadows Thad’s untimely death we learned about in Picard season one.

Seven of Nine’s Little Piece of Home

We see a model of the U.S.S. Voyager in Seven of Nine’s crew quarters, while she tinkers with some electronics while confined to quarters by Captain Shaw.

Beverly and Jean-Luc’s Big Conversation

When Beverly Crusher and Picard see each other again and discuss their son Jack after so many decades, it recalls the conversation Captain Kirk and his former lover Carol Marcus had about their son David in Wrath of Khan . David also never knew his dad, and did not meet him until he was an adult.

Captain Riker Takes Command

Captain Shaw gets seriously injured in the Shrike’s attack, forcing him to give Captain Riker an emergency field commission in command of the Titan . This recalls how Captain Pike gave Spock the emergency position of Captain in Star Trek 2009 after Nero’s attack. This made Kirk First Officer, just as Picard defaulted to becoming Riker’s Number One.

An Operatic Callback

The opera that Worf is listening to while training with his Bat’leth to is Hector Berlioz’s Les Troyens . The aria in particular is called “ Vallon Sonore.” This is the same piece of music that a pensive Picard listened to before the Borg attack on Earth in Star Trek: First Contact.

Worf’s Credentials

When Worf introduces himself formally to Raffi, he says he is “Worf, son of Mogh, House of Martok. Son of Sergei, House of Rozhenko. Bane to the Duras family. Slayer of Gowron.”

All of this references different pieces of Worf’s history in the franchise. His father was Mogh, killed by Romulans at the Khitomer outpost. He was then raised by human Starfleet officer Sergey Rozhenko, as revealed in the episode “Family.” When the Duras family tried to strip Worf of his family honor, Worf killed Duras, and later came into conflict with his sisters.

This conflict between Worf and the Duras family formed a long-term arc over several seasons of TNG . Particularly in the episodes “Sins of the Father,” “Reunion,” and “Redemption.” During the Dominion war arc on DS9 , Worf killed Klingon High Chancellor Gowron for his poor leadership, giving the reigns of the empire to House Martok. It was House Martok who adopted Worf into their family after Gowron had stripped him of his family titles.

Enemies Within

The Titan being sabotaged by someone onboard recalls many episodes of Deep Space Nine . In that series, Changelings disguised themselves as Starfleet officers and sabotaged ships from within. We saw this kind of sabotage as well on board the Enterprise , in the feature film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country .

The True Enemy Revealed

Worf reveals the true enemy behind the terrorist attacks on Starfleet installations when he interrogates a suspect who morphs into a liquid state. The terrorist was a Changeling, the shape-shifting Founders of the Dominion . The Dominion waved a long and deadly war on the Alpha Quadrant for three seasons of Deep Space Nine.

The actor who played the Changeling posing as a human named Titus Rikka was Thomas Dekker. He famously played John Connor in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but has real Trek bonafides. As a child actor, he played Jean-Luc Picard’s imaginary son in Generations . He also played the holographic Victorian child Henry Burleigh on Voyager in two episodes, “Learning Curve” and “Persistence of Vision.” The part of the Changeling is his first “real” role in the franchise.

Thomas Dekker did indeed return to #StarTrek a 4th time, to play Titus Rikka in #StarTrekPicard 's Seventeen Seconds↖️ after he was earlier seen as illusionary Thomas Picard (Star Trek Generations↗️) + holographic Henry Burleigh (Learning Curve↙️+Persistence of Vision↘️). pic.twitter.com/QmE08RZy7W — Jörg Hillebrand (@gaghyogi49) March 2, 2023

Picard Episode Four “No Win Scenario” Easter eggs

The kobayashi maru.

The title of the episode, “No Win Scenario,” is a direct reference to Starfleet’s Kobayashi Maru test . This test was the first scene in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , performed as a way of seeing how Starfleet cadets handle a no-win scenario where the loss of life is inevitable. We saw it referenced again in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot film, only this time, with a young James T. Kirk.

The Hirogen

In the flashback opening scene at the Ten Forward bar, young Starfleet officers ask Picard about facing off against the Hirogen. The Hirogen were a species of big game hunters (think Predator) who Voyager encountered in the Delta Quadrant. A young officer asks if he asked Admiral Janeway for advice since she was the first Starfleet officer to make contact with this species. Picard’s non-answer suggests he didn’t give Kathryn a call.

Arcanis Lager

In the holodeck version of Ten Forward, we see a neon sign advertising Arcanis Lager. This same sign was seen in the Starfleet bar Dr. McCoy goes to in The Search for Spock . It seems Arcanis Lager has kept their logo the same for a century.

Odo’s Bucket

The Changeling’s plot to kill and impersonate Starfleet officers mimics their plot to take over the Federation in Deep Space Nine . When Seven of Nine begins searching the Titan for a Changeling’s bucket where they regenerate in their liquid state, it looks exactly like the one Odo used on DS9 . The same bucket was also used as a flower pot during the brief time he became solid.

Paying Homage to Christopher Plummer

Amanda Plummer chews the scenery as the evil Vadic and spins her Captain’s chair around, cackling like a gleeful child on board the Shrike. This is exactly as the villainous Klingon Commander Chang did in his chair on board the Bird of Prey in The Undiscovered Country. This is a fun nod to the similarity between father and daughter actors, as Chang was played by Amanda’s father, Christopher Plummer.

The Tamarians

In another flashback to Picard telling stories to younger officers in Ten Forward, Jean-Luc spins the tale of how he made first contact with a race called the Tamarians, a species that only spoke in metaphors. Together, he and a Tamarian Captain fought against a deadly beast together. This is all a reference to the TNG fifth season episode, “Darmok.”

Stargazer Stories

Picard tells his son (Ed Speleers) about a near-death situation he and his best friend, Jack Crusher, found themselves in decades before on a shuttlecraft. Although this isn’t a reference to a specific episode, many books and comics have detailed the close bond between Jack Crusher and Picard in their younger days aboard the Stargazer .

Captain Liam Shaw tells his painful story of being a young engineer on the U.S.S. Constance during the Battle of Wolf 359. This was from the episode “The Best of Both Worlds,” when the Borg captured Picard and turned him into Locutus. They used all the information in his brain to stage an attack on Starfleet in star system Wolf 359. We only saw the aftermath of Wolf 359 in TNG , but a flashback in the pilot of Deep Space Nine showed the devastating attack itself.

“Encounter at Farpoint”

When the Titan gets out of the gravity well in the nebula, they realize it’s actually a womb for a spacefaring species that can survive in a vacuum. Picard realizes they’re very similar to the beings the Enterprise -D encountered in the TNG pilot episode “Encounter at Farpoint.” Upon seeing this species, Beverly Crusher says, “to seek out new life.” This is, of course, itself a reference to the spoken word intro to Star Trek TOS and TNG .

Picard Episode Five “Imposters” Easter eggs

The intrepid  .

The starship Intrepid delivers Commander Ro to the Titan , and the name Intrepid has a long history in Star Trek . It was a Vulcan ship in the TOS episode “The Immunity Syndrome,” and its successor ship was mentioned in TNG as the ship Worf’s adoptive human father served on. The starship Voyager was an Intrepid- class ship.     

Picard and Riker’s Most Notorious Moments  

As Captain Shaw escorts Riker and Picard to meet Starfleet intelligence, he mentions several of their less than glorious moments in the franchise. He name- drops the Enterprise -D saucer section crash on a planet in Generations , Picard violating the Prime Directive in Insurrection , and the time paradox they created in the Devron system in the TNG series finale “All Good Things.” 

IDIC – Infinity Diversity in Infinite Combination   

When Worf and Raffi return to District 6, the encounter a Vulcan crime lord. He wears a Vulcan IDIC symbol, which stands for Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. That symbol first appeared on Spock in TOS in the episode “Is There in Truth No Beauty,” also as a medallion he wore around his neck.  

The Mobile Emitter   

Worf and Raffi used a mobile holographic emitter to try and fall the Vulcan crime lord. Mobile emitters first appeared in Voyager , invented so their own holographic doctor could travel off the ship.  

Ro Laren’s Bajoran Earring  

When Commander Ro first appeared in this episode, she wasn’t wearing her traditional Bajoran earring. This shocked Picard, because she was adamant about wearing this symbol of her heritage on TNG . She ultimately gives Picard her earring, which contains all her investigations into the Changeling conspiracy. 

“Amok Time”   

When Worf fakes his death in a battle with Raffi, it echoes how Kirk faked his own death in “Amok Time,” when he had to do battle with Spock on the planet Vulcan.  

“Conspiracy” Callback  

The reveal of a vast conspiracy within Starfleet, going up to the highest levels, echoes the plot of the first season TNG episode “Conspiracy,” which was about a previous covert alien takeover of Starfleet. 

Admiral Janeway  

When Picard mentions enlisting the help of Admiral Janeway to Ro Laren, this is of course a mention of Admiral Kathryn Janeway, the former captain of the U.S.S. Voyager. We see her as an Admiral briefly in Star Trek: Nemesis , and as a supporting character in the animated Star Trek: Prodigy.   

Kahless the Unforgettable  

When Worf fakes his own death, he says he used the “Kahless technique” to slow down his heartrate to mimic death. Kahless is the Klingon messiah, an ancient warrior known as “the Unforgettable,” who appears in TOS and also TNG.   

Picard Episode Six “The Bounty” Easter eggs

Jack crusher’s irumodic syndrome.

Jack discovers in episode six he has Irumodic Syndrome, a degenerative brain condition he inherited from his father. Picard actually died of the disease in the first season, before having his consciousness transferred to a synthetic body. Picard’s Irumodic Syndrome, which was kind of like a future version of Alzheimer’s disease, was first mentioned as something the older Picard would suffer from in the alternate future timeline of TNG’s finale “All Good Things.”

Inside Daystrom Station

Daystrom Station was mentioned by Worf as the place where Section 31 hides its most off-the-books tech and contraband. Among this contraband, we saw some major references to Star Trek ‘s past. We saw a version of the Genesis device, the torpedo that could create a living world from a dead moon. This played a heavy part in Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock and was in part developed by Captain Kirk’s son, David Marcus.

Speaking of Kirk, we also saw that for unknown reasons, Starfleet has the corpse of James T. Kirk himself, who died in Star Trek Generations . Why they have his body in the stations, which Picard buried on Viridian III, remains a big mystery. And finally, we saw a genetically modified “attack tribble.” The usually cute and fuzzy pets from TOS now seem deadly. They still seem to really hate Klingons, and make shrill noises in their presence.

Daystrom’s AI Security System

We learned the sophisticated AI system that acts as security for Daystrom Station is none other than a version of Data himself. Well, Data and other Soong-made androids. But we’ll get to them. The program used Data’s memories as part of its protection program. These included a holographic crow, a reference to Data learning to dream in the TNG episode “Birthright.”

A holographic Professor Moriarty also appeared, a reference to the time Data had a battle of minds with the infamous Sherlock Holmes villain in “Elementary, Dear Data.” Finally, the song “Pop Goes the Weasel” is a direct reference to the first time Riker met Data in the TNG pilot episode “Encounter at Farpoint,” where he watched as Data struggled to whistle.

The Starfleet Museum

Many classic ships from Star Trek history are seen in the Starfleet Museum on Athan Prime. First, we saw the Defiant , from Deep Space Nin e, as we heard a bit of the DS9 theme song. We passed by Kirk’s second Enterprise , the Enterprise- A , which was decommissioned in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country . And Seven of Nine wistfully passes by Voyager, the starship where she was “reborn” from her time as Borg. We hear the Jerry Goldsmith Voyager theme as we pass her by.

The original Enterprise blew up, but another 1960s-style Constitution-class ship is among the rest, the U.S.S. New Jersey . Finally, the commandeered Klingon Bird of Prey, renamed the H.M.S. Bounty by Kirk in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , was also among the others, with her cloaking device intact. Several other starships were spotted in the distance, but none can be readily identified just yet.

Daystrom Android M-5-10

The AI protecting Daystrom Station is actually a synthetic “golem” body, one which looks and sounds like the late Commander Data. We learn that Dr. Altan Inigo Soong, son of Data’s creator Noonien Soong, created a synthetic body for his consciousness before he died. But into that body, he poured the memories of Data, his twisted brother Lore, his daughter Lal, and his prototype brother B-4. All mixed together into one new being. Starfleet was using this AI as a security system on the station. Soong made the body age like a human being, but the brain was still positronic.

Picard’s Dead Body

In episode six, we discovered that the object the Changelings stole from Daystrom Station wasn’t actually an object at all, it was a corpse. Housed within Daystrom, for unknown reasons, was the previous human body of Jean-Luc Picard, which died in season one. His consciousness was transferred to a new synthetic form. As to why the Changelings want the corpse of Admiral Picard, we’ll have to wait to find out.

Picard Episode Seven “Dominion” Easter eggs

The return of tuvok (but not really).

When Seven of Nine contacts who she believes to be her old Voyager comrade Tuvok, once again played by Tim Russ, she mentions all the games of Vulcan Kal-toh they played together. She believed this proved Tuvok was not a Changeling. However, when he agreed to meet her in a world protesting against Kolinahr, she knew he was an imposter. Star Trek: The Motion Picture introduced Kolinahr as a discipline a Vulcan takes to purge all remaining emotion. It’s a very sacred ritual to the Vulcan people.

Scanning for Lifeforms

The scanner Vadic uses to track Jack Crusher on the Titan used a very familiar sound effect. It was the same one used by Commander Chekov on his scanner in Ceti Alpha V in The Wrath of Khan.

Lore Influences Data

The programming of Lore, the malicious prototype android, began to overtake Data’s positronic matrix in this episode, and this isn’t the first time it has happened. In the sixth season TNG season finale “Descent,” Lore began transmitting his negative emotions to Data, in a way, taking over his programming. Here, they share a body, but the effect is mostly the same.

Project Proteus

In this episode, we learned about Project Proteus. In Greek mythology, the god Proteus could change his shape at will. This project was an operation taken by Section 31 during the Dominion War, and we learned that several Changelings were captured, experimented on, and tortured, all to create a new breed that could replicate solid beings perfectly—including their organs and blood. Vadic is a survivor of such an experiment. So her feelings of hostility toward the Federation are at least somewhat valid.

The Changeling Virus

The episode also referenced, and corrected, something Worf said in the previous episode. In “Imposters,” Worf said Section 31 created a virus to spread through the Great Link of the Changelings, an effort by the covert Starfleet intelligence organization to wipe them out. In Deep Space Nine , we learned a cure was found, but Starfleet did not administer it, as Worf said. It was Odo who did it, against Starfleet orders. So the Founders have a certain right to remain angry at Starfleet.

Picard Episode Eight “Surrender” Easter eggs

While in captivity on the Shrike , Will Riker and Deanna Troi talk about how they dealt with the untimely loss of their son Thad. They both admit to each other that neither of them really liked their cabin life on the planet Nepenthe , where they lived when Thad was ill, and where they stayed after his death. Nepenthe was a planet that we first saw in the Picard season one episode appropriately titled “Nepenthe.”

Worf, Riker, and Deanna’s Awkward Reunion

When Worf rescues Will and Deanna, he tells Deanna he’s been counting the days until he saw her again, making her husband Will very uncomfortable. Although often a forgotten plot point, Worf and Troi actually dated towards the end of TNG’s run. But Worf’s gratitude towards Deanna has nothing to do with their romantic past, but with how her psychological expertise helped him center himself into the zen Worf of today.

Data’s Memories

When Geordi La Forge attempts to plug Data back into the Titan’s computer systems, it begins to bring down the partitions between Data’s personality and his malevolent brother Lore’s. Lore tries to erase Data, by taking precious memories of his, one at a time. Among those memories are many references to Data’s past adventures on the Enterprise -D during the seven-season run of TNG.

We see his Sherlock Holmes hat and pipe, first seen in TNG season two’s “Elementary Dear Data.” Next, we see his memorial hologram of the late Enterprise crewmember Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby), who died in TNG season one . We first saw Data’s hologram of his late friend in TNG’s “The Measure of a Man.” Data’s playing cards and chips from his many poker games with his crew mates appear as well. Finally, we see Data’s beloved pet cat Spot, who he cared for over several seasons of TNG, and who was last seen in the film Nemesis .

Data Recalls His Death

When the Enterprise crew comes together again for the first time, Picard wonders if bringing the new synthetic human Data online is a betrayal of his earlier desire to experience death. This refers to the remains of the literal android Data, who only wished to die in Picard season one. Data assures Picard that while that Data was grateful to die, this Data was happy to be alive and with his dear friends.

Picard Episode Nine “Vox” Easter eggs

Resistance is futile.

When Deanna Troi opens the door in Jack’s mind, she uncovers something she didn’t want to see—a Borg cube. The Collective being the true “final boss” of the season makes sense, as they were the TNG crew’s biggest adversary. This makes the first appearance of the true Borg Collective in Star Trek since the end of Voyager in 2001. We saw a more benevolent form of Borg form at the end of season two of Picard , and several ex-Borgs in season one. But this marks the first appearance of the actual hive in decades.

Wesley Crusher’s Cosmic Fate

Beverly Crusher mentions to Jean Luc giving her first child Wesley “his space” growing up, and ultimately losing him to space itself. This was a reference to how in the TNG episode “Journey’s End,” Wesley Crusher evolved into a Traveler, a being that lives outside of space and time. We saw this adult Traveler version of Wes in the Picard season two finale, where he recruited Kore Soong into the Travelers.

The Return of Shelby

On Frontier Day, we see the Enterprise -E, NCC-1701-F. In command is none other than Admiral Elizabeth Shelby (Elizabeth Dennehy) . Fans might remember her as the ambitious young Commander gunning for Riker’s job in “The Best of Both Worlds,” hoping to one day become the Enterprise’s first officer. The character was never given a first name in the series, but non-canon Trek books gave her the name Elizabeth, after the actress that played her. That is now officially canonical.

A Nod to Captain Archer’s Enterprise

In Admiral Shelby’s speech on Frontier Day, she commemorates 250 years since the Enterprise NX-01 launched, giving birth to Starfleet. That Enterprise was of course the hero ship of Star Trek: Enterprise , and under the command of Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula).

The U.S.S. Pulaski

One of the ships at Frontier Day that gets name-dropped is the U.S.S. Pulaski . This means Stafleet named a ship after Dr. Katherine Pulaski, the Enterprise -D’s Chief Medical Officer in season two of TNG . She was played by veteran TV actress Diana Muldaur. After Dr. Crusher returned to the Enterprise in year three, we never saw her again. Sadly, it seems she died since then, as most vessels are not named for the living.

The Return of the Original Queen Bee

When Jack Crusher boards the Borg cube, after being whisked away via a transwarp conduit, he heard the voice of the Borg Queen. But this Borg Queen wasn’t the late Annie Wersching , or Voyager’s Susanna Thompson. It was the voice of actress Alice Krige, who originated the role in Star Trek: First Contact.

Like Father, Like Son

The Borg Queen says she gave Picard the name Locutus when he became “the one who speaks for the Borg.” She describes Jack Crusher by his new Borg designation Vox, which means “the voice itself.” Since Jack was revealed as a biological transmitter facilitating assimilation across the Federation, we can see how the name applies.

Frontier Day Starships

On the monitor on the Titan , we see the names of various Federation starships at Frontier Day. There’s the U.S.S. Excelsior , the latest starship to bear the name of Captain Sulu’s famous ship. Speaking of Sulu, another ship is the U.S.S. Hikaru Sulu , named after the former TOS helmsman.

The U.S.S. Drexler is named after visual effects artist Doug Drexler and the U.S.S. Trumball is named after Douglas Trumbull, the special effects genius who worked on Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The U.S.S. Okuda is named after Mike and Denise Okuda, the “Treksperts” who created the LCARS readouts on Starships since the TNG days. Other ships seen were the Firesword and the Resnik , ships that were in the spacedock in the first episodes of this season.

Worf Wrecked the Enterprise -E?

When Geordi takes his friends to the Starfleet Museum to show off his special surprise, (that’s the next entry) he laments that they could no longer use the Enterprise -E for any special mission. Everyone looks at Worf, who says “that wasn’t my fault.” This likely means that just as in the novel Star Trek: Picard: The Last Best Hope  by Una McCormack, Worf became Captain of the Enterprise -E once Picard got promoted to Admiral. Something happened though which caused the Enterprise -E to get decommissioned early, or even destroyed, during an event that was classified by Starfleet.

The Enterprise -D Returns

The biggest Easter egg of them all, perhaps in the whole season, was Geordi’s special surprise in Docking Bay 12 at the Starfleet Museum. He reveals to his friends the old Enterprise -D, now fully restored to her TNG-era glory. Starfleet was able to save the saucer section from the surface of Viridian III, where it crashed in the film Generations . The drive section and the warp nacelles were from another Galaxy -class starship. The entire bridge of the Enterprise -D is just as fans remember it, back in 1994. Right on down to the carpets.

A Familiar Computer Voice

The computer voice of the Enterprise -D is none other than the late Majel Barrett Roddenberry. Aside from playing Nurse Chapel on TOS and Lwaxana Troi in TNG , she voiced the Starfleet computer systems for the first five live-action Star Trek series. She passed away in 2008, but she left voice recordings of herself for future use in Star Trek projects. Her last time as the Enterprise computer voice was in J.J. Abrams’ 2009 big screen Star Trek reboot.

Picard Episode Ten “The Last Generation” Easter eggs

A familiar starscape.

Before the episode’s cold open about the Enterprise-D, we see a glimpse of the starfield from the opening credits of Star Trek: The Next Generation . This is the first time the credits have been used on Star Trek: Picard.

The Familiar Voice of Walter Koenig

As the Enterprise -D approaches an Earth under Borg attack, we hear a very familiar voice behind an SOS message. It’s the voice of TOS actor Walter Koenig, as Federation President Anton Chekov.  He’s telling all approaching vessels to flee Sector 001, but reminding them to never give up hope. He even reminds everyone that “there are always…possibilities.” A direct quote from Spock in The Wrath of Kahn . Koenig is actually not playing his iconic role of Pavel Chekov, who in 2401 would be 150 years old. He’s playing his previously unknown son, Anton Chekov.

Although the name Anton Chekov could be a tribute to the famous Russian writer of the same name, Anton was no doubt a tribute to the late Anton Yelchin, who played Pavel Chekov in the Kelvin-verse J.J. Abrams films. The scene is also a nod to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , when the Federation President warned all approaching ships to avoid Earth, which was under threat from an alien probe.

The Crippled Borg Collective

As the Enterprise approaches the Borg cube, which is hiding in the gases of Jupiter, we encounter the Borg Collective for the first time since the final episode of Star Trek: Voyager in 2001. In “Endgame,” Kathryn Janeway obliterated the Borg transwarp network in the Delta Quadrant. Almost all Borg ships were cut off from each other, and each ship became its own mini-collective. But unconnected from each other, the Borg were effectively crippled.

Although it appeared that particular Borg Queen died in the Voyager finale, she was instead only deeply damaged. As we saw in “The Last Generation,” many of those unconnected Borg died without the rest of the Collective. “Endgame” was also the last time Alice Krige played the Borg Queen.

The Flashback to a Flashback

To save his son Jack, now Vox of the Borg, Jean Luc actually assimilates himself into the Borg hive mind once more. When he does this, we get flashbacks to a flashback. It’s repurposed footage of Picard’s memory of being assimilated from the opening scene of First Contact.

We Were On the New Enterprise the Entire Time

While fans wondered if we’d see a new Enterprise in Picard , little did we know we were soaking in it the entire time. Towards the final episode’s end, we learned that Seven of Nine had been promoted to Captain of the Titan . We discovered that after her refit, the Titan had been renamed. After the destruction of the Enterprise- F during the Frontier Day attack, Starfleet rechristened the Titan as NCC-1701-G.

Worf’s Mugato Meditation

Once the crew of the Enterprise -D saves the Federation once again, our newly spiritual Worf mentions to his friends in Ten-Forward that he must get up early the next day to teach Mugato Meditation. The Mugato is an ape-like creature from the TOS episode “A Private Little War.” We have no idea what Mugato Meditation is because those creatures seemed less than calm when fighting Captain Kirk.

“A Warrior’s Drink”

Beverly also teases Worf in Ten Forward, telling him to “drink your prune juice.” In the TNG episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” Guinan introduced him to this “Earth drink” called prune juice, which he tasted and said was “a warrior’s drink.”

Data’s 35-Year-Old Limerick

While drinking with his Enterprise friends in Ten Forward on Earth, Data starts to recite a limerick, “There was a young Lady from Venus, whose body was shaped like a…” at which point everyone cuts him off. Data attempted to recite this same limerick in TNG’s second episode back in 1987, “The Naked Now.” But just like in this episode, everyone shut him up before the punchline.

Picard’s Love of the Bard of Avon

Picard gives a toast to his beloved crew and in true Jean-Luc Picard fashion, quotes William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. He says, “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat; and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”

“All Good Things…”

The last time we see the Enterprise -D crew together in Picard’ s final episode, they were playing poker together in Ten Forward. This mirrors TNG’s final episode, “All Good Things,” where we see the crew together around the poker table. Everything came full circle.

In a post-credits scene, we see Jack Crusher in his quarters on the Enterprise -G. Then, John de Lancie returns as the omnipotent Q . Jack tells him he’d heard he was dead, referring to Q’s last appearance in the Picard season two finale. Q tells Jack, “Humans think too linearly,” which suggests this Q is from an earlier point in his timeline. Or, death just doesn’t mean the same thing for the Q. He suggests that Jack Crusher has a big future, something every Star Trek fan hopes to see play out in a potential spin-off series .

Star Trek: Picard seasons one through three are all currently available on Paramount+.

Featured Image: Paramount+

Originally published on February 16, 2023.

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Star Trek: Picard : Our Favorite Easter Eggs From The Final Season

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A constant topic of conversation in the  Star Trek: Picard writers’ room involved the question of what constituted simple fan service and what was fresh storytelling in an established universe. What if they wanted to plop a big red statue of Rachel Garrett somewhere? (Which they did, in front of the Starfleet Recruitment Center, in Season 3’s premiere.) Garrett, you might recall, was the captain of the Enterprise-C who gave her life to save a Klingon base in  Next Generation ’s “Yesterday’s Enterprise” — and discovering who this “Red Lady” is became an internal Easter egg for one character on the show to hunt, before it was too late.

“There would totally be a statue of Rachel Garrett somewhere,” says showrunner Terry Matalas. “But does that mean this is a ‘Member Berry  from South Park ? We never really wanted to do that.” When there are references to past Star Treks — either subtle or full-on nostalgic — the writers wanted to make sure the environment and the situation of the story demanded it. “That was our North star,” Matalas says. “As long as it’s not soliciting an eye-roll, then we felt like we could use it. We are living in this universe, and these characters and these events exist.” The team’s many Easter eggs come from all over the Star Trek universe, but not all are explained within the show. Let’s boldly go back and trace the best ones throughout the final season, episode by episode — and if we missed any of your favorites, let us know what you spotted in the comments.

In the first five minutes of Season 3, we beam aboard the Mariposa medical vessel Eleos XII  and quickly realize this must be Dr. Beverly Crusher’s ship. Why? Because we recognize her taste and belongings from The Next Generation : orchids (a favorite flower, also in her quarters in “Cause and Effect”), pearls (“The Big Goodbye”) and drama and comedy masks (representing her love of theater in multiple episodes including “The Nth Degree,” “Disaster,” “Frame of Mind” and “Fistful of Datas”). There’s also a mission plaque honoring her service on Cor Caroli V (a classified case we heard about but didn’t see in “Allegiance”) and an away team kit belonging to her late husband Lt. Commander Jack Crusher (brought out of storage in “Family”). If all that didn’t clue you in, nothing will.

Another Easter egg is far more subtle. It’s a voice, the ship’s computer, warning Beverly of intruders. It belongs to Amy Earhart, wife of showrunner Terry Matalas, and it’s a little nod to Majel Barrett (Gene Roddenberry’s wife, who played Lwaxana Troi, and also provided the voice of most of the onboard computer interfaces). A recording of Barrett’s voice speaks once more at the end of Picard Season 3. Matalas himself provides a voice at the Starfleet Spacedock.

Quick bits to spot during Jean-Luc’s spring cleaning: a Ressikan flute from “The Inner Light,” an artifact from “The Chase” and a ship in a bottle from “Booby Trap.”

Jack Crusher is in so much trouble. Or is it Jack Canby? John Carson? James Cole? Jarlis Carvel? Of all Crusher’s aliases, the last one took him some serious thought — but it’s the next-to-last that gave us pause. James Cole, if you recall, is the name of the protagonist in the 1995 film and subsequent television adaptation of 12 Monkeys , which ran on Syfy from 2015 to 2018. The showrunner for that series? Yes, it was Terry Matalas, who recruited many members of his 12 Monkeys cast (Todd Stashwick, Aaron Stanford, Kirk Acevedo) and crew (co-executive producers Chris Monfette and Sean Tretta) for Picard . Which is why Picard sometimes feels like a 12 Monkeys Easter egg hunt. In addition to the James Cole shout-out, Cole himself — Aaron Stanford — appears as the Ferengi gangster Sneed. Sneed traffics in a drug called Splinter, a reference to splintering, which is what time travel was called in 12 Monkeys .

Beyond that, there are various eggs of note on the rap sheets of (alleged) criminals. Among Sneed’s known associates are Quark, from Deep Space Nine , and smuggler Thadiun Okona, from TNG ’s “The Outrageous Okona,” Lower Decks  and Prodigy . (This guy gets around.)

There’s also a quick bit to spot during the stop on M’Talas Prime: The name itself is a reference to showrunner Matalas, but it dates back to the Enterprise episode “Dawn,” in which the show’s producers decided to troll Matalas (then an assistant) by naming one of the worst places in the galaxy after him.

Worf saved the day! Introducing himself to Raffi, he lists the highlights of his narrative history: Son of Mogh (his biological father), House of Martok (the Klingon general who sponsored him), Son of Sergey and House of Rozhenko (his adoptive human Earth father from “Family”), Bane to the Duras family (as the killer of multiple heads of House of Duras) and Slayer of Gowron (as the killer of the High Chancellor in DS9 ’s “Tacking Into the Wind”).

Together, Worf and Raffi track down and interrogate Titus Rikka, who is played by Thomas Dekker. This is a casting Easter egg, as Dekker also played Picard’s Nexus fantasy son in the film Star Trek: Generations , and considering this is the episode where Picard confronts his missed fatherhood opportunity, the placement seems purposeful. (When he was still a child, Dekker also played a hologram in multiple episodes of Voyager .) Here, Dekker is once again a Trek character who is not what he appears to be — a Changeling. (Definitely not a junkie.)

And as a nice nod to our favorite Changeling, Odo, who couldn’t be here for this outing (actor René Auberjonois passed away in 2019), Worf refers to his former colleague as an honorable man.

Quick bit to spot during Beverly’s off-grid explanation: She and Jean-Luc dated on Casperia Prime, the vacation capital of the Horvan sector. You’ll recall another Star Trek couple has romantic history there: Worf and Jadzia picked it as their honeymoon destination in DS9 ’s “Change of Heart.”

The Ten Forward lounge in Los Angeles (first seen in Season 2 of Picard ) is where Picard and Riker like to meet up. Picard sometimes eats there alone, as we see him doing in the flashback. When admiring officers come upon him, he regales them with a story about the Tamarians, who base their language on myth and metaphor, from one of TNG ’s best episodes, “Darmok.” (Have you ever tried talking to someone who keeps quoting an impenetrable TV show you’ve never seen? It’s like that.) With much patience, Picard eventually deciphers their meanings. For example, “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” means “working together.” Eventually, they add “Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel,” or first contact, to their vocab as well.

Attempts to communicate with an alien culture aren’t always so successful. For a brief period, Picard served as the mouthpiece of the Borg and was forced to lead an invasion force. While in the holodeck version of Ten Forward, Captain Shaw reveals that during the Battle of Wolf 359 (seen in DS9 ’s “Emissary”), he served aboard the U.S.S. Constance — note that a diagram of the starship appears in the closing credits.

Also during drinks at Ten Forward, the Arcanis Lager logo is the same one from the Starfleet bar in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock . And one of the photos of Guinan is from a scene in Generations , when she appeared as an echo of herself in the Nexus. (How is there a photo of that moment in this world?)

Showrunner Terry Matalas decided to bring Ro Laren back , he says, because her story “felt like it wasn’t finished.” TNG ’s “Preemptive Strike” wasn’t supposed to be Ro’s last appearance. There was a plan in place to have the character be more heavily featured on DS9 , but Michelle Forbes declined an offer to join the spinoff, which led to the creation of a substitute Bajoran character, Kira Nerys, as well as a change of direction for Ro’s storyline on TNG . Instead of continuing to work with Starfleet, Ro defected and joined the freedom fighters known as the Maquis. Picard asks Ro if she remembers Guinan to test her identity — but it’s not just because Guinan used to stash weapons behind the bar and he’s reaching for one. The three of them had a special bond; they were accidentally turned into children together in “Rascals.”

The Changeling blood test, however, has never been foolproof. In DS9 episodes such as “The Way of the Warrior” and “Homefront,” it was demonstrated and discussed that Changelings could store real blood within their assumed bodies for such occasions. Also, listen for the little guttural noises that Ro’s two Starfleet officers make, revealing that they are Changelings.

Quick bits to spot during the turbolift ride: Captain Shaw rattles off a list of incidents that happened during the films Generations (the saucer section crash) and Insurrection (ignoring the Prime Directive) and the TNG series finale (the time paradox).

Daystrom Station is basically an Easter egg museum; it’s full of genetically-modified attack Tribbles, a version of the planet-changing Genesis Device and the bodily remains of James T. Kirk (which means that someone dug him up after Picard buried him in Generations ), as well as the human corpse of Picard himself. The theme of replacement and resurrection hangs heavily in the air as Riker and company meet a Professor Moriarty hologram and a composite android (Data, Lore, B-4, Lal, in a new vessel). Instead of Moriarty being an adversary to the android, now they are the same. Riker figures this out by referring to key points of his relationship with Data — from whistling together (“Encounter at Farpoint”) to the Sherlock Holmes games they played (“Elementary, Dear Data”). When Data died in Nemesis , Riker struggled to remember what song it was that Data was attempting to whistle. Now, years later, he does. (It’s “Pop Goes the Weasel,” and in the closing credits, you get a glimpse of its musical notation.)

A quick bit to spot during the Fleet Museum tour: The Klingon Bird of Prey was originally featured in The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home . Bones gave it the name the H.M.S. Bounty in reference to the 1789 mutiny. And the way the cloaking device is stolen and installed on another ship is a reference to the original Star Trek episode “The Enterprise Incident,” only that one was a Romulan cloaking device.

It’s not exactly the return of Tuvok in this episode — it’s just that a Changeling is pretending to be him. But even the idea of Tuvok counts, since he hasn’t appeared in a live-action Trek since 2001. However, Seven of Nine can tell this isn’t her old Voyager shipmate. First, she refers to their games of Vulcan Kal-Toh, which would hardly be a real test of identity, given that they played in full view of the crew ( Voyager ’s “The Omega Directive”). The fact that they played, and who won, would be public knowledge. Just to be sure, though, she tries again — and trips up the imposter by mentioning her neural pattern stabilization, claiming it was performed on a planet instead of onboard their ship ( Voyager ’s “Infinite Regress”). The planet she names has had demonstrations against Kolinahr, the Vulcan practice of shedding emotion on the way to pure logic, first depicted in Star Trek: The Motion Picture . No Vulcan would go there, let alone the real Tuvok, who had previously immersed himself in Kolinahr ( Voyager ’s “Flashback”).

Speaking of flashbacks, Vadic’s origin story, which takes place during the events of DS9 , refers to how, after Section 31 created a Changeling virus, a cure was developed, and Odo brought it to the Great Link (“What You Leave Behind”).

And a last quick bit to spot during Geordi’s Engineering: When Data says, “I’m no longer on the Enterprise ,” he’s referring to his final moments in Nemesis .

The Easter eggs are front and center in this episode, in which Data gives his TNG memories to Lore. Some of these are mementos from past leisure activities (a hat and pipe from his holodeck roleplay as Sherlock Holmes from “Elementary, Dear Data”) and his deck of cards and chips for playing poker. Others memories represent the two biggest loves of his life: Spot the cat (who started appearing in “Data’s Day” and was last… spotted… in Nemesis ) and Lt. Tasha Yar (who discovered to her delight in “ The Naked Now ” that Data is “fully functional” in every way and “programmed in multiple techniques”). After Tasha died, the android kept a holographic statue of her (first seen in “A Measure of Man”). But it was Spot — technically female, and a mother, even if Data keeps identifying her as male — who taught Data how to love. She inspired poetry and even tears of joy, when Data got an emotion chip ( Generations ).

Quick bit to spot during a stint on the Shrike: Another unlikely couple is referenced during Worf’s rescue of Riker and Troi — this being the fact that Worf and Troi once dated. When Worf bursts in, talking about counting the days since he last saw her, Riker says, “Inappropriate,” and then, “Is this a rescue mission or a continuation of the torture?” Of course, Worf wasn’t being romantic; he was thinking of Troi’s empathetic gifts during his sensitivity training. Still, awkward!

Isn’t it ironic? Picard calls it, but doesn’t explain, so we will. Admiral Elizabeth Shelby, onetime top Borg expert (last seen in “The Best of Both Worlds” gunning for Riker’s job as First Officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise ) fell for a Borg trap. She didn’t recognize that the synchronistic technology that allows every ship in Starfleet to operate as one is the very definition of how the Borg operates, as a collective. So this is not a fleet formation safeguard, but an opening for fleet-wide incapacitation.

Shelby is in command of the Enterprise-F during the Frontier Day ceremony… so what happened to the Enterprise-E ? Everyone looks at Worf. Not my fault, Worf says, referring to something that happened not on screen, but in the novels. “There have been books written about what they have done,” Matalas points out. “There was a whole arc about Worf being captain of the Enterprise-E for a while.” (That was in The Last Best Hope , by Una McCormack.) But the ship’s final mission — involving an “ incident ” above Kriilar Prime — is listed as classified , according to the Star Trek: Picard logs on Instagram. Other ships in the armada include the U.S.S. Hikaru Sulu and the U.S.S. Cochrane (named for the inventor of the warp drive).

Quick bit to spot during the reunion on the Enterprise : Picard’s order, “Set a course for Earth, maximum warp,” is the same line he says in Star Trek: First Contact .

Matalas considers the TNG series finale “All Good Things” to be a perfect send-off, with the crew and captain playing poker together. So one of the final shots of the Picard series finale emulates that iconic final image, right down to the rotation of the camera hovering over the poker table as Picard deals a hand. Before the game, the characters’ revelry in Ten Forward in Los Angeles includes multiple callbacks. References are made regarding drinks of choice — prune juice for Worf, the “ warrior’s drink ” (“Yesterday’s Enterprise”). Data tries to recite a limerick that no one ever lets him finish: “There was a young lady from Venus, whose body was shaped like a …” (“The Naked Now”). Picard recites Shakespeare, as both he and Patrick Stewart, a member of England’s Royal Shakespeare Company, are wont to do. So all’s well that ends well… or is it? Q returns and tells Jack Crusher that he is to stand trial for humanity — the same thing he told Jean-Luc Picard in the TNG pilot, “Encounter at Farpoint.”

One last quick bit. Pay attention to the voice, words and name of the President of the United Federation of Planets: Anton Chekov. He’s voiced by Walter Koenig, aka the original Star Trek series’ navigator and weapons officer Pavel Chekov. This new character is named after the rebooted Star Trek films’ version of Pavel Chekov, who was played by the late Anton Yelchin. And his message resembles a similar one in The Voyage Home : “Do not approach Earth.” Not yet, at least.

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Tuvok hadn’t been featured in live-action Trek since 1999? ST:Voyager ran until 2001!

And also all of the (unsanctioned, non-canon) films and shorts that he has made over the years (Of Gods and Men, Renegades)

Key words being “unsanctioned” and “non-canon”.

I really loved watching this final season. I hope they do another spin-off of the Enterprise-G crew with Seven as Captain. Especially since Discovery is ending after Season 5 and Section 31 is now going to be a movie. There is plenty of room for “Star Trek: Legacy,” as one TVLine reader suggested, to keep took Trek on our screens.

I agree it would be fun to see the further adventures of Captain Seven and her Number One, Raffi. Not sure how I feel about “Special Counselor” Ensign Jack Crusher. His “Chosen One” narrative worked for this season, but I’m not wild about making it an ongoing thing. – I’d also be curious to check in with the Jurati-Borg Collective and see what they are up to – her absence was definitely felt this season (both as a fan favorite and an obvious connection to the main plot.)

One Easter egg/clue I missed in all the nostalgia was the music. Part of the episode title cue, as well as part of the end credits’ music, was from Jerry Goldsmith’s score for FIRST CONTACT, the crew’s last full encounter with…the Borg. . So not only, in addition to being a beautiful score in itself, was it a callback to TNG’s best (and arguably their only truly successful) film, but the producers basically told us FROM GO that this season would come down to another showdown with the Borg and the Borg Queen.

Ahem… The musical tribute went FAR beyond that. The score “quotes” pretty much all the Trek music that has come before, from TOS to Voyage Home to all the TNG spinoffs. It is one of the reasons that this score was so great.

I certinly picked up on most of the other cues. But honestly, until the Borg reveal, I just assumed the use of the FC score was…well, just because it’s beautiful. But in hindsight, when used in tandem with the end credits which essentially foreshadowed many of the plot points all season, it was a missed clue (at least for me).

In episode 2 there were a couple more assiciates of Sneed that were important. Brunt FCA officer & Morn Quark’s bar fly that never talked both from DS9.

Never talked? You could never get Morn to shut up! Nobody can get a word in with that guy!

Ro and Guinan had a relationship well beyond de-aging together. Guinan forged a special bond with Ro and called her “her friend” which was a rare move for Guinan.

Moriaty and President Anton Chekov were too much. Otherwise, they did the nostalgia mostly right.

It was a quick line, but I smiled. After Geordi shut down the Enterprise, Riker says on the way out “I’m going to miss that voice.”

1 thing from episode 9 that cracked me up was Rikers line about thinking the bridge was bigger. Technically he’s not wrong from the changes they made to the set in Generations

The music on the screen at 50:48 is ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’. Now that’s a deep deep cut

Sorry, this is Episode 1

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‘Star Trek Picard’ Season 3: All the Easter Eggs Explained, From Spacedock to That Post-Credit Cameo

There are numerous references to “Star Trek: The Next Generation” even Trekkies may have missed

“Star Trek: Picard” Season 3 is finally here and boy, is it a trip down memory lane.

This season, touted as the “final voyage,” reunites Jean-Luc Picard with the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise .

Their adventures were chronicled in “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” which ran for seven seasons from 1987 to 1994. The last time the cast shared the screen was in the 2002 feature film “Star Trek: Nemesis.”

The newest season of “Picard” picks up some 20+ years later, with Picard (Patrick Stewart) assembling his old crew to save one of their own.

Each week, we’ll break down the easter eggs and “Trek” reference from the latest episode. Of course, spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution.

“Star Trek: Picard” Season 3, Episode 1 Easter Eggs

• The very title of this episode, “The Next Generation,” is an homage to the show that introduced us to the U.S.S. Enterprise D, its captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew.
• The episode opens on the Eleos, an aide vessel captained by Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden), the former chief medical officer of the Enterprise. The camera pans through her personal items, including theater masks (Crusher formed a theater troupe on board the Enterprise and taught acting), orchids (her favorite flowers which she was seen tending in one episode) and a storage locker belonging to Lt. Jack Crusher (her first husband who was killed while serving under Picard). There’s also a glass filled with a blue liquor — unmistakably Romulan ale.
• Beverly is replaying Picard’s log during an encounter with the Borg, in which the Enterprise hid in a nebula. Beverly is hiding the Eleos near a nebula.
• The next scene features Picard at his family winery in France. In the distance, you can hear a dog barking, likely his pet pitbull “Number One.” He is looking at a painting of the Enterprise-D. His companion, Laris, says “The first love is always the sweetest.” Picard replies “Well, she wasn’t the first, but she was definitely my favorite.” Picard’s first command was the U.S.S. Stargazer, the same ship Jack Crusher served on.
• Picard tells an assistant to give the painting to Geordi, the first mention of Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton), the Enterprise’s chief engineer and now head of Starfleet’s fleet museum.
• Picard looks at more memorabilia at his desk, which include a Bajoran award. He picks up a Ressikan flute, a memento of the time he lived the life of a man named Kamin on the dead planet Kataan. The story of Kamin is told in the Season 5 episode of “The Next Generation” titled “The Inner Light.”
• That evening, Picard receives an encoded message from Beverly Crusher. He’s alerted by the trill from his old Enterprise communications badge. It’s located in a box along with his red and black command uniform from the Enterprise.
• Picard meets up with his old friend/former first officer Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes) at a bar. The bartender offers up miniatures of the Enterprise-D, which she calls “fat ones.” This is an inside joke for Trek fans; the Enterprise-D saucer was unusually oblong and large; later models were more streamlined.
• Riker reveals he is spending time apart from his wife Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), the former Enterprise counselor, and their daughter Kestra. Kestra is also the name of Deanna’s deceased sister, whose death was explored in the Season 7 episode of “The Next Generation” titled “Dark Page.”
• Picard shares the codeword “hellbird” with Riker. Riker explains that it was a term used when Picard was “incapacitated.” He’s referring to when Picard was assimilated by the Borg in the Season 3 finale of “The Next Generation” titled “The Best of Both Worlds.” The Borg gained all of Picard’s memories, so the crew had to devise a new system.
• To track down Crusher, Riker and Picard go aboard the U.S.S. Titan, Riker’s command after leaving the Enterprise. The ship has undergone a “Neo-Constitution refit.” The Constitution class is one of the most popular in Trek lore; the original Enterprise itself was a Constitution-class starship.
• The first officer aboard the Titan is none other than Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), another human who was assimilated by the Borg and rescued in the “Star Trek: Voyager” episode “Scorpion.” Seven became Picard’s ally during Season 1 of “Picard” where they helped root out Romulan spies.
• Seven introduces herself as Annika Hansen. Her commanding officer, Captain Liam Shaw (Todd Stashwick) has instructed Seven to use her human name rather than her Borg designation.
• Seven was given a field commission by Picard, but officially joined Starfleet upon the advice of Picard and Admiral Janeway (Kate Mulgrew). Janeway was the captain of the U.S.S. Voyager that rescued Seven.
• Seven invites Picard and Riker to the bridge, where they meet a smiling helmsman, ensign Sidney La Forge (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut). Sidney is Geordi’s eldest daughter. Riker embarrasses her by bringing up her nickname from Starfleet Academy — “Crash” La Forge — after she crashed a shuttle … twice.
• A quick pan around the Titan bridge reveals a Bajoran tactical officer, a Haiilian communications officer (with little hair) and a Vulcan science officer (with no hair). Bald crewmen (or crewwomen in this case) have had a special place in “Trek” lore, dating back to Lt. Ilia (Persis Khambatta) from “Star Trek: The Motion Picture.” Other bald crewmembers include Lt. Airiam (Hannah Cheesman) from “Star Trek: Discovery,” Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks) from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and, of course, Picard.
• Showrunner Terry Matalas identified the Vulcan science officer as Lt. T’Veen. The actor who plays T’Veen, Stephanie Czajkowski, is a cancer survivor who kept her head shaved or short.
• As the Titan leaves spacedock, Seven tells the crew to set speed to “maximum warp.” Picard asks if she should give Engineering a heads-up before doing so, but Seven tells Picard there’s no need; it’s all automated now. During “The Next Generation,” Picard would often have to inform La Forge that he was going to push the limits of the Enterprises’ engines, despite the chief engineer’s concerns.
• Captain Shaw is not impressed by Picard or Riker, choosing to not greet them upon arrival and starting dinner before they arrive. Actor Todd Stashwick is not new to the “Trek” universe; he played Torak in the Season 4 episode of “Star Trek: Enterprise” titled “Kir’Shara.”
• Shaw tells Riker he had to purge the “bebop” files when he took command of Titan. Riker is a jazz lover and was shown to play the trombone in several episodes of “The Next Generation.” Shaw says he prefers “structure.” The music playing he’s playing in the background is a piano concerto by Chopin — classical music for a by-the-books captain.
• The “steak” Shaw is eating is blue — and we don’t mean undercooked. We don’t know the significance behind that but we wanted to point it out!
• In a secondary storyline, Raffi Musiker (Michelle Hurd) is working undercover to discover what happened to experimental weapons stolen from the Daystrom Institute. An informant gives her the clue “Red Lady” which she discovers is a red statue of Captain Rachel Garrett that will be dedicated at a Starfleet recruiting center. Garrett was the captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise C, whose fate was explored in the Season 3 “The Next Generation” episode titled “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”
• Riker and Picard make their way aboard the Eleos. While exploring the ship, Riker calls Picard “Captain” and then apologizes, saying “old habits.” Picard later refers to Riker as “Number One” — the way they referred to each other during their Enterprise days.
• Riker is ambushed by an assailant (Ed Speleers) but manages to get the upper hand. When asked by Picard what his relationship is to Crusher, he responds “her son.” So far, the only son Crusher is known to have is Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton), who lived and served aboard the Enterprise-D.
• The credits are filled with easter eggs themselves that will be revealed as the season progresses. The only one that is applicable right now is that display of the Shrike, the giant warship hunting the Eleos.

“Star Trek: Picard” Season 3, Episode 2 Easter Eggs

• We finally get the full name of Ed Speleers character — Jack Crusher. He’s named after his stepfather, Jack R. Crusher. We do a deep dive into the younger Crusher here .
• Among the Eleos’ supplies is a bottle of blue Romulan ale, one of the galaxy’s most inebriating liquors. In Episode 1, Beverly has a glass next to her bed.
• The Shrike opens fire on the Eleos, destroying the shuttle Picard and Riker flew over on. The debris reveals the shuttle’s name — Saavik. Saavik was a Vulcan officer who served aboard the Enterprise-A. She was played by the late Kirstie Alley and later by Robin Curtis.
• The Titan comes to the Eleos’ rescue and attempts to transport Picard, Riker and the Crushers aboard. However, the signal is blocked due to transport inhibitors Picard setup around the bridge. Realizing what he’s done, Picard takes out a phaser and destroys the inhibitors with surprising speed and accuracy, much to Jack’s astonishment. This is a subtle reminder that Picard is in a synthetic body with potentially better reflexes.
• Back on M’Talas Prime, Raffi meets up with her ex-husband, Jae Hwang (Randy Goodwin). Viewers previously met their son, Gabe (Mason Gooding), back in Season 1. In the Season 3 opener, Raffi gets emotional while looking at a photo of their granddaughter.
• Picard, Riker and Jack make their way to the Titan bridge, where they’re scolded by Capt. Shaw. At one point, Ensign Esmar (Jin Maley), the communication officer, calls out “Captain!” Shaw, Riker (who once commanded the Titan) and Picard all respond in unison, “What?”
• Capt. Vadic (Amanda Plummer) has dossiers on all the officers. She hints that Shaw has psychological problems. She also somehow knows that Picard is not human, saying “Admiral Jean-Luc Picard, in the synthetic flesh.”
• Jack Crusher has many aliases, among which is “James Cole.” James Cole is a character from “12 Monkeys,” the show that “Picard” showrunner Terry Matalas previously produced.
• While deep undercover, Raffi meets the Ferengi broker Sneed. Sneed is played by Aaron Stanford, who played James Cole on “12 Monkeys.” Of course, he’s barely unrecognizable under all those prosthetics.
• Sneed tries to break Raffi using the synthetic narcotic Splinter, which is administered via the eye. Given Raffi’s history of substance abuse, she is able to partially withstand its effects. Splinter is name of the technology used in “12 Monkeys.”
• Todd Stashwick, who plays Captain Shaw, ALSO appeared on “12 Monkeys.”
• Raffi’s handler is revealed to be non-other than Worf (Michael Dorn). Worf rescues Raffi by slicing and dicing his way through Sneed’s goons. The Romulan thug has green blood while Sneed’s Ferengi blood is yellow.
• Jack is about to turn himself over to Vadic when Beverly appears on the bridge of the Titan. She has a wordless exchange but it’s enough for Picard to confirm that Jack indeed is his son.

“Star Trek Picard” Season 3, Episode 3 Easter Eggs

• The episode opens with the Shrike hot on the Titan’s tail. Shaw orders the Titan to delve deeper into the nebula in an attempt to shake the Shrike. It’s an evasion maneuver seen in many Trek shows and films, notably “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”
• After the opening credits, a graphic appears that reads “Before.” The scene opens with a digitally de-aged Picard and Riker. They’re older than they were on the Enterprise but younger than the present. They’re celebrating the birth of Riker’s son Thaddeus, who was born on the Titan after Riker became captain. That would date this celebration about three years after the events of “Star Trek: Nemesis” and 20 years before the events of “Picard” Season 3.
• Picard and Riker’s celebration is interrupted when Troi, Riker’s wife and Thaddeus’ mom, messages them with a fussy baby in hand. Riker apologizes and calls her imzadi , which is the Betazoid word for “beloved.”
• Back in the present, Seven of Nine is confined to her quarters for insubordination. There’s a model of the U.S.S. Voyager — the ship that rescued her — on her desk. Ensign La Forge visits her and commends her for helping Picard and Riker, which is something her dad would’ve done. Seven thanks La Forge and tells her to rest, to which La Forge answers, “Yes, Commander Seven” instead of “Yes, Commander Hansen” as a sign of friendship.
• Picard and Beverly finally have a face-to-face conversation about Jack. Picard got Beverly pregnant while on shore leave two months before she left the Enterprise. She never told him because she was afraid his enemies will target their son.
• At one point, Beverly tried to tell Picard about Jack but “two Reman assassins had intercepted the ship in the Donatra sector.” Donatra was the name of the commander of the Romulan warship Valdore seen in “Star Trek: Nemesis” played by Dina Meyer.
• After Raffi regains consciousness, she meets her rescuer/handler. He identifies himself as “Worf, son of Mogh. House of Martok. Son of Sergey. House of Rozhenko, bane to the Duras family, slayer of Gowron.” These are nods to Worf’s complicated lineage. His Klingon father was Mogh, but he was adopted as a boy by Sergey and Helena Rozhenko. Worf eventually aligned himself with House Martok, whose sworn enemies were the Duras family and notably the Duras sisters, who were killed in a battle against the Enterprise in “Star Trek Generations.” In the Season 7, Episode 22 of “Deep Space Nine,” Worf kills Chancellor Gowron for undermining Martok during the Dominion War.
• Jack and Seven discover the Shrike is tracking the Titan via its verterium emissions. Gas leaks are another “Trek” trope. It’s how the Enterprise and Excelsior were able to track General Chang’s cloaked Klingon ship in “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.”
• Jack knocks out the guard stationed outside Seven’s quarters, to which she responds, “You’re insane.” Remember this for later.
• Jack is attacked by the saboteur, who is revealed to be a Changeling, a species of shapeshifters that waged war against the Federation 25 years prior (the aforementioned Dominion War).
• While exposed to toxic verterium gas, Jack has visions of a woman (in the form of Seven of Nine) who beckons to him “find me!” Is he actually insane?
• Meanwhile, Raffi and Worf interrogate Titus Rikka, a criminal played by Thomas Dekker. As a child actor, Dekker appeared as Picard’s imaginary son in “Star Trek Generations.” He also played a holographic child on “Star Trek: Voyager.”
• Rikka is sweating and shaking profusely, which Raffi thinks are drug withdrawals. However, Worf recognizes them as something else. Rikka is also a Changeling who is losing the ability to hold his solid form.
• Worf asks Rikka how long he has been separated from the Great Link. The Link is the collective of Changelings in their liquid forms introduced in “Deep Space Nine.” The Link makes decisions for all Changelings.
• Worf tells Raffi about a schism in the Link and a rogue faction of Changelings that were not able to accept defeat from the Dominion War. It seems they have now infiltrated numerous parts of the Federation. Worf learned about the schism from “a close friend within the Link, a man of honor.” While Worf doesn’t name this friend, he’s referring to Odo (played by the late Rene Auberjonois), the Changeling constable on Deep Space Nine.
• Back on the Titan, Picard tells Riker to stop running and fight, despite the “instinct to be fearful of loss.” Picard is referring to the death of Riker’s son Thaddeus at a young age. Riker tells Picard he’s out of line.
• The Shrike uses the portal weapon to literally turn the Titan’s weapons on itself. The Titan is struck by its own torpedoes. The disabled ship gets pulled deeper into the nebula where it’ll be crushed by a gravity well.

“Star Trek Picard” Season 3, Episode 4 Easter Eggs

• The episode opens on Frontier Day five years prior. Picard is trying to enjoy his lunch at a pub when several Starfleet cadets gingerly approach him and ask him out the Hirogen. The Hirogen were alien hunters native to the Delta Quadrant (think Predators).
• The cadets ask Picard if he sought advice from Admiral Janeway. Janeway and the Voyager crew were the first Starfleet personnel to encounter the brutal race while stranded in the Delta Quadrant.
• With the Titan trapped in the nebula and its systems failing, Riker has a heart-to-heart with his former captain. Riker reveals he lost hope when his son Thaddeus died, and his wife Troi, as an empath, also felt his grief. Riker reveals he went on the mission to get away from Troi. He urges Picard to talk to Jack in the few hours they have left.
• Picard takes Jack to the holodeck where they enter a replica of Ten Forward – the Enterprise bar and later a brick-and-mortar bar.
• Picard offers Jack some Chateau Picard from his own winery. Jack politely turns him down and says he prefers whiskey.
• In order to trap the Changeling saboteur, Shaw tells Seven to find its “pot.” Seven assumes he is NOT referring to cannabis, demonstrating that marijuana is still around in the 25th Century.
• Shaw shows Seven an example of a Changeling “pot.” In the bottom corner of the display is a photo of Odo (Rene Auberjonois).
• Back on the Shrike, Vadic cuts off her hand, which dissolves into a Changeling face. The face instructs her to pursue “the asset,” which we assume is Jack.
• The show jumps back to Frontier Day five years ago. Picard regales the cadets with the story of the Tamarian alien he had to work with despite being unable to understand each other. The events he describes took place in the Season 5 Episode 2 of “The Next Generation” called “Darmok.”
• Another cadet references Jack R. Crusher, Beverly’s first husband. Picard later tells his son about the time he and Jack R. Crusher blindly navigated a micrometeoroid shower in a damaged shuttle together until they got home.
• Shaw interrupts Picard’s tale and reveals he was at The Battle of Wolf 359. The battle is infamous in Trek lore and is depicted in the first episode of “Deep Space Nine.” The Borg, having assimilated Picard, used his knowledge to massacre a fleet of 40 vessels. Among them was the U.S.S. Constance, on which Shaw served.
• Shaw was only a handful of survivors from Wolf 359 (11,000 people died in that single battle). He is still suffering from PTSD decades later.
• Beverly discovers the bio-electrical pulses are actually contractions and the nebula is a life form giving birth. Jack proposes the Titan ride the pulse waves out of the nebula.
• Beverly tells Riker that they’ve encountered species that thrive in space, in which Picard replies, “Farpoint!” Farpoint was the very first mission shown in the series premiere of “The Next Generation,” in which a station was actually an alien life form.
• Riker thinks the plan is too risky, but Beverly invokes Troi’s name, making him change his mind.
• Shaw and Seven work in tandem to open the warp nacelles in order to ride the wave. When La Forge appears and offers to help, Seven is able to deduce that La Forge is the Changeling after she calls her “Commander Hansen” instead of “Commander Seven.”
• With Picard and Jack’s help, the Titan frees itself from the nebula, which gives birth to space babies. Beverly quotes the Enterprise mission, “to seek out new life,” which they have done.
• It’s revealed that Jack was in the bar five years ago listening to his father’s story. Jack asks if Picard had a life outside Starfleet, to which Picard replies, “Starfleet has been the only family I have ever needed,” which crushes Jack.
• Riker reaches out to Troi and apologizes for his behavior.
• Back in his quarters, Jack experiences visions and is once again told by a female voice to “find me.”

“Star Trek Picard” Season 3 Episode 5 Easter Eggs

• The episode opens with Jack massacring all of the bridge crew in a shootout. Luckily, it’s just a vision. “Star Trek” tends to shy away from such explicit violence, but a similar scene took place in Season 2 of “Star Trek: Discovery” when Burnham has a vision of Leland murdering the Discovery bridge crew.
• At the end of his frightening vision, Jack’s eyes turn red and he again hears voices. Is he possessed? We deep dive into his visions here .
• Shaw, Seven, Picard and Riker talk about the Changeling they encountered, who can mimic other species down to their internal organs. Beverly wants to investigate how the Changelings can now bypass the ship’s internal security systems.
• With Starfleet on it’s way to question Picard and Riker, Jack asks if he should find himself a set of restraints. Picard responds, “many a rebel from all reaches of the galaxy have found their way to Starfleet.” This is a foreshadowing of what’s — or more accurately who’s — to come.
• Raffi and Worf spar on the La Sirena, and Worf easily defeats her before taking a meditative stance. He urges patience on her part. They receive a message from Worf’s handler, who denies them access to the Daystrom Station.
• While investigating the criminals who broke into Daystrom, Worf and Raffi pull up a list of suspects. One of them is Krinn. Among the other names on the screen include Morn, a side character from “Deep Space Nine” that frequented the station bar. Morn is a play on Norm, the lovable bar patron from “Cheers.”
• Before turning them over to Starfleet, Shaw chastises Riker and Picard for previous instances when they’ve defied orders/Starfleet Command. He mentions several famous “Enterprise” adventures, including when the Enterprise saucer was “hot-dropped” on a planet (“Star Trek: Generations), throwing the Prime Directive out the window to “snog” a villager on Ba’ku (“Star Trek: Insurrection),, or they time they created a tie paradox in the Devron system (“Star Trek: The Next Generation” series finale.)
• Riker and Picard meet the Starfleet Intelligence officer, who turns out to be Commander Ro Laren. We deep dive into Ro’s past here .
• While dissecting the Changeling, Beverly confirms they can mimic internal organs and do not revert to liquid state after death. They have somehow evolved, she deduces.
• After being interrogated, Picard tells Ro that the Changeling remains are in sickbay. She diverts them to the holodeck, where Picard disables the safety protocols, so he can essentially make it a booby trap. With the protocols disabled, he grabs a live phaser from behind the bar that belonged to Guinan. Guinan was a mentor to Ro aboard the Enterprise.
• After exchanging words and memories, Ro and Picard realize they are who they say they are. They sheathe their phasers and Ro reveals that Starfleet has been compromised by Changelings.
• Worf and Raffi meet the criminal Krinn, a Vulcan gangster. They are forced to fight to the death, and Raffi fatally stabs Worf. Fortunately, it’s a ruse. Worf has learned how to feign death. Krinn gives them a key that will grant them access to Daystrom Station.
• On her way back the Intrepid, Ro’s security team plant an explosive on her shuttle. They beam off, revealing they are Changelings. With seconds left, Ro does a suicide run towards the Intrepid and crashes into their nacelle.
• The Changelings find Jack, who kills four of them with ease. He sees another vision of a red doorway.
• Before leaving for the Intrepid, Ro gives Picard her Bajoran earring. The earring has her entire investigation encrypted within it. They receive a message from Ro’s operatives, who turn out to be Worf and Raffi.
• When Beverly asks Jack how she knew the security team was Changelings, he replies, “I didn’t. I think there’s something very wrong with me.”

“Star Trek Picard” Season 3 Episode 6 Easter Eggs

• The episode opens with the Titan on the run. The ship evades capture by dropping decoy transponders. We learn that in addition to Starfleet, Vadic and the Shrike are on its tail.
• Vadic confirms the Changelings will have vengeance on Frontier Day, which is approximately three days away.
• Beverly discovers that Jack has irumodic syndrome, inherited from Picard. The syndrome drove Picard to have hallucinations and disassociate from reality in the series finale of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” But after the events in Season 1 of “Picard,” he is in a synthetic body and no longer vulnerable to the syndrome. But as Jack is human, his condition will degenerate.
• Picard meets Jack in the holodeck bar. Jack asks how Picard survived irumodic syndrome, to which he replies, “I didn’t” — another reminder that Picard’s human body is gone … or is it?
• Raffi and Worf beam aboard the Titan. Worf thanks Picard for his annual bottle of “sour mead” aka wine from Chateau Picard, which he describes as “quite tart.”
• Seven and Raffi have a slightly awkward exchange in the transporter room, a reminder they used to be lovers.
• Worf and Raffi explain whatever the Changelings stole lies can be tracked in the Daystrom Station manifest. The station houses “experimental weapons” and “alien contraband.”
• Worf, Raffi and Riker beam aboard Daystrom and use the key from Krinn to disable the security system. Worf is glad that Raffi’s ex-lover Seven is not a part of the away team. Worf should know — his ex K’Ehleyr was killed while trying to help him in the “Next Generation” episode “Reunion.”
• Two Echelon-class Starfleet ships arrive at Daystrom with sophisticated tracking technology, forcing the Titan to flee.
• Worf, Raffi and Riker explore the inventory at Daystrom, which Worf calls “Section 31’s most nefarious table scraps.” Section 31 is a critical clandestine division of Starfleet intelligence introduced in “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” but has been around since the time of “Discovery.” A “Section 31” spin-off starring Michelle Yeoh was reportedly in the works several years ago.
• Among the “good stuff” they find: a Genesis device used to terraform dead worlds (seen in “Star Trek II and III), a body scan and/or remains of James T. Kirk (captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise), and a genetically modified “attack” tribble (an irresistibly cute furry alien with extraordinary reproductive capabilities.
• The A.I. system defending Daystrom pulls up files on the away team, including one on Riker. The photo, interestingly, is of a younger Riker from approximately 20 years prior.
• The A.I. system sends a holographic crow, which caws at the away team. Riker notes there is “something familiar” about the crow as they approach the station mainframe.
• As part of the security response, the A.I. system creates a hologram of Professor Moriarty (Daniel Davis), a holodeck villain created by Data to be his intellectual rival in “The Next Generation” episode “Elementary, Dear Data.”
• The Titan flees to Athan Prime, the home of the Federation Fleet Museum, which is overseen by former Enterprise crewmember and current Commodore Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton).
• Geordi beams aboard with his daughter Alandra and gives Beverly a big hug. He addresses his eldest daughter, Sidney, by her first name, to which she replies, “Sir.”
• Picard asks Geordi to clone the Titan’s transponder signal to lure them away from Daystrom, but Alandra reveals that plan won’t work because all the ships in the fleet “talk to each other” and are aware of each other’s location.
• Back at Daystrom, we see a shot of the two ships patrolling the station. There’s an off-screen conversation between the Sternbach and Cole, who are searching for the away team. Sternbach is the last name of Rick Sternbach, the visual designer who worked on “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and several Trek shows.
• Moriarity fires at the away team with live bullets, indicating safety protocols are turned off. Riker notes he is not the same self-aware Moriarity they encountered 30+ years prior. Every few seconds, musical notes punctuate the air. Riker, a trombone player, realizes the notes are to “Pop Goes The Weasel,” the song Data was trying to whistle when Riker first met him in the first episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Riker finishes the tune, which disables the Moriarity hologram.
• Worf, Riker and Raffi reach the main chamber and discover the A.I. system, which ends up being Data (Brent Spiner) or a version of him.
• Geordi initially refuses to help Picard. At best, he’ll be court-martialed. At worst, Starfleet will come after his family, two of whom we have now met. We have yet to meet his wife though she is mentioned in passing.
• Jack takes the captain’s chair next to Seven and looks at the various legendary ships stationed at the Fleet Museum. They include the U.S.S. Defiant (from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”), the U.S.S. Enterprise-A (from the “Star Trek” movies), the U.S.S. Voyager (from “Star Trek: Voyager”) where Seven was “reborn,” the HMS Bounty (the Klingon Bird of Prey used in “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home”). As each of these ships is shown, the musical theme from each respective series or film is played.
• Raffi notes that Data died (after the events of “Star Trek: Nemesis”) and Worf says this cannot be the Data they served with. Raffi says this Data is a hybrid synthetic with an android interface. Somehow, Starfleet was able to take Data’s memories from B4, a more primative android where Data stored his personality. They activate a hologram of Dr. Altan Soong, the son of Data’s creator and the man who created the body Picard inhabits now. He says this Soong golem in Daystrom has a bit of Lal (Data’s daughter), B4, Lore (Data’s evil twin) and Data.
• This may explain why the photo of Riker this Data has on file is about 20 years old — the last time he saw Riker “in person.” However, one would think this Data has access to the most current Starfleet files.
• Worf deduces that Data is protecting the manifest, he is the manifest. Unfortunately, the away team is discovered by Starfleet.
• Shaw, who was an engineer aboard the U.S.S. Constantine, geeks out over meeting Geordi.
• Jack and Sidney steal and install the cloaking device from the HMS Bounty, allowing the Titan to return to Daystrom Station undetected. Geordi and Alandra stay onboard the Titan to make sure the cloaking device works properly.
• Raffi and Worf escape Daystrom but Riker is captured. Geordi meets them in the transporter room and is taken aback by seeing his best friend, Data, 20 years after his death.
• With his daughters’ help, Geordi reactivates Data. All of the personalities manifest, but Data’s comes through strongest. He identifies Geordi, his best friend and calls Picard “captain,” the rank Picard held when Data died.
• Data finally reveals what was stolen from Daystrom Station: the human remains of Picard.
• Riker is interrogated by a Starfleet officer, who turns out to be Vadic. She blackmails Riker into telling Picard’s whereabouts with the one thing he cares about: his wife Deanna Troi.

“Star Trek Picard” Season 3 Episode 7 Easter Eggs

• The episode opens with the U.S.S. Titan hiding in the Chin’Toka Scrapyard. The Chin’Toka system was where several battles of the Dominion War were fought during “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.” Many Starfleet and allied ships were destroyed, and it would make sense that their debris would be in a scrapyard.
• Seven of Nine reaches out to her former Voyager crewmate Tuvok (Tim Russ) for help. The four pips reveal that he has reached the rank of captain.
• Seven deduces that Tuvok is really a Changeling by lying about her neural net. The real Tuvok stabilized her neural net in Season 5, Episode 7 of “Voyager” (“Infinite Regress”).
• Picard, Beverly Crusher and Geordi La Forge turn to the Soong golem for answers. Unfortunately, the Lore personality has taken over. Lore was introduced as Data’s “evil twin” in Season 1, Episode 13 of “The Next Generation” (“Datalore”).
• Despite Geordi La Forge warning Jack Crusher to stay away from his daughter Sidney, the two engage in some flirting. Jack is able to read Sidney’s mind — a new ability he hasn’t demonstrated before.
• The Titan crew sets a trap for Vadic and the Changelings. They make it appear the Titan is derelict and have the Changelings board the ship. Once aboard, they lure them into traps and imprison them in forcefields.
• Beverly Crusher and Picard trap Vadic in sick bay. Vadic reveals the origin of her evolved physiology — she was experimented upon as a prisoner of war during the Dominion War. Want to know more? Here’s everything you need to know about Vadic .
• Lore disables the forcefields imprisoning the Changelings and Jack and Sidney become separated. Jack “possesses” Sidney and kills the Changeling attacking her. This is another one of Jack’s previously unseen abilities.
• Vadic whistles “Three Blind Mice” — another children’s song from Earth (“Pop Goes the Weasel” was played in the previous episode). Her human captor whistled the tune while experimenting on her and the other Changelings.

“Star Trek: Picard” Season 3, Episode 8 Easter Eggs

• Vadic and the Changelings commandeer the bridge of the U.S.S. Titan. She proceeds to cut off the ship’s “eyes” (power), “ears” (communications) and the “road ahead of them” (doors). Trapped with nowhere to go, the Changelings easily hunt down the crew.
• She lines up the bridge crew, which includes tactical officer Mura, communications officer Esmar, science officer T’Veen, Seven of Nine, and Captain Shaw.
• Jack uses his special powers to take over the body of a Titan security officer, but his connection is lost when a Changeling shoots the officer and kills him.
• Vadic gives the crew an ultimatum: deliver Jack Crusher or she’ll start executing the bridge officers one by one.
• Riker and Troi reunite on the Shrike, where they’re both being held prisoner. Riker again calls her imzadi (beloved) and tells her how he came face to face with “bleakness” while trapped in the nebula. He stops short of saying what it felt like, but it’s clear he’s referencing the death of their son, Thaddeus.
• Troi says a Changeling masked as Riker visited her. She joked he was “good in bed and bad at pizza.” One of Riker’s hobbies is making outdoor pizzas, as seen in Season 1 of “Picard.”
• Jack uses his power to take over Mura’s body and input a command override code, but Vadic catches him. She forces Mura and Esmar to their knees. She is about to execute Mura, but points the phaser at Esmar. After Esmar cries out Vadic shoots T’Veen instead. This shocking scene is a play on the “Redshirts always” trope in “Star Trek.” Mura and Esmar are “yellowshirts,” whereas T’Veen is a “blueshirt.”
• Riker and Troi have a heart-to-heart conversation. Riker says they might die aboard the Shrike and “Kestra would have lost everyone,” referencing their daughter. The topic then turns to their dead son. Riker felt immense grief after Thaddeus died, but Troi used her powers to dull that grief. She, in turn, felt everyone’s grief as an empath, which drove a wedge between them.
• Troi reveals she hated Nepethe, the planet they settled on to heal Thaddeus. She wants to move back to the city to drink raktajino  lattes. Raktajino  is a Klingon coffee mentioned throughout “Star Trek.”
• A Changeling guard enters their cell but is stabbed from behind by Worf. Worf professes that he’s “counted the days” since he last saw her, a nod back to when they were romantically involved in the later seasons of “The Next Generation.”
• Jack, Sidney, Beverly and Picard reunite with Geordi. In order to determine whether or not Picard is who he says he is, Geordi asks him what anniversary gift he received six years ago. “A Chateau Picard bordeaux, which you said was too dry,” Picard correctly responds. There’s an ongoing joke this season about the crew not liking Picard’s wine, with Shaw turning down a drink and Worf calling it too tart.
• Jack surrenders to Vadic on the bridge to stop the executions. He reveals he’s holding a device that will kill him if she makes any moves. She cryptically teases him about his powers, and refers to the “red door” he sees in his visions.
• Before they leave the Shrike, Raffi and Worf discover why the Changelings stole Picard’s body from Daystrom Station. They removed the parts of his brain with irumodic syndrome. Remember, Jack also has been diagnosed with irumodic syndrome, which may be giving him his special abilities.
• There’s another battle happening in this episode. Within the mind of the Soong golem, Data and his brother Lore are fighting for dominance, with the latter winning. Data draws upon his memories as Lore takes over. They include a violin concerto (Data played the string instrument several times in “The Next Generation), Sherlock Holmes houndstooth hat and pipe (he enjoyed playing the detective on the holodeck), a tricorder, a holographic crystal of slain crewmate Tasha Yar, a deck of cards (poker was a favorite pastime among the senior crew) and his cat Spot.
• Lore fully takes over and Geordi is distraught at losing his best friend a second time. However, Lore’s win is short-lived. The memories he took from Data transform him. “You took the things that were me, and in doing so, you became me,” a reconstituted Data explains.
• Data regains control of the Titan. Jack uses the device he brought to the bridge, which is not a grenade but a personal forcefield generator. Picard orders the evacuation hatch opened, which sucks Vadic into space. Her body freezes due to exposure and shatters into pieces when it hits the Shrike. The personal forcefield prevents Seven and Jack from being sucked out.
• The Titan then destroys the Shrike and presumably, Vadic and Picard’s remains.
• Despite Vadic’s death, Troi senses “a great darkness” on the ship.
• Data and Geordi help with repairs, at which point Data says, “We’re good here.” Geordi calls out that Data used a contraction, something he didn’t do previously but Lore could. It was one way to discern the two.
• Troi counsels Jack and tells him they’ll open the red door together.

“Star Trek: Picard” Season 3, Episode 9 Easter Eggs

• The song playing at the beginning of episode is “I Can’t Stop Crying” by Will Grove-White” from “Fleabag.”
• Jack says the red blossoms remind him of the trips he took with his Beverly to the Crimson Arboretum on Raritan IV. Showrunner Terry Matalas named the planet after Raritan, New Jersey, near where he grew up.
• The blossoms may be a metaphor for individuals, and the vines a metaphor for what connects them below the surface — a hint of what’s to come.
• Jack described the vines as “purposeful” and “perfect.” There is one species in the universe whose purpose is to seek perfection.
• The female voice from beyond the door beckons: “Hear me. Find me. Fear nothing. We will be together soon, Jack.”
• After her vision, Troi runs out to find Jack’s parents, Beverly and Picard. The sign on the door that closes behind her says “Counselor,” which was her role on the Enterprise.
• It’s finally revealed what’s behind the door: a Borg cube. His parents say it’s impossible, as Jack has never been assimilated and there are no nanoprobes in his system.
• Beverly says “no one has seen or heard from the Borg in a decade,” which directly contradicts the events of “Star Trek: Picard” Season 2, where the Borg asked specifically for Picard’s help.
• Beverly deduces that the Borg passed some organic technology to Jack through Locutus. Locutus is the name Picard took after being assimilated by the Borg 35 years prior. That was depicted in “The Next Generation” Season 3 finale and Season 4 opener “The Best of Both Worlds Part I and II.”
• Jean-Luc wants to tell Jack about the Borg but Troi stops him as there are protocols when threats to the Federation are discovered. Jack is considered “dangerous.”
• Picard speaks to Jack and tells him a Borg “seed” is implanted in him. Jack is distraught after learning he is merely a bee or drone. If you look at the wall behind him, the wall has a honeycomb design.
• He tries to leave but discovers security guards are stationed outside. He uses his ability to possess the security guards. When Picard asks Jack “What is this?” he responds in a very Borg-like answer: “futility.”
• Beverly also tries to stop Jack but the security guards stop her as well. He tells his mother he always thought the voice in his head was her, but now realizes it is the Borg Queen. He commandeers a shuttle and follows instructions from the Queen to “find me.”
• As they watch Jack escape, Picard tells Beverly “he inherited the best of you and the worst of me.” This is a reference to the aforementioned “The Best of Both Worlds” episodes.
• Data tries to comfort Picard by putting his hand on Picard’s shoulder. Picard pats Data’s hand. He did the same gesture to Riker in the Season 1 episode of “Nepenthe.”
• Jack flies to the coordinates the Queen sends him, and a Borg cube appears via a transwarp conduit.
• Geordi and Data make a startling discovery. Whereas assimilated Borg are “receivers,” Jack’s unique DNA makes him a “transmitter.” That’s why Vadic kept referring to him as special.
• Worf notes all of Starfleet is gathered in one location: the Sol system. A map appears with dozens of Starfleet vessels including the U.S.S. Sutherland (whose predecessor appeared in the “Next Generation” episode “Redemption”), the U.S.S. Okuda (named after “Trek” designers Michael and Denise Okuda), the U.S.S. Gagarin (named after the Soviet cosmonaut), the U.S.S. Ibn Al-Haythiam (named after the mathematician), the U.S.S. Drexler (named after “Trek” artist Doug Drexler), the U.S.S. Huygens (named after the Dutch astronomer), the U.S.S. Reliant (whose predecessor appeared in “The Wrath of Khan”) and several other ships.
• The map graphic dissolves into a live-action shot of the ships around Earth Spacedock about Earth. The doors open to reveal NCC-1701-F, the newest U.S.S. Enterprise commanded by Admiral Elizabeth Shelby (Elizabeth Dennehy). More on Shelby’s guest appearance here .
• Shelby’s Frontier Day speech pays homage to the NX-01, the first Enterprise commanded by Jonathan Archer 250 years prior. That Enterprise’s adventures were shown in the series “Enterprise.”
• Shelby is proud to showcase the newest Starfleet technology, Fleet Formation. It allows all Starfleet vessels to synch and act as one, a very Borg-like concept. One of the ships that syncs with the Enterprise is the U.S.S. Pulaski, named after Dr. Katherine Pulaski (Diana Muldaur) who served on the Enterprise-D.
• Picard notes the irony of Fleet Formation as Shelby was introduced as a Borg tactical specialist who really disliked the Borg.
• Jack beams aboard the Borg cube determined to destroy the Queen. She calls him “my child” and “my flesh.” She also names him Regenerati (rebirth) and Puer Dei (Child of God) before settling on Vox (voice), which is also the name of the episode.
• The voice of the Queen belongs to Alice Krige, who reprises her role from “Star Trek: First Contact.”
• Jack tries to kill the Queen, but cannot bring himself to. She assimilates him using tendrils, saying the phrase “Resistance is futile.”
• Geordi and Data discover that the Changelings stole Picard’s human body to extract the Borg genetic code. They infiltrated Starfleet vessels and introduced the code into the transporter system. Everyone who beams on or off-board has the code spliced into their genes, making the dormant Borg drones. Beverly notes this only affects brains still developing, which in human age is 25 or younger.
• This explains why Ro didn’t trust the transporters and decided to take a shuttlecraft to board the Titan way back in Episode 5. She suspected the Changelings were contaminating them — and she was right.
• Picard tries to warn Shelby but it’s too late. The Borg Queen uses Jack to transmit her signal through the entire fleet, activating all the dormant drones, including both LaForge girls, tactical officer Mura and communications officer Esmar. They become Borg and begin taking over the bridge.
• Shelby is killed when activated Borg take over the Enterprise. She is shot twice by two ensigns.
• This also explains why Vadic executed T’Veen instead of Mura and Esmar. As a Vulcan, T’Veen was likely older than 25, as Vulcans age slower than humans. Showrunner Terry Matalas confirmed this theory to TheWrap.
• Geordi is terrified to learn both Sidney and Alandra have turned in Borg and no longer register as human.
• The older, unaffected crewmembers (Picard, Riker, Shaw, Seven) flee the bridge as Esmar takes control of the Titan.
• The U.S.S. Excelsior, a vessel featured in several “Trek” films, manages to regain control but is promptly destroyed by the other Starfleet vessels, including the U.S.S. Hikaru Sulu. The Sulu is named after the original Enterprise helmsman, who ironically later became the captain of the Excelsior.
• The assimilated ships take formation into a shape that resembles DNA helixes or Borg symbols, depending on who you ask.
• The older crewmembers make it down to the maintenance deck with hopes of escaping on a repair shuttle. Shaw is killed in the firefight. With his last breath, he gives command to Seven, finally addressing her as Seven of Nine instead of Commander Hansen.
• There’s a nice moment where Raffi shields/holds back Picard, her former commanding officer. Raffi also decides to stay with Seven, her former lover, onboard the Titan.
• The assimilated fleet approaches Spacedock with the goal of eliminating any remaining Earth defenses.
• Geordi pilots the crew back to the Fleet Museum. They need a ship which is not connected to the assimilated fleet. That ship, of course, is the Enterprise-D.
• Geordi explains that the saucer section, which crashed on Veridian III, was retrieved so as to not violate the Prime Directive and influence the less advanced species in the system. The secondary hull engine and nacelles are salvaged from the U.S.S. Syracuse, another Galaxy-class starship.
• Geordi says “obviously they cannot use the Enterprise-E” and everyone looks at Worf. Worf was the captain of the Enterprise-E, which has befallen some sad fate that renders her unusable.
• Picard assumes command of the Enterprise-D. The computer voice that greets him is that of Majel Barrett Roddenberry, the wife of creator Gene Roddenberry. She also played No. 1 and Nurse Chapel in “The Original Series,” and Lwaxana Troi in “The Next Generation.”
• The crew take their positions on the bridge, including Geordi at the helm, where he started in early episodes of “The Next Generation.”
• As the Enterprise-D sets course for Earth, Picard utters his famous phrases: “Make it so” and “Engage!” He also tugs at the bottom of his tunic, a signature move fans have dubbed The Picard Maneuver.

“Star Trek: Picard” Season 3, Episode 10 Easter Eggs

• The series finale is titled “The Last Generation,” a play on “The Next Generation” — the name of the “Star Trek” series that chronicled the adventures of the U.S.S. Enterprise-D.
• The Star Trek logo at the beginning of the show flickers and turns green as it is “assimilated’ by the Borg.
• Picard and the Enterprise-D crew receive a distress call from Anton Chekov, the President of the Federation. Chekov is the son of Enterprise-A helmsman Pavel Chekov, played by Walter Koenig in “The Original Series.”
• The Enterprise tracks the Borg cube to Jupiter. Riker mentions the Borg hid a transwarp conduit within the planet’s gases, allowing them to enter the Sol system and broadcast their signal.
• Picard says, “What began over 35 years ago ends tonight.” He is referring to the Enterprise’s first contact with the Borg in “The Next Generation” which was hastened by the omnipotent being Q (John DeLancie).
• A wide shot shows how small the Enterprise is compared to the cube. In previous shows, Borg cubes have been compared to small moons. Several antennae protrude from the cube, amplifying its signal to the Starfleet ships surrounding Earth and attacking Spacedock.
• Seven, Raffi and their ragtag group of non-assimilated crew take back the Titan bridge, beaming their assimilated colleagues to a locked transporter room.
• Beverly is able to isolate Jack’s location on the cube. Data offers to go, given his “experience with the Borg.” He’s referring to being kidnapped and altered by the Borg queen in “Star Trek: First Contact.” Picard refuses and has Riker and Worf round out his away team.
• As the ranking officer — a commodore — La Forge is granted command.
• Troi and Riker share an empathic moment together, as he may not return from this mission.
• Picard finds a fully assimilated Jack broadcasting the Borg signal. Jack is wearing an eye prosthetic similar to Locutus’.
• The Borg queen, whose body has withered away, calls Picard by his Borg designation: “Locutus.”
• Aboard the Titan, Raffi realizes the Titan can be released from Fleet Formation if they cloak. Seven tells tactical to upload every prefix code they have for the fleet. With each ship’s prefix code, the Titan can disable their shields. Captain Kirk used this exploit to disable the U.S.S. Reliant’s shields in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”
• Riker and Worf find the beacon controls, but are attacked by drones. Worf dispatches several drones with his sword but is shot. He tells Riker to pick up his sword, but it’s too heavy. Hidden in the hilt is a phaser.
• The Borg cube fires upon the Enterprise. With Worf on the away team, Beverly takes over tactical, firing phasers and photon torpedos with accuracy. “A lot’s happened in the last 20 years,” she tells an astonished La Forge, Data and Troi.
• They locate the beacon at the heart of the cube. Data says he can fly the Enterprise into the cube ala Luke Skywalker and the Death Star in “Star Wars.”
• The fleet destroys Spacedock and Earth is defenseless. Sidney and Alandra destroy the Titan’s cloaking device, leaving the Titan exposed. Jack continues to broadcast orders, saying “concentrate fire on Sector 001.” Sector 001 is the Federation designation for Earth, and the fleet begins targeting all the major cities.
• In an attempt to stop the queen, Picard begins “unplugging” Jack. He then plugs himself into the Collective. Viewers see flashbacks from “The Next Generation” episodes “The Best of Both Worlds Part I and II.”
• Picard pleads with Jack to unplug, but Jack resists. La Forge tells Beverly to destroy the beacon, knowing it will kill Jack, Picard, Riker and Worf.
• Riker bids farewell Troi, saying “I love you, imzadi . We’ll be waiting, me and our boy,” referring to their deceased son Thaddeus.
• Troi empathically hears Riker and is able to discern their location despite the Cube falling apart around them. She also used this empathic tracking ability to locate Shinzon’s cloaked ship in “Star Trek: Nemesis.”
• The away team makes it safely aboard, and the cube — and Queen — are destroyed. With the beacon destroyed, all assimilated personnel regain individual control.
• We then get a captain’s log from Riker, explaining how Beverly, now an admiral and head of Starfleet Medical, devised a way to purge the Borg genetic code using transporter technology.
• By the end of “Picard,” Picard and Crusher hold admiral ranks, La Forge is a commodore, and Riker and Worf are captains. Troi holds a commander rank, while Data presumably never got promoted from his lieutenant commander rank.
• Captain Tuvok (Tim Russ) is alive and formally promotes Seven of Nine to captain, upon the recommendation from Shaw.
• Jay (Raffi’s estranged husband) sends her good news: their granddaughter wants to meet her grandmother. Raffi was looking at her granddaughter’s photo in the first episode.
• Data struggles to process his emotions and seeks counseling from Troi, but goes well over time during their appointments. Troi zones out by researching beach vacation spots, including Trill, Bajor, Malibu (California), Zadar IV, Orlando (Florida) and Kaphar Prime.
• There’s a time jump to a year later. The Enterprise-D is back at the Fleet Museum, where she is shutdown.
• Jack is fast-tracked through Starfleet and receives his first posting aboard the Titan, now re-christened the U.S.S. Enterprise-G.
• Jack’s commanding officers? Captain Seven of Nine and First Officer Raffi Musiker. He tells the helm to set a course for the M’Talas system with phasers and photon torpedos ready. It’s one final self-referring easter egg from showrunner Terry Matalas.
• The Enterprise-D crew close down Guinan’s Ten Forward Bar. Worf has been drinking prune juice, which Guinan introduced him to in “The Next Generation.” He called prune juice “a warrior’s drink.”
• The crew are joined by Picard for a game of poker. This mirrors the series finale of “The Next Generation.”
• In the post-credits, Jack is visited by Q (John de Lancie). We break down the ending and post-credit scene in detail here.

“Star Trek: Picard” is currently streaming on Paramount+

Star Trek: Picard - 21 Easter Eggs And Trek References From Episode 1

By Phil Hornshaw on January 28, 2020 at 12:53PM PST

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Star Trek: Picard rejoins the story of Jean-Luc Picard years after the legendary captain has retired from Starfleet, following the events of Star Trek: The Next Generation and its movies. The story is keenly aware of the history created by various Star Trek series. Picard's time on the Enterprise, his relationship with its crew, and his accomplishments over the years all play a part in Star Trek: Picard .

The premiere episode of Star Trek: Picard isn't just fully aware of Picard's history--it's also full of references that Star Trek fans will recognize from throughout the Star Trek universe. Here's a rundown of every Easter egg and reference we spotted in the first episode of Star Trek: Picard.

Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot's parent company.

Star Trek: Picard News and Features

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1. Data Sings "Blue Skies"

Star Trek: Picard opens with a very particular song: the Irving Berlin track "Blue Skies." Like a lot of the premiere episode, it's a callback to Jean-Luc Picard's relationship with Data. He sang the song during the wedding of Deanna Troi and Will Riker in Star Trek: Nemesis--the film that marked Data's final mission.

2. A Poker Game

The crew of the Enterprise often played poker together throughout the run of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was a game Data enjoyed but struggled to fully understand as he worked at being human. Picard's dream at the start of the episode finds him playing poker with Data once again, although the game seems to have a lot more meaning than just an activity Picard and Data enjoyed.

3. Data's Death

Data and Picard became very close throughout the course of The Next Generation and the subsequent four movies that followed the Enterprise crew. In the final movie, Star Trek: Nemesis, Data sacrificed himself to save Picard--and the Enterprise. Clearly, the loss of Data still troubles Picard even years later.

4. Remnants Of The Borg

Picard and the Enterprise have a long history with the Borg. During The Next Generation, Picard was assimilated by the cybernetic beings, only to be saved by the Enterprise crew. And in Star Trek: First Contact, Picard and the Enterprise put down a Borg invasion of Federation space, in which the Borg tried to use time travel to try to stop humanity's first contact with alien life and assimilate the planet in the past. The Enterprise stopped that attack as well, in large part thanks to Data and Picard, who defeated the Borg queen together. We catch sight of a Borg cube in the opening credits sequence of Star Trek: Picard and it shows up again at the end. The Borg play a part in the story that isn't completely clear by the end of the episode.

5. Picard's Number One

Apart from the dream vision of Data and Picard himself, the first character we meet is Picard's second-in-command--Number One, his pit bull. The dog's name is a reference to Picard's nickname for Commander Riker, who served as the Enterprise's first officer for years. Picard's pitbull is also a bit of a reference to actor Sir Patrick Stewart's real-life work with animal rescue organizations and fostering pitbulls.

6. Picard Chateau And Vineyard

At a few points in the past, we got a look into Jean-Luc Picard's family history. The Picard family owned a chateau and vineyard in France, which was run for years by Jean-Luc's brother Robert--who resented Jean-Luc for leaving the family to join Starfleet. We also saw Jean-Luc living in the chateau and tending the vineyard in the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which looked into Picard's potential future (although that whole storyline was the result of some Q interference). After his retirement from Starfleet, Jean-Luc returned to live in the family home. You won't see Robert or his family, though; in Star Trek: Generations, we learned that Robert and his son René perished in a fire. That makes Jean-Luc the last of the Picard family name (although we don't know what happened to Robert's wife).

7. Tea, Earl Grey

Picard's morning in his home during the premiere includes his favorite beverage: Earl Grey tea. He spent years with the drink on the Enterprise, always ordering "Tea, Earl Grey, hot." In Star Trek: Picard, the former captain acknowledges his years by ordering the tea "decaf." You might also notice that the cup Picard drinks his tea from during his dream sequence with Data is the same type he used on the Enterprise.

8. The Romulan Supernova

As Picard engages in his interview with a Federation journalist, he discusses the Romulan supernova. It's a disastrous event that occurred some 15 years before the show's timeline, in which an exploding star destroyed the planet Romulus and everyone who resided on it. We never saw the destruction of Romulus during The Next Generation or its subsequent movies, but the event was mentioned in a Star Trek series: the 2009 Star Trek directed by JJ Abrams. That movie mentions the destruction of Romulus, which Ambassador Spock tried and failed to prevent. The events resulting from the Romulan supernova winds up creating an alternate timeline, which is where the Abrams films are set, but the fate of Romulus is still a part of Star Trek's "prime" timeline.

9. The Federation's Dunkirk

Picard's interview with FNN delivers a bunch of backstory that sets up where we find Jean-Luc at the start of the show. After the Federation learned about the Romulan supernova, Picard pushed Starfleet to launch a massive armada to rescue the Romulan people. Picard likened the attempt to Dunkirk, in which British civilian ships rallied together to save stranded British soldiers during World War II.

10. Utopia Planitia Shipyards

While the Federation and Starfleet initially agreed to the Romulan rescue effort led by Picard, the plan was abandoned after another tragedy: an attack on Mars. As discussed in the interview, a group of rogue "synths," or synthetic lifeforms, attacked Mars and the Federation's Utopia Planitia shipyards. The shipyards and the rescue armada were destroyed, as was Mars--"it still burns," as mentioned during the interview. Utopia Planitia is a major location for Starfleet: it's where ships including the U.S.S. Enterprise, U.S.S. Voyager (from Star Trek: Voyager), and U.S.S. Defiant (from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) were all constructed.

11. The Tragedy From "Children Of Mars"

We only get a summary of the synths' attack on Mars during the Star Trek: Picard premiere, but you can get a slightly closer look at the event in another show on CBS All Access. That's Short Treks, a series of Star Trek shorts. Most of them are related to Star Trek: Discovery, but the latest episode, "Children of Mars," acts as a prequel to Star Trek: Picard. The attack on Mars resulted in the ban on synthetic lifeforms being built in the Federation.

12. Picard's Relationship With Synthetics

The interview brings up a lot of information about Jean-Luc Picard and makes a bunch of references to his history, some of which are a little more opaque than others. When discussing the attack on Mars, Picard mentions that he disagrees with the ban on synthetic life. Picard has quite a history with synthetics, in fact--he not only was good friends with Data, but in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Measure of a Man," Picard successfully argued that Data was legally a person, rather than Starfleet's property. In other episodes, Picard showed a respect for all life, whether natural or artificial.

13. Data's Paintings

Throughout Star Trek: The Next Generation, Data constantly endeavored to be more human. One of the ways he tried to achieve that goal was through creative expression. He played musical instruments and also tried his hand at painting. Though the two paintings shown in Star Trek: Picard didn't appear on TNG, there were numerous moments in that series in which Data was shown painting.

14. The Captain's Yacht

Picard's vault in the Starfleet archives includes a number of keepsakes from his career, many of which appeared in various Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes and its movies. You can spot a model of the captain's yacht, a small ship attached to the Enterprise-E, which Picard and Data used in their mission during Star Trek: Insurrection.

15. The Stargazer

Another model in Picard's Starfleet archives vault is the Stargazer, the ship Picard commanded before the Enterprise. Picard famously destroyed a hostile a Ferengi vessel at Maxia with a tactic later dubbed "the Picard Maneuver," in which he used warp drive to make the Stargazer briefly appear to be in two places at once. The Stargazer was mentioned repeatedly throughout Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Picard and the Enterprise crew even briefly visited the derelict ship in the episode "The Battle."

16. Klingon Bat'leth

Also on display in Picard's archives vault is a Klingon bat'leth sword, a traditional weapon of the Klingon people. Picard has a long history with the Klingons, previously serving as the Arbiter of Succession for the Klingon chancellor and establishing a relationship, along with his Worf, the Enterprise's former tactical officer, with Klingon Chancellor Gowron.

17. Captain Picard Day

Aboard the Enterprise, school children celebrated Captain Picard Day each year, creating art projects of the likeness of the captain. Picard personally judged a contest to pick the best of the projects, as seen in the TNG episode "The Pegasus." In Star Trek: Picard, we see the banner from Captain Picard Day on display in Picard's quantum archives.

18. Daystrom Institute

When we first meet Dahj, we find out she's been accepted to work at the Daystrom Institute; later in the episode, Picard visits the Institute to try to learn more about whether the construction of a flesh-and-blood synthetic is possible. The Daystrom Institute has been a fixture of cybernetic studies for a while in Star Trek, with branches on several planets. Whenever studying Data comes up, it's often the Daystrom Institute that's involved.

19. Data's Daughter

As the first episode of Star Trek: Picard unfolds, Picard learns that Dahj is apparently the daughter of Data. She wouldn't be the first, though. Star Trek: The Next Generation saw Data attempt to reproduce himself in the Season 3 episode "The Offspring," in which he created a daughter named Lal. Though Lal soon advanced beyond her father in her development and socialization, Data was unable to replicate his own technology sufficiently, and Lal eventually shut down.

20. Bruce Maddox

When Picard talks with Dr. Agnes Jurati at the Daystrom Institute, she notes that she was recruited by and worked with a noted Daystrom cyberneticist, Dr. Bruce Maddox. We've seen Maddox show up in Star Trek: The Next Generation before. In "Measure of a Man," it's Maddox who tries to argue that Data is property of Starfleet, so that Maddox can disassemble and study him. Maddox loses that argument, but apparently went on to continue studying Data (and androids in general) at Daystrom for the rest of his career.

21. The Disassembled B-4

At the Daystrom Institute in Star Trek: Picard, we see the disassembled form of an android that looks like Data: B-4. The android was discovered in Star Trek: Nemesis, making him the third of the androids we've seen that were built by Data's creator, Noonien Soong, in his own image. B-4 was the oldest, a less-sophisticated version built by Soong; he was followed by Lore, who was much more human but unstable; and finally by Data. In Nemesis, Data tried to download his memories into B-4, but B-4's positronic brain couldn't handle the information. B-4 is still around, but has been decommissioned, especially in the wake of the synth revolt on Mars.

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After 57 Years, Star Trek Settles the Truth About Trelane's Godlike Species

Star trek officially brands a surprising deep space nine hero as a war criminal, star trek isn’t supposed to have money: what is latinum.

The second season of Paramount Plus'  Star Trek: Picard has just wrapped up, and for many Trek fans it was another return to well-trodden territory.  Star Trek,  of course, has always recycled themes and plotlines, all the while attempting to treat the established canon with reverence.

In the more than 55 years since  Star Trek first aired, that canon has grown large indeed. With 10 movies and nearly as many live-action series to pull from, the writers of  Picard had a deep well of references and Easter eggs to pull from.

"Let's See What's Out There"

The premiere episode of season two is the first tease the audience gets that the season would more deeply explore Picard's relationship with his mother. "Let's see what's out there," he tells the Academy's newest class of graduates, informing them the quote was one of his mother's favorite phrases.

Related: One Quote From Each Picard Main Character That Goes Against Their Personality

This is not the first time fans have heard Picard use the phrase. Spoken at the conclusion of  The Next Generation's  pilot "Encounter at Farpoint", it seemed no more than an exhortation to adventure.  Picard repurposes the line to have originated with his mother, who also instilled a love of exploration in a young Jean-Luc that his father did not share.  It's a quick moment, but it helps demonstrate how instrumental Picard's mother was in his eventual journey to Starfleet.

Picard's Trophy Room

Transported to a dark alternate universe in which he is a powerful warlord, Picard is disgusted as Q gleefully shows him around his counterpart's trophy room. Festooned with skulls and weapons of the conquered, this scene is chock-full of references to  Deep Space 9 .

The skulls of General Martok and Gul Dukat are mentioned by name, and a piece of Cardassian armor can clearly be seen as Q tells Picard of his deeds in this universe. Also seen is a Ferengi skull, and though the nameplate is not visible, the presence of the Grand Nagus's staff clearly indicates that either Zek or Rom was another of Picard's victims.

Tipton Brothers Deli

After traveling to 2024 to repair the timeline in the third episode, the crew of  La Sirena  splits up.   Captain Cristobal Rios doesn't even have the luxury of solid ground under his feet when he beams into Los Angeles. He materializes in mid-air and falls hard in front of a restaurant called the Tipton Brothers deli.

Related: 10 Best Shows Like Picard

Scott and David Tipton happen to be prolific  Star Trek comic writers, and their inclusion in the third episode is well-earned. Most notably, they wrote the 2017  Mirror Broken  series, which follows the Mirror Universe version of Picard. The show's writers clearly found these comics influential when writing their own version of an alternate Picard.

Sanctuary Districts

Seven of Nine and Raffaela "Raffi" Musiker beam into a run-down area of Los Angeles and are quickly confronted at gunpoint. In the background of the scene is a poster, identifying the area as a Sanctuary District.

Sanctuary Districts first appeared in the  DS9 two-part episode "Past Tense" . That show portrays them as an attempt to combat problems of homelessness and economic hardship, gathering people who were struggling into secure districts.  Picard  captures the same idea, showing the poverty and desperation that defined Sisko and Bashir's experience in their Sanctuary District and giving viewers a taste of the social commentary  Trek  is so known for.

Punk On The Bus

While riding a Los Angeles bus, Seven and Raffi hear a loud, obnoxious song blaring from the back. Seven confronts the man playing it, who apologizes quickly and sheepishly before complying with her demand to lower the volume.

This Easter egg is a fun callback to  Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , where Spock has to administer a Vulcan nerve pinch to subdue the same punk blaring music on a bus in San Fransisco. Played by Kirk Randolph Thatcher in both show and movie, the man has clearly learned his lesson from his encounter with Spock by 2024.

21st Street Mission

In episode four Picard reunites with Guinan, or rather her 21st century counterpart. Aware of her species' unique ability to perceive time, Picard begs her for help as she gathers clothes to donate to a rescue mission near her bar at number 10 Forward Ave.

That mission, as can be seen on the canvas of the donation tent, is the 21st Street mission. This is an unmistakable reference to one of the most famous episodes of  The Original Series , "The City On The Edge Of Forever". Another time-travel story, in the episode Kirk and Spock find themselves stranded in 1930, and seek help at the 21st Street Mission. It's a quick shot, but a fantastic nod to a classic episode.

OV-165 Shuttle

Picard doesn't seem to mind playing fast and loose with the Temporal Prime Directive in the season's sixth episode. Striking up a conversation with his astronaut ancestor to convince her to go through with a critical mission, their eyes drift to a model hanging from the ceiling.

Related: Jean-Luc Picard's 10 Best Relationships

Renee Picard identifies it as the OV-165, a very familiar craft for most Trek fans. The OV-165 is first shown in the opening credits sequence of  Star Trek: Enterprise .  Placed conspicuously between shots of the International Space Station and the first warp capable ship the  Phoenix , it is meant to show the progress of spaceflight between the 90's and 2063. That aligns with the timeline of Picard , which finally gives the ship a designation number.

"I Work In Outer Space"

Episode seven shows the aftermath of Picard's injury at the hands of Dr. Adam Soong, played once again by Brent Spiner . After stabilizing Picard, Teresa questions Rios about whether he and his technology are from space. He replies that he's from Chile, but admits "I work in outer space..."

Another reference to  The Voyage Home,  in which Kirk uses the same line on Dr. Gillian Taylor when she suspects he too is from the future. It's a fun parallel, and continues as Rios brings Teresa and her son onboard  La Sirena with him just as Kirk beamed Taylor aboard his ship. The final episode turns this reference on its head however, with Rios choosing to stay instead of taking Teresa back with him.

Carbon Creek

The eighth episode begins with what turns out to be a flashback, a boy running after his dog Maggie in the woods stumbles across a pair of Vulcans performing an experiment. The boy grows up to be Martin Wells, an FBI agent obsessed with finding proof of further alien contact with Earth, and willing to detain Picard to get it.

At first it seems fairly random that Vulcans would simply be hanging around doing science, 90 years before first contact. But in the  Enterprise  season two episode "Carbon Creek", fans learn that Vulcans had been on Earth since the 1950's, discretely observing humanity to determine if they were ready for first contact. To complete the Easter egg, "Maggie" is the name one of the Vulcan characters in "Carbon Creek" assumes as she attempts to blend in.

Project Khan

As Dr. Soong faces the reality that all his plans have come to naught in the final episode, he reaches into a drawer and fishes out a file. Labeled "Project Khan", he looks gravely at it, pondering whether it has really come to this extreme to preserve his legacy.

Khan, of course, is one of the most famous villains in  Trek history. It's no surprise that his creation would come at the hands of Dr. Soong, whose descendant is responsible for the Augment crisis in  Star Trek: Enterprise's time. The date on the folder, June 1996 is a direct reference to Khan's first appearance in the  TOS  episode "Space Seed". That was the year the Eugenics Wars ended, forcing Khan and his followers to flee Earth.

Next: 10 Best Star Trek Episodes If You Love The Picard Series

• Star Trek: Picard

An exhaustive guide to every Easter egg in 'Picard' Episode 1

The newest Star Trek series is packed with references from the franchise's massive canon. Luckily, we did your homework for you.

Even though Star Trek: Picard is a series that non-Trekkies can watch and still enjoy, the first episode of season 1 — "Remembrance" — is packed with Easter eggs from across the Star Trek canon, and of course, specifically, The Next Generation . The new series is set year is 2399, and the warm and fuzzy 24th century you might remember from The Next Generation has been replaced with something a little more real and naturalistic. But that doesn't mean Jean-Luc's memories of boldly going have changed. The episode is called "Remembrance," and as the Easter eggs prove, Star Trek: Picard remembers where it came from.

Here's an in-depth breakdown of all the Easter eggs and deep-cut references in the very first episode of Star Trek: Picard, "Remembrance," including a few that were revealed during the official Picard aftershow, The Ready Room , as hosted by TNG-alum Wil Wheaton . Warning : Spoilers ahead.

“Blue Skies”

The first shot of interstellar space is set to Bing Crosby singing Irving Berlin's “Blue Skies.” This was the song Data sang at Riker and Troi’s wedding in 2002's Nemesis , the last time we saw any of the cast in Trek canon. At the end of the film, after Data is destroyed, Picard catches Data’s “brother" B-4 absent-mindedly singing the song to himself. The moment implies Data’s essence may have survived, which proves to be a central theme in "Remembrance."

Starship Enterprise NCC-1701-D

Although the saucer section of this ship crash-landed in 1994's Generations , the TNG era Enterprise is back. The ship appeared in all 178 episodes of Next Generation, the aforementioned film, and an episode of Deep Space Nine and Enterprise. Picard marks the ship's 182nd appearance in the franchise. In the aftershow, The Ready Room , former-Wesley Crusher actor Wil Wheaton said of this shot: "I can see my house from here," referencing, of course, that young Wesley was once onboard the Enterprise , too.

Ten Forward and Data’s anachronistic uniform

Data and Picard play poker in a slightly bare-bones version of the Enterprise -D bar and lounge called “Ten Forward.” Ten Forward gets its name because it sits on deck 10 and faces “forward.”

As a tip-off that this scene is probably a dream, Data is wearing a style of Starfleet uniform he would have never worn on the Enterprise-D. We first saw this style (with the muted grey shoulders) in First Contact, circa 2373. The Enterprise-D was destroyed in 2371, and everybody at that point was wearing the more colorful, Next Generation -era uniforms. This is likely an intentional anachronism to let viewers know that all is not as it seems. Director Hanelle Culpepper has revealed in interviews and on The Ready Room , that she originally wanted Jean-Luc in his uniform here, too and that the overall feel of this scene was designed to let you know that things were "off."

Though the entire Next Generation bridge crew played poker throughout the series, Jean-Luc didn’t join them until the very final episode of the series, “All Good Things…" Meanwhile, Data revealing he has five queens in his hand could subtly reference the episode “Cause and Effect.” In that one, Data was secretly reprogrammed to deal out duplicates of certain cards, in order to send everyone a secret message that they were caught in a time-loop.

Data also used to wear a really cool green visor when he played poker in The Next Generation , which he is sadly not wearing here.

Mars Disaster

When Picard relives the attack on Mars, this references several events which are explained later in the episode, but which were first depicted in the Short Treks episode “Children of Mars ."

The dream sequence references First Contact

Starting off in a dream references the most popular TNG film of them all : First Contact . It opens on a flashback in which Picard relives a traumatic event. Here, it’s the death of Data coupled with the Mars attacks. In First Contact, the film opened on him dreaming of his time as a Borg drone, then having a dream within a dream that a servo under his skin was breaking out.

Picard’s dog is named “Number One,” a clear reference to Jean-Luc's first officer, Will Riker. However, a bunch of Starfleet captains have called their Executive Officers “Number One,” including the famous first officer on Pike’s Enterprise. (Thanks to Michael Chabon’s Short Treks “Q&A” we now know her name is Una.)

Chateau Picard

In case you missed the trailers, Jean-Luc is spending his retirement on his family vineyard in La Barre, France. This vineyard first appeared in the episode “Family,” when Picard visited his estranged brother after the events of “The Best of Both Worlds.” Later, in an alternate future glimpsed in the series finale “All Good Things…” Jean-Luc also spent his retirement at Chateau Picard.

Dahj’s boyfriend is Xahean

When we meet Dahj in her Boston apartment, she mentions her boyfriend’s “Xahean” instincts. We first met the Xaheans in the 2018 Short Treks episode “Runaway,” where Ensign Tilly befriends Queen Po, of the planet Xahea. In Discovery Season 2, the planet Xahea and Po were instrumental in helping Pike, Spock, Burnham, and the crew defeat the malevolent AI known as “Control.”

Daystrom Institute

Dahj mentions she has been accepted into the Daystrom Institute, which Picard later visits in this episode. The Daystrom Institute has been mentioned in Star Trek since the original series, though it has never actually been seen. It’s a kind of MIT of the future and it gets its name from a character named Dr. Richard Daystrom, from the TOS episode “The Ultimate Computer.” In that episode, Daystrom invents a super A.I. for Captain Kirk’s Enterprise that goes rogue and tries to kill everyone. References to the Daystrom Institute exist in every series, excluding Enterprise, which takes place before Daystrom would have been born.

I’m from Seattle!

Funnily enough, Dahj is the second Star Trek sleeper agent in three years who believes they are from Seattle. In Discovery season 1, Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif) also thought he was from the Seattle era. Captain Lorca grilled him on this detail, and eventually, we found out Ash was not from Seattle. At all.

Borg Cube and eye in opening credits

It’s probably too early to speculate about the opening credits for Picard — there are undoubtedly some secret Easter eggs here, it’s just not totally clear at this point what those are. Yet.

Two direct references are already clear. There's a Borg cube, the giant starships operated by the cybernetic hivemind race famous for assimilating Picard in “The Best of Both Worlds.” We also seem to zoom into an eye, which, directly echoes the first shot of *First Contact*, which began inside of Jean-Luc's eye and then pulled back to reveal he was on a Borg ship.

Opening theme music references the TNG classic, "The Inner Light" and, the 1979 Star Trek: The Motion Picture score

The first instrument we hear for the main musical theme of Picard is a flute. In The Ready Room , contemporary Star Trek composer Jeff Russo says he wanted to use a flute to reference Picard's past, specifically the Ressikan flute from the Morgan Gendel-penned TNG episode, "The Inner Light," in which Picard learns to play an alien flute. However, because a Ressikan flute "doesn't exist in the real world," Russo says he decided to use a Piccolo flute. For what it's worth, official Ressikan flute replicas were produced, though they're kind of hard to ahold of now.

Russo also mentions that, like his theme for Discovery , it was also important to bring the main theme back to something familiar. That's why we hear a few bars of the famous Star Trek: The Next Generation main title theme at the end, albeit, slowed-down and softer. Though made famous in 1987 by TNG , this theme was originally composed by long-time Trek composer — the late Jerry Goldsmith —for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. To date, Star Trek: The Motion Picture is only Star Trek film score to have been nominated for an Academy Award.

“Don’t pretend you don’t speak French”

Picard speaks French to Number One, which is pretty funny considering Picard didn't actually speak in French all that much in TNG . Though, in the season 2 episode "Elementary, My Dear Data, " Picard totally says "Merde" which is "shit" in French. He also used to say "sacre bleu" in the very early TNG comics.

Laris and Zhaban

Jean-Luc’s Romulan housekeepers are named Laris and Zhaban, and their backstory comes from a very recent comic miniseries called Star Trek: Picard: Countdown . In issue #2, we learn Laris and Zhaban were members of the Romulan secret service — the Tal Shiar — but defected because they fell in love with each other and really liked Picard. When Laris tells Picard she remembers what he did during "Remembrance," she's referencing him standing up for her specifically, but also for saving a bunch of other random aliens, too.

News in the future

While it might seem jarring to see a contemporary-ish journalist interviewing Picard, there are several precedents for this. In the final episode of Voyager , in an alternate 2404, Janeway watches a news broadcast similar to the one seen this episode. In Generations , journalists interview Captain Kirk during the launch of the Enterprise-B . And in Deep Space Nine, Jake Sisko's eventual vocation was that of a journalist.

Tea, earl grey – decaf!

Picard has clearly switched from drinking a bunch of caffeine like in the old days. Jean-Luc's tea preferences aare legendary, but there's only a handful of times he actually ordered Earl Grey on The Next Generation . (In fact, he only speaks the exact order 11 times out of 178 episodes and four movies.) The "decaf" thing might be a subtle reference to the Season 6 episode "Lessons," in which Picard's then-girlfriend Nella Daren tells him he shouldn't be drinking a stimulant at night.

The news montage

During the interview, we get some rapid-fire Easter eggs of old publicity photos from The Next Generation and the various movies. This includes:

• A season 4 publicity photo of Picard
• A production still of Worf and Picard from the Season 3 episode "Sins of the Father." (This is when Picard became the Klingon Arbiter of Succession.)
• A promotional photo of Picard in a movie-era dress uniform from Insurrection.

Rescue armada, Rogue Synth Attack, and the Romulan Supernova

The Romulan supernova references the events of the Star Trek 2009 reboot, in which Spock tells Kirk that a supernova in the future became a huge threat to the Romulan people. This event created an alternate past, where the reboot movies reside. In Picard , we learn why the Federation didn't actually help Spock out: Picard had planned a rescue armada, which was sabotaged by the Rogue Synthetics. Again, the comic book series Star Trek: Picard: Countdown , details Picard's efforts.

In "Remembrance," we learn synthetic lifeforms destroyed the Utopia Planitia Shipyards. This means Picard is living in a world where androids are illegal, and he quit his job because a huge armada was destroyed. Picard saying "It was no longer Starfleet!" is not the first time he's been mad about Federation policy. In Insurrection, Picard went against orders when he found out a group of aliens native to the planet Ba'ku were being forcibly relocated.

"No legacy is so rich as honesty"

You didn't think you'd get through the comeback of Jean-Luc Picard without a Shakespeare reference, did you? Picard asks his dog "who said that, Number One?" The answer is: Mariana in Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well.

Picard's new life in "The Inner Light."

"Have you ever been a stranger to yourself?"

Dahj asks Picard if he's ever been a stranger to himself. He replies, "Many, many times."

Hardcore Trekkies can think of at least three: In "The Best of Both Worlds," Picard's identity was taken from him and was supplanted by Locutus of Borg. In "The Inner Light," because of a telepathic link with an ancient probe, Picard believed he was an iron weaver named Kamin on the long-dead planet Katan. Finally, in "Chain of Command," after being tortured by the Cardassians, Picard lost nearly his entire sense of self-worth.

Data painting and Picard’s second dream

In Jean-Luc's second dream, both he and Data wear TNG -era uniforms from roughly Season 6 of The Next Generation . This is when Data paints the image of his daughter and learns he can dream.

San Francisco

Since 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture , Starfleet Academy, and Starfleet Headquarters have been located in the Bay Area. Captain Kirk and the crew also visit the area in the past in The Voyage Home .

Starfleet archives and Picard's storage unit

Picard's items in the Starfleet archives are a treasure trove of Easter eggs. Here's all of this stuff:

• A model of the USS Stargazer. This was Picard's ship before the Enterprise . He had a yellow model like this in his Ready Room in TNG . This one looks more like the real Stargazer does in the TNG season 1 episode "The Battle," which is where we learned about "The Picard Maneuver."
• Klingon Bat'leth. It's unclear if this Bat'leth was a gift from Worf, but Picard had a lot of dealings with the Klingons, so it could have been from anyone.
• Maybe a huge Shakespeare book . It's not totally clear, but it looks like one of Picard's big books that he kept in a glass case in his Ready Room is here, too.
• Enterprise-E model. This was the starship Picard commanded after the Enterprise-D was destroyed. The Enterprise-E has never appeared in a Star Trek TV series, only in films. So this is its TV debut.
• Captain Picard day banner. In the Season 7 episode "The Pegasus," we learned that kids on the Enterprise celebrated "Captain Picard Day," this banner is from that episode.
• Captain’s Yacht. Another spaceship model we see is Picard's "Captain’s Yacht." This was a detachable spacecraft that was part of the Enterprise-E . Though not mentioned on-screen, the Captain's Yacht was named the Cousteau , in honor of the oceanographer.
• Enterprise-D model. This is a no-brainer. When Picard is looking at the painting he pulled out of storage, we see a model of the Enterprise-D behind him. You know what this is.

The Ready Room also revealed there were a few items in this room that we didn't get a good look at, including what looks like pieces of the Kurlan Naiskos; an ancient artifact Picard was gifted in the TNG episode "The Chase." There's also an award from the "Children of Tama," an alien race from the episode "Darmok," who somewhat famously, only speak in analogies and metaphors.

Credit: CBS All Access, 'The Ready Room'

The Ready Room also revealed that there's also set of leather-bound Shakespeare books and another award from the "Betazoid Loyalists." Betazoids are a telepathic alien race, and of course, Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), the ship's counselor on the Enterprise was half- Betazoid. Troi is set to appear in a forthcoming episode of Picard .

Data’s daughter

The mysterious painting that predicted Dahj's existence is titled "Daughter." But Data had a more literal daughter in the Season 3 episode, "The Offspring," where he created an android named Lal and allowed her to choose her own gender and appearance.

Lal had a really hard time adapting to humans. Essentially, she broke down because Data wasn't able to stabilize her positronic net. The first episode of Picard makes a big deal about how duplicating the science that created Data was nearly impossible. Even Data himself wasn't able to pull it off.

Dahj uses a computer just like Data

When Dahj hacks into the computer network of Earth, she accesses information at tremendous speed, exactly like Data "reads" in several episodes of The Next Generation .

“He sacrificed his life for me”

Picard tells Dahj that Data died to save him. This references the climax of Nemesis, where Data detonated a bomb aboard a Romulan ship while remotely beaming Picard out of danger.

Xenobotantist

Dahj says she has memories her father being a Xenobotanist, who studies extraterrestrial plants. In the Season 2 premiere Discovery , Paul Stamets mentioned being friends with a xenobotantist on the classic Enterprise .

The two shows take place a century apart, but it is interesting that both shows mentioned a xenobotantist off-handedly. What's more, we glimpsed orchids in her apartment at the top of the episode. She claims to have been named after a specific variety of the blossom, so perhaps there is some truth to the backstory of her "real parents?"

Sentient flesh-and-blood android

When Picard visits Dr. Agnes Jurati(Alison Pill) at the Daystrom Institute, she tells him that it will take about 1,000 years for current technology to make a fully sentient flesh-and-blood android. Funnily enough, that number is awfully close to where the time-skipping crew of Discovery will end up in Season 3.

The android we see in pieces in Dr. Jurati's the drawer is not Data, but his "brother" who actually predates Data. Jurati points out that B-4 wasn't able to function after a certain time, which seems to jibe with what Dr. Soong (Data's creator in TNG) claimed about his early attempts at creating an android. B-4 was randomly discovered in Nemesis and aided Data and the crew in that movie.

Bruce Maddox

Jurati says Bruce Maddox recruited her "out of Starfleet." He's a roboticist fascinated with Data, who later becomes his pen pal. There's more to be said about their relationship, which you can read here .

Romulan reclamation site is a Borg cube

At the end of "Remembrance," we cut to something called the "Romulan Reclamation Site," which is actually a huge Borg cube. The last time we saw Borg cubes was in the Voyager finale. The Borg are a hivemind, so, at this point, it's not clear what the Romulans are doing with the ship, nor what Dahj's "sister" Soji is doing there. Given that he's hot on her trail, it doesn't look like Picard's going to be able to escape running into the Borg again.

Star Trek: Picard is streaming now on CBS All Access. The next nine episodes of Season 1 will drop on Thursdays.

This article was originally published on Jan. 23, 2020

Easter Eggs In Star Trek: Picard Season 3

After two seasons of half-hearted attempts to endear audiences to a new cast of supporting characters, the final ten episodes of "Star Trek: Picard" will reunite the Starfleet legend with his old crew from "Star Trek: The Next Generation." 

Season 3 of "Picard" is essentially a fifth "The Next Generation" movie and a third attempt at giving one of the most popular casts from "Star Trek" a satisfying farewell. Not that there was anything wrong with the first try, of course, as the series ending "All Good Things..." still ranks amongst the best TV finales of all time. However,  "Star Trek: Nemesis"  was such a bummer that "Star Trek: Picard" spent most of Season 1 attempting to redeem it, and fans weren't exactly wild about how that went, either .

As such, Season 3 of "Star Trek: Picard" sees showrunner Terry Matalas spilling over the toybox and giving fans what they always want — more of the same thing they liked 20 years ago. That means a full "The Next Generation" cast reunion, nostalgia-fueled marketing, and, of course, about a million Easter eggs to reward longtime Trekkies for their encyclopedic knowledge of the canon. We've put our decades of obsessing over "Star Trek" minutiae to the test cataloging as many winks, nods, and name-drops as we can find in "Picard," from the obvious to the extremely obscure. Here are all the Easter eggs fans may have missed in "Picard" Season 3.

The season premiere wastes no time citing The Wrath of Khan as an inspiration

The series opens with the text "In the 25th Century..." in stylized blue typeface over black. This will be familiar to fans of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," which begins with the phrase "In the 23rd Century..." in that same print. This is the first signal that this season of "Star Trek: Picard" (particularly Episode 1) will borrow liberally from the popular film. In addition to a few plot beats throughout the season, the series has a definite aesthetic fondness for the entire "The Original Series" movie era.

There are several subtle nods in the production of the season premiere alone. The alarm klaxon in Beverly Crusher's ship indicating a security breach is the same one that sounds when Spock's quarters are invaded in "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock." Likewise, the style of the jacket that Beverly wears in the episode's teaser is reminiscent of the away team jacket from "The Wrath of Khan," which has a similarly broad collar. Later, when we get a look at the redesigned hand phasers, we can see that they've reverted to something closer to the swept-back models from the classic era, very much like those seen in "The Search for Spock" and "The Undiscovered Country."

Of course, there's also the design of the USS Titan-A, which Redditors have identified as a Neo-Constitution Class refit. It cuts a silhouette that's closer to the refit Constitution-Class of "The Original Series" films than any of "The Next Generation" era ships, and throughout the season, it appears that rectangular warp nacelles have come back into fashion at the turn of the 25th century.

The series premiere of Picard gets a nod in the season's opening minutes

Season 3 of "Star Trek: Picard" is plainly designed to be consumed independently from the first two seasons of the series. Most of the original characters introduced earlier are absent or have reduced roles, and there's even a new opening title sequence. Still, the series does make a subtle acknowledgment of its own origins.

Our first images of the season are a brief montage of beautiful and peaceful images of stellar phenomena, with an early 20th-century ballad playing underneath it. This is also how the first episode of the series, "Remembrance," begins. In that episode, the soundtrack was "Blue Skies" by Irving Berlin, as performed by Bing Crosby — a song that Data sang at Riker and Troi's wedding in "Star Trek: Nemesis." Season 2 of "Picard" also uses a 20th-century ballad in its opening episode, in that case, "Je Ne Regrette Rien" by Edith Piaf.

This time, our opening number is "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" by The Ink Spots. This tune has no prior history with "Star Trek," but might be familiar to gamers in the audience, as it features in the "Fallout" series . It was the center of a TikTok meme in 2022 , in which users painted their noses and flared their nostrils as if they were the singer's mouths. This is probably — unrelated.

Fans are prepared to meet Beverly Crusher before she appears

Episode 1's first scenes are set aboard an unfamiliar starship, the Elios, where the camera pans across a cluttered desk. Eagle-eyed fans will quickly put together that this workspace belongs to Dr. Beverly Crusher, thanks to a number of obscure visual clues. 

These include classic drama masks (recalling Crusher's love of theater) and the same sort of flowers that she tends in her quarters in "The Next Generation" episode "Cause and Effect." Her computer is playing back one of Captain Picard's log entries from "The Best of Both Worlds," and the following log in the queue is the one that opens "Encounter at Farpoint," the premier episode of "The Next Generation." She has a plaque awarded to a medical away team as honorary citizens of Cor Caroli V, likely in recognition of a mission that we hear about (but never actually see) in "The Next Generation" episode "Allegiance." 

Since these are all pretty obscure references, we then pan down to a more obvious one — the foot locker of Beverly's late husband, Lieutenant Commander Jack Crusher.

Picard's office is a The Next Generation museum

Just as in previous seasons of "Star Trek: Picard," Jean-Luc's home in La Barre, France, displays a number of artifacts that are familiar to Trekkies. A few of these items receive some special attention in the scene where Picard does some spring cleaning with his girlfriend, Laris. 

First, of course, is the large painting of the USS Enterprise-D that used to hang in his ready room in "The Next Generation," which he considers giving to Geordi La Forge and the Starfleet Museum. Just below it there's also a sextant on the mantle that may be the one from Picard's quarters. The Mintakan tapestry from "Who Watches the Watchers" that used to drape over his chair on both Enterprises still adorns the chair behind his desk at home. There's a Bajoran memento, gold models of both Enterprise-D and Enterprise-E, and, finally, his Ressikan flute from "The Inner Light," perhaps the most precious of all his mementos as it is his only keepsake from his lifetime of memories on the long-dead planet Kataan.

Later, he sits handwriting a note (whose print we don't get a good look at), and the Kurlan naiskos — a precious archeological artifact and a gift from his mentor Professor Galen — can be seen on his table. We get one additional reference here, as the authorization code that Picard uses to decrypt Beverly's message is "Picard 4 7 Alpha Tango," the same security code that he uses to activate the self-destruct sequence on the Enterprise-E in "Star Trek: First Contact."

Riker and Picard's conversation has nods to multiple past Star Trek stories

After receiving Beverly's encrypted distress call, Picard meets up with his old friend Riker at the Ten Forward lounge in Los Angeles. While reminiscing, Riker mentions that the crew of the Enterprise had previously used Beverly's "myriad" codec to encrypt their transmissions while on a mission to Rigel VII. However, Rigel VII is a planet whose first and only appearance is in the original "Star Trek" pilot, "The Cage," from 1965 (though this footage would later be reused in the classic 1966 two-parter "The Menagerie"). The incident to which Riker refers has never been depicted or mentioned before on screen.

The "hellbird" virus that offers the final clue to decoding Beverly's location is another new addition to the canon, a background plot retconned into "The Best of Both Worlds." We learn that the Borg attempted to foul the Enterprise's navigation using a computer virus while Picard was held captive as Locutus of Borg.

References to never-before-mentioned incidents such as these are a pleasant reminder that our heroes have had adventures beyond those that have been the center of existing "Star Trek" episodes and that even the stories we know have complications to which the audience isn't always privy. The Enterprise is a big ship, after all, in an even bigger galaxy.

Frontier Day is celebrating Star Trek's least-loved prequel series

When Picard summons Riker to the Ten Forward bar in Los Angeles, we learn that there is an upcoming celebration planned for Frontier Day, described as Starfleet's 250th anniversary. For this date to line up with where we appear to be in the show's timeline, it would have to be a celebration not of Starfleet's founding, but of its first deep space mission, which launched in 2151 under the command of Captain Jonathan Archer. 

The adventures of this first Starship Enterprise (also known as the NX-01) are the subject of the prequel television series "Star Trek: Enterprise," which aired on UPN from 2001 to 2005. Out of the five "legacy" live-action "Star Trek" series, "Enterprise" is the one that tends to get the least love from the current crop of creators, though there is the occasional nod to its historical significance in the universe, such as the christening of Archer Spacedock on Season 4 of "Star Trek: Discovery."

Incidentally, the souvenir starship models up for sale in Ten Forward appear to be items from the Eaglemoss Collection of "Star Trek" starships. Eaglemoss declared bankruptcy during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic after producing over 400 unique starship models from across the "Star Trek" canon.

M'Talas Prime brings showrunner Terry Matalas full circle

M'Talas Prime, the neon-lit city planet where Commander Raffi Musiker is working undercover for Starfleet Intelligence, is named for Picard showrunner Terry Matalas, who also wrote this episode. However, he didn't name the planet after himself — the planet was first introduced in dialogue on a 2002 episode of "Star Trek: Enterprise" by showrunner Brannon Braga, for whom Matalas was working as an assistant. Matalas would return to "Star Trek" years later to become co-showrunner of "Picard" Season 2 with Akiva Goldsman before finally taking the reins for its final run.

Matalas' fingerprints are all over this season. Fans of his previous series, Syfy's "12 Monkeys," will recognize the actor playing Captain Shaw. That's Todd Stashwick, who played the villainous Deacon on "12 Monkeys." He also guest starred on a 2004 episode of "Star Trek: Enterprise" as Talok, a Vulcan officer who turns out to be an undercover Romulan spy. Don't be surprised if you see a few other cast members from "12 Monkeys" crop up over the course of the season.

The arrival on the Titan mimics famous sights and sounds from Star Trek films

Picard and Riker's shuttle approach towards the USS Titan is very evocative of similar sequences in which Captain Kirk and company return to the refitted USS Enterprise in the various chapters of the original "Star Trek" film series. Once Picard and Riker are aboard the Titan, references to "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" continue as a crewman blows into a digital boatswain's whistle to signal their arrival. The same ritual is performed when Kirk is welcomed aboard the Enterprise in "The Wrath of Khan," and the prop used is almost identical to the one played by Yeoman Burke in "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country."

The influence of the "The Original Series" era of "Star Trek" films extends to non-diegetic sound choices as well. The arrangement of the musical score when Picard and Riker enter the bridge of the Titan — and the entire sequence of the ship's departure from Spacedock — are extremely reminiscent of James Horner's score from a parallel scene in "The Wrath of Khan." Though composer Stephen Barton also incorporates an original motif for this series and Jerry Goldsmith's famous theme from "The Motion Picture" and "The Next Generation," his arrangements evoke the feeling of "The Wrath of Khan" and "The Search for Spock" for viewers who may not recognize it outright. 

If you want to hear the inspirations for these compositions, listen to "Enterprise Clears Moorings" from "The Wrath of Khan" soundtrack. There's even a brief quote from Cliff Eidelman's score from "The Undiscovered Country" as the ship emerges from the space dock doors.

Raffi's search for the Red Lady is an Easter egg hunt of its own

When Raffi asks the computer to name all the "big events" coming up in the next few months (an pretty ridiculous request considering we're talking about the entire galaxy here), the computer displays a whopping three results. First, the Gratitude Festival, a Bajoran holiday first seen in the "Deep Space Nine" episode "Fascination." Empire Union Day is a Klingon holiday mentioned only in a quasi-educational audio tape called "Power Klingon," released in 1993 as part of a series of books and tapes about the Klingon language by its inventor, linguist Marc Okrand. Long out of print and remembered only by those who study the language , this is about as deep as deep-cut references get.

The "Red Lady" Raffi learns about from her contact on M'Talas turns out to be a codename for a statue being dedicated at a Starfleet Recruitment Center. The statue honors Captain Rachel Garrett, commander of the USS Enterprise-C, whose only appearance is in "The Next Generation" episode "Yesterday's Enterprise." Garrett is killed in battle while coming to the aid of a Klingon colony under Romulan attack. This is a more pivotal moment in history than it seemed, as Garrett and her crew's sacrifice helped to avert decades of war. 

Also on-screen during this scene are images of a few starships that have not made canon appearances before, including the Odyssey-Class USS Enterprise-F, which was designed via a fan contest for the video game "Star Trek Online."

The show's credits are loaded with hints and references

Even the end credits of "Star Trek: Picard" offer a few Easter eggs, some of which don't become apparent until after they've been paid off later in the season. To avoid spoilers, we'll highlight just one, which doesn't require any foreknowledge to interpret. Under the co-executive producer credits, a few staves of musical notation are briefly highlighted. It's a melody in 6/8 time in the key of D Major. If you can read music, you might recognize this tune as "Pop Goes the Weasel," which Trekkies will remember is the song that Data is trying to whistle when Will Riker first befriends him in "Encounter at Farpoint." Riker fondly recalls this moment after Data's death in "Star Trek: Nemesis."

Of course, there's the music that plays under the credits themselves, which contains Jerry Goldsmith's theme from the most beloved of "The Next Generation" films, "Star Trek: First Contact." Like in the end credits of that film, it eventually segues into Goldsmith's tried and true "Star Trek Main Title" fanfare. Once the animated credits have ended, the final set of closing credits are displayed in the blue typeface used in the credits for "Star Trek: The Next Generation." This same font was borrowed for the credits of "Star Trek: Lower Decks," which is likewise awash in "The Next Generation" nostalgia.

Shuttlecraft Saavik pays tribute to a fan favorite

In the opening episode of Season 3, Admiral Picard and Captain Riker commandeer one of the USS Titan's shuttlecraft for an unauthorized rescue mission to Dr. Beverly Crusher's ship, the SS Eleos. However, In the following chapter, "Disengage," the shuttle is destroyed. As the wreckage flies towards the camera, we get a clear look at the shuttle's name: the Saavik.

The vessel's namesake is a junior officer introduced in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," where she was portrayed by Kirstie Alley in her first major film role. Lt. Saavik was Spock's protégé and seemed positioned to take his place as a regular member of the Enterprise crew after Spock's death at the end of that film. However, when Spock actor Leonard Nimoy decided not to leave the franchise, Saavik was gradually given smaller roles (and a different actor, Robin Curtis) in the next two films before disappearing altogether. That is, until a recent official "Star Trek" franchise Instagram post revealed that Saavik eventually rose to the rank of captain and took command of the first USS Titan in the late 23rd century, making the shuttlecraft's name a tribute to her legacy.

In our universe, the original actress to play Saavik, Kirstie Alley,  passed away from colon cancer in December 2022 , and the shuttle may have been christened in her memory.

Ferengi broker Sneed has some famous friends

Any time you see a wall of text on a display in "Star Trek," you're bound to find a few Easter eggs. "Disengage" features quite a few in the criminal record for the Ferengi gangster Sneed. Sneed's list of known associates includes some familiar names from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." Quark of Ferenginar is, of course, the series' nefarious bartender, though by this point in the "Star Trek" timeline he's also the owner of a franchise of bars and gambling establishments bearing his name, as seen on "Star Trek: Lower Decks" and in previous seasons of "Picard." Brunt is Quark's nemesis from the Ferengi Commerce Authority, played by Star Trek's man of a thousand faces, Jeffrey Combs. Morn of Luria is Quark's most steady customer, appearing in 93 episodes of "Deep Space Nine" and never speaking a word.

The final name on Sneed's list of known associates is Thadiun Okona, a smuggler and playboy who first appeared in the infamously campy episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" called "The Outrageous Okona" and has since appeared in animated form on both "Lower Decks" and "Star Trek: Prodigy." We can now add a reference in "Picard" to his surprisingly illustrious resumé.

As for Sneed himself, he's portrayed by Aaron Stanford, who starred as James Cole on "Picard" showrunner Terry Matalas' previous series, "12 Monkeys." The name James Cole also appears on Jack Crusher's list of aliases in this episode.

T'Luco's rap sheet references Star Trek Online

While investigating the destruction of the Starfleet Recruitment Center, Commander Raffi Musiker looks into the criminal record of the Romulan outlaw Lurak T'Luco, who Starfleet has named as the perpetrator. Raffi disagrees, believing him to be too small time for such a serious crime. Over Raffi's shoulder, we get a quick look at T'Luco's history, which references two worlds that have never been seen in canon but nevertheless have long histories in the "Star Trek" franchise.

The planets Vendor and Rator III were both first mentioned in a 1973 episode of "Star Trek: The Animated Series," entitled "The Survivor." The shapeshifting Vendorians introduced in that episode wouldn't make another appearance until "Lower Decks" brought them back for a gag in 2020 , but Rator III has taken on a more important role in "Star Trek" history via the massively multiplayer role-playing game "Star Trek Online." 

In the game's backstory (expanded upon in the tie-in novel, "Star Trek Online: The Needs of the Many") Rator III briefly becomes the seat of the Romulan Empire after the destruction of Romulus. Though "Star Trek Online" is not considered canon, this Easter egg would seem to verify Rator III's location and prominence within the shattered Romulan Empire.

Amanda Plummer is a Star Trek legacy

Season 3 of "Star Trek: Picard" pays homage to the style and tone of the original six "Star Trek" feature films, so it's only appropriate that the season's antagonist be cut from the same cloth as those classic movie villains. The casting of Amanda Plummer as the dastardly Captain Vadic is surely no accident — her late father,  Christopher Plummer, portrayed the Klingon General Chang in "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" in 1991. Their characters have no direct relation, but there are definitely some stylistic connections beyond their actors' family ties. Both antagonists plainly relish in their villainy, indulging in flowery speeches and theatrical intimidation.

The fact that both Chang and Vadic twirl around in their big captain's chairs and order their crews to open fire with casual flicks of the wrist might just be a coincidence, or it could be a knowing tribute from a daughter to the father in whose footsteps she treads. However, it's almost certainly deliberate that, during Vadic's menacing viewscreen conversation in "Disengage," the sound designers for "Picard" have brought back the same ominous communications klaxon used to punctuate General Chang's hails in "Star Trek VI." It's exactly the sort of detail that someone would only notice if they'd watched "The Undiscovered Country" a dozen times — which, of course, we have, and we appreciate it.

Little production flourishes like this, combined with Plummer's performance, make Vadic a delightful throwback to the franchise's illustrious past.

Beverly and Jean-Luc's split has echoes of The Wrath of Khan

"Picard" Season 3 isn't shy about borrowing from "The Wrath of Khan," but the reveal of Jean-Luc's long-lost adult son might be the most blatant reference to the franchise's most popular film. In "Star Trek II," the audience learns that Kirk fathered a son before the events of "The Original Series," but that the boy's mother, Dr. Carol Marcus, retained sole custody in order to assure him a stable upbringing. In "Picard" Season 3's third episode, "Seventeen Seconds," we finally hear from Dr. Beverly Crusher about her decision to drop off the map and raise their son alone rather than have Jean-Luc be a part of his life.

While telling her tale, Beverly also name-drops a few curios from the "Star Trek" universe. Her last date with Jean-Luc was on Casperia Prime, a planet mentioned on Deep Space Nine as being "The Vacation Capital of the Horvan Sector." Both DS9's Jadzia Dax and Julian Bashir have planned to visit there but neither actually made the trip, and thus the audience has never had a first-hand look. Beverly also mentions the Donatra Sector, which shares the name of a Romulan Commander from "Star Trek: Nemesis."

It's also worth mentioning that, in the alternate "First Splinter Timeline" of Star Trek novels, Beverly and Jean-Luc have a son named René Jacques Robert Francois Picard who is born around the same time as the Prime Timeline's Jack Crusher.

Beverly's lost a lot of family to the stars

While explaining her long absence, Beverly lists the family members that she has lost. First, her parents, whose cause of death has never been mentioned in canon. Previously, we've known only that she was raised by her grandmother, but this seems to confirm the backstory established in "Star Trek" novels that her parents were space explorers whose vessel was destroyed in an attack by hostile aliens.

The death of her husband, Jack, is a well-established but barely-explained piece of "Star Trek" lore that goes all the way back to the first episode of "The Next Generation." Jack Crusher (Sr.) was the first officer aboard the USS Stargazer under Jean-Luc's command and was killed on an away mission. Jean-Luc has been weighed down with guilt over his death ever since, further complicating his romantic feelings for his late friend's widow. Further details about this tragedy have only been explored in non-canonical novels, such as 1991's "Star Trek: Reunion" by Michael Jan Friedman.

Her other son, Wesley, left to explore inter-dimensional time and space with the being called the Traveler at the end of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Apart from dropping in to attend Riker and Troi's wedding in "Star Trek: Nemesis," Wesley has been seen only once since, in the finale of "Picard" Season 2 , where we learn that he has continued to serve as a member of "the travelers," an inter-dimensional watchdog group that protects the timeline from incursions.

Worf's resume summarizes his history across two series

When Worf introduces himself to Raffi Musiker on M'Talas Prime, he reads off a list of impressive-sounding titles, accumulated over the course of his unprecedented 281 appearances across "The Next Generation," "Deep Space Nine," and the feature film series. To begin with, he is, of course, the Son of Mogh, a Klingon dignitary who was killed by Romulans when he was a young boy (his biological mother has never been named in canon). He is also the Son of Sergei, of "House Rozchenko," referring to his adoptive human parents Sergei and Helena Rozchenko of Earth.

Worf also names himself as a member of the House of Martok, the family that he was inducted into during "Deep Space Nine" after breaking out of Dominion prison with General Martok. Worf is the "Slayer of Gowron," referencing when he defeated the dishonorable Klingon High Chancellor in single combat and installed Martok in his place in the late DS9 episode "Tacking into the Wind."

Finally, he's "Bane to the Duras Family," his nemeses since early in "The Next Generation." Duras is the house of the Klingons who betrayed his parents to the Romulans and later murdered his mate, K'Ehleyr. Worf, in turn, has killed three of the last four heads of the House of Duras — Duras himself and his two sisters, Lursa and B'Etor — and bested their heir, Toral, in combat.

A departed friend from Deep Space Nine plays an invisible role in this season of Picard

The episode, "Seventeen Seconds," reveals that the masterminds behind the attack on the Starfleet Recruitment Center are Changelings, major antagonists from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." As their name suggests, Changelings are shapeshifters whose natural state is a liquid but have the ability to perfectly imitate any person, creature, or object they choose. They command the Dominion, an empire even more vast and powerful than the Federation, located in the distant Gamma Quadrant. The Dominion War takes place over the course of multiple seasons of "Deep Space Nine," but they haven't been heard from since.

Here, Worf tells Raffi that he has been contacted by a friend from the Changelings' Great Link who warned him that a splinter group of Changelings is aiming to attack the Federation. This "man of honor" could be none other than Odo, the former Chief of Security of space station Deep Space 9. Though a Changeling himself, Odo fought on the side of the Federation in the Dominion War, serving with then-Lt. Commander Worf throughout the conflict.

After the Dominion's surrender, Odo returned to the Great Link in order to cure his people of a deadly virus and help to foster a lasting peace. Sadly, Odo will not be making any appearances in "Picard," as actor, René Auberjonois, passed away  in 2019.

Picard encounters a Voyager villain off-screen

The episode "No Win Scenario" opens with a flashback to five years before the events of this season, in which retired Admiral Jean-Luc Picard is enjoying a meal at Guinan's Ten Forward lounge in Los Angeles. Fans will note that there are still Frontier Day posters on the wall despite the event being five years away, which is likely a production oversight. 

While there, a group of young officers asks Picard about his encounter with the Hirogen, a species of ritualistic hunters who made their debut in "Star Trek: Voyager" — hence the mention of Admiral Janeway. The adventure in question isn't one that we've seen or heard of before and would have taken place between the film "Star Trek: Nemesis" and the earliest flashbacks in "Star Trek: Picard." This isn't the only reference to a Hirogen on "Picard," however, as one of the ex-Borg seen on the Artifact in the Season 1 episode "Nepenthe" is an assimilated Hirogen .

Later in the episode — when we cut back to this conversation — Picard is regaling his admirers with the story of the classic "The Next Generation" episode "Darmok," in which Picard attempts to survive on a hostile world with an alien captain who speaks only in impenetrable references to his own popular culture and mythology. Of all his famous adventures aboard the Enterprise-D, it's the one that Picard would seem most likely to enjoy recalling, as it's a dilemma that was solved through patience, compassion, and communication. It also happens to be one of the best episodes of "The Next Generation."

Ensign Foster's quarters contain artifacts from DS9 and Voyager

When Seven of Nine first searches transporter officer Foster's quarters near the start of "No Win Scenario," there's a familiar artifact on his desk: a messy stack of thin metal cylinders arranged in a shape like a tumbleweed. This is kal-toh, a Vulcan strategy game enjoyed by Voyager's Lieutenant Commander Tuvok and other members of the Voyager crew. Seven is particularly adept at the game and can be seen effortlessly demolishing veteran player Tuvok in the episode "The Omega Directive." Seven has also been seen teaching the game to then-girlfriend Raffi Musiker in the final moments of the "Star Trek: Picard" episode "Et in Arcadia Ego."

Later in "No Win Scenario," Captain Shaw suggests that Seven search Foster's quarters again to find a pot or vase in which Foster's changeling imposter may have hidden while sleeping in liquid form. Lo and behold, Seven checks inside a light fixture and finds a bucket that's more or less identical to the one that Constable Odo of "Deep Space Nine" used to sleep in. 

This is a pretty silly inclusion, given that Odo's bucket is not a traditional Changeling artifact but something he would have acquired from the Cardassians long before he even knew that other Changelings existed. While Odo has since joined the Great Link, which would immediately share the knowledge of this habit with the entire species, it's unlikely that the Changelings — whose goal is to destroy the Federation — would want to honor his peoples' one and only traitor.

Picard explains away one of Voyager's silliest contrivances

"Star Trek: Picard" finally clarifies a baffling piece of "Star Trek" canon involving the franchise's famous simulator room, the Holodeck. On "Star Trek: Voyager," the titular vessel is hurled halfway across the galaxy and must brave a long, dangerous journey back to Federation space with no allies or support. Despite concerns about the ship's limited energy supply leading to replicator rationing, USS Voyager's holodecks — a purely recreational system — remained in service for the entire seven-year mission. The series handwaves this by explaining that holodecks have their own independent power source that is incompatible with the rest of the ship, but it feels a lot more like an excuse for the writers to continue to tell "The Next Generation" style holodeck fantasy stories despite the more dire stakes of "Voyager."

"No Win Scenario" finally offers an explanation as to why Starfleet would give its holodecks their own power source — so that they can be used as a pleasant sanctuary in the event that the ship should be damaged beyond repair. There, the crew could enjoy a nice diversion while, say, plummeting hopelessly into the heart of a gravity well, as the Titan does during this episode. This allows Jean-Luc and his son Jack Crusher to share a quiet moment in a simulation of Ten Forward while the rest of the ship's systems are on the blink. It's a flimsy explanation, but it's better than the nothing we had before.

Vadic's knife is familiar, and not just from Star Trek

In "No Win Scenario," the mysterious Captain Vadic uses an ornate dagger to slice off her own hand, which transforms into the face of her Changeling overlord. If this dagger looks familiar, it should — this is the Jackal , crafted by knife smith Gil Hibben and employed in an assortment of genre cinema and television. For instance, it's the rogue vampire hunter Faith Lehane's signature weapon on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

It's also not the first time the Jackal has appeared in "Star Trek" canon. It played the role of a ceremonial Reman dagger used by Tom Hardy's Praetor Shinzon in "Star Trek: Nemesis," even featured on the film's theatrical poster. We'd be surprised, however, if this is meant to hint at anything in Vadic's origins. It's likely just an Easter egg for fans, as well as a nod to one of the most maligned movie installments in the franchise and one of the cooler custom blades of the silver screen.

Captain Shaw was present for Star Trek's darkest hour

During his tirade in the Ten Forward holodeck simulation, the Titan's Captain Shaw reveals that he is a veteran of the Battle of Wolf 359, the Federation's devastating defeat at the hands of the Borg. This battle takes place during the famous "The Next Generation" two-parter "The Best of Both Worlds," in which Jean-Luc Picard is assimilated by the Borg and forced to lead their invasion force, though only the aftermath of the massacre is seen in that story. Our first and only canonical glimpse at the battle comes in the opening scenes of "Emissary," the first episode of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," in which we learn that Benjamin Sisko is also a survivor of Wolf 359.

Shaw served aboard the USS Constance, which joins the still-incomplete list of the 39 vessels destroyed during that battle. Diagrams of the Constance also appear during the closing credits of the season, which identify it as a Constellation Class starship. This is consistent with its one non-canonical reference in the video game "Birth of the Federation."

Incidentally, Shaw also mentions that, despite the creation of a new, more benign offshoot of the Borg during Season 2 of "Star Trek: Picard," the "real" Borg are still out there somewhere, waiting to menace the Federation once again. This is an important clarification, given the time travel antics that brought about the new hive, which was created by Dr. Agnes Jurati and the temporally-displaced Borg Queen in the early 21st century.

The nebula's newborns recall The Next Generation's first adventure

As the USS Titan sinks deeper into the gravity well of a strange nebula, Dr. Crusher realizes that the pulses of energy that are rocking the ship are actually contractions and that the anomaly around them is a womb that's about to give birth. While explaining this phenomenon to the crew, she and Admiral Picard reference an earlier encounter with a space-dwelling life form, dating way back to the first episode of "The Next Generation," titled "Encounter at Farpoint." In their maiden voyage together, the crew of the USS Enterprise-D discovers that a remarkable new space station is actually an imprisoned shapeshifting space jellyfish.

In "No Win Scenario," the beings born in the nebula also turn out to be space cephalopods, though more closely resembling octopi. It's a cute callback to the very beginning of Picard, Riker, and Crusher's service together, one that restores a sense of hope and wonder to the weary Starfleet legends.

Those weird red tendrils may hint at an additional villain

In Episode 5, "Imposter," we see that Jack Crusher is having waking nightmares about betraying the crew of the Titan, the first evidence that he might be some sort of enemy sleeper agent. In his dreams, he sees a strange red door creak open and vein-like tendrils spread across various surfaces. In one vision, he sees those tendrils appear on the face of Titan's operations officer, Ensign Esmar. This image is evocative of the "Star Trek: Voyager" two-parter "Scorpion," in which Ensign Harry Kim (also an ops officer) is infected with a deadly virus by the aliens known as Species 8472. This is probably a coincidence, or maybe a cute production nod, but it might also be a clue to what's happening with Jack and the nature of this season's major foe.

Species 8472 is a hostile species that hails from Fluidic Space, an extra-dimensional realm once invaded (unsuccessfully) by the Borg. When we last saw 8472 in the "Voyager" episode "In the Flesh," they were experimenting with human DNA to create and train shapeshifting double agents to infiltrate Starfleet. By the end of the episode, the Voyager crew seems to persuade 8472 that the Federation doesn't present a threat, but is it possible that they went through with their infiltration plan after all and that 8472 has joined forces with the Changelings? The Changeling who was interrogated by Raffi and Worf did say that the Federation's new foes were a group of "like-minded souls," implying that there may be more than one faction involved.

It seems unlikely that 8472 would make an appearance, but on a show as reference-happy as "Star Trek: Picard," we certainly can't count them out entirely.

Changeling blood tests have never been reliable

"Imposter" reveals that this latest crop of Changeling infiltrators has mastered the ability to replicate the internal structure of whatever species they've morphed into, thus circumventing any existing method of detection the Federation put in place during the Dominion War. This is meant to demonstrate that the typical process for proving someone isn't a Changeling — by extracting blood from them and ensuring that it doesn't turn into goo — isn't effective any longer.

This isn't as huge a development as it seems to be, as bloodletting has never actually been a reliable way to determine whether or not someone is a Changeling. The shapeshifters had already found a way around the standard blood test midway through "Deep Space Nine" — in the episode after the test was devised. In the Season 4 premiere, "The Way of the Warrior," Klingon General Martok cuts his hand to prove he is who he claims to be. A year later, we learn that this Martok is, in fact, a Changeling and that the real Martok has been imprisoned in the Gamma Quadrant since before his doppelganger's first appearance on the show.

Captain Sisko's father, Joseph, has his own theory as to how this works. In the episode "Homefront," Joseph decries the uselessness of subjecting citizens to blood screenings, given that a Changeling could easily store real blood within its assumed body in case it ever needed to prove its identity. The Changelings we see in "Picard" are definitely more advanced, given their ability to retain their form even when dead or unconscious, but the ability to fool a blood test isn't actually a major feature of the upgrade.

Captain Shaw runs through a list of Picard's most public disasters

In "Imposter," the USS Titan's Captain Liam Shaw retakes command of his ship from the mutinous Admiral Picard and Captain Riker. As he gleefully escorts Picard and Riker to their hearing with Starfleet Intelligence, his two rivals defend themselves by mentioning the number of times they've saved the entire galaxy. In response, Shaw lists off a few examples of when the crew of the Enterprise (D or E) broke bad, arguing that saving the Federation a few times has, at best, made their service records a wash.

Shaw chooses to highlight three blemishes on Picard and Riker's records. First, he mentions the crash-landing of the Enterprise-D's saucer section in "Star Trek: Generations." This may be an iconic moment of "Star Trek" cinema, but it really shouldn't be held against them, as an emergency saucer landing is just one of the ship's safety features working exactly as designed. We accept no slander of Counselor Troi's piloting skills! Shaw also brings up Picard's rebellion against the Federation in "Star Trek: Insurrection," which he implies was motivated by Picard's desire to sleep with charming Ba'ku villager Anij. Then again, seeing as Picard was disobeying orders to save the Ba'ku helped to prevent Starfleet from participating in a genocide, it's a little disingenuous to frame Picard as the bad guy in this one, too.

As for the third incident he mentions, in which Picard almost wipes out all life in the galaxy by creating a spacial anomaly that grows backward through time in the "The Next Generation" finale "All Good Things...", Shaw may have a point. It's hard to give Picard credit for preventing pan-galactic doom when the threat was the result of his own time-traveling.

Michelle Forbes never shows up with good news

"Imposter" boasts the long-awaited return of fan-favorite character Ro Laren, who hasn't been seen since "Preemptive Strike," the penultimate episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Picard's most complicated mentee, Ro joins the crew of the Enterprise during Season 5 and appears in a total of eight episodes. The character was popular enough amongst fans and writers alike that she was intended to feature in the spin-off "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," but actor Michelle Forbes was reluctant to sign an extended contract. This led to the character of Kira Nerys being created in her place. A different fate was written for Ro, who closes out her run on "The Next Generation" by defecting from Starfleet to join the human and Bajoran resistance group called the Maquis. 

Now, Ro has returned as a Commander in Starfleet Intelligence, and she arrives on the Titan to interrogate Picard about his effort to commandeer the ship to pursue his agenda. This gives Ro and Picard the opportunity to resolve the tension created by their unpleasant parting in "Preemptive Strike" and puts a bow on Ro's canonical "Star Trek" tenure. With her death in this episode, it now appears that we've really seen the last of Ro Laren after a 29-year hiatus.

However, that doesn't mean that Michelle Forbes hasn't set foot on the deck of a starship in all of that time. The last time sci-fi fans saw Forbes don a scowl and a spacesuit was on "Battlestar Galactica," where she guest-starred as Admiral Helena Cain. Just like in "Picard," Forbes' character challenges the authority of that show's commander and patriarch. It didn't work out great for her on that show, either.

The 12 Monkeys cast rules M'Talas Prime

"Imposter" introduces another of the crime lords of the planet M'Talas Prime, a Vulcan gangster named Krinn. Krinn is a close associate of the Ferengi baddie Sneed, who was played by Aaron Stanford — the star of "Picard" showrunner Terry Matalas' previous show, "12 Monkeys" There, Stanford played time-traveling protagonist James Cole. Appropriately, Krinn is also played by another actor from "12 Monkeys," Kirk Acevedo, who played apocalypse survivor José Ramse. The relationship between Sneed and Krinn closely parallels the friendship shared between Cole and Ramse. Both sets of characters grew up together in hostile environments, the mean streets of M'Tala Prime's District Seven and the plague-ravaged future United States, respectively.

It wouldn't be surprising if all of the most prominent figures on M'Talas Prime turn out to be buddies with the planet's namesake. It would certainly underline the joke if co-stars Amanda Schull, Emily Hampshire, or Barbara Sukowa turned up as members of this bizarre interspecies crime family by the time the season comes to a close.

Further "12 Monkeys" alums working on this season of "Star Trek: Picard" include composer Stephen Barton, actor Tiffany Shepis as the Titan's Dr. Ahk, and of course, Todd Stashwick as Captain Liam Shaw.

Daystrom Station's Easter egg collection is unmatched

"The Bounty" sees Captain Riker, Commander Musiker, and Worf sneak through the vault at Daystrom Station, hoping to learn what the Changelings were really after when they burgled the facility before the start of the season. As they search the secret archive of spooky technology, they pass by several displays containing artifacts from throughout the history of the "Star Trek" franchise.

The label of the first display we see is too blurry to identify for certain, but it appears to be a Thalaron weapon like the one used by Shinzon in "Star Trek: Nemesis." The rest of the artifacts, however, are clearly labeled for the audience. There's the "Genesis II Device," apparently an upgraded version of the planet-changing machine from "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," as well as the body of James T. Kirk, recovered from Veridian III after his burial in "Star Trek Generations." We also see a Borg Vinculum, the device that processes the thoughts of assimilated drones as originally seen on "Star Trek: Voyager," and a genetically modified Tribble .

While no specific items from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" are seen aboard the station, it's not entirely left out of the fun. The collection itself is curated by Section 31, the amoral covert ops organization introduced in Season 6 of "Deep Space Nine." Section 31 also plays a role in the backstory for this season of "Picard," having created the deadly virus that crippled the Changelings and forced an end to the Dominion War. This atrocity is doubtlessly to blame, at least in part, for the fury of the Changeling faction that currently terrorizes the Federation.

Data's presence on Daystrom Station is apparent from the beginning

Towards the end of "The Bounty," the audience learns that the advanced artificial intelligence which guards the vaults of Daystrom Station is, in fact, a new synthetic android that houses the restored memories of Data, his siblings Lore, B-4, and Alton Soong, and his daughter Lal. However, the clues as to the AI's identity are laid almost from the moment Riker, Raffi, and Worf arrive at the station. When Worf swaps out the computer's security key with the hacked copy he acquired on M'Talas Prime, the computer says "Thank you" in a number of different voices. The first of these voices is that of Data himself.

The rest of the clues are sussed out by Riker throughout the adventure. A holographic crow appears in a corridor, which is an echo of one of Data's dreams from "The Next Generation" episode "Birthright." Later, the team is confronted by Professor Moriarty, a fictional character who became a sentient life form when the computer attempted to create a worthy adversary for Data in his Sherlock Holmes holodeck program in "Elementary, Dear Data." 

There are also a few audio cues. The sound of a violin — Data's primary musical instrument — begins echoing throughout the station, and when Riker recognizes that it's playing excerpts from "Pop Goes the Weasel," he flashes back to his first meeting with Data in "Encounter at Farpoint," when Data is struggling to whistle that very tune. Riker previously recalled Data's whistling at the android's wake in "Star Trek: Nemesis" but couldn't remember what song Data was attempting. Thankfully, this adventure jogged his memory.

The fleet museum hides one particularly important starship

While on the run from the Changeling-infiltrated Starfleet and looking for a way to rescue the away team from Daystrom Station, the USS Titan pays a visit to the fleet museum, the final resting place of many legendary vessels. In addition to the ships that get a shout-out — the Defiant, the Enterprise-A, Voyager, and the HMS Bounty — there are also a few other ships visible around the perimeter of the old spacedock. Eagle-eyed viewers will make out two examples of the fan-favorite Akira-class from "Star Trek: First Contact," a Nebula-class ship originating from "Star Trek: The Next Generation," an old-style Romulan Bird-of-Prey from "Star Trek: The Original Series," and a Klingon Battle Cruiser as seen in "Star Trek: The Motion Picture."

However, one noteworthy ship is visible only in a few shots and never gets a close-up: the Enterprise NX-01, from "Star Trek: Enterprise," which is parked behind the Klingon Battle Cruiser. We get a decent look at it during the montage that plays under Altan Soong's personal log, and from there we can see that the NX-01 has received a refit since its last appearance on "Enterprise," with the addition of a familiar drive section like the one found on the Constitution-class. 

This refit never made it to "Enterprise," but it has been seen in books and merchandise . Young Jean-Luc Picard even has a model of the refit on display during a flashback in "Picard" Season 2 . This would seem to confirm that this refit did, in fact, occur in canon. Hopefully, we'll get a better look at the updated NX-01 during the Frontier Day parade.

Mica Burton's casting isn't The Bounty's only backstage nod

All season long, we've been following the adventures of Ensign Sidney La Forge, daughter of the famous engineer Geordi La Forge. Sydney is portrayed by Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut, a newcomer to the "Star Trek" family. "The Bounty" brings LeVar Burton back to reprise the role of Geordi, who is now a Starfleet Commodore and the curator of the fleet museum. Geordi brings along another familiar face: Sidney's sister, Alandra, portrayed by Burton's real-life daughter, Mica Burton.

This, however, isn't the only backstage bonus that this episode has to offer. When the Daystrom Institute AI (which we later learn is Data) scans Will Riker's face, we see his service record appear on our screen. This confirms some apocrypha from official reference materials (like Riker's mother's name, Betty), and also gives us Riker's birthday — August 19th, the same as actor Jonathan Frakes.

The names of the two Starfleet vessels dispatched to pursue the Titan are also tributes to behind-the-scenes figures from the show's art department. One is the USS Sternbach, almost certainly named for artist  Rick Sternbach , designer of countless starships during "The Next Generation" era. The other is the USS Cole, likely named for Lee Cole, an art director and graphic designer who helped define the interior aesthetic of "The Original Series" film era. She worked on the aborted "Star Trek: Phase II" series before joining the production teams of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" and "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan."

The Chin'toka System is a battleground of the Dominion War

At the start of "Dominion," the Titan is hiding in a scrapyard in the Chin'toka System. Located at the edge of Cardassian space, Chin'toka is the site of two pivotal battles in the Dominion War, as seen in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." In the episode, "Tears of the Prophets," Captain Benjamin Sisko and the crew of the USS Defiant led the allied Federation, Klingon, and Romulan fleets in a successful invasion of Chin'toka, winning the allies their first offensive victory of the war (sadly, while Lt. Commander Worf was aboard the Defiant in this battle, his wife Lt. Commander Jadzia Dax, was back on DS9, where she was murdered by Gul Dukat).

The Dominion wouldn't be on their back foot for long, however, and the following year, in "The Changing Face of Evil," they would retake the system with the aid of their new members, the Breen. The Second Battle of Chin'toka was a devastating defeat for the allies. Using their deadly energy-dampening weapons, the Breen tore through the Federation and Romulan forces, including the USS Defiant, whose wreckage can be seen floating in the window of the Titan's conference lounge. Also visible in the scrapyard are the remains of a massive Jem'Hadar warship.

Speaking of junked ships, the Vulcan wreckage against whom the USS Titan stages the aftermath of a fictional battle is a design first seen in "Star Trek: Discovery," in an episode set nearly 150 years earlier. This was likely done to spare the "Picard" effects team from having to build a brand new CGI model for a handful of shots.

Seven of Nine tests Captain Tuvok's authenticity

In an effort to find someone in Starfleet she can trust with intelligence about the Changeling's plot to attack the Frontier Day ceremony, Seven of Nine reaches out to Captain Tuvok, her old shipmate aboard the USS Voyager. During this conversation, she attempts to trip up a potential imposter using leading questions and misinformation, knowing that only the real Tuvok will be able to parse her meaning. First, she feels reassured when Tuvok mentions that she used to routinely defeat him in the Vulcan game kal-toh. Her assertion that only Tuvok would remember their games of kal-toh is a bit of a stretch, as the two played at least once in the Voyager mess hall in full view of the crew. It's possible that this was also a checkpoint Seven's test, a point at which she could feign total trust and lull a possible imposter into a false sense of security.

However, when she suggests meeting at a planet disavowed by Vulcans, she realizes that she's actually talking to a Changeling infiltrator. Seven also deliberately misidentifies this planet as the place where her neural patterns were stabilized, while that actually occurred on "Voyager" in the episode, "Infinite Regress." This is the second reference to "Infinite Regress" this season, the first being the Borg Viniculum stored aboard Daystrom Station in "The Bounty."

Tim Russ's appearance in "Dominion" isn't actually the first we've seen of Tuvok since Voyager's return to the Alpha Quadrant. He also makes a wordless, animated cameo in an episode of "Star Trek: Lower Decks," "Grounded," in which we learn of his involvement in a secret operation to exonerate Captain Carol Freeman of destroying Pakled Planet. This episode is set two decades before "Picard," and presumably features the real Tuvok.

Troi learns to take some of her own advice from The Next Generation

While Counselor Deanna Troi and her husband Captain William Riker are imprisoned together aboard Captain Vadic's ship, the Shrike, they reflect on the way they've each handled the death of their son, Thad. We first learned of the tragic loss of their firstborn in "Nepenthe," a first season episode of "Star Trek: Picard." Since then, their marriage has hit the rocks, and in Season 3's "Surrender," we learn a bit more about their difficulties. Managing grief is hard enough for two human parents, but it's tougher still when one parent is a half-Betazoid with empathic abilities, meaning that she feels both her own grief and her husband's. In an effort to ease the process, Deanna apparently uses her abilities to siphon off some of Will's pain. This led to a period of separation.

When conversing about this conflict, Deanna realizes that she's broken what she calls the first rule of being a therapist: "You can't skip to the end of grief." This is something we actually see her working on with one of her patients in an episode of "The Next Generation," "The Loss." Here, we sit in on Counselor Troi's therapy sessions with Ensign Brooks, who recently lost her husband and is in denial about her own pain. Over the course of the episode, we see Troi pull Brooks out of her false sense of contentment and truly feel what's happened to her. Only then can Brooks truly heal. Now, it seems that Deanna's going through the same sort of struggle, and she has had to learn this lesson for herself.

Data's computational speed has been upgraded

In "Surrender," the Changelings led by Captain Vadic have hijacked the USS Titan, locking the crew out of the ship's command functions. Only a few of our main characters have eluded capture, and they are struggling to find a way to retake the bridge. While brainstorming a solution, Ensign Sydney La Forge mentions that breaking Vadic's lockout codes would require a processor with a capacity of more than 90 trillion operations per second. Picard's eyes light up at this, as he recalls that the new synthetic golem containing Data, Lore, and all their Soong-type android siblings is currently lying dormant in one of the ship's science labs.

This heavily implies that Data's current processing power is at least 90 trillion operations per second, and considering how quickly and totally he seizes control of the Titan's computer, it may be much more than that. This is a serious upgrade from his previous stated computational speed. In the "TNG" episode "The Measure of a Man," Data is said to be able to perform 60 trillion operations per second. That means his new positronic brain is at least 33% faster than the one in his old body.

It's worth noting, however, that the storytellers in both that 1989 episode and this one from 2023 have likely underestimated the processing power of a cutting-edge android being from the distant future. Bear in mind that the 16-core Neural Engine found in current Apple computers can perform 15.8 trillion operations per second. Surely the legendary Lt. Commander Data should be more than six times smarter than your Mac?

Data's memories are represented by familiar props from The Next Generation

Commodore Geordi La Forge reactivates the new Data and deactivates the partition between his different personalities in the hope that his friend Data will win out over his malevolent brother Lore, with whom he currently shares a brain. Data is a gentle soul and has no interest in destroying Lore, whereas Lore is only too eager to take his brother apart piece by piece. Data realizes that he can use this to his advantage and wilfully offers up his memories for Lore to steal. As Lore gobbles up aspects of Data's life, he unknowingly becomes Data, allowing the two personalities to fuse into a single being who has Data's wisdom and kindness as well as Lore's capacity for emotion and whimsy.

We see this struggle take place inside the new android's head, as Data manifests his memories in the form of recognizable props from "The Next Generation." First, we see the hat and pipe from his Sherlock Holmes costume, which he first wore in the episode "Elementary, Dear Data." He also summons a small holographic statue of the late Lt. Tasha Yar, with whom Data had a brief intimate relationship in the episode "The Naked Now." This memorial hologram was first seen in "The Measure of a Man," and later in "The Most Toys."

Finally, Data offers up his cat Spot as a representation of his capacity to love. Longtime fans may chuckle to hear Spot referred to as a "he," as the cat's sex inexplicably changed from male to female during "TNG" Season 7. Spot is now a boy cat again — at least in Data's memory.

The Frontier Day fleet includes some familiar names

Season 3's penultimate episode, "VÕX," shows us the long-advertised Frontier Day ceremony in which the entire active Starfleet assembles for a single demonstration over Earth. Naturally, this calls for the cast of "Picard" standing in front of a big map so that fans can pause the show and take note of as many of the involved starships as possible. We even get an extended shot of just the fleet map. Director and showrunner Terry Matalas certainly knows his audience.

None of the assembled ships are old enough to have appeared on earlier "Star Trek" series, but a few of them have been featured in previous armada scenes in Seasons 1 and 2. These include the USS Zheng He, which Captain Riker commands in the standoff with the Romulans in "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2." Most of the fleet that investigates the anomaly in "The Star Gazer" is present here, including the Gilgamesh, Sutherland, Ibn al-Haytham, and the new Excelsior.

Some of the ships are also named for prominent figures in the history of "Star Trek" special effects and production design. The USS Okuda, which also appears in "The Star Gazer," is certainly named for production designers and authors of multiple "Star Trek" reference books, Michael and Denise Okuda . The USS Drexler pays homage to the longtime "Star Trek" ship designer Doug Drexler, while the USS Trumbull likely pays tribute to the late Douglas Trumbull, a pioneer in special effects who passed away in 2022.

We've also got ships named for important figures in "Star Trek" history, like the USS Cochrane (for warp drive inventor Zefram), the USS John Kelly (an astronaut from the "Voyager" episode "One Small Step"), and the USS Hikaru Sulu,  who needs no introduction.

Fan-favorite guest star Shelby's first name is finally canon

"VÕX" features a surprise appearance by Elizabeth Dennehy as Shelby, a beloved guest star from "The Next Generation" two-parter "The Best of Both Worlds." In that episode, Shelby joins the crew of the Enterprise-D to confront the Borg threat, even becoming the ship's new first officer after Captain Picard is captured by the Borg. Though Shelby's role in the two-parter is memorable, she never appears on the series again. Her only other canonical appearance is a cameo in the animated series "Star Trek: Lower Decks," by which time she has been promoted to captain.

While she remained unused on television for decades, Shelby became a main character in "Star Trek: New Frontier," a long-running series of novels by Peter David and John Ordover. In the novels, she receives a first name, Elizabeth (after Dennehy) and is eventually promoted to the rank of admiral.

"VÕX" makes a point of establishing Shelby's name and rank as canon, even placing her in command of the USS Enterprise-F during the Frontier Day ceremony.

Shelby gives the events of this season an exact Earth date

In the future of "Star Trek," Federation starships aren't in the habit of measuring time by the same calendar that the viewers use at home. Sure, they still use the same minutes, hours, and years — but when someone asks what day it is, a Starfleet officer is bound to respond with something like, "Stardate 47988." Over the years, fans have engineered ways to roughly translate this into Earth dates, but this isn't an exact science. Every once in a while, however, circumstances provide us with the tools we need to pin the events of a given episode to an exact date on our calendar.

We've known all along that Season 3 of "Picard" is set in the year 2401, as confirmed by showrunner Terry Matalas in interviews. It's also implied by nature of the Frontier Day festivities, celebrating the 250th anniversary of Starfleet, since the maiden voyage of the Enterprise (NX-01) began in 2151. In "VÕX," Admiral Shelby gets even more specific and notes that the NX-01's mission began "250 years ago today." Luckily for us, that launch predates the transition to the stardate calendar, so thanks to Captain Archer's log entry from "Broken Bow," the first episode of "Star Trek: Enterprise," we know that this episode of "Picard" takes place on April 16th. Funnily enough, that's only three days after the episode itself debuted, on April 13th, albeit in the year 2023.

The cast of VÕX includes some familiar voices

Several "Star Trek" alumni make their return in this episode exclusively in voice over. Most prominently, Alice Krige, who originated  the Borg Queen in "Star Trek: First Contact" and reprised it in the series finale of "Star Trek: Voyager" is back to provide the voice of the Borg Queen during her confrontation with Jack Crusher. Krige succeeds actor Annie Wersching, who portrayed the queen in Season 2 of "Picard." Wersching died of cancer in January of 2023 at the age of 45, and this season's premiere was dedicated in her memory.

The late Majel Barrett can also be heard in this episode reprising the role of the Enterprise-D computer via clips of archival audio. Barrett portrayed the default voice of the Starfleet computer across a plethora of "Star Trek" series, films, and video games, and fan works from 1966 until her death in 2008. She also originated the roles of Nurse Christine Chapel and Number One on "The Original Series," both of whom are now regular characters on "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds." She might be best remembered as Lwaxana Troi, Deanna's mother, on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," and as the wife of series creator Gene Roddenberry.

Finally, the voice of Captain Benbassat of the ill-fated USS Excelsior is provided by prolific voice actor Nolan North, who has played multiple characters on "Star Trek: Lower Decks." He's best known as the voice of Nathan Drake in the "Uncharted" video game series.

Worf destroyed the Enterprise-E off-screen

Since the entire modern Starfleet has been hijacked by the Borg, Picard and his old crew are forced to flee to the fleet museum and bring an old starship out of mothballs to confront them. As luck would have it, Commodore Geordi La Forge has been secretly reconstructing the USS Enterprise-D, on which he and his surrogate family served during "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Obviously, the real reason why Picard's crew will be riding into battle aboard the Enterprise-D and not the more advanced Enterprise-E is because, by and large, the viewing audience doesn't have as much nostalgia for the dimly lit, battle-hardened E as they do for the cozy and familiar D. The characters do, however, offer a funny in-universe explanation.

While en route to the Enterprise-D in Spacedock, Geordi mentions that it's a shame that they're unable to use the Enterprise-E, after which everyone side-eyes Worf. "That was not my fault," says Worf, implying that he is somehow responsible for the loss of Picard's second Enterprise. This actually lines up with some backstory provided in a "Star Trek: Picard" tie-in novel, "The Last Best Hope" by Una McCormack. There, we learn that Picard chooses Worf to succeed him as captain of the Enterprise-E after his promotion to admiral. The exchange in "VÕX" implies that this is canon, and that Worf's tenure as captain of the Enterprise had an explosive conclusion. In the Enterprise's Star Trek: Picard Log on Instagram , the ship's final mission is listed as "CLASSIFIED."

President Chekov's warning is its own basket of Easter eggs

The series finale, "The Last Generation," opens with the crew of the refurbished Enterprise-D listening to an audio distress call sent by the President of the United Federation of Planets, Anton Chekov, voiced by original "Star Trek" cast member Walter Koenig. Koenig's casting, along with a reference to his father, implies that President Chekov is the son of Commander Pavel Chekov, former navigator and weapons officer of the Enterprise under James T. Kirk. Chekov says that his father was fond of saying, "There are always possibilities," a phrase favored by Pavel Chekov's shipmate Spock. President Chekov shares his first name, Anton, with late actor Anton Yelchin, who portrayed Pavel Chekov in the rebooted "Star Trek" film trilogy. Yelchin was killed in an accident in 2016.

The text of President Chekov's message also closely resembles one sent by a previous Federation President in "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home," when the Earth is under attack by a strange alien probe. Both messages include the phrases "Do not approach Earth" and "Save yourselves ... Farewell." In both "The Voyage Home" and "The Last Generation," our heroes are fugitives from Starfleet who must return to Earth in a stolen vessel to prevent a global disaster.

While playing the audio message, the text on the Enterprise-D's view screen mentions General Order 12, a Starfleet directive mentioned in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" that requires that vessels go to red alert when any vessel approaches without first establishing communications. Also noted are Starfleet Order 104, which requires that commanding officers exhibiting strange behavior be relieved of duty, and Regulation 19, Section C, which allows another officer to take command in an emergency.

Raffi invents the portable transporter (unless she didn't)

To retake the bridge of the USS Titan from the assimilated junior officers, Seven, Raffi, and a few other grown-ups rig phasers with transporter technology in order to instantly beam anyone they shoot into the secured transporter room. The plan works, allowing them to capture their Borgified shipmates without harming them. Impressed with the ingenuity of Raffi's new weapons, Seven tells her that she "may have just invented the portable beam-me-up." This particular use of transporter technology is, in fact, something new for "Star Trek," but it's not the first time we've seen portable transporter technology or the use of a transporter as a weapon.

On "Star Trek: Voyager," the Vidiians use weapons similar to Raffi's new rifles, which fire a phaser-like beam at their targets that transports individual organs out of their victims. Voyager's cook, Neelix, falls victim to one of these weapons in the episode "Phage" when a Vidiian makes off with both of his lungs. (In fairness, this happens years before Seven joins the Voyager crew.) Similarly, in "Star Trek: Insurrection," the Son'a employ drones that fire small transporter tags, beaming whatever they hit up into holding cells aboard their ship. Raffi's rifles seem to be an evolution of this technology, as they do not appear to require any kind of projectile to lock onto a target.

Seven's reference to a portable transporter might actually be a call-forward to a technology that we know to be commonplace in the distant future of Starfleet. In later seasons of "Star Trek: Discovery," set over 600 years after "Picard," tiny transporters become integrated into Starfleet badges, allowing officers to instantly beam between any two points.

The finale contains many small nods to Treks past, and some big ones

"The Last Generation" contains a handful of smaller nods to other "Star Trek" films and episodes, including some direct visual references. When Captain Picard plugs back into the Borg Collective, we're treated to some footage from the prologue of "Star Trek: First Contact," showing images from his original assimilation.

The shot towards the end of the episode of the Enterprise-D and the Titan-A flying side by side framed against Earth's sunrise is evocative of a similar shot towards the end of "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country," in which the Enterprise-A and the Excelsior fly one final time together before parting ways. The rechristening of the USS Titan as the new Enterprise parallels a reveal in "Star Trek IV," when the USS Yorktown is renamed the Enterprise-A in tribute to Kirk and his crew. Both of these reveals take place in Spacedock, as the captain of the old Enterprise approaches via shuttle.

In the final scene of the series, Worf mentions that he will be teaching a seminar about "mugato meditation." A mugato (sometimes called a mugatu), is a giant horned ape creature seen in the "Original Series" episode "A Private Little War." When asked to propose a toast, Data breaks into a saucy limerick that he once tried to recite in the Season 1 "TNG" episode "The Naked Now." Just like last time, he is interrupted before he can finish.

Finally, we close on the crew playing poker, like in the "TNG "finale "All Good Things..." and the final shot of the series under credits is patterned closely after the final shot of "The Next Generation," right down to the rotation of the camera over the poker table as Picard deals.

Picard Season 3's Daystrom Station Is Like Star Trek's Version Of The Raiders Of The Lost Ark Warehouse

This post contains spoilers for "Star Trek: Picard" season 3, episode 6.

As it crosses into the back half of its third and final season, "Star Trek: Picard" finally brings back Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton). It's good to see him again: let's acknowledge that. Episode 6, "The Bounty," also hints at the end that season 3 might finally give Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) something more to do than yelp about how her son "just vomited all over engineering" (as she did during her brief episode 3 appearance, while video-chatting in flashback with William Riker, played by Jonathan Frakes). Back then, all we had to worry about in "Picard" was one shaky subplot with Worf (Michael Dorn) and Raffi (Michelle Hurd).

In episode 6, the subplot merges with the main plot. Dorn acquits himself admirably, but he continues to be saddled with dialogue like, "Breakups on my homeworld seldom end without bloodshed," as Worf and Raffi beam aboard the USS Titan and take us on a subsequent trip to Daystrom Station for an Easter egg hunt, or something very much like it.

Speaking of sons and regurgitation, in the same way that Picard's boy, Jack Crusher (Ed Speleers), is "plagued with an overclogged brain," episode 6 is clogged with callbacks and references to earlier "Trek," like Jack's gentle reminder that Jean-Luc (Patrick Stewart) now has a synthetic body after his fake-out death in season 1 (which season 3 has mostly ignored in favor of a soft reboot with more legacy characters). The eggs are scattered all over the place in episode 6, and this won't be a simple laundry list. What it will be is an interrogation of "Picard" as the unlikely, space-faring hellspawn of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and its final warehouse scene.

The warehouse of old ideas

"Raiders of the Lost Ark," also produced by Paramount, famously ends with the Ark of the Covenant — the gold relic that holds the original Ten Commandments, inscribed by the finger of God himself — being wheeled into a warehouse full of crates, all of which are labeled "Top Secret Army Intel." The camera pulls back to reveal how this religious artifact is just one of many military prizes, as the warehouse stretches back endlessly. The implication is that army intelligence is sitting on a massive trove of X-Files.

It's worth noting: the crates are also marked "Do Not Open," and they would perhaps be better left that way, though "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" would head back to the same warehouse again some 27 years later for its opening set piece. Only 21 years have elapsed since "Star Trek: Nemesis," the last movie with the cast of "The Next Generation," but "Picard" season 3 made it clear from the get-go that it aims to be nothing less than "the best Next Generation movie we never got," as our review calls it.

In place of Indy's warehouse, episode 6 holds its Easter egg hunt in two separate locations. One is the "fleet museum," where Georgi La Forge presides over the "final resting place" of "every legendary starship," including the Defiant from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and the cloaking Klingon Bird of Prey from "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home." However, it's Daystrom Station that most neatly aligns with "Raiders of the Lost Ark," since it holds all sorts of "experimental weapons" and "alien contraband" from Starfleet intelligence. That includes the life-giving Genesis Device from "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," a watershed sequel that "Picard" has been channeling for weeks now.

'Wonderful dumb fun'

"The Wrath of Khan" hit theaters in 1982, the year after "Raiders of the Lost Ark." For anyone who was bored by "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (which is to say, not watching it correctly ), "Khan" provided an antidote, with what film critic Pauline Kael called "wonderful dumb fun." That can be a two-edged sword when the fun part tips over too far into dumb, as the 2013 "Wrath of Khan" remix "Star Trek Into Darkness" did at times. That movie was co-written by "Picard" co-creator Alex Kurtzman, the current shepherd of "Star Trek" as we know it on Paramount+.

In many ways, "Picard" season 3 feels like the third generation, twice removed, of "Wrath of Khan," meaning it's a more direct descendant of "Star Trek Into Darkness." Elsewhere, the season has drawn from the gnarly "Next Generation" episode "Conspiracy," which contains a face-melting scene right out of "Raiders of the Lost Ark." However, as episode 6 continues window-shopping for Easter eggs in Daystrom Station, the next stop is the body of the original Enterprise captain, James T. Kirk. We don't actually see the face of the character originated by /Film contributor William Shatner  — just his name and X-ray — though it would be funny if they did stick him in there and have him pop his eyes open through the window real quick as Raffi passes by.

Next, Worf peeps an "attack Tribble," which takes us back to the classic episode, "The Trouble with Tribbles," from "Star Trek: The Original Series." From there, we move on to the biggest, most sentient egg of all: a gun-toting Professor Moriarty (Daniel Davis). We'll have more to say about him in a minute, but let's take a step back here and look at the bigger picture of what this episode is doing.

Trek has overtly homaged Raiders before

"Picard" season 3 isn't the first time "Star Trek" has echoed "Raiders of the Lost Ark." In a 2013 Fast Company article ("How to Write and Produce a Summer Blockbuster"), Alex Kurtzman acknowledged that the opening sequence" in "Star Trek Into Darkness" "is an homage to 'Raiders.'" Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) absconds with a precious temple artifact on the planet Nibiru, leading an alien tribe to chase him and Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) through a red jungle. It's as if we're right back in Peru with Indiana Jones, dodging arrows (just as "Star Trek Into Darkness" would have to run for cover from fan criticism, being voted the worst "Trek" movie ).

This is indicative of a larger issue with "Picard" season 3: namely, that it still shows "Trek" in blockbuster mode. It's the kind of thing where you could almost rewrite Picard's "Next Generation" mission statement like this:

Paramount+: the final frontier. These are the expletives of the new "Star Trek" dialogue. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new writing. To seek out new lighting, or lack thereof. To boldly go where J.J. Abrams has gone before.

With all the main cast members of "The Next Generation" returning this season, "Picard" is also now part of a newer breed of blockbuster, the legacy sequel, which is great until it's not. Since legacy sequels are often penned by screenwriters who grew up with the original movies, they can sometimes feel like fan fiction. In "Picard" season 3, that entails dialogue like:

Beverly Crusher: Will, did you just throw an asteroid?

Riker: You're g**damn right I did.

And two minutes later:

Beverly Crusher (gazing in wonder at space jellyfish): To seek out new life...

Riker: I think we should boldly get the hell out of here.

Raiders of the lost adolescence

The dialogue above speaks for itself. You can feel the heavy writing hand in moments like that, leading the viewer along, constantly winking, waxing nostalgic, and reassuring them "Trek" is hip to the new space lingo, if not entirely cerebral anymore. It's an instinct that belongs, not so much in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," as in its bastard blockbuster children, all the tentpoles living in the vast warehouse Steven Spielberg and George Lucas built. They're the kind of movies and shows that keep going back and raiding the warehouse — and with it, your lost adolescence — for Easter eggs and recyclable plots. Usually, they're driven by marketing impulses, as opposed to flying on impulse, like a true starship.

So, about Moriarty. In its New York Comic Con trailer , "Picard" season 3 marketed his return from the annals of the "Next Generation" holodeck. It turns out he's the "astonishingly lethal A.I." security system guarding the vault aboard Daystrom. Worf first warns everyone about it/him during the heist-movie scene where they're all gathered around the table, going over their plan for breaking into the station (rather like a group of writers breaking the story for a TV episode).

"This is not the same self-aware Moriarty we encountered on the Enterprise," Riker observes in the middle of a shoot-out with the "19th-century holo-villain." Moriarty calls him and Worf "pathetic old warriors," one of many instances where "Picard" season 3 uses its own words against itself. Whistling "Pop Goes the Weasel" makes Moriarty evaporate, and that's that. His return, which has been teased for months, winds up feeling like a cheat, just a glorified cameo. After his non-disclosure agreement lifted, Daniel Davis confirmed (via TrekMovie.com ) that he only did a single day of shooting for this one "Picard" episode.

Loose lips sink starships

In "The Bounty," the dialogue in the heist-planning scene, which includes Riker saying things like, "Excellent use of the word 'burgle,'" is just a chain of exposition that hops from one character to another. They complete each other's sentences in such a way that it becomes obvious we're listening to a thinly plotted info dump, broken up across multiple mouthpieces.

One thing you can say about Indiana Jones is that he knows how to keep his professional life separate from his personal life. Just look at the way his professor-self dresses, versus the way his adventurer-self dresses.

In "Star Trek: The Next Generation," the Enterprise-D was as formal as any space office. True, while Jean-Luc Picard is bald, he and the other officers would sometimes let their hair down and play poker. Something you wouldn't often hear them doing, though, is using language that might be deemed "not suitable for work." This is one area where "Picard" could stand to remember what happened when Indiana Jones got a little too loose-lipped around his father at a motorcycle crossing.

Dr. McCoy is well-known for grumbling, "Dammit, Jim," and in the youthful 2009 "Star Trek" reboot , Chris Pine famously called "bulls***" on the sight of an older Spock (which is still a perfectly delivered one-liner). There is a precedent, then, for some occasional NFSW language in "Star Trek," similar to "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and its one "Holy s***" (spoken at the sight of an uninvited Nazi submarine). But if you missed "Star Trek: Discovery" and its whole exploration of the f-bomb frontier , it might be similarly unbelievable to hear "Trek" toss around words like "dips***," or hear Picard do what he does best and engage — in use of the f-word? — in the holodeck bar this season.

Pop goes the legacy sequel

Later in the episode, after he's whistled away Moriarty to the tune of "Pop Goes the Weasel," Riker gets captured, interrogated, and tortured. Defiant, he then gets in on the cussing action, too, asking one of his captors, "How much of that goo s*** did they pour into you?" He sounds less like himself here and more like Captain Shaw (Todd Stashwick), who treated us to some equally gooey dialogue earlier this season, calling Changelings "goo people" and "clay-dough" (and their residue, "resi-goo.")

It's funny wordplay, but this sort of glib phraseology also serves as a dim reminder of "Star Trek Into Darkness," giving the beleaguered viewer a whiff of that movie's less-than-artful "super blood" line, whereby McCoy was able to simplify Kirk's magical resurrection and wave off any misgivings about it with a quip. "Picard" also magically resurrected its title character in its season 1 finale, and his human remains come back into play at the end of season 3, episode 6. The level of writing on this show is such that it wouldn't be surprising if they had two characters say in dialogue:

"Wait, how did they bring Jean-Luc back to life?" 

"You know, that f***ing super blood."

"Star Trek" once flirted with Quentin Tarantino , who's nothing if not a pastiche artist, but at what point did it become the type of science fiction where we're no longer to able to relay the dialogue in polite company without asterisks? (Our content management system literally won't allow me to type it without asterisks.) Shaw, the captain we love to hate , has a good line in episode 4 where he confesses, "At some point, a**hole became a substitute for charm." However, the cussing there comes right after an emotionally charged moment where it feels earned.

The Hollow-deck

The moment in question for Shaw follows a compelling confrontation where we realize that the reason he's been such a jerk to Picard and Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) is that he had a traumatic encounter with the Borg under Locutus, which left him prejudiced. That kind of callback, rooted in good character drama, is aces. Yet this same Shaw turns blushing fanboy when he meets Geordi La Forge, and too much of "Picard" falls back on another, emptier kind of callback. As long as we're in the Tarantino room, you might describe it as one that appeals to the heart of every Trekkie with the lowest common denominator of "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" finger-pointing .

Jack Crusher does physically finger-point at the fleet museum as he identifies starships like "Kirk's Enterprise," with its "perfectly clean, retro lines." Alas, Seven has to educate him about the history of her own starship Voyager. "We all long for connection," Jack muses to her, and at this point, we can't be sure he's not talking about intertextual "Trek" connections.

Both inside and outside Daystrom Station, this whole episode of "Picard" is dealing from the bottom of the deck: not the beloved "Lower Decks," mind you, but rather, something more like the Hollow-deck, a simulation of what "Star Trek" was once upon a time when it actually meant something. As Riker goes to meet Data/Lore/B-4 (Brent Spiner), "Picard" even throws in old archive footage from when the younger Riker met Data in the holodeck in "Encounter at Farpoint," the series premiere of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." It's a play right from the legacy-sequel handbook. Speaking for the viewer, Raffi says, "I thought Data died. Twice!" Ah, but this is comic book "Star Trek," where no one ever really stays dead.

Same writers' room as season 2

As much as the final season of "Picard" might try to differentiate itself from the much-derided first two seasons — setting itself apart as a "Next Generation" thing — it's still born of the same writers' room, led by Terry Matalas (now sole showrunner after serving as co-showrunner with Akiva Goldsman in season 2). Patrick Stewart revealed in a 2022 interview with The Hollywood Reporter  that the pandemic forced the production team to shoot "both seasons two and three back-to-back," wrapping the second season at 7 p.m. and then immediately beginning work on the third season at 7 a.m. the following day. It's not like they had a long break in-between to internalize the creative failures of season 2 and learn the right lessons from them.

Season 3 could still redeem itself, but right now, when the sugar rush of the reunion wears off outside Daystrom Station, it leaves a questionable aftertaste, one that smacks of empty calories. That's the same effect derivative blockbusters like "Star Trek Into Darkness" have.

When you've been trained to swallow pabulum long enough, it can be hard to tell what's really good on TV or in the movies anymore. As Geordi La Forge greets Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) on Paramount+ this week, he says he "debated the virtues of a curt professional handshake or an uncomfortable but long overdue hug." The hug that "Picard" season 3 provides surely is uncomfortable at times, and maybe it wouldn't hurt "Star Trek" and its characters to show a bit more professionalism again.

The franchise needn't be puritanical, but hearing Jack Crusher talk about getting laid does set off  Salt-n-Pepa bells. Suddenly, "Trek" has become less stuffy, with the streaming frontier allowing it to abandon the buttoned-up formalism or classicism of itself on network TV.

'You built amazing things. I just wanted to fly them'

In "Picard" season 3, episode 6, Sidney La Forge (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut) tells Geordi, "I grew up listening to your adventures, all the times you and Picard stood up for what was right." Geordi insists that it was a different time, and Sidney, speaking in stilted dialogue without contractions, exclaims, "No! It is you and I that are different."

"You built amazing things," she confesses. "I just wanted to fly them."

Again, we hear the "Picard" season 3 writers own themselves in dialogue. They just want to fly the amazing things "Star Trek: The Next Generation" built. An even deeper self-own comes when they cut back to Riker, Raffi, and Worf on Daystrom Station.

Riker: "So Starfleet installed an insane A.I. to defend its deepest secret?"

Raffi: "They used him because he's a one-of-a-kind work of art, certainly more brilliant than anything else they can come up with."

"Star Trek: The Next Generation" was a one-of-a-kind work art. As "Picard" continues flying into darkness, countervailing Gene Roddenberry's utopian ideals, it's just using that series the way "The Offer" (also available to stream on Paramount+) and its many Easter eggs used "The Godfather."  That movie was about capitalism , the real not-so-creative force behind the current glut of legacy sequels. Sure, it brings a tear to the eye when we see fan-favorite characters reunited, but there also comes a point when you need more of that and less explaining of things in dialogue in the most asinine way.

While "Star Trek Beyond" may have gone Mutt Williams and incorporated a motorcycle, this franchise is not Indiana Jones. At the end of the day, the deepest secret Daystrom Station may hold is that "Picard" and its warehouse of references are bereft of originality.

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11 ‘star trek: picard’ easter eggs as season 1 nears the end.

There are plenty of Easter eggs in the penultimate hour of Star Trek: Picard's first season, an episode that packs a considerable amount of plot twists and revelations into its run time.

By Phil Pirrello

Phil Pirrello

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[This story contains spoilers for season one, episode nine of  Star Trek : Picard , “Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1.”]

“Brace yourselves!”

Picard’s warning to Rios and the rest of his crew might as well have been directed at us as “Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1” — the penultimate hour of Star Trek: Picard ‘s first season, an episode that packs a considerable amount of plot twists and revelations into its run time. 

As Picard finally arrives at Coppelius, the homeworld of the advanced synthetic android Soji (Isa Briones), the retired admiral’s season-long journey — and reason for going back into space after an almost 20-year absence — pays off with more Soji-looking androids, their Spock-inspired ways, and a surprise appearance by a new relative of Data’s. (Honestly, I’ll believe a colony full of space flower-using androids is possible before I’ll ever believe that Soji’s favorite meal of french fries dipped in peppermint ice cream is a thing.) 

In between all that are, yup, you guessed it, lots of Easter eggs. Here are the essential ones our tricorders picked up: 

1. A chroniton field is referenced at the top of this episode, which is fitting given that the subatomic particles are what Romulan cloaking devices produce (see the Star Trek: The Next Generation season six episode “The Next Phase”). The Borg also used chroniton fields to help mitigate the hull stress caused by traveling via transwarp conduit like the one Rios’ ship uses to get to its destination.

2. Seatbelts on the bridge of the La Sirena (aka “The Mermaid”) are deployed similarly to those seen on the bridges of the Enterprise in Star Trek: Nemesis and Star Trek Into Darkness , respectively. 

3. When the Borg Cube piloted by Seven ( Jeri Ryan ) emerges from the transwarp conduit, we can glimpse the space where seemingly a Borg sphere — like the one seen in Star Trek: First Contact  — would be housed and launched from. 

4. Agnes finds an old tricorder (albeit one with a design new to us) in a med-kit; the latter also houses a TNG era hypospray and DermaGel. 

5. 3D chess at Coppelius Station, or as Raffi calls it, “Synthville.” 

6. Soji’s home, with the center of town populated by various sets of identical twin androids, gives off some serious “I, Mudd” vibes from season two of The Original Series . In this classic Trek episode, Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and crew encounter sets of synthetics in the service of con man Harry Mudd. 

7. Another “mad scientist” Soong is introduced, in a way that ret-cons all we know about Data: Dr. Alton Inigo Soong. And, like all Soongs, this one is also played by Brent Spiner. Alton is the biological son of Data’s creator, Dr. Noonien Soong, and the half-brother to Data. 

8. Sutra (also Isa Briones) is the twin sister of Jana, the late synth Rios encountered years ago when he served in Starfleet. She is seen here, like most of Alton and the late Bruce Maddox’s androids, with both skin pigment and eyes similar to Lt. Cmdr. Data’s.

9. Sutra’s fascination with Vulcan culture brings about her use of the mind meld and Alton name-dropping Surak — Vulcan’s most important philosopher — first seen in The Original Series season three episode, “The Savage Curtain.”

10. Agnes gets very chummy with Spot 2, an android copy (because reasons) of Data’s cat from TNG .

11. Dollars to donuts this is likely a coincidence, but the tool Raffi is given to help repair Rios’ ship looks similar in shape to the recording device a reporter uses on the bridge of the Enterprise-B in the opening scenes of Star Trek: Generations .

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Did you catch the ’12 Monkeys’ Easter eggs in the latest episode of ‘Picard’?

The Star Trek universe is making some fun connections to an old SYFY series.

Credit: SYFY

The mastermind behind SYFY’s 12 Monkeys series, Terry Matalas , is now calling the shots on the bridge of Star Trek: Picard . But thankfully, he’s not above a nice Easter egg nodding back to his days on the acclaimed SYFY original series.

The 12 Monkeys series was an adaptation of the acclaimed 1995 sci-fi film from director Terry Gilliam that starred Bruce Willis as a man sent into the past to try and avert a mysterious virus that leads to the apocalypse. The SYFY series that ran from 2015-2018 followed a fairly similar track, but built out its own mythology and mysteries along the way.

As for how all that connects to Picard on Paramount+? Matalas already staged a mini-reunion with the addition of Todd Stashwick as the gruff Capt. Shaw on the final season of Picard . Stashwick was a fan favorite in 12 Monkeys as the scavenger gang leader Deacon. 

RELATED: Our favorite time travel shows, from ’12 Monkeys’ to ‘Timeless’

In the second episode of Picard ’s third season, when they’re running down some known aliases of the renegade character Jack Crusher, the name “James Cole” pops up as one of his many identities. As 12 Monkeys fans are well aware, that’s also the name of the main time traveler in 12 Monkeys (with Aaron Stanford taking over the role from Bruce Willis in the small screen adaptation). Digging a bit deeper, a drug used in the outskirts in the galaxy is called a “splinter,” which is also the name of the time travel method used in 12 Monkeys .

But there was one more Easter egg you might’ve missed, even if you were looking closely for it. Stanford actually showed up in Episode 2 of Picard playing the Ferengi criminal Sneed. You could be forgiven for not realizing it was Stanford under all that makeup and prosthetics — but yes — he’s also made the jump over to the Star Trek universe as part of Matalas’ well-placed Easter egg hunt. Now we can’t wait to see what other little 12 Monkeys nods he’s going to sneak into this show as Picard ’s third and final season keeps barreling ahead on Paramount+.

If you want to catch up on 12 Monkeys , you can find the entire series run streaming on Hulu , or the original film from Universal Pictures . If you're looking for deep space action in the vein of Trek , check out SYFY's latest original series, The Ark .

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All the Big Star Trek Easter Eggs In Picard's 'The Bounty'

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The Old Man's Season 1 Ending, Explained

Two highly-anticipated mcu animated series will reportedly no longer premiere in 2024, 10 darkest superman: the animated series episodes, ranked.

The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Picard Season 3, Episode 6, "The Bounty," now streaming on Paramount+.

One great thing about a series like Star Trek: Picard is the folks telling its stories are old enough to have grown up loving The Next Generation . This means each episode is jam-packed with references. However, "The Bounty" features some of the biggest Star Trek Easter eggs yet, both literally and figuratively.

Fans could watch and rewatch all episodes of Picard from Season 1 and never run out of Easter eggs. Some references are integral to the plot, such as this episode's titular ship. Still, looking at the walls of Ten Forward or even among the LCARS displays in the episode credits yield many references to Trek 's past. Yet, with characters at both the Daystrom Vault and the Fleet Museum, some oddities and old favorites return from bygone days of the franchise. One such oddity, Jean-Luc Picard's human body, was kept in the vault. Even more disturbing, the villains and their devastating portal weapon absconded with it. Still, "The Bounty" wasn't all dead captains and strange plans. It was a look back at Trek history, including the first moments of The Next Generation .

RELATED: Star Trek: Picard Brings Closure to Another TNG Relationship

All the Nods to the Star Trek Franchise In the Daystrom Vault

The most obvious Star Trek Easter eggs in the Daystrom Vault are all the references to Data. Riker, Raffi and Worf team up to infiltrate the secure location and face off against the AI, which turns out to be Data. In Season 6 of The Next Generation , Episode 15, "Birthright," Data sees a crow while trying to dream. The appearance of Moriarty was a clue since he began as a holographic villain who could "outsmart" Data. While his whereabouts are unknown, he was likely a manifestation of Data's positronic consciousness. Lastly, the whistling, complete with the scene from the pilot episode, "Encounter at Farpoint," Riker and Data first bonded over whistling. And this new synthetic body means that Data is, finally, human. Or, at least, as human as Picard is now.

On the way to Data, however, the gang passes some familiar and interesting things. The first big Star Trek Easter egg in the vault is the Genesis Device. It played a central role in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock . The original devices were destroyed, so Section 31 seemed to commission another one dubbed "Genesis II." Another big Easter egg in the vault is everyone's favorite Star Trek cuties: the Tribbles. Though, these fuzzballs have a violent streak. These "attack Tribbles" are the work of some scientist playing a little god .

Of course, the biggest and creepiest Star Trek Easter eggs in the Daystrom vault are the bodies of past heroes. Jean-Luc Picard's body was there, stolen by Vadic and the changelings. Yet, viewers also see the remains of James T. Kirk in the vault. This is curious since his body was buried in Star Trek: Generations by Picard on Veridian III. The Captains' bodies aren't the only ones. An Arretan android body, a reference to an episode of The Original Series , is seen behind Raffi and Worf when Moriarty opens fire at them.

RELATED: Captain Shaw Just One-Upped an Iconic Sisko Moment with Picard

The Star Trek Fleet Museum Is a Repository of Fan-Favorite Ships

A far less creepy source of fun Star Trek Easter eggs comes from the Fleet Museum, where The Next Generation crew reunites with Geordie LaForge. The title of this episode comes from one of the ships stationed there: HMS Bounty. It's the Klingon Bird of Prey commandeered by the Enterprise-A crew during Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home . Jack Crusher and the LaForge sisters steal the ship's cloaking device for the Titan-A. There are several Birds of Prey, both of the Klingon and Romulan varieties. There is also the USS New Jersey, a ship not found in Star Trek canon, likely named for showrunner Terry Matalas's home state. There are also glimpses of the Stargazer and a ship resembling a reimagined NX-01 from Enterprise .

This season, Picard included a massive Deep Space Nine connection by revisiting the changelings. So, it's only appropriate that the USS Defiant , the ship that made Benjamin Sisko a true "captain," has its place of honor in the museum. It's a shame Worf, formerly stationed on Deep Space Nine, wasn't there to see it. As Sisko's First Officer, he often commanded the Defiant. This is likely the ship that began service as the Sao Paulo but was renamed after the first Defiant was destroyed in battle.

A small poignant moment happens when Seven of Nine shows Jack the USS Voyager , the ship where she was "reborn." After its return from the Delta Quadrant, it was turned into a museum in an alternate future. It seems that in this timeline, Voyager wasn't the only ship. Still, for Seven, seeing her old home was as heartwarming as it was for fans of the old series. In fact, the fleet museum itself is an Easter egg. It looks like the space dock, which was first introduced in Search for Spock. Perhaps, when Picard and company save the galaxy again, the Titan-A will find its place among these legends.

Star Trek: Picard debuts new episodes Thursdays on Paramount+ .

• Star Trek: Picard (2020)

10 Biggest Star Trek Retcons and Contradictions

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Star Trek is a long-running sci-fi franchise which has been distributing new productions nearly non-stop since its inception in 1966. Every Star Trek movie and show is supposed to occur within the same fictional universe, so it follows that they should all abide by the same basic in-universe rules and premises. 60 years of ongoing creation of episodes and films is sure to have employed a multitude of screenwriters, directors, producers, and editors. With so many contributors, inconsistencies are inevitable and for such an expansive franchise, Star Trek still has impressively few.

One cause of such retcons is that showrunners are bound to disagree with each other at times. Other backtracking results from simple human error. In contrast, a few retcons have been thoughtfully planned and placed in the show's projects, adding meaning and depth to prior stories without contradicting any past events. This type of retcon is generally appreciated by fans rather than being lamented like most others.

Some of Star Trek's retcons are disruptive only to its most obsessive followers, while others are blatant enough to be noted by the general public. From resurrections of the dead to alien overhauls, here are 10 of Star Trek's biggest retcons ever.

10 Captain Benjamin Sisko's Father

Is captain sisko's father dead or alive.

Benjamin Sisko commands a far-flung outpost in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine . Promoted to the rank of Captain in the Season 3 episode "The Adversary," Sisko has become a beloved character who is now known as one of the best Starfleet captains ever . An interesting part of Sisko's backstory is his relationship with his father, Joseph. Early in the series, he fondly speaks of Jospeh in the past tense, and it is implied that Jospeh is dead. A later retcon proves this not to be the case.

The Writers Decided an Appearance by Sisko's Father Would Boost the Story

In early episodes, Sisko's backstory is laced with a tragic tone. In the Season 2 episode "The Alternate," Sisko states: "When my father became ill, I can remember how small and weak he looked lying there in the bed.......In the end, I realized that there was nothing that he could do, and nothing that I could do to help him."

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In the Season 6 episode "Far Beyond the Stars," Captain Sisko's father decides to leave Earth for the first time to visit his son on Deep Space 9. Viewers were likely relieved and amused to learn that Sisko's father is a riotous Creole cook, spouting lines such as, "Point me in the direction of a party and a pretty girl, and I'll show you how good I feel!" He adds dimension and conflict by clinging tightly to his earthly New Orleans heritage, eschewing modern technology, and distrusting a blood test while the crew is looking for shapeshifters in "Homefront."

While this retcon is rather obvious, it was an overall beneficial choice for the plot . Seeing Joseph cling to his customs, such as scratch-cooking when food can be automatically synthesized in Trek's futuristic universe, is a compelling struggle and sets up an intriguing and relatable conundrum for Ben Sisko while offering a glimpse into his origins.

9 Dr. Beverly Crusher's Secret Son

How old was beverly crusher when she gave birth to her son with captain picard.

Dr. Beverly Crusher is the doctor on Enterprise-D in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Throughout the series, she and Captain Picard have a mutual attraction on which they never act, partially because they seem to feel guilty about the death of Crusher's husband who happened to be Picard's best friend. In the show Star Trek: Picard, viewers learn that Dr. Crusher has been living in seclusion for the past 20 years, cutting off all contact with her former crew mates.

In Season 3, she makes her big return to reveal that she got pregnant the last time she saw Picard. She now has a second son, along with her first son Wesley who falls among the ranks of genius kids portrayed onscreen.

The Explanation for Beverly Crusher's Secret Pregnancy Is Surprisingly Simple

At first glance, Crusher's stunning news of a secret baby seems unrealistic based on the timeline. The episode "The Conondrum" reveals she was born in 2324, making her 55 years old during the events of Nemesis, the final movie for The Next Generation ensemble. Her lines in Picard reveal that her son was born sometime after that.

However, fans must not forget that in another movie, Insurrection, the crew visits a rejuvenating planet known as Ba'ku. It is plausible that Crusher's jaunt to the planet extended her fertility, making the surprising twist possible. This retcon works because it is not contradictory , and makes a nice Easter egg for devoted detail-finding fans.

8 The Eugenics Wars

Were the star trek eugenics wars the same as world war iii.

The Eugenics Wars are first referenced in the Star Trek episode "Space Seed." It establishes that the Eugenics Wars occurred in the 1990s when genetically modified superhumans nearly succeeded at taking over the planet, when Captain Kirk's crew finds a lost ship containing a small group of these selectively bred people who have been frozen in time. They are led by Khan Noonien Singh, who they drop off on an uncolonized planet, Ceti Alpha V, to see what they can make of it. This sets up the premise for the 1982 film The Wrath of Khan, a must-watch for lovers of classic adventure films .

The Dates of Star Trek's Wars Were Retconned to Keep Them in the Future

The '90s would have seemed like a futuristic and far-off time to the Star Trek's creators as they were writing episodes in the 1960s. At that point, no one knew that Star Trek would become a long-lasting franchise, so they didn't think to push events far enough in the future to keep them ahead of current times. By the time new shows and films were made, the '90s were no longer in the distant future so the timeline needed to be moved.

At times, World War III and the Eugenics Wars are spoken about as two separate events, while at other times, various characters seem to imply they are the same thing . A war called "The Second Civil War" is also brought into the mix. Captain Pike of Strange New Worlds offers perhaps the best explanation, describing the various wars as an ongoing cascade of conflicts which were referred to by different names as they grew.

Ultimately, while the retcons about the timeline of Earth's wars are a bit annoying, they do not significantly detract from the plot or conflict with Star Trek's overall themes. The key takeaway is that Earth devolved into chaos, nearly destroying its entire planet and species with nuclear attacks, before making contact with an alien species, the Vulcans, in 2063 and realizing they must work peacefully together.

7 Lieutenant Geordi LaForge Becomes an Engineer

Why was geordi's uniform changed from red to green.

Geordi LaForge is well known as the charismatic and quotable chief of engineering aboard the Enterprise-D in Star Trek: The Next Generation. He is portrayed by the charismatic LeVar Burton, who was originally given the role of a generic red-shirted bridge officer who mans the helm. Season 1 makes no mention of his engineering expertise, but by Season 2 he is wearing the green uniform reserved for the operations, security, and engineering divisions, and running the ship's engine room.

Geordi Was Possibly Promoted Because the Chief Engineer Was Fired Over a Salacious Star Trek Scandal

Season 1 of The Next Generation features various characters leading the engineering department, including Sarah MacDougal, Mr. Singh, and perhaps most notably, Chief Argyle. While it's possible the show was simply testing different engineers and never found the perfect fit in the first season, a rumor alleges that Biff Yeager, the actor who played Chief Engineer Argyle, was fired from the show . He supposedly solicited fan mail supporting his character, some of which arrived to the studio prior to the airing of his episodes.

Spreading spoilers is sure to be frowned on by any studio, especially in an era where the absence of social media meant television surprises could be tightly held. Regardless of the reason, the promotion of Geordi LaForge was well-suited. With his ability to pick up minute details invisible to other humans using his superior eyesight, it makes sense that he would excel in engineering.

6 Changes to the Borg

Where did the borg queen come from.

The Borg is a villain entity which is introduced in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Q Who" and are expounded upon in the two-part episode "The Best of Both Worlds." The original Borg group is a mind-twisting, almost incomprehensible opponent because it contains trillions of drones who are physically separate, but connected as one through a singular hive-mind identity. They work towards a unified goal: to assimilate any intelligent life form they encounter into their composite. Because members are not quite dead, but certainly not alive in a person-like way, Trek episodes featuring the Borg are disconcerting in the same way great zombie movies are.

The Queen's Human-Like Behavior and Motivations Detract From the Borg's Fear Factor

The 1996 film First Contact introduces the Borg Queen. Unlike the other Borg who behave like automatons and speak with an artificial, electronic quality, the Queen speaks like a human, carries a special vendetta for Captain Picard, and behaves more like a stereotypically sinister movie villain than the disturbingly robotic Borg of past productions.

This drastic change to the Borg collective is one of the more disliked retcons of Star Trek. The Next Generation , in which fans first meet the Borg, has a reputation for avoiding overt horror, and relies mainly on psychological factors to create fear and suspense. Dark episodes are effective because of their subtleties, which is why the introduction of a grotesque-looking "monster queen" who menacingly gyrates and gives loquacious speeches was an unnecessary addition.

5 Several Star Trek Characters' Names Have Changed

Is captain kirk's middle name tiberius.

One Star Trek retcon is that a few of the characters are now referred to by different names than they previously were. In Season 1 of Star Trek: The Next Generation , Dr. Crusher calls her old friend, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, "Jean" and Counselor Deanna Troi calls her former fiancé, William T. Riker, "Bill." After Season 1, these nicknames are never used again.

More noticeably, Captain Kirk's middle name has been changed . The name "James R. Kirk" appears on a gravestone erected by possessed crew member Gary Mitchell who is trying to kill him. The later episode "Bem" reveals his middle name to be Tiberius, and a film explains the name comes from his grandfather.

The Writers Decided Other Names Were a Better Fit

In the cases of Riker and Picard, the writers most likely decided their nicknames didn't sound very good. "Bill" is too obvious and old-fashioned, and "Jean" doesn't have the same ring to it as Jean-Luc. As for Captain Kirk, the writers probably didn't consider his middle name important, so they chose a random initial. Later, they decide to choose a specific middle name that helps illuminate his backstory. The name changes, while noticeable, are forgivable because the new names fit better and the alterations do not disturb the story. No other name than "James Tiberius Kirk" would fit the iconic original captain .

4 The Origins of 10 Forward

What does 10 forward stand for in star trek.

10 Forward is a key feature of the ship's atmosphere in The Next Generation, and also serves as a crucial dot connector in Star Trek: Picard . It was first introduced as the public eating area on Enterprise-D where social meals and celebrations can be held. Crew members can also receive advice at the bar from a mysterious mixologist named Guinan. Guinan is played by the wisened Whoopi Goldberg, whose sage and enlightened aura unsurprisingly qualified her to once have a role as God . Guinan's domain is named for its location at the front of Enterprise's tenth deck.

Not All Fans Love the 10 Forward Retcon in Star Trek: Picard

Guinan is well known to be a time traveler, a fact which allowed the 2020 series about the beloved Captain Jean-Luc Picard to retcon 10 Forward's origins . The episode "Seventeen Seconds" features present-day Guinan running a bar in Los Angeles by the same name as her former eatery aboard Enterprise-D. But the show later displays Picard, who is now an admiral, time-traveling to meet a young version of Guinan. Young Guinan is running the same L.A. bar, suggesting that the celestial gathering place with which TNG fans are so familiar is actually named after this earthly bar which came first.

This retcon simply doesn't make much sense , because how could Guinan have influenced the makers of Enterprise-D to build the café in the perfect spot to be named after her former haunt? This retcon was an attempt at a charming full-circle moment which didn't quite meet the mark.

3 Transformation of the Trills

Why does jadzia dax have spots on her face.

A glaring retcon in Star Trek is the transformation of the Trill species, which became all the more noticeable when one of its members, the vibrant Jadzia Dax of Deep Space Nine , became one of the franchise's most popular characters and earned a place among the ranks of famous sci-fi beauties . Changes have been made not just to the Trill outer appearance, but also to the rules of how they operate and interact.

The Next Generation introduces the Trill as a humanoid species with ridged heads who have the ability to host a slug-like creature known as a symbiont. It is mentioned in the episode "The Host" that transporting a Trill via beaming will kill the symbiont it is carrying. In the following series, Deep Space Nine , a new type of Trill appears. The new Trill have traded their ridges for a spattering of giraffe-like spots, are able to transport, and exist as a combination of the host and symbiont's personalities rather than being a singular consciousness controlled by the worm.

20 Great Sci-Fi Movies With Female Leads

Flashy visuals and mind-blowing concepts do entertain but let's face it; it's the compelling female characters that really elevate the storytelling.

The Trill of Deep Space Nine Should Have Been Introduced As a New Species

Instead of trying to retcon and reconfigure the Trill, a better plan would have been to introduce the new version as their own Fans must remember that in the early 1990s when production on Deep Space Nine began, the television landscape was very different. There was no ability to instantly binge past episodes via streaming, so retcons were often able to go unnoticed by all but the most devoted Trek junkies.

Despite being rather obvious, the new version of the Trill works because it makes more sense . The original form left too many unanswered questions, such as what happens to a Trill when it becomes host to a symbiont. Does its personality and consciousness permanently die until removal, and if so, why is anyone willing to become a host?

2 The Klingon Redesign

Why do the klingons look different in star trek: discovery.

The Klingon are arguably the most popular of Star Trek's aliens. They are introduced in the episode "Errand of Mercy" of the original series, and they feature prominently throughout the franchise's subsequent movies and shows. These original Klingons look very similar to humans, with thick raised eyebrows being their most prominent "alien" feature.

The second Star Trek series, which prominently features a Klingon named Worf as the chief of security, shows the Klingons with their original eyebrows and enhanced, ridged heads. Star Trek: Discovery is when the Klingons are completely overhauled, featuring much darker skin and a turtle-like appearance. The new Klingons of Discovery are also bald and eyebrow-less; a giant change considering their eyebrows were formerly their most distinctive feature.

Discovery's Klingon Upgrade Goes Too Far

The second iteration of the Klingons, as seen on Lieutenant Worf, artistically takes advantage of the expanded budget and cosmetic technology available to the makers of The Next Generation, while retaining the spirit of their original look. However, Discovery makes the Klingons look like a completely new species . The makeup job stacks up well with other great cinematic special effects jobs , but it makes the Klingons fully unrecognizable from their predecessors. This redesign ultimately comes across as "playing" with the budget and adds a somewhat distracting flashiness to the film's aesthetic.

1 Captain Pike Sees His Future

Why did spock get court-martialed, and what happens to captain pike in the future.

All fans of the OG Star Trek will remember when Spock is court-martialed in "The Menagerie" after defying Starfleet in order to illegally return Captain Pike to the planet Talos IV. Pike has been injured in a horrible accident and Talos IV, a planet with magic-like powers, is the only place Pike can be comfortable rather than living in misery for the rest of his days.

Captain Pike Seeing His Future is the Best Star Trek Retcon of All Time

Captain Pike's glimpse of his future in the Strange New Worlds episode "Through the Valley of the Shadows" is sure to give viewers a chill. Trek connoisseurs already knew that Spock risked his life out of loyalty to his former captain, but seeing new footage of the events prior to Pike's accident playing out adds a new depth to Spock's actions as well a new layer to Captain Pike's integrity .

In the horrifying psychic vision, Captain Pike watches his own face being melted off by radiation. The choice to still go through with his heroic act of putting himself in harm's way to rescue cadets during a catastrophe on a training vessel hits harder after seeing this new revelation.

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‘Star Trek Picard’ Season 3: All the Easter Eggs, From the Fleet Museum to Daystrom Station

“Star Trek: Picard” Season 3 is finally here and boy, is it a trip down memory lane.

This season, touted as the “final voyage,” reunites Jean-Luc Picard with the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise .

Their adventures were chronicled in “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” which ran for seven seasons from 1987 to 1994. The last time the cast shared the screen was in the 2002 feature film “Star Trek: Nemesis.”

The newest season of “Picard” picks up some 20+ years later, with Picard (Patrick Stewart) assembling his old crew to save one of their own.

Also Read: ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Season 3 Cast and Character Guide (Photos)

Each week, we’ll break down the easter eggs and “Trek” reference from the latest episode. Of course, spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution.

“Star Trek: Picard” Season 3, Episode 1 Easter Eggs

Warning: spoilers ahead.

The very title of this episode, “The Next Generation,” is an homage to the show that introduced us to the U.S.S. Enterprise D, its captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew.

The episode opens on the Eleos, an aide vessel captained by Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden), the former chief medical officer of the Enterprise. The camera pans through her personal items, including theater masks (Crusher formed a theater troupe on board the Enterprise and taught acting), orchids (her favorite flowers which she was seen tending in one episode) and a storage locker belonging to Lt. Jack Crusher (her first husband who was killed while serving under Picard). There’s also a glass filled with a blue liquor — unmistakably Romulan ale.

Beverly is replaying Picard’s log during an encounter with the Borg, in which the Enterprise hid in a nebula. Beverly is hiding the Eleos near a nebula.

The next scene features Picard at his family winery in France. In the distance, you can hear a dog barking, likely his pet pitbull “Number One.” He is looking at a painting of the Enterprise-D. His companion, Laris, says “The first love is always the sweetest.” Picard replies “Well, she wasn’t the first, but she was definitely my favorite.” Picard’s first command was the U.S.S. Stargazer, the same ship Jack Crusher served on.

Picard tells an assistant to give the painting to Geordi, the first mention of Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton), the Enterprise’s chief engineer and now head of Starfleet’s fleet museum.

Picard looks at more memorabilia at his desk, which include a Bajoran award. He picks up a Ressikan flute, a memento of the time he lived the life of a man named Kamin on the dead planet Kataan. The story of Kamin is told in the Season 5 episode of “The Next Generation” titled “The Inner Light.”

That evening, Picard receives an encoded message from Beverly Crusher. He’s alerted by the trill from his old Enterprise communications badge. It’s located in a box along with his red and black command uniform from the Enterprise.

Picard meets up with his old friend/former first officer Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes) at a bar. The bartender offers up miniatures of the Enterprise-D, which she calls “fat ones.” This is an inside joke for Trek fans; the Enterprise-D saucer was unusually oblong and large; later models were more streamlined.

Riker reveals he is spending time apart from his wife Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), the former Enterprise counselor, and their daughter Kestra. Kestra is also the name of Deanna’s deceased sister, whose death was explored in the Season 7 episode of “The Next Generation” titled “Dark Page.”

Picard shares the codeword “hellbird” with Riker. Riker explains that it was a term used when Picard was “incapacitated.” He’s referring to when Picard was assimilated by the Borg in the Season 3 finale of “The Next Generation” titled “The Best of Both Worlds.” The Borg gained all of Picard’s memories, so the crew had to devise a new system.

To track down Crusher, Riker and Picard go aboard the U.S.S. Titan, Riker’s command after leaving the Enterprise. The ship has undergone a “Neo-Constitution refit.” The Constitution class is one of the most popular in Trek lore; the original Enterprise itself was a Constitution-class starship.

The first officer aboard the Titan is none other than Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), another human who was assimilated by the Borg and rescued in the “Star Trek: Voyager” episode “Scorpion.” Seven became Picard’s ally during Season 1 of “Picard” where they helped root out Romulan spies.

Seven introduces herself as Annika Hansen. Her commanding officer, Captain Liam Shaw (Todd Stashwick) has instructed Seven to use her human name rather than her Borg designation.

Seven was given a field commission by Picard, but officially joined Starfleet upon the advice of Picard and Admiral Janeway (Kate Mulgrew). Janeway was the captain of the U.S.S. Voyager that rescued Seven.

Seven invites Picard and Riker to the bridge, where they meet a smiling helmsman, ensign Sidney La Forge (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut). Sidney is Geordi’s eldest daughter. Riker embarrasses her by bringing up her nickname from Starfleet Academy — “Crash” La Forge — after she crashed a shuttle … twice.

A quick pan around the Titan bridge reveals a Bajoran tactical officer, a Haiilian communications officer (with little hair) and a Vulcan science officer (with no hair). Bald crewmen (or crewwomen in this case) have had a special place in “Trek” lore, dating back to Lt. Ilia (Persis Khambatta) from “Star Trek: The Motion Picture.” Other bald crewmembers include Lt. Airiam (Hannah Cheesman) from “Star Trek: Discovery,” Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks) from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and, of course, Picard.

Showrunner Terry Matalas identified the Vulcan science officer as Lt. T’Veen. The actor who plays T’Veen, Stephanie Czajkowski, is a cancer survivor who kept her head shaved or short.

As the Titan leaves spacedock, Seven tells the crew to set speed to “maximum warp.” Picard asks if she should give Engineering a heads-up before doing so, but Seven tells Picard there’s no need; it’s all automated now. During “The Next Generation,” Picard would often have to inform La Forge that he was going to push the limits of the Enterprises’ engines, despite the chief engineer’s concerns.

Captain Shaw is not impressed by Picard or Riker, choosing to not greet them upon arrival and starting dinner before they arrive. Actor Todd Stashwick is not new to the “Trek” universe; he played Torak in the Season 4 episode of “Star Trek: Enterprise” titled “Kir’Shara.”

Shaw tells Riker he had to purge the “bebop” files when he took command of Titan. Riker is a jazz lover and was shown to play the trombone in several episodes of “The Next Generation.” Shaw says he prefers “structure.” The music playing he’s playing in the background is a piano concerto by Chopin — classical music for a by-the-books captain.

The “steak” Shaw is eating is blue — and we don’t mean undercooked. We don’t know the significance behind that but we wanted to point it out!

In a secondary storyline, Raffi Musiker (Michelle Hurd) is working undercover to discover what happened to experimental weapons stolen from the Daystrom Institute. An informant gives her the clue “Red Lady” which she discovers is a red statue of Captain Rachel Garrett that will be dedicated at a Starfleet recruiting center. Garrett was the captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise C, whose fate was explored in the Season 3 “The Next Generation” episode titled “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”

Riker and Picard make their way aboard the Eleos. While exploring the ship, Riker calls Picard “Captain” and then apologizes, saying “old habits.” Picard later refers to Riker as “Number One” — the way they referred to each other during their Enterprise days.

Riker is ambushed by an assailant (Ed Speleers) but manages to get the upper hand. When asked by Picard what his relationship is to Crusher, he responds “her son.” So far, the only son Crusher is known to have is Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton), who lived and served aboard the Enterprise-D.

The credits are filled with easter eggs themselves that will be revealed as the season progresses. The only one that is applicable right now is that display of the Shrike, the giant warship hunting the Eleos.

Also Read: Who Is Vadic in ‘Star Trek Picard’? Everything We Know About the Villainous Big Bad

“Star Trek: Picard” Season 3, Episode 2 Easter Eggs

We finally get the full name of Ed Speleers character — Jack Crusher. He’s named after his stepfather, Jack R. Crusher. We do a deep dive into the younger Crusher here .

Among the Eleos’ supplies is a bottle of blue Romulan ale, one of the galaxy’s most inebriating liquors. In Episode 1, Beverly has a glass next to her bed.

The Shrike opens fire on the Eleos, destroying the shuttle Picard and Riker flew over on. The debris reveals the shuttle’s name — Saavik. Saavik was a Vulcan officer who served aboard the Enterprise-A. She was played by the late Kirstie Alley and later by Robin Curtis.

The Titan comes to the Eleos’ rescue and attempts to transport Picard, Riker and the Crushers aboard. However, the signal is blocked due to transport inhibitors Picard setup around the bridge. Realizing what he’s done, Picard takes out a phaser and destroys the inhibitors with surprising speed and accuracy, much to Jack’s astonishment. This is a subtle reminder that Picard is in a synthetic body with potentially better reflexes.

Back on M’Talas Prime, Raffi meets up with her ex-husband, Jae Hwang (Randy Goodwin). Viewers previously met their son, Gabe (Mason Gooding), back in Season 1. In the Season 3 opener, Raffi gets emotional while looking at a photo of their granddaughter.

Picard, Riker and Jack make their way to the Titan bridge, where they’re scolded by Capt. Shaw. At one point, Ensign Esmar (Jin Maley), the communication officer, calls out “Captain!” Shaw, Riker (who once commanded the Titan) and Picard all respond in unison, “What?”

Capt. Vadic (Amanda Plummer) has dossiers on all the officers. She hints that Shaw has psychological problems. She also somehow knows that Picard is not human, saying “Admiral Jean-Luc Picard, in the synthetic flesh.”

Jack Crusher has many aliases, among which is “James Cole.” James Cole is a character from “12 Monkeys,” the show that “Picard” showrunner Terry Matalas previously produced.

While deep undercover, Raffi meets the Ferengi broker Sneed. Sneed is played by Aaron Stanford, who played James Cole on “12 Monkeys.” Of course, he’s barely unrecognizable under all those prosthetics.

Sneed tries to break Raffi using the synthetic narcotic Splinter, which is administered via the eye. Given Raffi’s history of substance abuse, she is able to partially withstand its effects. Splinter is name of the technology used in “12 Monkeys.”

Todd Stashwick, who plays Captain Shaw, ALSO appeared on “12 Monkeys.”

Raffi’s handler is revealed to be non-other than Worf (Michael Dorn). Worf rescues Raffi by slicing and dicing his way through Sneed’s goons. The Romulan thug has green blood while Sneed’s Ferengi blood is yellow.

Jack is about to turn himself over to Vadic when Beverly appears on the bridge of the Titan. She has a wordless exchange but it’s enough for Picard to confirm that Jack indeed is his son.

“Star Trek Picard” Season 3, Episode 3 Easter Eggs

The episode opens with the Shrike hot on the Titan’s tail. Shaw orders the Titan to delve deeper into the nebula in an attempt to shake the Shrike. It’s an evasion maneuver seen in many Trek shows and films, notably “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”

After the opening credits, a graphic appears that reads “Before.” The scene opens with a digitally de-aged Picard and Riker. They’re older than they were on the Enterprise but younger than the present. They’re celebrating the birth of Riker’s son Thaddeus, who was born on the Titan after Riker became captain. That would date this celebration about three years after the events of “Star Trek: Nemesis” and 20 years before the events of “Picard” Season 3.

Picard and Riker’s celebration is interrupted when Troi, Riker’s wife and Thaddeus’ mom, messages them with a fussy baby in hand. Riker apologizes and calls her imzadi , which is the Betazoid word for “beloved.”

Back in the present, Seven of Nine is confined to her quarters for insubordination. There’s a model of the U.S.S. Voyager — the ship that rescued her — on her desk. Ensign La Forge visits her and commends her for helping Picard and Riker, which is something her dad would’ve done. Seven thanks La Forge and tells her to rest, to which La Forge answers, “Yes, Commander Seven” instead of “Yes, Commander Hansen” as a sign of friendship.

Picard and Beverly finally have a face-to-face conversation about Jack. Picard got Beverly pregnant while on shore leave two months before she left the Enterprise. She never told him because she was afraid his enemies will target their son.

At one point, Beverly tried to tell Picard about Jack but “two Reman assassins had intercepted the ship in the Donatra sector.” Donatra was the name of the commander of the Romulan warship Valdore seen in “Star Trek: Nemesis” played by Dina Meyer.

After Raffi regains consciousness, she meets her rescuer/handler. He identifies himself as “Worf, son of Mogh. House of Martok. Son of Sergey. House of Rozhenko, bane to the Duras family, slayer of Gowron.” These are nods to Worf’s complicated lineage. His Klingon father was Mogh, but he was adopted as a boy by Sergey and Helena Rozhenko. Worf eventually aligned himself with House Martok, whose sworn enemies were the Duras family and notably the Duras sisters, who were killed in a battle against the Enterprise in “Star Trek Generations.” In the Season 7, Episode 22 of “Deep Space Nine,” Worf kills Chancellor Gowron for undermining Martok during the Dominion War.

Jack and Seven discover the Shrike is tracking the Titan via its verterium emissions. Gas leaks are another “Trek” trope. It’s how the Enterprise and Excelsior were able to track General Chang’s cloaked Klingon ship in “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.”

Jack knocks out the guard stationed outside Seven’s quarters, to which she responds, “You’re insane.” Remember this for later.

Jack is attacked by the saboteur, who is revealed to be a Changeling, a species of shapeshifters that waged war against the Federation 25 years prior (the aforementioned Dominion War).

While exposed to toxic verterium gas, Jack has visions of a woman (in the form of Seven of Nine) who beckons to him “find me!” Is he actually insane?

Meanwhile, Raffi and Worf interrogate Titus Rikka, a criminal played by Thomas Dekker. As a child actor, Dekker appeared as Picard’s imaginary son in “Star Trek Generations.” He also played a holographic child on “Star Trek: Voyager.”

Rikka is sweating and shaking profusely, which Raffi thinks are drug withdrawals. However, Worf recognizes them as something else. Rikka is also a Changeling who is losing the ability to hold his solid form.

Worf asks Rikka how long he has been separated from the Great Link. The Link is the collective of Changelings in their liquid forms introduced in “Deep Space Nine.” The Link makes decisions for all Changelings.

Worf tells Raffi about a schism in the Link and a rogue faction of Changelings that were not able to accept defeat from the Dominion War. It seems they have now infiltrated numerous parts of the Federation. Worf learned about the schism from “a close friend within the Link, a man of honor.” While Worf doesn’t name this friend, he’s referring to Odo (played by the late Rene Auberjonois), the Changeling constable on Deep Space Nine.

Back on the Titan, Picard tells Riker to stop running and fight, despite the “instinct to be fearful of loss.” Picard is referring to the death of Riker’s son Thaddeus at a young age. Riker tells Picard he’s out of line.

The Shrike uses the portal weapon to literally turn the Titan’s weapons on itself. The Titan is struck by its own torpedoes. The disabled ship gets pulled deeper into the nebula where it’ll be crushed by a gravity well.

“Star Trek Picard” Season 3, Episode 4 Easter Eggs

The episode opens on Frontier Day five years prior. Picard is trying to enjoy his lunch at a pub when several Starfleet cadets gingerly approach him and ask him out the Hirogen. The Hirogen were alien hunters native to the Delta Quadrant (think Predators).

The cadets ask Picard if he sought advice from Admiral Janeway. Janeway and the Voyager crew were the first Starfleet personnel to encounter the brutal race while stranded in the Delta Quadrant.

With the Titan trapped in the nebula and its systems failing, Riker has a heart-to-heart with his former captain. Riker reveals he lost hope when his son Thaddeus died, and his wife Troi, as an empath, also felt his grief. Riker reveals he went on the mission to get away from Troi. He urges Picard to talk to Jack in the few hours they have left.

Picard takes Jack to the holodeck where they enter a replica of Ten Forward – the Enterprise bar and later a brick-and-mortar bar.

Picard offers Jack some Chateau Picard from his own winery. Jack politely turns him down and says he prefers whiskey.

In order to trap the Changeling saboteur, Shaw tells Seven to find its “pot.” Seven assumes he is NOT referring to cannabis, demonstrating that marijuana is still around in the 25th Century.

Shaw shows Seven an example of a Changeling “pot.” In the bottom corner of the display is a photo of Odo (Rene Auberjonois).

Back on the Shrike, Vadic cuts off her hand, which dissolves into a Changeling face. The face instructs her to pursue “the asset,” which we assume is Jack.

The show jumps back to Frontier Day five years ago. Picard regales the cadets with the story of the Tamarian alien he had to work with despite being unable to understand each other. The events he describes took place in the Season 5 Episode 2 of “The Next Generation” called “Darmok.”

Another cadet references Jack R. Crusher, Beverly’s first husband. Picard later tells his son about the time he and Jack R. Crusher blindly navigated a micrometeoroid shower in a damaged shuttle together until they got home.

Shaw interrupts Picard’s tale and reveals he was at The Battle of Wolf 359. The battle is infamous in Trek lore and is depicted in the first episode of “Deep Space Nine.” The Borg, having assimilated Picard, used his knowledge to massacre a fleet of 40 vessels. Among them was the U.S.S. Constance, on which Shaw served.

Shaw was only a handful of survivors from Wolf 359 (11,000 people died in that single battle). He is still suffering from PTSD decades later.

Beverly discovers the bio-electrical pulses are actually contractions and the nebula is a life form giving birth. Jack proposes the Titan ride the pulse waves out of the nebula.

Beverly tells Riker that they’ve encountered species that thrive in space, in which Picard replies, “Farpoint!” Farpoint was the very first mission shown in the series premiere of “The Next Generation,” in which a station was actually an alien life form.

Riker thinks the plan is too risky, but Beverly invokes Troi’s name, making him change his mind.

Shaw and Seven work in tandem to open the warp nacelles in order to ride the wave. When La Forge appears and offers to help, Seven is able to deduce that La Forge is the Changeling after she calls her “Commander Hansen” instead of “Commander Seven.”

With Picard and Jack’s help, the Titan frees itself from the nebula, which gives birth to space babies. Beverly quotes the Enterprise mission, “to seek out new life,” which they have done.

It’s revealed that Jack was in the bar five years ago listening to his father’s story. Jack asks if Picard had a life outside Starfleet, to which Picard replies, “Starfleet has been the only family I have ever needed,” which crushes Jack.

Riker reaches out to Troi and apologizes for his behavior.

Back in his quarters, Jack experiences visions and is once again told by a female voice to “find me.”

“Star Trek Picard” Season 3 Episode 5 Easter Eggs

The episode opens with Jack massacring all of the bridge crew in a shootout. Luckily, it’s just a vision. “Star Trek” tends to shy away from such explicit violence, but a similar scene took place in Season 2 of “Star Trek: Discovery” when Burnham has a vision of Leland murdering the Discovery bridge crew.

At the end of his frightening vision, Jack’s eyes turn red and he again hears voices. Is he possessed? We deep dive into his visions here .

Shaw, Seven, Picard and Riker talk about the Changeling they encountered, who can mimic other species down to their internal organs. Beverly wants to investigate how the Changelings can now bypass the ship’s internal security systems.

With Starfleet on it’s way to question Picard and Riker, Jack asks if he should find himself a set of restraints. Picard responds, “many a rebel from all reaches of the galaxy have found their way to Starfleet.” This is a foreshadowing of what’s — or more accurately who’s — to come.

Raffi and Worf spar on the La Sirena, and Worf easily defeats her before taking a meditative stance. He urges patience on her part. They receive a message from Worf’s handler, who denies them access to the Daystrom Station.

While investigating the criminals who broke into Daystrom, Worf and Raffi pull up a list of suspects. One of them is Krinn. Among the other names on the screen include Morn, a side character from “Deep Space Nine” that frequented the station bar. Morn is a play on Norm, the lovable bar patron from “Cheers.”

Before turning them over to Starfleet, Shaw chastises Riker and Picard for previous instances when they’ve defied orders/Starfleet Command. He mentions several famous “Enterprise” adventures, including when the Enterprise saucer was “hot-dropped” on a planet (“Star Trek: Generations), throwing the Prime Directive out the window to “snog” a villager on Ba’ku (“Star Trek: Insurrection),, or they time they created a tie paradox in the Devron system (“Star Trek: The Next Generation” series finale.)

Riker and Picard meet the Starfleet Intelligence officer, who turns out to be Commander Ro Laren. We deep dive into Ro’s past here .

While dissecting the Changeling, Beverly confirms they can mimic internal organs and do not revert to liquid state after death. They have somehow evolved, she deduces.

After being interrogated, Picard tells Ro that the Changeling remains are in sickbay. She diverts them to the holodeck, where Picard disables the safety protocols, so he can essentially make it a booby trap. With the protocols disabled, he grabs a live phaser from behind the bar that belonged to Guinan. Guinan was a mentor to Ro aboard the Enterprise.

After exchanging words and memories, Ro and Picard realize they are who they say they are. They sheathe their phasers and Ro reveals that Starfleet has been compromised by Changelings.

Worf and Raffi meet the criminal Krinn, a Vulcan gangster. They are forced to fight to the death, and Raffi fatally stabs Worf. Fortunately, it’s a ruse. Worf has learned how to feign death. Krinn gives them a key that will grant them access to Daystrom Station.

On her way back the Intrepid, Ro’s security team plant an explosive on her shuttle. They beam off, revealing they are Changelings. With seconds left, Ro does a suicide run towards the Intrepid and crashes into their nacelle.

The Changelings find Jack, who kills four of them with ease. He sees another vision of a red doorway.

Before leaving for the Intrepid, Ro gives Picard her Bajoran earring. The earring has her entire investigation encrypted within it. They receive a message from Ro’s operatives, who turn out to be Worf and Raffi.

When Beverly asks Jack how she knew the security team was Changelings, he replies, “I didn’t. I think there’s something very wrong with me.”

“Star Trek Picard” Season 3 Episode 6 Easter Eggs

The episode opens with the Titan on the run. The ship evades capture by dropping decoy transponders. We learn that in addition to Starfleet, Vadic and the Shrike are on its tail.

Vadic confirms the Changelings will have vengeance on Frontier Day, which is approximately three days away.

Beverly discovers that Jack has irumodic syndrome, inherited from Picard. The syndrome drove Picard to have hallucinations and disassociate from reality in the series finale of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” But after the events in Season 1 of “Picard,” he is in a synthetic body and no longer vulnerable to the syndrome. But as Jack is human, his condition will degenerate.

Picard meets Jack in the holodeck bar. Jack asks how Picard survived irumodic syndrome, to which he replies, “I didn’t” — another reminder that Picard’s human body is gone … or is it?

Raffi and Worf beam aboard the Titan. Worf thanks Picard for his annual bottle of “sour mead” aka wine from Chateau Picard, which he describes as “quite tart.”

Seven and Raffi have a slightly awkward exchange in the transporter room, a reminder they used to be lovers.

Worf and Raffi explain whatever the Changelings stole lies can be tracked in the Daystrom Station manifest. The station houses “experimental weapons” and “alien contraband.”

Worf, Raffi and Riker beam aboard Daystrom and use the key from Krinn to disable the security system. Worf is glad that Raffi’s ex-lover Seven is not a part of the away team. Worf should know — his ex K’Ehleyr was killed while trying to help him in the “Next Generation” episode “Reunion.”

Two Echelon-class Starfleet ships arrive at Daystrom with sophisticated tracking technology, forcing the Titan to flee.

Worf, Raffi and Riker explore the inventory at Daystrom, which Worf calls “Section 31’s most nefarious table scraps.” Section 31 is a critical clandestine division of Starfleet intelligence introduced in “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” but has been around since the time of “Discovery.” A “Section 31” spin-off starring Michelle Yeoh was reportedly in the works several years ago.

Among the “good stuff” they find: a Genesis device used to terraform dead worlds (seen in “Star Trek II and III), a body scan and/or remains of James T. Kirk (captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise), and a genetically modified “attack” tribble (an irresistibly cute furry alien with extraordinary reproductive capabilities.

The A.I. system defending Daystrom pulls up files on the away team, including one on Riker. The photo, interestingly, is of a younger Riker from approximately 20 years prior.

The A.I. system sends a holographic crow, which caws at the away team. Riker notes there is “something familiar” about the crow as they approach the station mainframe.

As part of the security response, the A.I. system creates a hologram of Professor Moriarty (Daniel Davis), a holodeck villain created by Data to be his intellectual rival in “The Next Generation” episode “Elementary, Dear Data.”

The Titan flees to Athan Prime, the home of the Federation Fleet Museum, which is overseen by former Enterprise crewmember and current Commodore Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton).

Geordi beams aboard with his daughter Alandra and gives Beverly a big hug. He addresses his eldest daughter, Sidney, by her first name, to which she replies, “Sir.”

Picard asks Geordi to clone the Titan’s transponder signal to lure them away from Daystrom, but Alandra reveals that plan won’t work because all the ships in the fleet “talk to each other” and are aware of each other’s location.

Back at Daystrom, we see a shot of the two ships patrolling the station. There’s an off-screen conversation between the Sternbach and Cole, who are searching for the away team. Sternbach is the last name of Rick Sternbach, the visual designer who worked on “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and several Trek shows.

Moriarity fires at the away team with live bullets, indicating safety protocols are turned off. Riker notes he is not the same self-aware Moriarity they encountered 30+ years prior. Every few seconds, musical notes punctuate the air. Riker, a trombone player, realizes the notes are to “Pop Goes The Weasel,” the song Data was trying to whistle when Riker first met him in the first episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Riker finishes the tune, which disables the Moriarity hologram.

Worf, Riker and Raffi reach the main chamber and discover the A.I. system, which ends up being Data (Brent Spiner) or a version of him.

Geordi initially refuses to help Picard. At best, he’ll be court-martialed. At worst, Starfleet will come after his family, two of whom we have now met. We have yet to meet his wife though she is mentioned in passing.

Jack takes the captain’s chair next to Seven and looks at the various legendary ships stationed at the Fleet Museum. They include the U.S.S. Defiant (from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”), the U.S.S. Enterprise-A (from the “Star Trek” movies), the U.S.S. Voyager (from “Star Trek: Voyager”) where Seven was “reborn,” the HMS Bounty (the Klingon Bird of Prey used in “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home”). As each of these ships is shown, the musical theme from each respective series or film is played.

Raffi notes that Data died (after the events of “Star Trek: Nemesis”) and Worf says this cannot be the Data they served with. Raffi says this Data is a hybrid synthetic with an android interface. Somehow, Starfleet was able to take Data’s memories from B4, a more primative android where Data stored his personality. They activate a hologram of Dr. Altan Soong, the son of Data’s creator and the man who created the body Picard inhabits now. He says this Soong golem in Daystrom has a bit of Lal (Data’s daughter), B4, Lore (Data’s evil twin) and Data.

This may explain why the photo of Riker this Data has on file is about 20 years old — the last time he saw Riker “in person.” However, one would think this Data has access to the most current Starfleet files.

Worf deduces that Data is protecting the manifest, he is the manifest. Unfortunately, the away team is discovered by Starfleet.

Shaw, who was an engineer aboard the U.S.S. Constantine, geeks out over meeting Geordi.

Jack and Sidney steal and install the cloaking device from the HMS Bounty, allowing the Titan to return to Daystrom Station undetected. Geordi and Alandra stay onboard the Titan to make sure the cloaking device works properly.

Raffi and Worf escape Daystrom but Riker is captured. Geordi meets them in the transporter room and is taken aback by seeing his best friend, Data, 20 years after his death.

With his daughters’ help, Geordi reactivates Data. All of the personalities manifest, but Data’s comes through strongest. He identifies Geordi, his best friend and calls Picard “captain,” the rank Picard held when Data died.

Data finally reveals what was stolen from Daystrom Station: the human remains of Picard.

Riker is interrogated by a Starfleet officer, who turns out to be Vadic. She blackmails Riker into telling Picard’s whereabouts with the one thing he cares about: his wife Deanna Troi.

“Star Trek Picard” Season 3 Episode 7 Easter Eggs

The episode opens with the U.S.S. Titan hiding in the Chin’Toka Scrapyard. The Chin’Toka system was where several battles of the Dominion War were fought during “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.” Many Starfleet and allied ships were destroyed, and it would make sense that their debris would be in a scrapyard.

Seven of Nine reaches out to her former Voyager crewmate Tuvok (Tim Russ) for help. The four pips reveal that he has reached the rank of captain.

Seven deduces that Tuvok is really a Changeling by lying about her neural net. The real Tuvok stabilized her neural net in Season 5, Episode 7 of “Voyager” (“Infinite Regress”).

Picard, Beverly Crusher and Geordi La Forge turn to the Soong golem for answers. Unfortunately, the Lore personality has taken over. Lore was introduced as Data’s “evil twin” in Season 1, Episode 13 of “The Next Generation” (“Datalore”).

Despite Geordi La Forge warning Jack Crusher to stay away from his daughter Sidney, the two engage in some flirting. Jack is able to read Sidney’s mind — a new ability he hasn’t demonstrated before.

The Titan crew sets a trap for Vadic and the Changelings. They make it appear the Titan is derelict and have the Changelings board the ship. Once aboard, they lure them into traps and imprison them in forcefields.

Beverly Crusher and Picard trap Vadic in sick bay. Vadic reveals the origin of her evolved physiology — she was experimented upon as a prisoner of war during the Dominion War. Want to know more? Here’s everything you need to know about Vadic .

Lore disables the forcefields imprisoning the Changelings and Jack and Sidney become separated. Jack “possesses” Sidney and kills the Changeling attacking her. This is another one of Jack’s previously unseen abilities.

Vadic whistles “Three Blind Mice” — another children’s song from Earth (“Pop Goes the Weasel” was played in the previous episode). Her human captor whistled the tune while experimenting on her and the other Changelings.

“Star Trek: Picard” Season 3, Episode 8 Easter Eggs

Vadic and the Changelings commandeer the bridge of the U.S.S. Titan. She proceeds to cut off the ship’s “eyes” (power), “ears” (communications) and the “road ahead of them” (doors). Trapped with nowhere to go, the Changelings easily hunt down the crew.

She lines up the bridge crew, which includes tactical officer Mura, communications officer Esmar, science officer T’Veen, Seven of Nine, and Captain Shaw.

Jack uses his special powers to take over the body of a Titan security officer, but his connection is lost when a Changeling shoots the officer and kills him.

Vadic gives the crew an ultimatum: deliver Jack Crusher or she’ll start executing the bridge officers one by one.

Riker and Troi reunite on the Shrike, where they’re both being held prisoner. Riker again calls her imzadi (beloved) and tells her how he came face to face with “bleakness” while trapped in the nebula. He stops short of saying what it felt like, but it’s clear he’s referencing the death of their son, Thaddeus.

Troi says a Changeling masked as Riker visited her. She joked he was “good in bed and bad at pizza.” One of Riker’s hobbies is making outdoor pizzas, as seen in Season 1 of “Picard.”

Jack uses his power to take over Mura’s body and input a command override code, but Vadic catches him. She forces Mura and Esmar to their knees. She is about to execute Mura, but points the phaser at Esmar. After Esmar cries out Vadic shoots T’Veen instead. This shocking scene is a play on the “Redshirts always” trope in “Star Trek.” Mura and Esmar are “yellowshirts,” whereas T’Veen is a “blueshirt.”

Riker and Troi have a heart-to-heart conversation. Riker says they might die aboard the Shrike and “Kestra would have lost everyone,” referencing their daughter. The topic then turns to their dead son. Riker felt immense grief afterThaddeus died, but Troi used her powers to dull that grief. She, in turn, felt everyone’s grief as an empath, which drove a wedge between them.

Troi reveals she hated Nepethe, the planet they settled on to heal Thaddeus. She wants to move back to the city to drink raktajino  lattes. Raktajino  is a Klingon coffee mentioned throughout “Star Trek.”

A Changeling guard enters their cell but is stabbed from behind by Worf. Worf professes that he’s “counted the days” since he last saw her, a nod back to when they were romantically involved in the later seasons of “The Next Generation.”

Jack, Sidney, Beverly and Picard reunite with Geordi. In order to determine whether or not Picard is who he says he is, Geordi asks him what anniversary gift he received six years ago. “A Chateau Picard bordeaux, which you said was too dry,” Picard correctly responds. There’s an ongoing joke this season about the crew not liking Picard’s wine, with Shaw turning down a drink and Worf calling it too tart.

Jack surrenders to Vadic on the bridge to stop the executions. He reveals he’s holding a device that will kill him if she makes any moves. She cryptically teases him about his powers, and refers to the “red door” he sees in his visions.

Before they leave the Shrike, Raffi and Worf discover why the Changelings stole Picard’s body from Daystrom Station. They removed the parts of his brain with irumodic syndrome. Remember, Jack also has been diagnosed with irumodic syndrome, which may be giving him his special abilities.

There’s another battle happening in this episode. Within the mind of the Soong golem, Data and his brother Lore are fighting for dominance, with the latter winning. Data draws upon his memories as Lore takes over. They include a violin concerto (Data played the string instrument several times in “The Next Generation), Sherlock Holmes houndstooth hat and pipe (he enjoyed playing the detective on the holodeck), a tricorder, a holographic crystal of slain crewmate Tasha Yar, a deck of cards (poker was a favorite pastime among the senior crew) and his cat Spot.

Lore fully takes over and Geordi is distraught at losing his best friend a second time. However, Lore’s win is short-lived. The memories he took from Data transform him. “You took the things that were me, and in doing so, you became me,” a reconstituted Data explains.

Data regains control of the Titan. Jack uses the device he brought to the bridge, which is not a grenade but a personal forcefield generator. Picard orders the evacuation hatch opened, which sucks Vadic into space. Her body freezes due to exposure and shatters into pieces when it hits the Shrike. The personal forcefield prevents Seven and Jack from being sucked out.

The Titan then destroys the Shrike and presumably, Vadic and Picard’s remains.

Despite Vadic’s death, Troi senses “a great darkness” on the ship.

Data and Geordi help with contractions, at which point Data says, “We’re good here.” Geordi calls out that Data used a contraction, something he didn’t do previously but Lore could. It was one way to discern the two.

Troi counsels Jack and tells him they’ll open the red door together.

“Star Trek: Picard” is currently streaming on Paramount+

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The 25 Best Shows Like 'The Book of Boba Fett', Ranked By Fans

Vote up shows perfect for fans of ‘The Book of Boba Fett’.

With its gripping tale of transformation, intense action sequences, and deep exploration of Star Wars lore,  The Book of Boba Fett has firmly established itself as a must-watch for fans of the galaxy far, far away. The series continues  the journey of Boba Fett from a feared bounty hunter to a formidable crime lord on the sands of Tatooine, blending epic showdowns with intricate political dynamics, but now that the series has wrapped up its first season, fans are eager to find shows like  The Book of Boba Fett that capture the same exhilarating mix of adventure, lore, and character development.

Fortunately, there’s a fantastic array of TV series like  The Book of Boba Fett ready to quench that thirst for intergalactic excitement. For those who can't get enough of the  Star Wars universe,  The Mandalorian offers a seamless continuation of the themes and characters introduced in Boba Fett's saga, featuring more bounty hunter escapades and heart-pounding missions, and on the animated front,  Star Wars: The Clone Wars and  Star Wars Rebels explore even further into the lore, presenting rich backstories and epic battles that will fascinate any  Star Wars enthusiast. Venturing outside the  Star Wars realm, series like  The Expanse and  For All Mankind provide their own captivating narratives filled with space exploration, political intrigue, and human resilience. These shows similar to The Book of Boba Fett promise to keep the excitement alive, allowing fans to continue their journey through new, thrilling worlds and unforgettable stories.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Why you'll like this show:

Star Wars: The Clone Wars provides rich adventure brimming with intense battles, intricate politics, and profound character development, much like The Book of Boba Fett . The series explores themes of loyalty, leadership, and honor through the eyes of the Jedi, which deeply resonate with Boba's journey from bounty hunter to crime lord.

• Actors : Matt Lanter, Ashley Eckstein, Tom Kane, James Arnold Taylor, Matthew Wood
• Premiered : October 3, 2008

IS IT WATCHWORTHY?

Star Wars: The Bad Batch

Star Wars: The Bad Batch captures the essence of transformation and survival in a rapidly changing galaxy, mirroring the themes explored in The Book of Boba Fett . Following a group of experimental clones in the era after the Clone Wars, the series dives into themes of identity, loyalty, and adaptation, reflecting Boba Fett’s own struggles and evolution.

• Actors : Dee Bradley Baker, Ming-Na Wen, Stephen Stanton, Andrew Kishino
• Premiered : May 4, 2021

WandaVision

WandaVision blends sci-fi drama with deep character study, much like The Book of Boba Fett , as it delves into Wanda Maximoff's journey of self-discovery and the reconstruction of her reality. Both shows incorporate intricate political dynamics and personal metamorphosis, drawing viewers into their protagonists' complex inner worlds.

• Actors : Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Teyonah Parris, Kathryn Hahn, Kat Dennings
• Premiered : January 15, 2021

The Mandalorian

The Mandalorian shares numerous themes with The Book of Boba Fett , making it a near-seamless continuation of the narrative threads with Din Djarin's thrilling escapades and deep lore. The gritty, Western-inspired aesthetics and high-stakes missions in The Mandalorian mirror the captivating elements that define Boba's story, providing an enthralling continuation for those invested in Boba Fett's saga.

• Actors : Pedro Pascal, Carl Weathers, Giancarlo Esposito, Omid Abtahi, Nick Nolte
• Premiered : November 12, 2019

For All Mankind

For All Mankind brings a unique perspective to sci-fi storytelling, akin to the visionary narrative of The Book of Boba Fett . As the show reimagines the global space race, it delves into intense political intrigue and character-driven drama, echoing the trials and tribulations faced by Boba as he carves out his legacy.

• Actors : Joel Kinnaman, Wrenn Schmidt, Coral Peña, Krys Marshall, Cynthy Wu
• Premiered : November 1, 2019

Jupiter's Legacy

Jupiter's Legacy captivates with its blend of sci-fi action and intricate character dynamics, much like The Book of Boba Fett , as it focuses on the children of legendary superheroes struggling with their new roles. Themes of legacy, honor, and conflict within families resonate strongly across both shows.

• Actors : Josh Duhamel, Leslie Bibb, Ben Daniels, Andrew Horton, Elena Kampouris
• Premiered : May 7, 2021

Ragnarok weaves a narrative rich with mythology and modern-day battles, echoing the thematic depth found in The Book of Boba Fett . The show explores the collision of ancient legacies with contemporary struggles, highlighting the challenges of stepping into roles of great power and responsibility.

• Actors : David Stakston, Jonas Strand Gravli, Theresa Frostad Eggesbø, Herman Tømmeraas, Emma Bones
• Premiered : January 31, 2020

Star Trek: Discovery

Star Trek: Discovery offers a sci-fi experience rich with exploration, loyalty, and political intrigue, akin to the narrative found in The Book of Boba Fett . The series draws viewers into high-stakes scenarios and deep character development as the crew navigates new worlds and complex interstellar politics.

• Actors : Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, Anthony Rapp, Mary Wiseman, Wilson Cruz
• Premiered : September 24, 2017

The Nevers combines Victorian settings with supernatural abilities, creating a tapestry of adventure and intrigue similar to The Book of Boba Fett . As characters navigate treacherous alliances and complex political environments, the blend of supernatural drama and intricate character arcs offers a thrilling experience.

• Actors : Laura Donnelly, Olivia Williams, James Norton, Tom Riley, Ann Skelly
• Premiered : April 11, 2021

Star Wars Rebels

Star Wars Rebels deepens the Star Wars lore with a narrative that explores rebellion and the fight for freedom, mirroring The Book of Boba Fett’s exploration of power and legacy. The series introduces a diverse group of characters battling against the Empire, highlighting themes of honor, resilience, and camaraderie.

• Actors : David Oyelowo, Vanessa Marshall, Tiya Sircar, Steve Blum, Taylor Gray
• Premiered : August 11, 2014

Doom Patrol

Doom Patrol follows a misfit team of superheroes tackling bizarre phenomena and personal traumas, echoing the unconventional heroes and complex dynamics found in The Book of Boba Fett . Themes of redemption, loyalty, and identity are prevalent in both series, drawing viewers into the characters' multifaceted journeys.

• Actors : Brendan Fraser, Matt Bomer, April Bowlby, Diane Guerrero, Joivan Wade
• Premiered : February 15, 2019

Star Trek: Picard

Star Trek: Picard delves into the personal and political challenges faced by retired admiral Jean-Luc Picard, paralleling the redemption and leadership arcs seen in The Book of Boba Fett . Themes of resurgence, honor, and resilience are intricately woven into both narratives, offering a deep, character-driven experience.

• Actors : Patrick Stewart, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes, Gates McFadden
• Premiered : January 23, 2020

Lost in Space

Lost in Space centers on survival and family dynamics in a hostile environment, akin to the trials faced by Boba Fett as he navigates the treacherous sands of Tatooine. The Robinson family's struggle to come together and surmount challenges echoes the themes of loyalty, resilience, and adaptation found in The Book of Boba Fett .

• Actors : Toby Stephens, Molly Parker, Maxwell Jenkins, Taylor Russell, Mina Sundwall
• Premiered : April 13, 2018

Titans blends gritty superhero action with deep character exploration, reflecting the intense, character-driven narrative seen in The Book of Boba Fett . As young heroes confront their dark pasts and come of age, themes of redemption, loyalty, and leadership resonate strongly across both shows.

• Actors : Brenton Thwaites, Anna Diop, Teagan Croft, Ryan Potter, Conor Leslie
• Premiered : October 12, 2018

Shadow and Bone

Shadow and Bone presents a fantasy adventure filled with magic and political intrigue, closely aligning with the high-stakes narratives of The Book of Boba Fett . The series follows a powerful protagonist navigating newfound abilities and dangerous enemies, with themes of power, legacy, and transformation at the forefront.

• Actors : Jessie Mei Li, Archie Renaux, Ben Barnes, Freddy Carter, Amita Suman
• Premiered : April 23, 2021

Castlevania

Castlevania weaves a dark fantasy tale rich with action and complex character relationships, echoing the epic, character-driven storytelling of The Book of Boba Fett . Following the last survivor of a disgraced clan battling dark forces, themes of legacy, honor, and redemption are explored, much like Boba's transformation and quest for power.

• Actors : Richard Armitage, James Callis, Alejandra Reynoso, Jessica Brown Findlay, Rila Fukushima
• Premiered : July 7, 2017

Black Lightning

Black Lightning explores the return of a retired vigilante to a life of action and justice, paralleling Boba Fett’s ascent to power and transformation into a leader. Themes of redemption, family dynamics, and societal leadership resonate strongly in both series, drawing viewers into their protagonists' battles against dark forces and personal demons.

• Actors : Cress Williams, China Anne McClain, Nafessa Williams, Christine Adams, James Remar
• Premiered : January 16, 2018

Supernatural

Supernatural follows two brothers battling various dark forces, reflecting the themes of family, loyalty, and resilience seen in The Book of Boba Fett . Both series explore deep bonds between characters and their struggles against increasingly dangerous enemies, blending intense action, supernatural elements, and emotional depth.

• Actors : Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, Misha Collins, Alexander Calvert, Mark A. Sheppard
• Premiered : September 13, 2005

Loki explores the God of Mischief’s quest for identity and power, mirroring Boba Fett’s transformation from outlaw to leader. Themes of self-discovery, loyalty, and complex alliances are intricately woven into both series’ narratives, with a blend of sci-fi drama, intricate character arcs, and high-stakes adventures.

• Actors : Tom Hiddleston, Sophia Di Martino, Owen Wilson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Wunmi Mosaku
• Premiered : June 9, 2021

Van Helsing

Van Helsing centers on the descendant of a legendary warrior combating dark forces, paralleling Boba Fett’s struggle to redefine his legacy and power. Themes of resilience, leadership, and transformation are deeply embedded in both series, drawing viewers into their protagonists' battles against formidable enemies.

• Actors : Kelly Overton, Jonathan Scarfe, Christopher Heyerdahl, Paul Johansson, Vincent Gale
• Premiered : July 31, 2016

The Boys exposes the darker side of heroism and power, exploring themes of corruption, justice, and loyalty that align closely with The Book of Boba Fett . As The Boys embark on a quest to expose superheroes who abuse their powers, the series delves into complex moral questions and intense action, similar to Boba Fett’s rise to power and battles with various threats.

• Actors : Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, Erin Moriarty, Dominique McElligott
• Premiered : July 26, 2019

Star Wars Resistance

Star Wars Resistance broadens the Star Wars universe with a tale of new heroes rising against the First Order, paralleling the themes of rebellion and courage found in The Book of Boba Fett . The series showcases young characters navigating their roles in a larger conflict, combining action-packed adventure and detailed exploration of the Star Wars lore.

• Actors : Christopher Sean, Suzie McGrath, Scott Lawrence, Myrna Velasco, Josh Brener
• Premiered : October 7, 2018

The Umbrella Academy

The Umbrella Academy explores the dynamics of a dysfunctional family of superheroes , echoing the deep character exploration and complex relationships seen in The Book of Boba Fett . As the siblings come together to solve their father's mysterious death, themes of legacy, identity, and redemption are prominently featured, blending dark comedy, high-stakes action, and emotional depth.

• Actors : Elliot Page, Tom Hopper, David Castañeda, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Robert Sheehan

Wynonna Earp

Wynonna Earp follows the modern-day descendant of Wyatt Earp battling supernatural forces, mirroring the themes of legacy and transformation in The Book of Boba Fett . The series' focus on a powerful protagonist grappling with her past and leading a team against dark threats parallels Boba’s rise to power and leadership challenges.

• Actors : Melanie Scrofano, Tim Rozon, Shamier Anderson, Dominique Provost-Chalkley, Katherine Barrell
• Premiered : April 1, 2016

The Expanse

The Expanse delivers a richly crafted narrative set in the vast expanse of space, filled with political intrigue, interstellar conflict, and complex human dynamics, paralleling the thematic depth of The Book of Boba Fett . The show’s exploration of power struggles, loyalty, and identity within a meticulously built universe mirrors the elements that define Boba Fett’s journey, making it an exhilarating companion for those captivated by his saga.

• Actors : Steven Strait, Dominique Tipper, Wes Chatham, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Frankie Adams
• Premiered : December 14, 2015
• The Book of Boba Fett (Disney+)
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• Watchworthy
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Are you the "TV Person" on your Zoom Trivia team? Well, study up, pal. We've got some lists for you.

Den of Geek

Picard Season 3 Episode 9 Easter Eggs Deliver the True Return of ’90s Star Trek

Star Trek: Picard season 3 can't go more '90s than it has in its penultimate episode!

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This Star Trek: Picard article contains spoilers.

As Picard season 3 heads toward its conclusion, Star Trek fans are simply not prepared for how hard these episodes go in the nostalgia department. More than any other science fiction franchise, Star Trek ’s history is so rich and varied, that it’s always possible to do something new with old material. For this reason, Picard ’s penultimate episode, “Vox,” is still pretty shocking, even if you predicted some of these twists.  

The easter eggs and callbacks here are there for the fan service, of course. But these are also storytelling moments, payoffs that are decades in the making. Here are all the biggest and most and best references and easter eggs in “Vox,” the next-to-last episode of Picard ever.

The Crimson Arboretum on Raritan IV

As Jack and Deanna try to get that red door opened, Jack remembers visiting the “crimson arboretum” on Raritan IV. We actually saw Raritan IV at the start of Picard season 2, and it appeared to be populated by Deltans. Raritan itself is a real city in New Jersey, and in SyFy’s 12 Monkeys — produced by Picard showrunner Terry Matalas — it was the site of Project Splinter, a time machine. On top of that, the crimson arboretum is probably a reference to the “red forest,” a time-altering concept from 12 Monkeys .

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We Are the Borg

Turns out behind the red door is a giant Borg cube. Jack has dormant genetic Borg DNA and that’s what’s been causing trouble all this time. Later in the episode, Data and Geordi figure out that Jean-Luc had similar Borg DNA, too, which is why the Changelings stole his human body. Their plan was to harvest that genetic code. 

The Borg references in this episode are numerous. Early in the episode, we actually hear dialogue from the TNG episode “The Best of Both Worlds.” Also, the revelations about Picard’s ability to “hear” the Borg even after he was assimilated references the opening of First Contact , when Picard told Troi he could “hear” the Borg when they tried to attack Earth at the start of that movie.

Deanna Troi’s “Gifts”

This is a small one, but when Jean-Luc and Beverly question what Troi saw in Jack’s mind, she says “My gifts aren’t perfect, but I have never mistaken Borg.” This may go without saying, but Deanna Troi is not a full telepath like other Betazoids, she’s mostly an empath. Trek canon has played fast-and-loose with her ability to speak exclusively inside of other people’s minds, but there’s always been a limitation, which is why Deanna doesn’t have straight-up mind-reading skills. This small line of dialogue actually helps with some of these decades-long canon inconsistencies. Troi can speak to Riker and her mom via what seems like telepathy directly in their minds, but she can’t always get thought patterns 100 percent correct. Her gifts aren’t perfect!

Which Borg again?

Beverly says, “No one has seen from or heard from the Borg in over a decade.” For those who watched Picard season 2 this might be a bit confusing. But, as Shaw pointed out in episode 4 of this season, the Jurati-led Borg were from an alternate timeline and had nothing to do with the Borg in the Prime Universe. Over a decade means that the last time the “regular” Borg appeared would have been sometime before 2391. This would be roughly around the time the Borg Cube known as the “artifact” went offline before the events of Picard season 1.

Picard and the Borg Queen

Jean-Luc tells Jack, he “came close to killing everyone I knew, everyone I loved,” referencing the events of “The Best of Both Worlds.” He also references the Borg Queen, saying that Jack can’t know “what she can make you do.” This foreshadows the arrival of the true Borg Queen, as played by Alice Krige, later in this episode! 

Voice of Alice Krige

As the credits reveal, the Borg Queen is once again played by the voice of Alice Krige. She first played the character in First Contact , and later, in the Voyager finale. Krige also voiced the Borg Queen in Lower Decks Season 2.

The Changeling-Borg Alliance 

In two scenes full of a lot of new information, Data, Geordi, and Worf lay out what’s been going on all this time. The Borg and the rogue Changelings made a pact to destroy the Federation. Vadic discovered the genetic Borg code in Picard’s body when she broke out of Daystrom Station. The Borg, as still controlled by the Borg Queen, accepted the Changelings’ help for reasons that will likely become clearer in the finale. The Borg introduced Picard’s genetic code into all the Starfleet transporters, which embedded the Borg juice into anybody who uses the transporter.

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The Borg were unable to put this code in the transporters on their own, because, as we were told in season 2, the Prime Universe Borg were hobbled by Janeway’s actions in the finale of Voyager .  

A Huge Amount of Starship Easter Eggs 

Throughout the episode, we see countless Starfleet ships and many of those names are easter eggs and references. Here’s a list of the biggest ones:

• USS Okuda : This references Michael and Denise Okuda, longtime designers and artists who have worked on the Star Trek franchise since The Next Generation .
• USS Sutherland : This was the name of the ship Data took command of in the TNG episode “Redemption.”
• USS Drexler: This references Doug Drexler, a longtime and influential Star Trek artist.
• USS Akira : The Akira-class starship was first glimpsed in First Contact and is named after the anime sci-fi classic Akira .
• USS Luna: Riker’s Titan from Lower Decks was a Luna-class ship, and we do see at least a few Luna-class ships in fleet formation.
• USS Excelsior: Obviously, a reference to the Excelsior from the classic Trek films, although a new Excelsior was introduced in the Picard season 2 premiere.
• USS Ross: Likely a reference to Admiral Ross from Deep Space Nine .
• USS Relian t: The ship Khan stole in The Wrath of Khan . But another Reliant was the first ship Picard served in deep space, which was established in Picard season 1 and TNG .
• USS Castillo: This references Richard Castillo, the first officer of the USS Enterprise-C , from the TNG episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”  
• USS Zheng-He: An Inquiry-class ship we saw in the finale of Picard season 1. This was Riker’s ship at that time, and it’s named for an ancient Chinese naval explorer. All the Inquiry-class ships are named for ancient explorers or scientists
• USS Ibn al-Haytham: Named for an Arab astronomer who was born in the year 956. Likely another Inquiry-class ship.
• USS Harlan: Probably named for Harlan Ellison, the science fiction writer who penned The Original Series classic “City on the Edge of Forever.”
• USS Forrest : This references Admiral Forrest from Star Trek: Enterprise .
• USS Hikaru Sulu: Obviously a reference to Sulu from TOS and all the classic films.
• USS Intrepid: We’ve actually seen this new Intrepid earlier this season. This was the ship that tried to trap the Titan in episode 5 .
• USS Cochrane: Named for Zefram Cochrane, the inventor of the warp drive, introduced in the TOS episode “Metamorphosis” and made famous by the film First Contact .

The USS Enterprise-F

Since the first episode, we’ve known that the Enterprise-F has been scheduled for decommissioning. In the game Star Trek Online , the Enterprise-F is an Odyssey-class ship, and it appears here much as it does in that game. 

Admiral Shelby (Elizabeth Dennehy)

Elizabeth Dennehy reprises her role as Shelby, who first appeared in “The Best of Both Worlds.” At the time, she was Starfleet’s leading Borg expert, which is why Picard cracks wise about “the irony of her endorsing something so Borg-like.”

The Anniversary of the NX-01

We learn here that Frontier Day celebrates the voyage of the Enterprise NX-01 from the series Enterprise . We hear cues from the Dennis McCarthy score from that series as Shelby explains the voyages of the NX-01 “would lead to…the birth of what we know as Starfleet.” To be clear, Starfleet existed in Enterprise . But the Federation did not. This is a small distinction, but the Federation version of Starfleet and the Enterprise version of Starfleet are a bit different. Basically, Frontier Day draws a line at the NX-01 as the end of the old Starfleet and the beginning of the new. The first version of Starfleet clearly existed before 2151, but now, it appears Starfleet thinks of those days as different from the Starfleet we know. This makes a decent amount of sense. Everything in Enterprise indicates that Starfleet wasn’t doing much boldly going before the NX-01.

Shaw Gives Seven Command

After Shaw is tragically blasted by the newly assimilated Titan crew, he gives command to Seven, and poignantly calls her “Seven of Nine,” instead of Commander Hansen. Shaw had previously refused to call Seven by her name, and instead, had used her pre-assimilation name.

The Fleet Museum and Docking Bay 12

When Geordi takes the crew back to the Fleet Museum, we finally get to see what’s inside Docking Bay 12. Back in episode 6, “The Bounty,” Geordi’s daughter Alandra, suggested they try to use something in Docking Bay 12. Now we know what it is.

The ENTERPRISE-D!!!

The biggest plot point in this episode of Picard is the return of the Enterprise-D . When Picard questions how the half-destroyed ship can even be here, Geordi says, “Thanks to the good old Prime Directive, the saucer was retrieved from Veridian III so as to not influence the system. I’ve been restoring it bit-by-bit over the last 20 years, the engines and nacelles come from the USS Syracuse .”

This quick bit of dialogue tells you everything: The saucer section, which crashed on Veridian III in Generations , was retrieved, and Geordi rebuilt the rest of the ship by salvaging other ships!

What Happened to the Enterprise-E?

Geordi quips that “we obviously can’t use the Enterprise-,” and everybody gives Worf the stink eye. He replies, “That was not my fault.” This references the fact that at some point after Nemesis , Worf was the captain of the Enterprise-E . We don’t know what happened to it, but clearly, it’s in no shape to get restored! We wrote way more about Worf and the Enterprise-E here .

The Enterprise-D Bridge and Majel Barrett

When the crew boards the Enterprise , the easter eggs mostly speak for themselves. The style of the bridge is exactly as it was on TNG , emulating the look of the ship from the series rather than from Generations . We see the classic dedication plaque, and Jean-Luc even makes a joke about the carpet. (A lot of contemporary Trek bridges don’t have carpet.)

When Picard takes command of the ship, we hear the voice of Majel Barrett, the late wife of Gene Roddenberry, who played the voice of the computer throughout TOS and TNG . This is the first time we’ve heard her voice in a new Star Trek show or movie since 2009 when she was the voice of the computer in the first J.J. Abrams reboot. 

The computer recognizes Picard as “Captain” not as “Admiral,” and Jean-Luc says that he accepts the “field demotion.” Data’s been calling him “captain” since episode 6. Riker called him “captain” in episode 1, and now, everyone’s calling him “captain.” Clearly, Captain Picard is back, and as Riker says, “We are the crew of the USS Enterprise .”

As the Enterprise-D makes its way out of Spacedock, we can see the NX-01 parked behind her in the Fleet Museum. And just before the ship goes to warp, the ship looks just as it does in Picard’s famous painting in his ready room. The Next Generation has returned and fans are not ready for this finale.

Ryan Britt is a longtime contributor to Den of Geek! He is also the author of three non-fiction books: the Star Trek pop history book PHASERS…