STAR TREK: PICARD
BATTLE STATIONS!
AS STAR TREK: PICARD BEAMS DOWN TO SCREENS GLOBALLY, STARS MICHAEL DORN AND MICHELLE HURD DISCUSS THE EPIC NEW SEASON
WORDS: DARREN SCOTT
THE FIRST PREVIEWS AND REVIEWS are in, and season three of Star Trek: Picard seems to be ticking all the right boxes. “I’m actually a little too close to it,” star Michael Dorn considers. “Also, I’m a little too critical of myself to really have an opinion about it in terms of what it is.” He pauses. “Saying that, I do know one thing – that the fans and people that watch it are gonna go ape, I really believe they’re going to enjoy it. Like, immensely.”
It’s no understatement – even for Dorn’s self-critical eye. The new season, which reunites the cast of The Next Generation, is an incredible piece of television which truly earns the much-used term “cinematic”.
“It’s a great show, they’ve done a really, really good job,” he agrees. “To the point that it really does look like a movie. Not just the special effects and that type of stuff. But I’m saying the way they crafted it is a movie – it should be a movie,” he laughs. “It should be, because it kind of deserves that platform.”
NOT A MERRY MAN
Dorn has played the role of Worf in seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, four feature films and four seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, totalling 282 on-screen appearances. How does this iteration of Worf differ for him?
“It was more collaboration than I’ve experienced in the past,” he considers. “They really took the producers and writers and my ideas about where Worf should be and put it together to create his world now, as it is, and that was different. Usually in the past they said, ‘Okay, Worf’s going to be doing this, here’s the script, we’ll see you on Tuesday.’ So this was quite different. It was quite an experience. I loved it.”
Like other returning cast members, Dorn spoke with the producers of Picard about where he felt his character would now be.
“Basically I said I wanted him to be on a journey,” he recalls. “My whole overarching theme with Worf is that he’s never staying in one place and he’s always learning. He’s always had very clear ideas at the very beginning, and those ideas were kind of dashed on the rocks. But he didn’t understand why that was.