Picard’ Showrunner Terry Matalas On Assembling This Epic Final Season As A Life-Long Fan

As the much-anticipated third and final season of Star Trek: Picard premieres on Paramount Plus, it marks the triumphant return of a rather familiar group of leading actors from Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994) and an epic conclusion for their beloved characters. What may be most surprising is that this intriguing, full circle narrative is not just happening on-screen, but also occurring off-screen, surrounding the real-life story of Picard showrunner Terry Matalas.

“I was a kid watching Star Trek with my dad, watching Next Generation,” Matalas, 47, tells me during our recent Zoom conversation. “Family outings were going to see the original series’ movies. For college, I went to Emerson and we had an incredible internship program where you can come out to LA and get college credit for your last semester by working for free at a production office or a company. I faxed Star Trek on every fax machine I could find, like a hundred times. Finally, post-production called me and they’re like ‘We could use an intern.’ That’s how I can got in on the Paramount lot – just getting coffee, getting lunches, logging tapes, doing things like that. Then there was an opening for a production assistant and I went upstairs and interviewed with Merri Howard, who I had her trading card from Next Generation and it was for Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001). I got the job and became a PA and it was one of the best jobs I ever had actually. That’s where I met Jeri Ryan and we’ve been friends since then. Star Trek has just been in my DNA.”

Before joining the Star Trek: Picard series, Matalas was the showrunner for other television series MacGyver and 12 Monkeys, where he was also the co-creator. When opportunity knocked for Matalas to come aboard Picard for season two, Matalas says he was ready to “come home.”

Recalling his initial Picard talks, Matalas says, “The show is very much created by Alex [Kurtzman] and Akiva [Goldsman] – Michael Chabon. Alex had reached out, saying that Akiva was going to need some help on the second season but there was also a third season, and eventually Akiva was going to branch off to do Strange New Worlds after that. I came in and eventually, I split off to do this season.”

With actor Patrick Stewart continuing to lead the charge as the title character Commander Jean-Luc Picard and the return of his Star Trek: The Next Generation co-stars Jonathan Frakes, Gates McFadden, Michael Dorn, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, and Marina Sirtis, alongside a new generation of fresh faces on the fleet, I wondered what it was like for Matalas and his Picard production team to get to work alongside these veteran actors, reprising their iconic roles from yesteryear.

“Everyone’s heart was in it from the get-go,” Matalas says. “Everybody immediately went to work right away. A tremendous amount of discussion went into every one of these characters. The energy on-set was – they [the actors] would fall back into their roles, their ‘jokey,’ nonstop, burst into song after calling cut roles. As the showrunner, who has to look at the clock being like ‘Guys, we got to go. We have to shoot!’ That transition from these are your heroes and you are fans of them to these are now your friends, who you have to wrangle to get the job done (laughs), is very special.”

Frakes, who plays Captain Will Riker on Picard, briefly shared with me his thoughts on Matalas steering their ship (so to speak) for this latest Star Trek season. “Terry is a clever, collaborative showrunner. In addition to understanding Trek, specifically Next Gen, as well as anyone I’ve ever worked with. He made Riker better!”

Now with Star Trek: Picard’s final season being shared with its countless fans on Paramount Plus, I asked Matalas what he would say has been the most important objective for him and his team in crafting this farewell season – and is this really the end?

Matalas responds, “I think it was to tell a final sort of Star Trek: The Next Generation story. A final emotional send-off, if you will, but also is kind of the passing of the torch to the next generation of heroes, and leaves the door open to see perhaps our legacy characters again in new roles – mentoring roles. I want to see more of them and I have ideas, but that’s up to the fates and the people above my pay grade. So, we’ll see!”

Living in a modern society today with social media at our fingertips and passionately loyal Star Trek fans having the ability to instantly share their opinions with the world at large, I wondered if Matalas has felt any pressures with this Picard series to get its conclusion “right” by keeping quality storytelling at the forefront, while also somewhat appeasing Star Trek’s many generations of fans.

“The problem is there’s no single one pressure,” Matalas reveals. “There’s a thousand of them that come from all different directions. Making sure the characters are right, the story, things you want to see because you’re living in the universe, but does that qualify as egregious fan service or is that just the kind of things that should be in the world? It will be up to the fans to decide how well we managed that.”

Matalas goes on to tell me that the pressures this season have weighed heavy on him, sharing that he has not slept well in the past two years. Fortunately, he says some of that relief was recently eased at the Picard season premiere event at the historic TCL Chinese Theatre on February 9.

When speaking of the energy he felt and experienced that night in Hollywood, Matalas says, “You’re never going to have a warmer room than that. It’s filled with fans, it’s filled with your actors and your colleagues and your producers that made it. To have hundreds of fans in there means every Star Trek joke is going to land. It felt like the opening night of a blockbuster [film]. Pretty much within 30 seconds in [to screening the season premiere episode], I just knew it was going to play and I was able to relax for the first time in like a year and a half and just enjoy it. It was magical to be in that theatre and to see it – it looked great.”

With a young Matalas in mind, who was just hoping to get on the radar of the Star Trek production team in the beginning, he says if his former self could see him today that “he would be blown away and daunted by it, as I am now.” Getting to now live out his dream after years of hard work leading up to this point in his professional career, I wondered what message Matalas might have for his Picard cast and crew, following this entire experience together.

“Nothing more than thank you,” says Matalas. “It was hard to do a 10-hour feature film like this. With not nearly enough time and money for your aspirations requires people to go above and beyond every minute they’re working on it. What you’re about to see shows a tremendous amount of that hard work, passion and love from everyone – from production assistants upward. So many folks were [Star Trek] fans, many were not, but all of us worked from the heart on it and I’m just beyond appreciative of every single one of them who contributed to this.”

As for his message for the many life-long Star Trek fans, like himself, who are about to experience this final season of Picard – “Nothing other than turn off the lights, pop some corn, put your feet up and have fun.”