Season 2 of Picard is taking the Q-Picard love seriously

As a 94-year-old synthetic, Admiral Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) is, predictably, reflecting on the life he’s lived, the lives he’s saved, the adventures he’s had, and the regrets he holds. Season 2: PicardPicard explores new, strange places every day. Just this time, it’s his own love life.

“In the original TNG Series […] it was touched on, occasionally, but not often,” Stewart tells Polygon, “because I don’t think Gene Roddenberry — may he rest in peace — was as interested in that aspect of storytelling.” It was only later, after the franchise was in other hands, that it became an inclusive part of the TNG storytelling, providing, as Stewart puts it, “a greater exploration of who these people were.”

PicardThe title character is not the only one who takes up that responsibility. Every character on season 2 Paramount Plus is exploring the lows and highs of their relationships. Not least the one that drove Paramount Plus fans nuts in the last minutes of season 1. Raffi and Seven talked at the table as the camera moved around the ship. Seven was smiling and Seven reached out to touch their hands.

“What’s interesting is that the emergence of that relationship was really their idea. The two actors, both of them, came up to me and Michael Chabon at a party, and they put their arms around each other,” showrunner Akiva Golsman says. “And they said, ‘This is next season.’”

Grid View

• 
  
  Image via Paramount Plus
  

• 
  
  Photo by Trae Patton/Paramount Plus
  

Of course when season 2 picks up there’s been a time jump; already their relationship is getting complicated, hamstrung by their competing needs and desires. It’s maybe not the swoony romance that fans hoped for in that tentative glimpse of early love bliss, but it’s something Hurd relishes the chance to dig into.

“Jeri and Michelle — just like Raffi and Seven — are, you know, very independent women. We’re very strong minded […] we’re grown,” she says. “[And] I love that that’s a common ground, that we could bring those realities into our characters’ realities, and how they would actually truthfully react, and dive into a relationship.”

And for whatever rough seas they hit, it’s nothing compared to the quarrels of Picard and Q (John de Lancie), the extra-dimensional fan-favorite being who’s back to mess with Picard. Q and Picard are once more playing games in their ongoing battle to the top. It is, in Q’s special way, an expression of love.

“There’s no question in my mind that when I play it, I love Picard,” de Lancie says, “and I believe he loves me — but not in a physical way. It is in a way that neither of us can particularly admit, but is there.”

Goldsman certainly took the “profound love” between the two seriously when writing the season. The writers discovered a number of characters with stories that were naturally compatible in the second season. Picard and Q are one example of such a pair.

“I think is, in some ways, as significant as any other love life in Picard’s life, and in Q’s life,” Goldsman says. “We do want to examine that, and how that works and why it exists and what it means to both of them [… and] we definitely explored All versions of that relationship — they’re not all explored on screen, but as we were developing.”

They will not reveal the conclusion that they came to, but they agreed on it. But there’s a lot more mirroring between them than there ever was.

“The writers are using the fact that time has passed here as a temporal thing for real, between two actors, as a motivator,” de Lancie says. “Season 2 is about an old Picard who does not have much time to come to grips with certain personal issues that he has not dealt with — and the clock is ticking.

“The hidden part of this, which I think you’re getting a little taste of in those opening episodes: is that there’s a clock ticking for me as well.”