Star Trek: Picard's Enterprise-D Had To Be Built From Scratch
Since the final season of "Star Trek: Picard" has continued to delight fans with its parade of familiar faces and characters, it only makes sense that one last character would decide to stop by. In the series' penultimate episode, a brand new Enterprise-D joined the fight and promised a series finale full of nostalgic adventuring. Of course, Geordi (LeVar Burton) had to revamp the Enterprise-D a little after its demise in "Star Trek Generations," but that was to be expected.
The real surprise, as Variety revealed in an article about the ship, is that the Enterprise-D had to be built entirely from scratch for "Picard." "Everyone tried to talk us out of doing this, because financially it's a nightmare," explained executive producer Terry Matalas. Still, Matalas and his team assembled a group of around 50 people to physically recreate the bridge, which eventually boasted the same measurements as the original from "Star Trek: Next Generation." However, that didn't make the production designers' jobs any easier.
The production crew didn't have much to go on
Rebuilding an entire set from scratch is probably not your average production designer's first idea, but "Picard" production designer Dave Blass and art director Liz Klockzowski had to do just that for the new Enterprise-D. "There's the ongoing rumor that there's a warehouse somewhere that has all this 'Star Trek' stuff, but what exists is not a lot," Blass told Variety. "We went into the deep dive of looking at every photo ever taken and every screencap, and we had a giant wall of inspiration at the back of the soundstage with photos of every single detail, so that everyone could see that we had thought this through."
However, everything began to click after Blass got the idea to hire Mike and Denise Okuda, who had previously worked on the "Next Generation" production team. Still, some of the biggest challenges for Blass and his crew were the deck's chairs and wood archway, the latter of which required a gargantuan paper plan and multiple subsequent templates to complete.
And yet, with the Okudas and tow and his team of around 50 people, Blass eventually achieved the impossible and completed work on the Enterprise-D, despite having built sets for "Picard" Seasons 2 and 3 almost concurrently. And just in case another production designer ever had to revisit the Enterprise-D, Blass made sure to save it for posterity. "There were lots of interested parties who wanted to save the set," he said. "Luckily it has a home in the Star Trek archives."