Picard Show Set In Post 2009 Movie Future

Alex Kurtzman, CBS's chosen to steer the good ship Trek for TV, has confirmed that upcoming Picard Star Trek TV series will be set in post 2009 Star Trek continuity, but no its not set in the movie-verse continuity. Since the show takes place about 20 years from the end of Star Trek: Nemesis, the time setting was assumed, but this is the first official confirmation of that.

"Picard's life was radically altered by the dissolution of the Romulan Empire," Kurtzman tells THR.

The Picard series will be the first onscreen Trek story set in the aftermath of that event, which would have altered the balance of power in the galaxy. The destruction of Romulus would also have extra resonance for Picard, who has a long and complicated relationship with the Romulans, the alien race that split from Vulcan society thousands of years ago and founded a separate civilization. The Romulans went on to control a portion of the galaxy, and the empire was in opposition to the Federation for all of Picard's career.

Now, this might be a little confusing if do not bother to keep up with Star Trek continuity. To start, there are multiple Star Trek universes or continuities. The three most common is The Original Series (I call it Prime-verse), the Mirror Universe (the one with bad versions of our heroes, most recently seen in Discovery), and Kelvin-verse (the last three movies' setting). Now remember in the 2009 Star Trek film, part of the story was Nero seeking revenge for the destruction of Romulus (home of the Romulans) and going back in time with Prime-verse Spock in pursuit creating the Kelvin-verse. The details of the movie are not important to the show beyond knowing that Romulus' destruction is an in canon event in the Prime-verse.

The main takeaway is the history of events is The Original Series (circa 2265-2268) > +100 or so years to The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager (circa 2365-2372) > + 7 or so years to Star Trek: Nemesis (circa 2379) > destruction of Romulus due to a supernova (2387) > Picard show set after this (~2393?).

In this context you how understand why his days on the USS Enterprise was over. In the comic book Star Trek: Countdown, co-written by Alex Kurtzman, around the time of Romulus' destruction, Ambassador Jean Luc Picard was the Federation representative on Romulus who had left the planet before its destruction and had taken on the goal of re-unification with Spock (who in turn had taken over from his father) between the people of Romulus and Vulcan. A goal that became essentially impossible with the the near extinction of the Romulus people. So for the first time Picard has no ship to captain and his secondary goal in life literally went up in a ball of flames. So yeah "radically altered" does seem about right. Looking forward to seeing the show when it premieres sometime in Fall 2019.