Star Trek: Picard Gains Castmembers, Director, Possible Official Title

Pre-production on the upcoming Star Trek: Picard series continues. Hanelle Culpepper (Discovery, Flash) has signed on to direct the first two episodes of the pilot, becoming the first woman to direct a debut episode in the franchise's history but that is only 7 debut episodes. With writers doing their thing, a director on board to get the vision going for those first few episodes, that leaves the cast as a primary source of news.

On that front, there is some with Santiago Cabrera and Michelle Hurd joining the cast in undisclosed roles. Michelle Hurd is everywhere on TV as she is a go to character actor for most television dramas with recent work including Blindspot, Hawaii Five-O and Lethal Weapon. Santiago Cabrera was seen recently on Salvation and BBC's The Musketeers. The story is 20ish years after Star Trek: Nemesis so Picard is retired from Starfleet so chances are his cast mates would be playing co-workers either with the Federation or ex-Starfleet for various reasons. The reported rumor is Cabrera role is Picard's pilot and skillful thief while Hurd suffers from drug and alcohol addiction that has not slowed down her memory or analytical skills as an ex-intelligence officer.

As for principle photography, that too has not been officially confirmed but the start date appears to be April 14 through to October 1st. That is surprisingly long time but apparently Star Trek: Discovery's 15 episodes took 8 months. For comparison, most television dramas film their 20+ episodes in 8 or so months but then they tend not to be as special effects heavy as Star Trek which always complicates and extends filming time. Thanks to California's $15.6 million tax credit, the show will film in Santa Clarita, CA instead of Toronto where Discovery films.

I was hoping the filming time would give us an estimate of its premiere date but nope. Filming until October would barely give them time to release all 10 episodes, one per week, through the end of the year so it seems more likely the show will either premiere in parallel to Star Trek: Discovery's 3rd season or after it sometime in the spring of 2020.