A major Star Trek: Picard relationship involving Seven of Nine started at ComicCon when the cast met up ahead of filming for season one of the series.
ScreenRant sat down with Star Trek: Picard co-star Michelle Hurd and an interesting piece of information came out of the interview about when the idea was pitched for Hurd’s Raffi Musiker and Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine to be romantically linked. It turns out that it wasn’t an original idea that the writers were thinking about before casting was finished but was thought up after the Picard producers got ahold of cast photos of the two actresses talking casually at ComicCon.
Hurd goes on to describe how it all came about to ScreenRant;
"We kind of knew it was coming. Our writers are so phenomenal. The whole world of Star Trek is that all of our writers and producers and everyone involved is receptive to the world, right? To what’s happening in the world, and what’s happening to that, and they put it in the scripts. And I will say that we were all at a comic con and Jeri [Ryan] and I were just hanging out, and one of our cast members took a picture of us. We were both looking good, whatever, and [the photo] goes back to our producers and writers and literally, you could just see them looking at that picture and they were like [makes whispering sounds]. It just made them go, “Wait! This could be a possibility”. So they sort of floated it to us and we were like, “all good!”"
The relationship made waves online, with some fans liking the pairing and others not. Many suspected that due to the almost perceived rushed nature of their coupling – holding hands in the closing moments of the season after barely spending any time with one another – that this was a last-minute addition.
It apparently wasn’t, it was just not fully fleshed out during the production of the first season. This has some fans wondering if it’ll continue on into season two. With that said, it’s still unclear who’s coming back for season two and what will be the focus of season two. A good number of fans were displeased with how the first season handled its story and how it ultimately concluded it. Many claimed the series was just pulling from the nostalgia well to get fans subscribed to CBS All Access.
A second season will surely need to shake things up much like Star Trek: Discovery did but to what end is unknown. Not every fan who was excited about the Picard series finished season one that way. That can’t keep happening if the series is going to continue to expand into more “retro” Star Trek stories.