Star Trek: Picard's small set budget wasn't an obstacle for the final season

If you've seen the final season of Star Trek: Picard, then you know the sets for season three were some of the best, including the final two episodes which brought back the Enterprise-D. And amazingly, it, along with the bridge of the USS Titan and the remaining sets, were created on a limited budget.

Production designer David Blass, clearly a master at his craft, told ComingSoon.Net, in a recent interview [via Slashfilm] that the final season was a "massive challenge." Every script that came in was really big so the sets were supposed to be really big as well, but the money wasn't there. That meant Blass had to scale down what the script called for with weekly compromises.

""Season three was just such a massive challenge because every script would come and it was huge. Then it was the emotional compromise of, 'Here, I want to design this new set and make it cool. I want to do this.' Then you submit it — this big huge set — and they're like, 'Okay, that's $5 million.' And I'm like, 'How much do we have?' And they're like, '500.' And you're like, 'Oh, okay, maybe the set's this big, then.' So it was just a weekly compromise of, 'Here's what I want to do, here's what we get to do.' In the end, it's actually fine."

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- David Blass

Blass was able to meet the budget constrictions by reusing some sets. For instance, they had one set for everyone's quarters, which is not something we would have known without Blass' information.

""I think my best example of this is the fact that we only had one bedroom, or one quarters, for everyone. Everyone has the same teeny tiny room and we redressed it, but there's a scene that Terry shot in the finale where we go from Raffi and Worf having a scene in the room, and then without any cut to anything else, we go to Data and Troy in the same exact room having a scene together, and it completely works."

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- David Blass

Though I'm guessing most of the design budget went into the recreation of the Enterprise, what was left was certainly put to good use. The sets were brilliant and well-defined without revealing they were duplicates, with Blass admitting it completely works.

Star Trek: Picard season three had the best sets of all three seasons, and without knowing the budget for the first two, if the final season's budget was smaller than the first two, Blass did a phenomenal job in bringing both the Titan and the Enterprise to life on the screen. It just goes to show what talent can do even with limited income!