TRAILER TALK

Unfiltered, uncensored, uncompromising trailer reactions from team EMPIRE

The Empire team pick apart the Star Trek: Picard trailer in almost excruciating detail. Set phasers to nerd!

Liz Beardsworth (Associate Editor: Production): [innocently] So is this to do with Star Trek?

James Dyer (Editor-in-chief, Digital): Data! Now as you know, Data was destroyed at the end of Star Trek: Nemesis...

Chris Hewitt (Associate Editor: Review): We’ve made a huge mistake having James here.

James: That could be B-4, the protoandroid that has Data’s knowledge downloaded into him, or Lore, his evil twin, but I think it’s a dream.

Liz: Until you explained all that it looked quite promising. Now it’s very boring.

James: This might be Dahj [Isa Briones], the mysterious woman who comes to see Picard.

Jamie Inglis (Deputy Art Director): Was that battle shot a flashback?

James: They’re not spaceships I recognise. It might be the fall of Romulus which is, I believe, what caused Picard to drop out of Starfleet.

Ben Travis (Online Staff Writer): This is a different timeline to the J.J. Abrams stuff, right?

James: Yes, this is the Prime timeline — literally given it’s on Amazon.

Nick de Semlyen (Associate Editor: Features): This shot of Picard in bed, looking upset, is all of us listening to James.

James: Does that make me Number One, the dog? Licking your face while you sleep?

Helen O’hara (Editor-at-large): You’re not that cute.

Jamie: Is that Patrick Stewart’s own dog? He adopts pit bulls.

Joanna Moran (Photography Director): His home looks beautiful.

James: The Picard family vineyard, inherited by Jean-luc after his brother died in a fire.

Ben: It’s interesting that they still have flat caps in the future.

Nick: I’m looking forward to a series where he’s just pottering around a vineyard.

Jo: My favourite Star Trek — I’ve only actually seen one — is where they go to San Francisco and Seaworld.

James: That’s a hologram of the NCC1701-D Enterprise in Starfleet Headquarters, of course.

Chris: Oh Jesus. Does Dignitas do home visits?

James: This bit is interesting, with the androids. There’s a Next Generation episode, ‘The Measure Of A Man’, where they’re trying to use Data as a template to create a new generation of androids. These might be those. Helen: This rainy scene is extremely Blade Runner-y by Star Trek standards.

Jo: There Dahj is again, looking all crack-y and bad.

James: That’s where an implant was removed! She was assimilated, Jo.

Jo: I don’t trust her.

James: Note the communicator there is not the original Next Generation communicator but the one introduced in Deep Space Nine, Voyager and the Next Gen movies.

[short silence]

Helen: Well, I think we’re all glad we asked James along to this. But this is cool, because these are the Vasquez Rocks where Kirk famously fought...

Nick: A shit lizard man.

James: The Gorn.

Helen: And where Bill and Ted were killed by their evil doppelgängers in Bogus Journey.

James: That’s Michelle Hurd as Raffi Musiker.

Ben: A space hippy.

Nick: For the record, James is looking these names up.

James: And this is Evan Evagora, who plays a Romulan ninja, Elnor.

Helen: Santiago Cabrera is obviously the Han Solo of the gang.

James: That is a heavily fucked-up Borg cube with forcefields maintaining its structural integrity. In the first trailer you saw a prison camp with Romulan guards and a sign saying “X days since the last assimilation” so the speculation is that these are former drones being kept by Romulans.

Nick: I feel like time has ceased to exist.

James: And look, that’s an original Romulan Bird Of Prey. You don’t see many of those anymore. Now Picard’s doing a bit of swashbuckling. Look at his fencing technique, extraordinary.

Chris: He’s old, he’s doing well to be able to lift his arms at all. Why’s Matthew Perry in this?

James: That is Hugh, Jonathan Del Arco, from the episode ‘I, Borg’. He’s a Borg who was freed from the Collective. And Seven Of Nine [Jeri Ryan] with phased pulse rifles. Love it! And here’s Will Riker [Jonathan Frakes].

Helen: The original Number One, before he was a dog. He’s still married to Troi [Marina Sirtis]. I am genuinely emotional.

Jamie: I’ve never seen football in Trek before.

James: This bit is all, spacey spacey shooty shooty. And then Dahj is burned. Probably another dream sequence, or this is a big spoiler.

Jamie: Riker’s always got his chest out, though, doesn’t he?

James: I think we can all agree: That. Was. Fabulous. star trek: picard is on prime video in early 2020