Star Trek: 10 MORE Behind The Scenes Decisions We Can't Forgive

Speaking of Star Trek: Picard... it's not a secret the show went through some growing pains in its first season. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, producer Akiva Goldsman revealed that he regretted not planning out the arc of season one before production began:

If you’re going to do a serialized show, you have to have the whole story before you start shooting. It’s more like a movie in that way — you better know the end of your third act before you start filming your first scene.

Star Trek: Picard famously underwent additional photography to expand the pilot into three installments and to insert story beats into already produced episodes. Among the late additions were the numerous flashback sequences to immediately after the destruction of Mars and the grisly, apocalyptic visions of the Admonition. Seen in the episodes "Broken Pieces" and "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1", the Admonition featured images of war and planetary destruction with several pieces of footage pulled directly from Star Trek: Discovery's second season, itself centering on the impending robo-pocalypse.

The inclusion of reused footage immediately raised questions. Was Star Trek: Picard linking its story of Synths to Star Trek: Discovery's similar second-season plotline? The idea made sense and was bolstered by the appearance of squid-like robots in Star Trek: Picard's finale after similar creatures appeared in the Discovery episode "Light and Shadow".

No stranger to crossover events like the Maquis storyline which spanned Star Trek: The Next Generation season 7 and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 2 in order to set up Star Trek: Voyager, the Star Trek Universe is among the few franchises with built-in shared storytelling potential. And in today's media environment in which shared universes are highly sought after, it would be surprising if Star Trek didn't take advantage of its own internal connections.

Ultimately, though, that's exactly what happened and the crossover between Picard and Discovery never materialized. Any similarities between the two consecutive seasons' storylines chalked up to coincidence. Oh and that reused footage? Well Star Trek's no stranger to reusing footage either.

Recently, franchise honcho Alex Kurtzman teased interconnectivity between Paramount's Star Trek film franchise and the series currently proliferating on streaming. But a big crossover event, or even a small one like the one teased by Picard, would appear to be off the table. A strange course when every other franchise wants the shared universe potential the Star Trek Universe takes for granted.