Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The La Sirena
2. Holographic Universe
Owing to Star Trek: Picard's place in the Star Trek timeline, 20-something years after Star Trek Nemesis, the production designers took the opportunity to update familiar Trek tech. While Star Trek: Picard does feature numerous touchscreen panels reminiscent of TNG's "Okudagrams", new holographic interfaces were incorporated into Starfleet and Romulan starships, civilian consumer technology, and the La Sirena's cockpit.
According to production designer Todd Cherniawsky:
That came from a lot of our research into what’s being done at places like Caltech, MIT Media Lab, Stanford, Oxford or any of the other high-tech labs. With what they’re doing in experiments, we’re already into tactile interfaces based on light and touch. It just seemed like a natural progression to migrate towards holographic technology. That was a very early decision.
The distinctive orange holographic interfaces appearing aboard the La Sirena were designed by Andrew Jarvis and Twisted Media. Describing the process, Jarvis said:
I was constantly looking at the source material, I was poring through TNG, Voyager, Deep Space Nine all the Berman era material that Michael Okuda worked on, and his team... really making sure that we stay true to that. And that it felt like a natural progression from that era, twenty years later, to be this. The Sirena, obviously, there was no precedent set so it was just all fun and games. We were able to just think what does a really high tech ship in the 25th century look like?