Star Trek: Picard’s third and final season is creeping ever closer to the finish line, as Episode 7, aptly titled “Dominion,” brings Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) face-to-face with Vadic (Amanda Plummer) and the ramifications of Starfleet’s involvement in the Dominion War. But capturing Vadic comes with a moral cost, as Picard and Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) are pushed to reassess what they’re willing to do to save their son Jack (Ed Speleers). “Dominion” feels like the first half of a movie, with the final moments leaving audiences on the edge of their seat waiting for whatever lies ahead in Episode 8, especially now that Vadic has taken control of the Titan.
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Collider had the opportunity to chat with Picard’s showrunner Terry Matalas to break down the high-anxiety episode, discuss those epic leather jackets that some of the crew are sporting, delve into Picard and Beverly’s do-or-die thought process, unpack Vadic’s tragic backstory and what that means for Starfleet and Section 31, the potential for LaCrush if Star Trek: Legacy happens, bringing back Star Trek: Voyager’s Tim Russ, and of course, some of the Easter eggs and best moments of the episode.

COLLIDER: Okay, so my first question is going to be about the costume change at the top of this episode. What happened between Episode 6 and Episode 7 that had Seven and Shaw being like, “I’m going to go put on these badass leather jackets”? Is that their we’re-on-the-run-now outfit?

TERRY MATALAS: That’s exactly what it is. So we call them field jackets, so they’re not quite in Starfleet uniforms. They’re kind of ready for anything was the look. Any minute you might need to beam off the ship and get into some rough and tumble, was the idea, and they’re just cool.

They’re so cool.

MATALAS: What’s funny is everyone wanted one of these jackets. We started it with Raffi, and then every one of these actors saw one of these things saying, “I want one,” and then no one wanted to give them up. When we wrapped the show, everyone tried to take them home and Paramount literally would go to people’s houses and take them back. True story.

Oh, I love that. I always wonder if the studios actually show up to be like, “Give us what you took.”

MATALAS: No, they did. They did. Everybody just wanted their jackets.

Image via Paramount+

Oh God, that’s too funny. How much time has passed between the two episodes? Because it seems like maybe they’ve tried a couple of different avenues of getting information.

MATALAS: Yeah, I think it’s been a couple of days, but a couple of sleepless days of trying to reach out to friends and family while being on the run.

And those doors that they were knocking at, essentially going down different avenues to find people, were most of them Changelings that they ran into, or is it just this one?

MATALAS: The way we rationalized it is, when you’re on a Starship far enough into space, it’s not like you could just pick up your cell phone and call your friends, that there are certain subspace relays that are monitored by Starfleet. Reaching out to admirals or people within Starfleet are certainly monitored by lower-ranking individuals that could be compromised or traced. So it’s not easy to just get ahold of someone, but you’ll see, quickly, that there are some Hail Marys coming.

Okay. I know as a Voyager girly, I was so happy with this opening scene and that it was Tuvok. He was definitely on my wishlist. I was like, “Could it happen? Maybe. Who knows?”

MATALAS: So good.

It was so good. What went into the process of getting Tim Russ back as Tuvok?

MATALAS: Calling him.

Was he eager?

MATALAS: Well, it’s also that he’s the perfect character to do it with because he is a Vulcan. And so, an is-he-or-isn’t-he is inherent in how he’s going to portray the character, and there’s something so juicy and delicious about the reveal being a smile for a Vulcan. And they had a very special relationship, Tuvok and Seven. And I love a Vulcan, and as someone who worked on Voyager back in the day, Tim Russ is just a wonderful human being. So it was just the perfect opportunity for that.

I have to really commend the music cues during the scene because there’s a moment that the music sounds so hopeful that you think, “Maybe this really is Tuvok, maybe some time passed and he’s a little different,” and then it turns.

MATALAS: Yes. When the Voyager theme comes on, you drop your guard, you feel the swell of emotion, of reconnection. And then, what I love is Seven’s really clever, and she’s like, “I’m going to give this one more try. I need to be really sure it’s him.” And that’s, again, one more step into her being suitable for being a captain of a Starship is, “I’m not fully convinced,” and then tries it one more time, and then that’s when she’s got him.

She’s learned from the best.

MATALAS: She’s learned from the best, yeah.

The Changeling, when he turns into Riker, is so unsettling. I’m curious to know what the process was like with HMU and deciding how creepy to go. Were there different versions for that makeup? Because it’s just so good.

MATALAS: No, we just said, “Give me zombie Frakes,” and he was fully on board with it, and that’s what we did.

Image via Paramount+

Oh, that’s excellent. We’ve seen that Jack has had some unnatural abilities in the previous episodes, but this is the first time that we get to see his telepathy when he taps into what Sidney is thinking. Are we going to see his abilities continue to grow as we round out the rest of the season?

MATALAS: It’s certainly something new. How and why he is able to get into the mind of young Sidney La Forge is a real question.

Oh yeah, oh yeah. I love that scene so much because I am a huge sucker for a good ship, and I definitely checked the little flirtation in the previous episodes, so this made me very happy. But what can you tease for – I think Twitter has minted it as LaCrush for the ship name?

MATALAS: Yeah. A fan came up with that, it was brilliant.

It’s so smart.

MATALAS: Yeah. Well, look, it’s not a romantic season for Jack, Sidney, for Seven and Raffi, for Riker and Troi, for Picard and Beverly, but there [are] definitely elements of attraction that we’re seeing here, and the beginnings of a connection that could continue on if we were ever to continue on.

Seeing Jack and Sidney working together in this episode really feels like it’s giving us a taste of the shenanigans that, if Star Trek: Legacy becomes a thing, we could see there. I know there’s a lot to be said about the pressure of writing legacy characters like the core cast from previous Star Treks, but what is it like to bring life to their offspring?

MATALAS: It’s really fun because neither character is quite what you’d expect the offspring of Jean-Luc Picard or Geordi La Forge to be. And a lot of that comes from the voice of the actors. It comes from Ed Speleers and [Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut]. They are such a joy to write for, and such natural actors, that they kind of demand their own kind of electricity, which is really fun to write for. It’s funny, when you write them, you actually don’t really think too hard about the legacy because, hopefully, they’re enough of their own voice at this point in the narrative to not have that weight.

Image via Paramount+

I would agree with that sentiment completely. They definitely feel like they’ve taken on a life of their own. You see glimmers of their parents, but they are their own personas. Speaking of parents, there’s a really great scene in the sickbay in this episode with Beverly and Picard trying to decide if their moral compass has reached a point where it’s been compromised enough to do a murder of a character that needs to be murdered. What was it like arriving at that decision for those characters? Because it is a natural evolution of the situation that they’ve been into. It’s do or die.

MATALAS: It’s, without question, the scene that makes me the most uncomfortable in the episode and definitely the scene that I debated the most in the writers’ room and the editing room. Probably all the way until air because it is the antithesis of everything that was in these characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation, which is what they vocalize in the scene, how we’ve become the opposite of what we were in the 1990s. And that is really scary because you know right away doing this scene that there’s a large portion of fans that are immediately saying this is a character betrayal from the get-go.

However, we’re telling a different kind of story here. And so, you have to ask yourself: in that moment, what would these characters really do? Would this be a question they would really ask? So in the writers’ room, you have an actual debate, and when you have a unanimous agreement from everyone in the room who would have every perspective on it, that it’s probably a good idea at this point to stop this, then maybe Picard and Beverly would feel the same as parents at this moment. But goddamn is it dark. And so, it’s really– as a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, to me, it’s a hard moment to watch your childhood heroes go through, but we’re doing it.

So we’ll see how fans react. But I’m definitely probably the most nervous about that moment of all.

It plays out really well because you’ve had so many episodes building up to this moment. We know something’s going to have to happen with Vadic to get rid of her, but also, this is the first time we’ve gotten to see these characters as parents with this do-or-die scenario playing out. So it all works together so well in my mind.

MATALAS: I think so, and it’s juxtaposed with what’s going on with Geordi and Data and Lore. And so there’s a lot of emotion going on there, too, but it’s not the brightest moment of the season.

There was something else in that whole scene that I noticed. I didn’t notice it the first time I watched it, but I noticed it when I was working on my recap, which was that Vadic is aware of Wesley. And that made me wonder, is this like she just did some search on the Star Trek internet to see other relations, or is that something that we should be paying attention to? It sparked an interest when I was listening back.

MATALAS: Well, Vadic is aware of a lot of their personal files, and to me, that felt like part of the infiltration within Starfleet probably accessed the files within Section 31. I mean, this is the episode where we really do focus on the fact that Section 31 is a nefarious aspect of Starfleet intelligence. This is not a good organization. We are really shining a light on war crimes, and that Vadic really is as much of a sympathetic villain as one could be in that regard. She has a definitive point of view that history is written by the victors, and we really asked ourselves how much was Picard aware of the fallout, the end of the Dominion War, and specifically, the morphogenic virus, and who voted to give it to the Changelings and who didn’t?

Initially, there was an idea in the writers’ room; was Picard part of that vote, and which way did he vote? Was he one of the holdouts, or did he vote for it? Because at what point did they need to end the war? Obviously, it felt like Picard would never vote for genocide. But again, it doesn’t quite hold up because Section 31 seemed to be working independently. However, it seems like they had some authorization within Starfleet. It’s sort of murky as to how much they were able to operate. Are they like Blackwater? How do they operate? So anyway, it was a really interesting discussion in the writers’ room for us to explore that.

Image via Paramount+

Oh, to be a fly on that wall. I am a sucker for stories that take the good guys and go, “Are they really as good as they seem?” Especially, I mean, Starfleet’s essentially a military organization, and we all know the military does shady things. So this was a delight for me as somebody who loves those kinds of stories. But I’m curious, with Vadic’s story in particular, her backstory, how did that develop in the writers’ room? Because there are so many nuances to it, what with her adopting the face and the mannerisms of the scientist that was doing these horrible things to her, it is so dark and so delicious at the same time.

MATALAS: Well, yeah, her embracing her trauma and her being a victim was something we had talked about early on. Why she maintains this particular form of Amanda Plummer, and those scars, was an aspect of the torture that she was subjected to. And so that was all part of her character early on. But the idea that Changelings would be of interest within Starfleet intelligence, or within Section 31, was an early idea as well. But they’re not exactly recruitable. So you would have to find your own way to make them and improve upon them. And so that felt like they were up to their old tricks.

That makes sense. I’ve been at an absolute loss for what to call the disembodied head that is ordering Vadic around. Do you have a name that’s shareable, or what is that? Is that just how the Changelings manifest themselves?

MATALAS: Who? Her boss? Her face boss?

Yeah, the boss. Yeah, her face boss.

MATALAS: Her face boss as we lovingly refer to. There’s certainly a mystery there yet to be told.

It’s very creepy. That’s the stuff of nightmares right there.

MATALAS: Your mother will be pleased with who that is.

Image via Paramount+

She has so many theories. Can you talk a little bit, on a happier note, about the Data and Geordi dynamic in this episode and playing with their friendship, and that connection that they had that was so deep in The Next Generation?

MATALAS: It’s exactly that. It was going back to The Next Generation, and also, going back to the end of Nemesis, and really never getting to see Geordi properly mourn that relationship. Certainly, we saw a lot of that with Picard in Season 1, but seeing what this must mean to Geordi and getting to play that, but using that as a way to get through to his old friend, that’s in there. And wow, is LeVar good. He’s so good.

And Brent and LeVar are just dear friends. I mean, Brent was LeVar’s best man at his wedding, and they bring something out in each other in these scenes. And [there are] things to come, too, that I cannot wait for people to see that is really special. It’s genuine. That’s really LeVar feeling those feelings you’re seeing there. So yeah, it’s a privilege to be able to get those two actors in a room, to be able to get them to emote and say how they feel about each other, and hopefully be able to tell a story that brings an outcome to it that is satisfying.

Do you have any favorite Easter eggs from this episode?

MATALAS: I do like that when Data looks around, he says, “I’m no longer on the Enterprise,” because that’s where that copy left off from Nemesis. That’s where his full upload leaves off. I think it is quite fun. [There are] not many.

What can you tease for Episode 8?

MATALAS: Episodes 7 and 8 are like a two-part movie, so you’ll definitely feel like this has reached a satisfying conclusion by the end of eight.