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While the first two seasons utilized composer Jeff Russo, this one makes a sonic change by bringing in Stephen Barton, the composer on Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, as well as the final two seasons of Matalas’ 12 Monkeys.
“If we were going to say this is the last Star Trek: The Next Generation film, or 10 of the last Star Trek: The Next Generation movies—because all the episodes are very different—then it needed to sound like that, too,” Matalas says. “And that required Stephen Barton. Then, later in the season, the score gets so massive as the story grows that we had to bring in some help from Frederik Wiedmann, who’s a brilliant composer as well. I grew up with legends [like] Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner. Not to mention Dennis McCarthy and Cliff Eidelman. All those Trek composers have nods.”
A 25th-Century Odyssey
What Matalas does by talking about the new musical score for this season is reveal what the show feels like without spoiling it. When fans watch the first four episodes, this feeling will be apparent right away, but also, if everyone has done their jobs right, not jarring or noticeable at all. From the font to the music to the uniforms to the structure and the dialogue, what Matalas has accomplished is to make Picard season three feel like we’ve simply picked up with a Next Generation storyline already in progress.
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“He really gets Next Gen,” Frakes says of Matalas’ writing in season three. “Without blowing too much smoke up Terry’s ass, he’s a wonderful writer. And the stuff he gave me to do was exciting. I know that Gates felt the same way, and I think LeVar [Burton] did, too.” That said, just because the entire crew is back, don’t expect this season to be one big prolonged TNG hug. Good writing comes from conflict, and Frakes points out that at a few points, “Terry wrote Riker in conflict with Picard, which I thought was quite exciting.”
Like all the TNG cast members, Frakes was part of the last group of Star Trek actors to be cast by the late Gene Roddenberry himself. But, Frakes’ association with the Trek franchise has extended way beyond the end of TNG in 1994. After directing eight episodes of TNG, Frakes famously directed the feature films First Contact (1996) and Insurrection (1998). Since then, Frakes’ work behind the camera on Star Trek has become perhaps even more influential than his acting. Counting Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Discovery, and Picard episodes, Frakes has directed over twenty Trek episodes. Frakes also directed the upcoming Strange New Worlds crossover episode with Lower Decks, which will air later in 2023, which he thinks could be a “proof of concept” for a live-action Star Trek comedy series, should such a thing ever happen.
For this season of Picard, Frakes directed two episodes, and those episodes are full of tense conflict between familiar characters, something that will take Trek fans on a fascinating and surprising journey. “Roddenberry was, for some reason, opposed to conflict,” Frakes recalls.“It was a peculiar ask back in the day, but he wanted everyone to get along. Not so much with Terry. He’s really stirred the pot. Conflict, which, as we know, is an absolute necessity in drama.”
