What Comes After Picard?

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Tonight! The card comes back big. Obi-Wan goes back to the hangar, and the peacock is coming. All of this and more on this edition of multiverse tonight. Let's see. And more. If we're looking around up in the right place, multiverse. Well, hello everyone, and welcome to episode 60 of Multiverse Tonight. I'm of course your host, Thomas Townley. And uh it's been about a week now. Have you have you seen the first episode of Star Trek Picard? Um, well, let me give you kind of a non-spoiler review. You know, it it felt very well put together, and a lot of what I thought, you know, happened, did happen. You know, if if you if you saw the uh the uh promos for it, especially like the first trailer, the first trailer gave you you know a lot of indication of what was going on, especially in regards to data. One of the few few gripes that I have about it is the theme music, which was, well, let me put it this way. I don't think anyone's going to be humming this tune. But, you know, that's fine. I can live with that. You know, I'm very interested to see how and where the show goes from here. I hear that the first three episodes act as a pilot episode in whole. So it'll be interesting after the first three episodes have aired, if uh we if you watch those back to back to back, if if they all mesh together. You know, solidly, like like a big long movie. Anyway, uh let's get started with uh Star Trek News. We start the Star Trek News with Picard's Jerry Ryan. The actress talked with Games Radar about how Seven of Nine has changed since the last time we saw her, and what she's thinking of Picard. Quote, I wouldn't say there's a huge affinity because Seven's pretty jaded over the last twenty years. She's seen a lot of bad stuff and she's very much hardened from when we saw her twenty years ago. The universe has kind of gone to hell in the handbasket, and she holds Starfleet and the Federation in a large part responsible for that. Initially, I think she sort of sees Picard as a representative of that, so she's not in idol worship, he's a hero mode, when we first meet her. I think that makes her makes it more interesting. Now Games Radar also spoke with the other major board character on the on the Picard show, Jonathan Delarco. He told them, quote, in the story, you'll see it's a very logical conclusion to where Hugh ends up. But what I didn't know were the circumstances of the world or how that affected how he ended up. He changed so much physically and emotionally and grown up like other people grow up. How many people do you know from high school who are in the same in their forties and fifties? Not many. But I wanted for the audience to have a thread because he was beloved as who he was, unquote. The they also ask uh what he thinks of his character has been doing in the last time that we saw him in the episodes descent parts one and two. He replied, quote, There there's lots of novels about what happened to the Borg and possible stories that could have developed. So creating Hugh's backstory was a combination of talking to producers that had deep knowledge of on the canon, but also some of my own imagination. Because, you know, when you're an actor, you don't have to tell anybody how you got there. You could make up anything you want in your head, unquote. You know, I'm looking forward to seeing uh how these stories unfold over the season. You know, where where do these characters find themselves at this point in time? And uh while we're on this uh Picard Blitz, Picard Stewart, Patrick Stewart himself has been on a huge press tour uh promoting Picard, and one of those stops was the Graham Norton show over in Jolly Old England. While uh there, he told the story about the time he was caught by a room service waiter watching himself on an episode of The Next Generation. Quote, I don't look for it, but occasionally it'll happen I'll happen upon it. There was one night in a hotel when I was flicking through the channels and there was an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation. So I watched it for a few minutes and I got hooked. Then the waiter came in with my room service order, and he looked at me, then looked at the television, and I thought, he's going to go away and tell the entire kitchen staff that it was the saddest thing he had ever seen, this guy upstairs alone having room service and watching himself, unquote. Well, Patrick, if you don't watch yourself, who will? Now uh if you know we will be seeing much more of uh Sir Patrick and Star Trek Picard, as the series has earned an early renewal for season two, but this time it'll have a brand new showrunner. Terya Metallus will be taking up the reins for the next season. Mr. Metallus previously was the showrunner for Sy-Fi's 12 Monkeys, and he's not entirely new to track, having worked as a production assistant for both Star Trek Voyager and Enterprise. Showwriter Michael Chabon sat down for an interview with Rolling Stone in and in this interview he laid down his track Bonafides, such as how he and his wife both got into the next generation. He also talked about a dinner he had with Rick Berman, saying, quote, I had dinner with next generation showrunner Rick Berman a few weeks ago. I said something like, Oh, it was so remarkable that they cast such a great actor and someone who was well known on the English England stage. And he said, You have to remember, when we started that show, we actually cast two really well-known talented actors, LeVar Burton and Will Wheaton, who had been Standby Me. That was the casting coup of the next generation in the beginning. It was viewed as they got LeVar Burton and Will Wheaton, who was this hot young actor. Patrick Stewart was so unknown at the time, he wasn't viewed as a coup in the sense that he was, say, when they cast him to play Professor X, unquote. Now, he also discussed about what it was like writing for the next generation characters, and how it was to write for an older Picard, saying, quote, It's incredible the things he does over the course of the season, because he it's not just him playing the Picard ye that you know when you think of Picard. He's playing Picard who's decades older, has been through a lot, has aged physically, is looking at his life in the way that someone who's middle aged wouldn't. In canon in our story, Picard is, I believe, ninety-two, so he's older than Patrick is, but someone who's been alive that long looking at his life is going be is going to be behaving very differently than someone who who's however old Patrick was when he started doing TNG. Patrick had all of that. He represents the character of Picard very much as the same guy, and yet he's changed. Inevitably, he's older, he's wiser, he's sadder, he has more regrets and more to regret. All that just emerged on day one of shooting. You know, it's a it's a very long interview, and I'll have a link to it in our show notes. Now uh one of the best parts of the series premiere of Picard was Jean-Luc's Dog, number one. You know, I have a feeling we won't see much of him until the end of the season, since I'm sure Picard is going on the road in the next episode or two, and leaving you know leaving number one and the and the uh vineyards far behind. Now, on the Picard after show, The Ready Room with host Will Wheaton Will Wheaton showrunner and executive producer Michael Chabon talked about how they came to give the Bulldog his name. Quote, Pretty early on, as soon as the first draft was getting written, I think it appeared at that point. It's meant to be it's an Easter egg, and it's cute and charming, but there's something also kind of poignant about it, to me at least. He doesn't have a number one, those days are behind him. Riker's long gone in his life, and there's almost something sort of touching that he's trying to recreate in the form of a dog. Which is not a bad thing to try to do. It's so much that he's lost so much that it he's left behind. Now, we might already have a special guest star lined up for Picard Season 2. Well uh uh appearing on the view to promote the show, Sir Patrick Stewart said this to host Whoopi Goldberg, quote, something that I need to bring up. I'm here with a formal invitation, and it's for you, Whoopi. Alex Kurtzman, who is the senior executive producer of Star Trek Picard, and all of his colleagues, of which I am one, want to invite you into the second season, unquote. The crowd burst into applause and Whoopi responded with a big yes. You know, it would be good it would be good to see Gaynan back in Picard's life. You know, probably after the events of this season, he probably does need, you know, a a shoulder to talk to, someone someone that knows him inside and out. Now, CBS had its day at the winter 2020 TV Critics Association Press Tour, and it gave us some jaw-dropping news nuggets, specifically that there are two more live action projects in the pipeline. Now, of course, there was nothing to indicate what these two projects are, and speculation seems to hover around a Starfleet Academy series or a Pikes Enterprise show that brings back Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, and Rebecca Romain for the further adventures of those characters. These two new shows would be in addition to the Section 31 show, which is still in active development. So, where are the Discovery Season Season 3 and the Animated Lower decks, you might ask? Well, Trek Corps got to ask producer Heather Caden about the shows and she revealed that both should be ready to go by May. As to which one goes first, that's up to the all access executives. And uh might I suggest to those executives, if you want me to keep paying for all access after Picard is over, go ahead and put out the lower decks. I want to see that more than I want to see Discovery Season 3. You know, just saying. Well, it looks like the Kevin the Kelvin timeline just might be dead. Uh as director Noah Hawley has told the Hollywood reporter that his project will be an original story with a new cast, quote, to call it Star Trek 4, the placeholder the trades have been using, is kind of a misnomer. I have my own take on the franchise as a lifelong fan. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, it's it's early days. I don't know, but new characters often involve new cast. As an example of what he plans to do, he told them, quote, it's William Shatner putting on his reading glasses and Loring Khan's shields, which cost like nine dollars and fifty cents. There's no big action sequence, he's just more clever. There's something really uplifting about that feeling. I went to Paramount and I just had my own ideas for what I wanted to do with it. So that's the direction that I'm going in. It's very still very early days, so I can't really be more specific, but it's going to be different. Well, you know, different is good. And in a different interview he had with Deadline, he uh elaborated, I have quote, I have my own story, and I want to make sure, as I did with Fargo and Legion, that I'm respectful to the underlying material, that I'm not unintentionally changing things that people love or feel passionate about. So it's important to do that research as I go, unquote. So it sounds like we're actually going to see something original on the big screen, not just a rehash of old episodes, and we're going to leave the Enterprise crew behind and tell a story that's just set in the Star Trek universe. You know, that's a very good idea. Now it especially now that the Tarantino movie is still up in the air and might never come to fruition. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Deep Space Nine is getting some comics love. IDW has announced that a new Star Trek Deep Space Nine miniseries called Too Long a Sacrifice will be out in April. The series is being written by David and Scott Tipton and will have artwork by Greg Scott. It's being described as a noir thriller centering around Odo. David Tipton, in a press release, said, Set during the most difficult hours of the Dominion War, too long a sacrifice, shows the station during tr trying times, a series of mysterious and seemingly unsolvable terrorist attacks, just as the war has everyone strained to the breaking point. We'll get to see the darker side of life on the station as Odo leads the investigation with increasingly desperate conditions, forcing him and others to deal with new and unexpected allies, and to use unusual tactics in their efforts to stop the attacks. Scott Tipton added added also, quote, We're so excited to return to the world of Star Trek Deep Space Nine with its frontier setting and precarious place in the univer in the galaxy. Deep Space Nine offers the opportunity to tell truly unique tales of intrigue and suspense. Combine that with one of the best character ensembles ever assembled, and you got something no other Star Trek series can offer. Now it looks like we're one step closer to the Star Trek Biobed. Nanux, a company out of Israel, has created a medical machine called the Nenux Arc. It resembles the Star Trek Biobed and promises to make medical scanning available to people around the world at a significantly lower cost. Instead of a huge CT machine, the Arch is a portable bed. Ran Polakine, founder and CEO of Nanox, told Digital Trends, quote, Nanox has achieved the world's first commercial grade digital X-ray source without the use of heat. This X-ray device enables pulsating electron beams versus the continuous radiation of X-rays used today. Building a silicon-based electronano gun placed on a silicon chip has made Nanox's method more efficient than the traditional way of heat-based filaments. Basically, since the device doesn't need to produce heat, the device can be made 70 to 90% smaller, reducing the cost. Nanox believes that this would make medical imaging more accessible to people around the world. As to the resemblance resemblance to the Star Trek Biobed? It's not a coincidence. Now let's go on to the Star Wars news. Rumors of the Obi-Wan series demise are a bit premature. Apparently, on the january seventeenth, rumors started spreading about the plug being pulled on the Ewan McGregor-led Disney Plus series. Now, reports appear to have traced this rumor back to a parody Twitter account. Comicbook.com reports that sources close to the production say that it has not been cancelled, but is going back to the drawing board. Unknown sources have told the Hollywood reporter that the story has been scrapped and a new writer is being sought to write the series. The source also indicated that it might go from a six-part series to a four part series. Now the star, Ewan McGregor, told IGN that filming would shift next year. Quote, it's just slid to next year, that's all. The scripts were really good. Now that episode 9 came out and everyone at Lucasfilm has got more time to spend on the writing, they felt they wanted more time to write the episodes. Now, I'm guessing that the Star Wars franchise will continue being more of a TV franchise for the near future. Probably, you know, just putting out a movie new movie project every couple of years or so. The rise of Skywalker has finally passed the $1 billion mark, 28 days after being released in theaters. This was slower than the Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, which took 12 to 19 days respectively. Now, while this shows a trend, I don't think the Walt Disney Company is worried. After all, the only Star Wars film that really didn't do as expected was Solo. Now, let me take a look at the uh box office for this past weekend. Uh s now Star Wars has fallen to number seven from number five. Um it's still, you know, it made five and a half million dollars this past weekend, so it's still doing okay. Um The Turning debuted at number six, Jumanji, the next level, went from number four to number five, the movie The Gentleman uh came at number four, Doolittle, stay at number three, nineteen seventeen, stay at number two, and bad boys for life stay at number one. So, you know, it wasn't a big weekend at the box office, anyway. But uh going on, composer extraordinaire John Williams walked away from the Grammys with his twenty-fifth Career Grammy Award. Mr. Williams won the Best Instrumental Composition Grammy for the Star Wars Galaxy's Edge Symphonic Suite that he created f especially for the theme park. Now, I'd like to offer him my congratulations and you know, if he'd like to write me a theme song, you know I wouldn't uh say no. Tika Watiti is a busy man. You know, lots of plate to spin, he acts and he directs, including in The Mandalorian. So naturally rumors would get started that he might be working on a Star Wars movie. Tika's response to these rumors. On Twitter, he put up the cover of Fleetwood Mac's album, also called Rumors. Funny. Well, I guess uh we can never actually say never. One day he might actually have some free time. And I'm sure Lucasfilm would love to have him do some work for them. So, you know, in other words, don't hold your breath right now. Now, let's go ahead and go on with uh the the geek news. Hulu's senior VP of originals. Speaking at the Winter Television Critics Association Press Tour, spoke about the Orville's upcoming third season. Quote, The Orville has a very loyal following on Hulu, so when there was an opportunity to bring a new season to our viewers, we jumped at it. I will see the first episode next week and will monitor and evaluate the show as it goes, unquote. So that sounds like Orville fans need to have a strong showing to make sure we get that season four. Now if they just tell us when the show up, come on, tell me when. So is uh the Space Force planning on invading Endor? Wouldn't black or blue make more sense? Yeah. Let's let's just hope that this is just you know something temporary. You know, they just haven't gotten around to designing a a uniform that you know showcases the service. It looks like we're getting a third National Treasure movie from Disney and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. The script will be written by Bad Boys for Life screenwriter Chris Bremner, who also is uh going to be writing the fourth Bad Boys movie. National Treasure is uh uh, you know, if you'll remember, were a couple of movies that starred Nicholas Cage as treasure hunter Benjamin Franklin Gates. Now the first one came out back in 2004, and the sequel came out in 2007. Now, there's no word on when they're looking at putting out this third one, so I guess we'll we'll just have to, you know, wait, and you know, well, Nicolas Cage, we know, is up as is up for acting in anything. You know, if if if you open open a bag of potato chips, he'll he'll come and act for that. So NBC Universal has released details on its Peacock streaming service. Now, first off, Comcast Infinity X1 and Flex Video Platforms will get to see it on April 15th. Now, it comes out then nationally on July 15th. There will be three different versions. Quote, a free ad supported one, a more robust ad-supported one that will be free to Comcast and Cox cable subscribers, and five dollars for everyone else, and then offering with no ads, that's five dollars for Comcast and Cox subscribers, and ten dollars for everyone else. Unquote. Now, free will, you know, free the free service will have next day access to current seasons of freshman broadcast series, a range of film and TV titles, but only select episodes of Marquee Peacock Originals and Tent Pulse series. It will also feature curated Peacock streaming genres channels like SNL Vault, Family Movie Night, and Olympic Profiles, unquote. The paid version will have everything the free version does, plus quote, it adds full season Peacock Originals and Tent Pole series and next day access the current seasons of returning broadcast shows. It also throws in early access to the late night shows like the Tonight Show of Jimmy Fallon and sports attractions like exclusive Premier League soccer matches and Olympic programming. Now the service will have about 600 movies and 400 series. You know, I I I don't know. I'll I'll stick with the free version. You know. You know, I have Cox cable. I hope that I can get the uh the the the middle tier version for free, but you never know. You know, it's always seems to seems to be a hassle. The mouse kills the fox. The mouse kills the fox. Hi, hold there you the mouse kills the fox. In a step meant to symbolize Disney's takeover of the 20th Century Fox studio, you'll no longer see films from 20th Century Fox or Fox Searchlight Pictures. Instead, they'll be branded 20th Century Studios and Searchlight Pictures. Now, the TV side side of the equation is completely unchanged, but it's expected that a renaming there will occur sometime in the you know not too distant future. The logos will be the same just without the word fox in them. You know, it's it's thought that this is done to not confuse the marketplace as there are now two foxes. There's 20th Century Fox and there's the Fox Corporation. So, you know, might as well just drop the fox. Anyway, finally tonight, we remember the son of author J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien. Christopher was born in November of 1924, and assisted his father with his work on The Lord of the Rings. He even edited the companion book The Silmar Silmarillion after his father died in 1973. Now he would go on to edit dozens of other books by his father and Jeffrey Chaucer, and also wrote a book of his own called The Battle of the Goths and the Huns. He served as chairman of the Tolkien Estate Limited until 2017 and was critical of the Lord of the Rings movies, saying, quote, they gutted the book, making an action film for 15 to 25 year olds, unquote. Now, he spent the rest of his life in France, where he passed away at the age of 95 on January 16th, 2020. He's survived by his second wife, their two children, and a son from his first marriage. And that brings us to the end of this edition of Multiverse Tonight. Now be sure to check us out on our social media. We're at Twitter at multiverse tom. We're also on Facebook and Instagram as uh multiverse tonight as well. And if you'd like to contribute some money, please visit mtpodcast.com to go to our coffee, Patreon, or our brand new glow.fm link as well. And be sure to visit multiverse tonight.com to check out the affiliate marketplace links, the link to our Tea Public Store, and uh so much more. And if you're a subscriber, please share us with your share us with a friend. You know, I'm I'm not looking for you to share us with millions of people, just a friend. You know, find someone, anyone. And if you're brand new to the show, welcome. And be sure to uh hit subscribe and uh leave us with a you know piece of feedback and let us know how we're doing. Special thanks to Shane Ivers for our intro music and Lobo Loco for the outro theme music. Thanks for watching the sci-fi edition of Multiverse Tonight. We'll be back in two days with the comic book edition. Now please exit the universe in an orderly fashion. Good night. Multiverse tonight is a production of Half Big Genre Productions Copyright twenty twenty. All rights reserved.