This week we reveal Crusher family secrets
as I chat with Ed Speleers, aka Beverly Crusher's
youngest son Jack, and my Spacebrother.
We discover what went into designing Vadic's terrifying ship
the Shrike, and we go undercover to expose the seedy
underbelly of the Star Trek Universe.
Remove your transporter inhibitors and beam directly into
The Ready Room.
Hey nerds, I'm Wil Wheaton.
This is The Ready Room.
You're official behind-the-scenes hub
for all things Star Trek Universe.
This week's episode of Star Trek: Picard, "Disengage",
had a ton of bombshells,
and I am not just talking about the weapons on the Shrike.
To avoid feeling like someone threw an entire starship
at you, I am calling for a red alert.
We'll be uncovering spoilers so significant that they change
the Star Trek Universe forever.
I am serious - change forever.
So, nerds, I implore you,
if you haven't seen this week's episode, escape to a nebula
to stream it,
and then report right back here to The Ready Room.
Okay.
I am so, so excited to be sitting down today
with Ed Speleers who plays Jack Crusher-
the son of Beverly Crusher and Wesley Crusher's kid
brother who he never knew about-
to talk in depth about joining the Star Trek family,
and especially the stunning episode-ending revelation
about Jack's parentage.
Later, just like Raffi and Worf investigating heinous
conspiracies, we will be confronting Ferengi crime bosses,
Orion pirates, and black market traders as we go deep inside
District Six, part of the sinister underground
within Star Trek's otherwise utopian future.
But before we get to any of that,
there have been a lot of intimidating starships
in Star Trek's history, but Vadic's heavily armed warship,
the Shrike, is possibly the scariest of them all.
I mean, I would not want to face off against the Shrike,
alone and outside of Federation space? No, thank you.
Hard pass.
Here's a behind-the-scenes look at the process of designing
this terrifying vessel.
Control room? Engage!
[Eleos] Proximity alert, unknown vessel approaching.
You just led them straight to us.
What the hell is going on?
We are being hunted.
By whom?
[Eleos] Forward blast doors retracting.
See for yourself.
Some of the best Star Trek hinges on an amazing villain.
Good afternoon.
I am Captain Vadic.
And we wanted to create one with Vadic, Amanda Plumber,
and her ship.
We wanted a really iconic ship, the Shrike.
Something that terrifies you immediately
when you see it coming out of a nebula
and you know you don't want to be in its crosshairs.
You have been causing us some concern, Captain.
State your business.
Oh, Admiral Jean-Luc Picard,
in the synthetic flesh.
The ship was amazing.
Smaller. Homey for me, very homey.
The colors were cool.
They made a special chair for me,
which was delightful.
I could really move around in it and play in it.
Turn your back to run and the only way you'll see the shot
that kills you is through the hole in your proverbial chest.
We've seen on Star Trek, two ships face off.
We've seen photon torpedoes, we've seen phasers.
I remember someone in the writer's room pitched that,
what if you used a tractor beam and actually physically
threw another ship at our hero's starship?
When the Shrike throws the Eleos at the Titan,
you want to have it feel realistic as far as scale and mass,
because these are big ships doing big things.
But you also want it super exciting and dramatic.
Shields up.
Evasive maneuvers.
It was just such a great idea,
which I wasn't sure if we could pull off,
but we put it in the script and months and months
of visual effects later, finally, we have this thing,
and I think it'll be a really cool moment.
I'm pretty excited to see how fans react to that.
It's certainly something we haven't really seen
in Star Trek before.
When approaching any of the design of the ships that we've
been doing in this Trek shows, it's been very important that
each feel like its own thing.
We're always looking at how to add as much definition
and detail as possible.
So each of the ships feel like it's their own character
and they really stand alone.
I thought you might care to know the name
of my particular vessel, the Shrike.
Some of the challenges in bringing the Shrike to life
is that you wanna break ground if you can,
on the design of a ship,
but it still has to fit in the Star Trek Universe.
I feel like Dave Blass, our production designer,
worked with his team and really came up with, like,
a menacing silhouette that has a lot of drama to it.
We started with John Eaves and Doug Drexler,
two amazing concept artists from the history of Star Trek,
and we just went back and forth and back and forth
going around of how we want it to look,
and refined it down to a simple design of the, you know,
when you saw it, it felt like a predator.
The big difference between cinema and TV is that in TV you
have to roll one set into another set, into another set.
So, when it came down to the Shrike and the bridge,
so we're like, okay, well what do we have available?
Well, we have the downstairs of La Sirena.
So, it was sitting there looking at it going,
how can I take the geometry and change the geometry
of the ship, change it dramatically,
and then work with the lighting designer Crescenzo
and come up with something that's drastically different
and gives it a very big mood?
So, when you're dealing with the lighting on the ship,
the embedded lighting,
the design of that lighting, is so crucial.
So, we came up with a lot of different facets of angles
of light that when cast would walk through,
they would get little glimpse of light into their eyes.
We would look around the set and you would see these
fingers of light, shafts of light,
and it created these really dark quasi-silhouettes,
these dark silhouettes that made the characters
really ominous looking.
I'll peck and I'll jab everything that makes you, you.
Behind the Captain's chair we have this organic material
and I'd like to say it was something super cool
and high tech, but it was really window screen.
You just crunch it up and it's like metal window screen that
you crunch up and you uplight it.
What I liked was that it allowed for the joining
of lighting and design.
Again, working with Crescenzo,
it was creating the the web patterns that we did
that allowed the smoke and the lights to come through.
It really worked together.
It without the lighting, there was no set.
So, it was a really nice combination of lighting and design.
Oh, follow him.
Follow him!
I'm thrilled to be sitting down with Ed Speleers,
who of course plays Jack Crusher.
Ed, thank you for being here.
It is so nice to talk to you.
Wil, thank you very much for, for bringing me in.
It's a real honor to be here.
I've watched quite a few of these, so.
Well, I wanted to ask you about that.
What's your relationship to Star Trek before you auditioned?
There's a nostalgic element.
Yeah?
My dad was a big fan of the original sort of the Kirk era.
The very beginning.
But the TNG unit, that franchise, that era.
I have fond memories of coming back from school
on the south coast of England,
the rain battering the windows, gray, fire on,
I think about 6:00, maybe 6:30,
and off we went with the theme tune and The Next Generation,
So, I have fond memories of Worf, of Riker,
of everybody, really.
When I met you for half a second on the set,
I just felt right away, oh, here's someone who
just fits!
Like, just kind of fits into everything.
And I talked to Gates and she would not stop going on and on
and on about how much she loved you and how amazing you are
and how excited she was to work with you.
And then she drops to me, "And he's playing your brother!"
and I was like, "Gates, I don't know that."
And Gates texts me back,
"I'm gonna get fired if anyone knows that I told you."
And I was like, "No, it's okay,
NDAs have an exclusion for family."
Yeah, of course.
And I count as family.
So, let's talk about that elephant in the room
a little bit. - I know.
Jack is Beverly's son, obviously.
We find out at the end of this episode what we all
kind of knew from the beginning.
He is Picard's son.
Would you just talk to me about sort of playing the child of
literal Star Trek royalty?
I mean, it's a thing, isn't it?
Yeah.
I mean it's also, we need to talk about the fact where,
yeah, I mean, I'm sat next to my brother at the moment,
so you know, half brother.
So yeah, I feel that it's such a,
it's such an interesting thing to try and get your head
around. Like, it's like being the son of the most famous man
in the world, essentially.
Yeah.
That's because Picard, in the Star Trek Universe,
everybody knows who he is and he's held by in large in such
high esteem. And the fact that Jack is fighting that really.
I think he's, we don't really, he's,
we don't really know where he sits with that, with where,
you know, when we meet him and once we uncover the fact
that he is, you know, Picard's son, he's still,
we don't know what that means to him.
Yeah.
Because why hasn't that happened before?
Why hasn't that been confronted before?
And so obviously that's something that's deep rooted in him
and something that he has been battling with
his whole adult life and beyond.
There's a theme this season in these,
these first two episodes of Picard and Riker, and the
legendary Starfleet men that they are,
coming to the Titan and nobody on the Titan
being impressed with them.
And I actually quite love that.
I love seeing these people who I venerate,
who I just adore and worship kind of being people, right?
And being viewed as people.
As an actor, you go in to prepare this character.
You're not part of Star Trek, the big whole Star Trek thing,
right, you're Jack, you're Beverly's son.
Jack has every right in the world to not be thrilled
about being around this guy.
Did you prepare through that process?
Did you spend time thinking about all of this time that
Picard has not been in Jack's life?
I think it's a very good question.
I feel that I try to explore as much of an understanding
of who Jack was as possible.
And I feel that,
it's interesting you say about being in that world.
Jack has pushed everything to do with Starfleet away as
far as possible
that, like, anything to do with that world.
Course, cause it's tied into his father.
I mean, it is tied into his mother as well,
but it's obviously his mother Beverly,
she's broken away and done her own thing.
So he can relate to that.
Yeah.
And I don't think she's ever bad mouthed Starfleet.
I don't think that's ever been her, her port of call.
But I feel because it's so closely associated
with his father and this relationship that he doesn't have,
he inherently fights against it, butts up against it.
And that's why I think we see this sort of Robin Hood
element and you see it early on in Episode 2.
This sort of slightly, not nefarious, but there is a,
there is a, for want of a better phrase,
a Jack the Lad quality to him.
Romulan ale.
A new miracle cure I'm not aware of?
For sterilization.
It's ideal antiseptic and the commonly prescribed treatment
for life in general, all of which we are happy to share.
There is that burning, I think drive and, you know,
maybe modus operandi of trying to prove that he
doesn't need the help of a big machine.
And actually that doesn't represent anything
that he can connect with.
And I think that's one of the biggest things for me,
that he's searching for in this season, his connection.
Connection is hugely important to him,
even though he doesn't know it.
I see these things in Jack that he clearly gets
from his mother
that desire to be outside of the system and that desire
to push back against what everyone expects him to do.
Did you and Gates have any conversations about the, like,
kind of like what your relationship was,
the character relationship is off camera?
Absolutely.
I think Gates and I, we struck it off straight away.
We, you know, we got into the nitty gritty with character
'cause she loves to do that as you well know.
Oh, I know.
With a huge theater background.
Yeah, that's her real, her real burning passion.
And I feel that we got into that and I think Gates made it
very clear to me she wanted to be a part of this again,
because she wanted to have that,
she wanted to have those moments.
And it's paramount that no-
Nice.
No pun intended.
That a guy who has been brought up by his mother
is gonna have a huge, huge connection to his mother.
You have done some amazing fantasy roles
and some great period pieces.
My kids are obsessed with Downton Abbey.
Are they?
They just like, it's a big deal that I'm talking
to you today. - Oh, okay.
- For Ryan, it's a big deal. - Oh wow.
So those shows are like, you know,
they're genre in their way, they're period very much.
We can think of the 24th century,
25th century as a period piece.
A time period's a period, right?
Yeah, right!
Do you find places where the preparation and the skill
and those things that are unique to those experiences
translated to the Star Trek experience for you?
Well, I think as you well know as an actor,
I think that one of the beauties of this,
of this career and this industry is you get the opportunity
to delve into many different time periods,
many different worlds.
And that is what, that's what drives me
to do what I do for a living.
I think that that's, you know, more than anything else,
it comes down to understanding humans or whoever,
whatever you're playing.
And the great thing about being in the 24th century is yes,
you get all the, all the gizmos, all the toys
Yeah.
it looks amazing.
And you, and you're charging around with phasers
and it's great and it looks wonderful and it's high-end.
However, still at the core of it all,
you can strip that away from any time period.
We're still dealing with family.
Yeah.
We're still dealing with human relationships,
we're still dealing with morality,
trying to understand people better,
trying to push things forward to, for the greater good.
Which is, I mean, for me is the Star Trek what I've taken
to be the Star Trek core and the foundation of it.
And to what actually makes it such a popular world
and why it's been so popular for however many
60 years or something?
We talking 60 years? - Yeah.
Yeah.
So, I think the time period is one thing,
and obviously you have to adapt to that, but I feel that it,
the skillset is still the same.
You need to be applying to what,
what's the script telling me?
What's the character telling me?
What am I feeling, what am I thinking?
"How am I gonna get outta this situation?"
is what normally what Jack's thinking.
When I first walked onto the bridge in 1987.
Wow.
- I - - Wow.
- I lost, I lost my mind. - Yeah.
I could not believe that it was real and I was there
and, dear young Wil Wheaton,
who is watching Star Trek on a tiny black and white TV,
it happens, buddy.
Tell me about the first time you went in to experience.
[Ed] I was blown away by the scale of it, straight away.
- [Wil] It's huge. - [Ed] It's massive.
- [Wil] Yeah.
And it's shiny.
It's got that new ship smell.
[Wil] It really is.
It's like two and a half times the size of our bridge.
Right, it's, yeah.
And, and yeah, and shiny.
- Shiny. - So beautiful.
Shiny but dark and metallic and all these, it was like a,
it's like a nightclub you really wanna be in.
Yeah.
But I was blown away by how many people were involved
to make that bridge work,
whether it be like people behind the screens,
to make those screens actually operate and work
and be realistic.
To every detail that was put into that from Dave Blass,
the production designer was, like, incredible.
It's, again, as an actor,
you have to create feelings and emotions and you have to do
that sapping off the environment you're working in.
Yeah.
But when you have a space like that,
it just starts flowing.
But yeah, I was, I'm not gonna deny it,
I was completely overwhelmed.
There's a real pinch yourself moment.
You're like, how,
how am I standing here? - I know.
And I'm looking to the left of me,
there's oh, there's Seven of Nine.
You looking to the right of me, there's, oh there's Riker,
there's, you're like, what? What?
What is actually taking place with my day to day?
Oh, I've got a phaser on me.
I mean it's like completely bonkers.
The thing, the feeling I took from it,
and I know you feel this as well, 'cause it,
it just comes clearly from you.
You're so effusive about the whole thing,
is that no matter the scale, no matter how grand
it might feel and high concept and high-end,
there's a family there, both sides of, of the camera.
Yeah.
Everyone is making this machine, this unit,
to work in a way that is, it allows an amazing space
to play as an actor and to go out and have fun
and do your job to the best of your ability.
And I have to thank, I have to thank Paramount,
and CBS, and Terry Matalas, and everybody involved
to make that machine feel like that, as a safe space.
I mean it's just, it felt like a big family.
Yeah, I get that.
Yeah, I know, yeah.
This is a surreal thing.
This is, I mean this is kind of -
I get that too.
I have a question for you about Jack, but before we do that,
I wanna stay with family, specifically your family.
You brought in a drawing this morning
- Oh yeah. - your daughter did.
It's so wonderful and beautiful. Can we share it?
Yeah, of course we can.
Let's share it! It's wonderful, I love this.
So, I was going out for lunch yesterday
with Jonathan Frakes and Terry Matalas, and I came back
and my daughter, 'cause she knew I was coming on here today,
she was like, "Daddy, I did a drawing for you."
So this is her,
her rainbow Starship Enterprise that she drew just for me.
And she was like, "When you gonna go meet Wil today,
this is for your work so you can take it with you
for your work."
And I mean, so this will be framed at some point
next to the poster of Picard Season 3.
That's great.
This is going up there next to it.
I love that.
So yeah, I was very...
I absolutely love that.
- Yeah, she's... - That's so cool.
She's very sweet, they're both very sweet.
Let's go back to Jack for a little bit.
He is being hunted.
He is being all kinds of hunted
and we're not entirely sure why.
It, part of this fun of the season for me is trying
to figure out, like, is Jack being hunted
'cause he's a bad guy?
Did he do something bad?
I mean maybe, like sometimes villains don't necessarily,
they aren't the villain we think they are when we see them.
Vadic is one of the most terrifying Star Trek villains
I've ever seen! - Yeah.
And Amanda Plummer is so freaking good -
in that role. - She's incredible.
Good afternoon.
I believe it is afternoon in Sol system.
[Wil] What does it feel like to play a guy
who is pursued by her?
I mean, talk about surreal!
That's about as surreal as it gets.
And the Shrike is a terrifying Starship.
I know and I think when Lieutenant Mura announces the
arsenal that it has,
it's like it's, the list just is relentless.
I think even Todd Stashwick, Captain Shaw,
is like, "Ah, okay, okay, we get the picture."
Captain Liam Shaw.
That's me.
It's important for you to know that I was having a nice
morning before all of this.
You mentioned Shaw.
I think Todd Stashwick steals every scene that he is in
this season. I just think he is phenomenal in this series.
I love his being totally unimpressed with Riker and Picard.
It's amazing.
I think it's incredible.
But he is like not real into Jack being on his ship, either.
Whoever this kid may be,
he is not worth the lives of my crew.
I think it's great having unique conflict
and I feel that I personally love being in that position
as Jack who's, who's an outsider,
who's trying to find his way and trying to fit.
So from a character standpoint
when Jack says, "Look, okay, I'm turning myself in."
Right?
Like, let's do that.
Would you talk me through his decision making process in
that and how it reflects his feelings for Shaw, the crew
of the Titan, and the people he is around?
That's a big choice to make.
Yeah, it's a big choice.
And I think it sort of touches on this feeling inside of him
that actually yet, okay, he does put on a show and he does,
he does bristle his own, you know, you know,
bristle himself up and he likes to be a bit pugnacious
and argumentative, but actually deep down
he does know what is good, and he does want people
to be okay. - Yeah.
And it comes down to what we're talking about a little bit
earlier on, that understanding of how people operate,
an understanding of what's right and wrong himself.
And I feel that Jack makes the decision 'cause he is like,
"I don't wanna see all these people get hurt.
I don't wanna see that. There's no need for it."
And he's brave enough to confront that and be like,
"Okay, this is my-I've messed up
and I want to deal with it myself."
And that in a weird, not actually a weird way,
in an interesting way is quite Picard-esque, I think.
Although it's, he's doing it in a very different way.
Yeah.
He's doing under a different guise.
It's the sort of thing that Jean-Luc Picard would do.
Be like, "Okay, let's deal with this head on."
In this episode there is this very heated conversation
with Picard and Riker and Jack.
When you, Ed, go into the set with Frakes and Patrick and
and Gates, does the little boy that watched Star Trek
jump up and down inside of you at all?
Do you have to like tell him to settle down so you can work?
I ask you, because this is the thing I have to do.
I see.
I have to be like, listen, Trekkie-Wil,
it's time to be professional.
So you're in a room with big heavy hitters.
Exciting, intimidating, just another day at the office?
All of these things?
It's never for me another day at the office.
That's awesome.
It's never that.
Because I think if it's that then you're taking your foot
off the gas and then, you're in danger zone
and it, who knows, it could all go horribly wrong.
I'm not saying it's gone horribly right.
But what I did feel early on in some of those scenes
was I can't let other people down here.
I'm with, - Man.
- I'm, you know, I'm stepping up to the plate
with some big heavy hitters who know this inside out
and they're not gonna, even if they're the nicest people
in the world, which they are,
they're not gonna take prisoners or suffer fools gladly.
So you've gotta match them and you've gotta surpass that as
well, I felt.
You are accused of organized crime on Andoria,
actual terrorism on Binar 3 and you're wanted for the
death of a man on Andreas 5.
That's unfair.
He's a Falsettian and they go into a deep hibernation
for seven cycles, so knowing is he dead or is he alive,
who's to say?
I relish that 'cause I felt it tuned into Jack as well.
So it was a, it was a lovely little way for me
to step into something that was like,
"Okay, come on there guys, what have you got?
I'm gonna bring you this.
Let's see what you guys have got.
Let's have some fun and let's play."
And I love that.
I know before I sat down you were talking about ice hockey
and sports and I'm a big, big football fan.
- Yeah. - My football, and -
Who's your team, who's your club?
Tottenham Hotspur.
- Talk to Marina about that? - Yeah, of course.
I mean that's like the first thing.
That was the first thing - Yeah.
- that's the first thing. - Yeah.
With a lot of effing and blinding as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
Which was great.
But as a result, I have that sense of,
and I play a lot,
and I have that sense of competition, I mean,
not that it means that at work and an acting environment is
competition, but it means that when you're stepping
into the world of working with these people,
you've gotta be ready in on your game.
And, and I feel
I've relished that. I've made mistakes in the past
when I haven't and it's not worked out.
So you know this, you've got one opportunity.
This is a huge opportunity to be given by people, by,
you know, very, you know, serious players
and they've given me a chance.
I can't let the pressure of who these people are
in front of me override that.
You have to just throw yourself into it.
About two months ago, I saw Patrick briefly
and he had just met Lionel Messi.
I just...
I mean there's not many things you can just
pick up off the floor.
I'm telling you the, so the next time you see Patrick,
Wow.
you can can ask him because if you wanna see the gravitas
and the grace and the Shakespearean Sir Patrick Stewart
of everything turn into a 10-year-old kid
who's excited cuz he met his hero,
the way he lights up and just explodes with joy when he
tells the story. - Wow.
It's a great thing.
I'm looking forward to talking about that.
You will,
you will greatly enjoy that.
Without spoiling anything,
which is so hard for us to do.
Yeah.
Do you want to drop any hints
about the rest of the season?
I just, I don't know what I can say.
It's so difficult.
I mean, I would just, I mean, I know that the people
watching this, I would hope that the people watching this
are gonna stick with it.
But I would just say stick with it because I don't think
you realize what you're in for.
I think this, this season,
it's like an all, it's like a big symphony.
It just crescendos, it rattles along at a pace,
but it goes and goes and goes.
And it's like a throwback not just to, to Next Gen of old,
not just to films like First Contact.
It is a throwback to some sort of 80's era-fueled movie
with amazing music all the way through,
characters so fleshed out.
I know I've mentioned it a two or three times,
but this high concept, high-octane action and story,
but which is under undercut and underpinned by beautiful
family relationships. - Yeah.
And I'm so proud to have been a part of this season.
What happens after that, who knows?
But I'm so, so proud to be given
an opportunity by Paramount.
I'm so, and I'm so eager to see what people think.
That's so awesome. I love that for you.
And I love that we share a Spacemom.
I mean, that's about as cool as it can get.
I just think that's pretty great.
Thank you so much for being here.
It's an honor.
Such a pleasure talking with you.
No, likewise, thank you so much for bringing me in.
The future that Star Trek represents is so inspiring.
It is one of peace, equality and Infinite Diversity
in Infinite Combinations.
It's basically all the best things and it is a future
I desperately want to live in.
Now, despite the great strides taken to achieve this vision
of perfection, there will always be those who stand
in selfish opposition: the pirates, the greedy profiteers,
and the warlords who are determined to subvert
the United Federation of Planet's vision of utopia.
Here is a look at the creation of one of Star Trek's
seediest locales where they all hang out, District Six.
Stepping over junkies is one hell of a way
to conceal a drug den.
We're not open to strangers, move on.
So, Season 3,
we find Raffi in a very interesting sort of situation.
She doesn't seem to be doing the best.
She's in a sketchy neighborhood.
Hey, watch it freak.
I'm not your dealer.
When you think of Star Trek,
most of the locations are set on our amazing ships,
which are fun and beautiful,
but we always try to open up the palette as well of finding
certain locations or locales that feel like this isn't
what you would expect on a Star Trek show.
One of the things you don't normally see in Star Trek
is the seedy underworld.
You're like the all-knowing oracle of the underworld
and shit, right?.
And so that was a lot of fun designing this planet,
which when I worked on Enterprise, I was a PA,
and they had named this horrible planet after me.
I've seen things I could never imagine back home.
I saw that ring moons of M'Talas Prime.
So, when we were talking initially about what's a horrible
place to be in, someone in the writer's room,
"Well there's M'Talas Prime" and I was like,
"All right, here we go."
At night, it can drop to five or even 10 degrees below zero.
That doesn't sound so bad.
During the day, the temperature can rise to as high
as 170 degrees.
So, we decided to put that into the show.
I'm happy to be associated with the worst place
in the galaxy.
Being able to design District Six and just make this
underbelly alien world with strange alien meats and all
kinds of weird things are going on,
it was a really fun palette to play with.
District Six was really fun.
And whenever you're doing something like that,
it's kind of looking at what has been done before.
They did an alien market on Discovery.
- [Georgiou] What is that? - Delicious.
It's a space whale.
Gormagander?
And we actually did an Okinawa market in Season 2.
All right, come on, let's get outta here.
[Computer] Lockdown initiated.
And it was that that inspired the Showrunner
Terry, he said, "Oh, that is so great.
We only used it for one scene! Let's do that
but do it on a bigger scale."
As you're walking through District Six,
you can sit there and point to, pick out different elements
from every other set that's been played throughout
the course of Picard because we just said, "Okay,
what have we got in the garage that we can put in and turn
into something else?"
We went over the list of all of the, like, Klingon foods
and alien foods and we had signage, it was made up
for Klingon White Fang Steaks.
And we called up a Marc Okrand who created the Klingon
language, he gave us notes.
If you'll see in a sign, and it's in Orion, it's real Orion.
It's like we have Geoffrey Mandel,
who was the graphic designer for many years on Star Trek.
It's that thing of going, "Okay, well how do you do the,
what's the language?"
He goes, "Well, here's what we did on this show.
Here's the original graphic that we used
on this episode of Enterprise."
So, not only are we doing a callback,
it's the actual sign that was used.
And we did that a lot throughout the show where we're
pulling props or details from the actual sets.
Well that, that is a seedy place for sure.
And one of the seedier characters there is Sneed.
I like human things, retro things.
It's like pressure and coal.
Let something get old long enough,
eventually it becomes vintage
and of value.
He was a real challenge because it was all about creating
something new, but honoring canon and the expectation
that the audience will have of this particular character.
Ooh, la la, you nasty girl.
But nobody comes in here asking nothing for something.
It would offend me if they did.
We designed prison tattoos and things that, that certainly
indicated his life of crime as a gangster ne'er-do-well.
This is Toluco.
Do you really think I wouldn't tie up my loose ends
or risk my goddamn reputation selling out the big fish?
The area for Sneed, the gangster's lair, was just wall-to-
wall-to-wall Easter eggs.
There was the Klingon gambling table,
there was the Ferengi Book of Acquisition.
There was an episode of Lower Decks
where they had the Ferengi going after Mugatu
and they had like the Mugatu horns.
You know you guys could just replicate stuff, right?
Like the, the stuff you buy with latinum,
you could just replicate.
You guys are dumb.
So, we had Mugatu horns on the thing and all the stuff has
been figured out and it all plays into Trek history,
including the graffiti and you know, so it was,
it was a lot of fun.
The U.S.S. Titan, escaping from Vadic into a nebula
has left me feeling tense.
If you're feeling that way too and are looking for a hint of
what's to come, maybe a bit of optimism,
here's an exclusive clip from next week's episode.
[Mura] No sign of the Shrike, sir.
We've lost contact.
And there go the sensors.
We lost her.
For now.
I'm really sorry we all have to wait seven days
to find out what happens.
I recommend maybe binging Lower Decks in the meantime.
Thank you once again for visiting me here in The Ready Room.
And a personal thank you to Ed Speleers for joining me
for what turned out to be a really wonderful family chat.
Next week, we'll be right back here,
joined by Captain William T. Riker himself,
my dear friend Jonathan Frakes, as we dig into Season 3,
Episode 3 of Star Trek: Picard titled "17 Seconds."
Until then, I'm Wil Wheaton.
Live long and prosper.