It’s just a week to go until Star Trek: Picard launches on CBS All Access in the United States, and as the week of premiere events made its way from Los Angeles to London, we took the opportunity to find out how the new series, set past the events of the 2009 Star Trek film, connected to the wider Trek universe.

A year ago, Star Trek: Picard executive producer Alex Kurtzman first revealed that the new series would be heavily influenced by the destruction of Romulus, seen on-screen in the 2009 Star Trek film, which was the launching point of Spock and Nero’s journey into a black hole that dropped them into a whole new universe.

We talked to series executive producer Kurtzman in London yesterday and asked if Spock’s disappearance from the ‘prime timeline’ into the world of Chris Pine’s version of Captain Kirk — known as the Kelvin Timeline — might tie into the Star Trek: Picard storyline.

TREKCORE: So ‘Picard’ is the first follow-up in the prime ‘Star Trek’ universe that’s set after the 2009 film. Will Spock’s attempt to save Romulus be revisited? ALEX KURTZMAN: Well, if you’re looking at the timeline linearly, he’s already jumped to [the Kelvin Timeline]. TREKCORE: And what does the universe he left behind think of his disappearance? KURTZMAN: That doesn’t play a part in our story, but that’s a very excellent question. Whether [the Federation] even knows that he’s gone — that’s a question.

Earlier in the week, we asked Kurtzman at the Los Angeles premiere if the story of Star Trek: Discovery might be influenced by the events of Picard, now that the Discovery crew has traveled to the far future — past all previous Star Trek events in the timeline.

TREKCORE: Will the events of ‘Picard’ Season 1 tie in to the ‘Discovery’ Season 3 story at all? KURTZMAN: No, not right now. We’re talking almost 1,000 years between shows, so no. What I’ll say about ‘Discovery’ is that a lot of things that were planted in previous shows will play out there.

Fellow executive producer Heather Kadin also countered recent commentary framing the expanding Star Trek universe as being similar to the frequent crossover events of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe.

NEW: We ask #StarTrek executive producer Heather Kadin how long we'll have to wait for #StarTrekDiscovery Season 3 and #LowerDecks…. and is the STAR TREK UNIVERSE really going to be as connected as the MCU? (Apologies for the audio, captions in place!) pic.twitter.com/33XD3nQOcZ — TrekCore.com 🖖 (@TrekCore) January 14, 2020

Kadin also shared that while production on Discovery Season 3 — and the forthcoming animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks — may be completed by May, both shows are still unscheduled for public release.

One-time Enterprise captain Scott Bakula is still working in the CBS television world, having been solving crimes on NCIS: New Orleans for the past six years, so we had to ask Kurtzman if we might get an opportunity to see Jonathan Archer once more… or any characters from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, now that Jeri Ryan’s return in Star Trek: Picard is tying the Voyager story into modern production.

KURTZMAN: We don’t have any immediate plans [for Archer], but I would say that all characters in the ‘Star Trek’ universe, if we find a reason to bring them back, we would do it. [Regarding ‘Deep Space Nine,’] sure, it’s possible. Characters from ‘DS9’ could show up… in a lot of different ways.

Finally, while we’ve all now heard the story about how much convincing it took to bring Patrick Stewart back into the Star Trek fold after two decades away, we wanted to hear the creative team talk about the original genesis of the Star Trek: Picard story — and their answer was one completely unexpected.

Speaking first to series co-creator Kirsten Beyer, the Trek novelist-turned-producer told us how the new series was actually borne out of an idea which would have brought classic Star Trek star Nichelle Nichols back to reprise her role as Uhura — last seen in 1991’s Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

KIRSTEN BEYER: So, at the very, very beginning, we were talking about ‘Short Treks’ for the first time, and what kind of stories you could tell — and we were actually beginning with an Uhura story, and the idea was that we very much wanted to see we could bring Nichelle [Nichols] back in at this point in time, and then see what kind of stories [Uhura] might tie in to. And then Patrick’s name came into the mix, and could we get him, would he be interested… so the very first idea was a meeting between Uhura and Picard — a very, very young Picard.

Alex Kurtzman elaborated, briefly, on the story concept they were exploring for Nichols’ return.

KURTZMAN: The original idea was that a young Picard had been called to a hospital where Uhura had a mission for him, and it was related to the Borg. I’m not going to give any more away, because maybe one day we’ll actually do it! [Laughs]

Uhura is the only member of the Original Series crew to have not been seen after the events of final classic Star Trek film, as all of her TOS co-stars either made guest appearances in later films (Shatner, Nimoy, Doohan, Koenig) or television episodes (Takei, Whitney). DeForest Kelley appeared in the pilot of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was filmed years earlier, but was set chronologically later in the Trek timeline.

And though it may seem odd that Uhura could even know about the Borg, the flashbacks in “Dark Frontier” — set nearly eight years before The Next Generation — do establish that the Federation Council was aware of rumors about the cybernetic species, as Seven of Nine’s father notes in that episode… and of course, the rescue of Guinan and the El-Aurians in Star Trek Generations brings their carried knowledge of the Borg to the Federation as well.

While it certainly would have been a delight to see Nichols revisit the role after nearly 30 years away, her impeding retirement from public life likely spells the end of this particular storytelling attempt — but who knows, maybe Kurtzman’s team will find a way to open hailing frequencies one last time before the actor hangs up her communicator.

Star Trek: Picard debuts on CBS All Access on January 23 and will follow internally on Amazon Prime Video starting January 24.