With a week to go to the premiere episode of Star Trek: Picard, we’ve rounded up some bits of interest from interviews the producers and cast have given at the red carpet premiere events in the US and the UK.

The possibility of Worf on Picard

With Patrick Stewart saying he hopes to include more of the TNG cast in the show, one specific character that fans have wondered about comes to mind: Worf. TVLine asked Alex Kurtzman about it, who said:

It’s totally possible, I think Worf is such an amazing character… We didn’t want to just throw people in because they were in Next Gen… We actually weren’t even thinking about bringing Marina [Sirtis] and Jonathan [Frakes] back until halfway through the season when, as we were breaking story, something came up that made it very clear they need to be in the story. So a deliberate reason is the bar, and if there’s a great reason to bring Worf in, anything is possible.

The big question is what would Worf’s Klingon makeup look like? Kurtzman responded:

…he’s got to look the same, we’re not changing that. It’s funny, because you’ll see by the time you get to [Picard‘s] third episode, there are different kinds of Romulans that look different, depending on their territories. You’ll see some Romulans that are just about the ears, you’ll see some with the ears and deeper ridges in their foreheads… so I have to believe that there are different iterations of Klingons, depending on where they are from.

The Discovery-style Klingon makeup has already undergone a number of tweaks, making it quite a bit closer to the TNG-era makeup style than it was at the beginning of the series. So tweaking things further to give Worf a look that’s similar to the way he was last seen (in Nemesis) wouldn’t be a far stretch.

NOTE: It should be obvious, but if you’re trying to stay totally clean and spoiler free, don’t read the interview excerpts below.

Where we find Seven of Nine in Picard

Jeri Ryan and Alex Kurtzman spoke with IGN about the inclusion of Seven of Nine.

Jeri Ryan says Seven’s not a fan of Starfleet when we meet up with her again:

Seven I think holds Starfleet and the Federation in large part responsible for much of it. The universe is a mess and I think she initially sees Picard as a representation of that. She’s been working … with sort of a group of freedom fighters called the Fenris Rangers who are trying to keep some semblance of order in the mess that is the galaxy.

NOTE: A likely clue: Fenris is a monstrous wolf in Norse mythology, and Romulus and Remus were twins raised by wolves in Roman mythology.

Ryan went on to explain that the moment we’ve seen in the trailers with Seven coming to Picard at his vineyard is the first time the two characters actually meet:

This is the first time that Seven and Picard actually meet, they know each other by reputation. And as I’ve said before, Seven’s not on the ‘Oh, he’s a god’ bandwagon I think initially when she meets him because she holds him partially responsible for what Starfleet has done in her view.

Executive producer Alex Kurtzman spoke about Seven’s inclusion:

Seven and Picard have never been onscreen together before. So that was a really interesting opportunity, and what they share, even though they’ve never spoken, is they were both assimilated by the Borg. So they would obviously both be haunted by that element of their lives. We certainly know that both of them have been individually, and now what does it mean for them to see that in each other. Is it too painful? Is it a little like staring into the sun? Is it comforting? Those are really interesting questions to ask.

Picard’s new perspective on The Borg

Alex Kurtzman spoke with CNET about The Borg in Star Trek: Picard:

There’s a humanity, for the lack of a better word, that was taken away from them. There’s a new perspective on the Borg. Patrick, in his infinite wisdom, did not want to repeat the things he had played already, he was really resistant to doing the Borg for a long time, and it ended up leading us to a new version of the Borg you haven’t seen.

CNET then confirmed that Hugh still looks after the Borg that disconnected from the collective, as seen in the TNG two-parter “Descent,” who have become more human over time. The broader Borg collective is still out there somewhere, and remains a threat.

Jonathan Del Arco confirmed to CNET that Hugh has spent the last 20 years serving as a protector to the disconnected Borg, and has had to make compromises to keep his people safe. “But he’s held on to that moral center that I think has always made the character really important to Star Trek,” he added.

Cast members tease their characters

Star Trek: Picard will premiere on January 23, 2020. It will be available on CBS All Access in the USA and on the CTV Sci-Fi Channel and CraveTV in Canada. It will premiere on Amazon Prime Video for the rest of the world on January 24. Episodes will be released weekly.

Keep up with all the Star Trek: Picard news at TrekMovie.