Star Trek: Picard is finally almost here and fans are waiting with baited breath for the first episode. A new exclusive clip from TV Insider shows how Captain Jean-Luc Picard has been spending his days during retirement. He walks around with Number One (a pretty interesting canine companion) on his family’s vineyard in France. Loire Valley doesn’t just play host to Picard and the pup though, he has a couple of Romulans around to help tend to the vineyard. The French on display from Patrick Stewart is very fun and it becomes quite clear that something is going to draw him out of this boredom and back toward the path to exploration.

But, how have things changed since the good old days? Well, Stewart says that anyone expecting a retread of previous material could be a bit disappointed. “I think what we’re trying to say is important,” he told Variety. “The world of Next Generation doesn’t exist anymore. It’s different. Nothing is really safe. Nothing is really secure.

“We are remaining very faithful to Gene Roddenberry’s notion of what the future might be like,” Stewart added. “In a way, the world of Next Generation had been too perfect and too protected. It was the Enterprise. It was a safe world of respect and communication and care and, sometimes, fun.”

Stewart’s comments here were very much in line with what Picard executive producer Akiva Goldsman had to say in a recent interview as well. "Well we pointedly wanted to not make a sequel to Next Gen," Goldsman explained. "I think that tonally, it's a little bit of a hybrid. Obviously it’s – you will see, I hope – slower, more gentle, more lyrical. It is certainly more character-based."

“It also takes on the same thing that The Original Series took on, that Next Gen took on, that Discovery takes on, which is a hope for a future that is in many ways better than the world we live in today. Star Trek remains aspirational and what we get to do that DS9 got to do a little bit and Discovery got to do is to tell serialized stories, and in serialized storytelling, the characters can evolve in a way that makes it unique. So we think it's a new kind of Star Trek show, made by a lot of people who love all the old kinds of Star Trek."

Star Trek: Picard begins January 23rd on CBS All Access.