[EDITORS NOTE: This article contains spoilers for Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Episode 6.]Star Trek: Picard Season 3 has been delivering knock-out episodes for the past six weeks, featuring an epic reunion of the Next Generation cast and a deep dive into of some of Star Trek's less explored territory. This week the show's two major storylines finally collided as Raffi (Michelle Hurd) and Worf's (Michael Dorn) secret Section 31-style mission lead them to team up with Picard (Patrick Stewart) on the Titan. With the crew on the run from both Starfleet and Vadic, the episode sees Picard take the Titan to the Fleet Museum to seek safe haven with Geordi (LeVar Burton), while Raffi, Worf, and Riker (Jonathan Frakes) head to Daystrom Station and find more than they bargained for in an old friend.
A new featurette goes behind the scenes of Daystrom Station, affectionately dubbed "Starfleet's Area 51," with the cast and creatives behind the series. Season 3 showrunner Terry Matalas explains that when choosing which items we would see kept in this secret vault, he and the team tried to carefully toe the line of fan service and what would actually be in such a secret Starfleet facility. While Raffi, Worf, and Riker's target turns out to be none other than Data (Brent Spiner) himself, we see plenty of other Easter eggs before our heroes find what they're looking for including attack tribbles, the Genesis II device, and the body of James T. Kirk.
Daystrom Station also allowed Picard to bring back several Data-specific Easter eggs with Daniel Davis' hologram villain Moriarty now playing the security system, and a callback to the pilot episode of TNG with Riker knowing the exact tune to whistle back for his old friend. While Data is technically dead, Matalas knew they didn't want to have a TNG reunion without Spiner, so together they crafted a way to bring back all of the characters Spiner brought to life over the course of TNG. Matalas told Collider:
"What if it was Jekyll and Hyde? What if both Lore and Data [were] in there with all these other things? Wouldn't that give Brent Spiner something really interesting to play? And couldn't that promise a really interesting final Data/Lore story? I took that to Brent thinking he was going to reject the whole thing, and he was like, "Oh, that's actually really cool." Brent was unbelievably collaborative with it, and Brent had ideas that only elevated it in ways I couldn't have imagined. In fact, some of the best moments of this story were Brent's idea."
Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Episode 6 Finally Delivers the Full Next Generation Cast
Star Trek: Picard Season 3 promised a full TNG reunion back when it was announced and finally the full ensemble cast has been revealed with the return of Data and Geordi, as well as the reveal that Vadic and the changelings have captured Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) as well as Riker. While we haven't seen the whole cast together we're certainly headed there in the next few episodes, with Worf promising Picard that he would bring Riker home.
New episodes of Star Trek: Picard arrive on Paramount+ every Thursday, and you can watch the featurette on Daystrom Station down below. If you're looking for more behind-the-scenes details on the latest episode of Star Trek: Picard, check out Maggie Lovitt's full conversation with Matalas on everything that went into this epic reunion.