Five months after the show concluded its second year of storytelling, Star Trek: Picard — Season 2 makes its way to Blu-ray with a significant amount of behind-the-scenes exploration, paving the way for the series’ final outing.
 
For its second year, Star Trek: Picard is available to home-media collectors on Blu-ray, in special Blu-ray Steelbook packaging, and on DVD for those who haven’t made the jump to high-definition.
 

Across its three-disc collection are all ten episodes of Picard Season 2, a number of deleted scenes, a fun gag reel, and over 90 minutes of behind-the-scenes featurettes which explore various areas of production.

A divisive season of Trek to be sure, with opinions ranging from love to loathing, the season began with a three-episode trip across realities (and across time) as Next Generation foe Q (John de Lancie) tossed Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), and the rest of the cast into a world where the Federation never formed — forcing the La Sirena gang to head back to modern-day Los Angeles to correct history.

After the major setting change got the season going (a sci-fi turn shepherded by new co-showrunner Terry Matalas), the Earthbound tale then morphed into a psychological examination of Jean-Luc Picard’s family history.

In a twist from incumbent co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman, we learned that in fact Yvette Picard sadly committed suicide after battling mental illness — a repressed memory found at the end Picard’s journey along Q’s path.

Returning Picard, Seven, and Raffi Musiker (Michelle Hurd) to the 25th century thanks to a last-breath finger-snap from Q, Star Trek: Picard said farewell to much of its cast — with Cris Rios (Santiago Cabrera) left behind in 2024, Kore Soong (Isa Briones) joining the Travelers, Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill) forming a new “voluntary” Borg collective, and Elnor (Evan Evagora) returning to his Starfleet Academy training.

As the final season approaches — returning to Paramount+ on February 16 — the show finds itself ready to reinvent itself for next season’s impending Next Generation cast reunion.

The Steelbook edition continues to be our favorite way to bring Star Trek television home, as the metal packaging features the stark black-and-white Season 2 key art (featuring Patrick Stewart haunted by John de Lancie) and the Blu-ray discs are well-protected by the Steelbook’s disc spindles.

The standard Blu-ray and DVD releases sport rather disappointing cover artwork, featuring individual photos of the cast — minus Brent Spiner, for some reason — Photoshopped onto a glowing blue background; the Blu-ray set stacks the three discs across just two spindles inside the plastic casing.

(Not a great way to keep those discs from getting scratched!)

Even with high-bandwidth home internet connections, the video quality of Blu-ray discs are always going to be a nice improvement from the streaming presentation on Paramount+, and Picard Season 2 is no exception.

From the violent space anomaly which kicks off events in “The Star Gazer,” to the race towards Earth’s sun in “Assimilation,” to the dark battle scenes beneath Chateau Picard, the show looks its best here — without any blocking or smearing from streaming compression — and helps make the location filming in sunny Los Angeles look even better, especially compared to the dark future where the Confederation of Earth is in charge.

The score from composer Jeff Russo sounds wonderful on Blu-ray as well, presented in 5.1 DTS-HD audio; unfortunately there are no audio commentary tracks included with any of Season 2’s episodes.

Picard‘s Season 2 Blu-ray set contains six main behind-the-scenes features, covering everything from the complicated makeup effects used to turn Annie Wersching into the new Borg Queen, to the design of the Sagan-class USS Stargazer, to the various props and set decoration seen throughout the year’s adventure.

• Picard Passages (24:58) — The primary overview the year, featuring cast interviews and writer-producer discussions around the Picard backstory, time-travel, Q, and Borg Queen elements which make up Season 2’s storytelling.
• Picard Props (12:05) — As you might imagine, this feature focuses on prop master Jeff Lombardi’s work for Season 2, touching on the various weapons and costume pieces built for the dark Confederation future, along with the tech of Adam Soong and Tallinn found in 2024.

  Lombardi offers a great look at some concept art and production-made pieces from Season 2, including the design thoughts behind the sharp Confederation combadge, Romulan tricorder, and Guinan’s El-Aurian bottle.

• Rebuilding the Borg Queen (11:10) — Lead creature designer Neville Page (along with other artists in the Picard team) describes the challenge of bringing back the intimidating Borg Queen with the makeup and prosthetic technology now available to Trek creatives, along with actor Annie Wersching’s experience becoming the cybernetic villain.

• The USS Stargazer (18:28) — The feature explores the genesis of the new Stargazer starship, all the way from early Zoom design calls between Terry Matalas, Doug Drexler, John Eaves, Dave Blass, and Star Trek Online‘s Thomas Marrone — all the way through the interior sets on the production stages with input from Mike Okuda, and the designers of the various LCARS user interfaces seen on the ship.

  There’s a fantastic amount of insight in this feature, from concept designs and blueprints to the wildly-complicated set construction efforts used to bring the Stargazer bridge to life.

• The Chateau (15:23) — Production designer Dave Blass and prop master Jeff Lombardi guide viewers through the design and contents of the Chateau Picard set (a new build for Season 2), used in both the 2401 and 2024 time periods. Neville Page also lays out the design philosophy behind ‘Borgslayer’ Picard’s alien skull collection, in a deep exploration of those artifact.
• The Trial is Over (12:03) — John de Lancie, Patrick Stewart, Alex Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman discuss Q’s return, and the character’s impact on Jean-Luc Picard in both past and present encounters. There’s also a great look at de Lancie’s final day on set with Patrick Stewart, as the actor recounts how his Next Generation journey began all the way back during preparation for “Encounter at Farpoint.”

There are four selections of Season 2 deleted scenes as part of this season’s package, totaling just over 9 minutes in length.

• “Assimilation” (203) — An excised moment from Elnor’s death scene; a calm moment between Dr. Ramirez and her son at the clinic before Rios arrives; Seven and Raffi scanning Los Angeles for signs of The Watcher.
• “Fly Me to the Moon” (205) — Q pestering a Los Angeles waitress about her thoughts on life’s purpose; Tallinn (Orla Brady) stunning a group of partygoers so Jurati can steal their identity bracelets; Adam Soong (Brent Spiner) monologues about genetic perfection as the gang crashes the Europa Mission party and Jurati speaks to the Borg Queen (Annie Wersching).
• “Monsters” (207) — Tallinn experiences more of young Picard’s memories while inside his mind; a short moment from Raffi and Seven chasing down ‘Queen Agnes’ in Los Angeles.
• “Farewell” (210) — Seven takes charge while the La Sirena gang considers their place in history, much to Raffi’s delight; Seven reports that she, Raffi, and Rios will not be able to help at the Europa Mission launch facility.

The bonus features are rounded out by a four-minute gag reel, letting the sometimes-all-to-serious characters fall away as the fun Star Trek: Picard cast get to have a few laughs while trying to film on noisy Los Angeles city streets — or just having trouble remembering the right Trek talk as they work to deliver complicated line readings.

Overall, this is a great deal of behind-the-scenes material for the 10-episode season — though whether you choose to invest in a purchase for your collection is going to need to depend on your thoughts on Season 2 as a whole.

For the completist, it’s a no-brainer; for folks not too hot on the Season 2 story, it’s still something we’d recommend to keep the Star Trek physical media wheels turning for future releases — though for sure, this season was not everyone’s cup of Earl Grey tea.

Star Trek: Picard — Season 2 is the third in a wave of new Trek Blu-ray releases this fall, following the Original Series films remastered in 4K, and the 4K-remastered Star Trek: The Motion Picture — The Director’s Edition which each arrived in September; the first ten episodes of Star Trek: Prodigy hit Blu-ray in November, followed by Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 on December 6.

Star Trek: Picard is currently in post-production on its third and final season, set to debut in February 2023 on Paramount+ the United States, and on CTV Sci Fi Channel and Crave in Canada. Outside of North America, the series is available on Amazon’s Prime Video service in most international locations.