ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Star Trek: Picard Production Designer David Blass about the series‘ recent conclusion with Season 3. Blass discussed balancing nostalgia with new ideas and his lifelong Star Trek fandom.
The final season is out now on DVD, Blu-ray, and limited edition Blu-ray SteelBook, while the limited edition Star Trek: The Picard Legacy Collection will be released on November 7.
Tyler Treese: Dave, it had to be a real thrill to work on Star Trek: Picard. I read that you’ve been a lifelong fan. Talk me through your history with the series as a fan
David Blass: Yeah, I shared in the Comic-Con or the Star Trek convention thing. I put up my photo of myself as Mr. Spock when I was like 16 — lifelong fan. That was really what inspired me to get into the movies. When I attended Emerson College when I was just out of high school, I had to get a job at the media center because I didn’t have cable, and Star Trek: The Next Generation was the new show that had just come out. Because I didn’t have cable, though, the only way I could do it was if I worked the night that The Next Generation was on, and then I could go in and watch the show. So it turns out that Emerson became a touchstone because Terry Matalas, the showrunner, also attended Emerson.
We knew a lot of the same people, which really connected us during my job interview with him. He was like, “Oh, we know this, and you know this,” so I credit Emerson for getting me the Star Trek job. But to then start out in the industry and try and achieve the goal of designing Star Trek, and not only make it happen but to do so and to have the fans really love what you did is really a great thing. Because, as I say, there’s nothing worse than achieving your goal and then sucking at it. If I finally got to design Star Trek and I sucked at it … But I think we stuck the landing, especially with Season 3. It’s the backhanded compliment. People always said, “I love what you did with Season 3.” I’m like, “I did Season 2 as well.” But I think that, again, Season 2 and Season 3 are different things, different tones, and in Season 3, what we were able to do and the team we brought together was pretty amazing.
I think the reason why Star Trek: Picard Season 3 registers as much as it does with everybody is it’s just the perfect send-off for the characters. What did it mean to have such a hand in that? It’s this beautiful love letter to nostalgia, but nostalgia can often be surface level, but there’s such a clear, deep understanding and love for everything put into here. What did it mean to be able to make that final chapter and send it off in such a great way?
What was great was that Terry Matalas is an artist and he uses nostalgia like a brush. You could just slap it on, but he’s like, “Nope, we’re just doing a little here, a little here, a little here,” and that’s what makes art happen. And again, he is, he’s a, he’s a master, and it’s like, he, he gets it. He loves Star Trek, and you can see it because he loves the characters. He loves the, the core idea of what Star Trek is and the adventure and the comedy. It’s like the episode — the no-win scenario — it’s the best you’re ever going to get, because Terry knew how to write it. He wrote it for Jonathan Frakes, who was directing it, and he put in just enough nostalgia, enough Jonathan Frakes, and it really works.
But, for me, as a Star Trek fan, Terry and I really approached it as “Create the version of Star Trek that we, as fans, want to see.” When I went to Terry, I said, “You know what, dude? We don’t have the money to do flashy, shiny, cool new sets. I do have the money, and this is my idea. Let’s just make the sets look like Star Trek.” Because Star Trek never had any money. So it’s got to be space crate on the ceiling, transparencies on the wall and in the gradients, and let’s just make it look like Star Trek. He’s like, “Duh! Yeah, let’s do that.” So when people look at the transporter room, it should look like a transporter room. Sick bay should look like a sick bay, and it should look like a natural extension of Voyager and all those things. As a fan, to go onto those sets, it’s like, “Yeah, that’s what I wanted it to feel like.”
There’s so much history to Star Trek. It’s very unique in this space and the fans are so passionate. What was the biggest challenge in working on Star Trek: Picard?
Season 3 was just such a massive challenge because every script would come and it was huge. Then it was the emotional compromise of, “Here, I want to design this new set and make it cool. I want to do this.” Then you submit it, this big huge set, and they’re like, “Okay, that’s $5 million.” And I’m like, “How much do we have?” And they’re like, “500.” And you’re like, “Oh, okay, maybe the set’s this big, then.” So it was just a weekly compromise of, “Here’s what I want to do, here’s what we get to do.” In the end, it’s actually fine. I think my best example of this is the fact that we only had one bedroom, or one quarters, for everyone. Everyone has the same teeny tiny room and we redressed it, but there’s a scene that Terry shot in the finale where we go from Raffi and Worf having a scene in the room, and then without any cut to anything else, we go to Data and Troy in the same exact room having a scene together, and it completely works.
There’s no one going, “Hey, that’s the same room in the thing.” On the day, I’m pulling my hair out — “This is stupid. It looks a thing.” And in the show, it just doesn’t matter because you’re so locked into the characters and the writing, the story and the emotion that then I realized, I was like, “What you do is really background. You’re the background guy. I get it, but my background’s important.” We ended up reusing the same couple rooms like five times. It went from the transporter room to the nacelle room, but again, the audience doesn’t care. They look at it and they buy it. So it was fine, but getting to do that was challenge just the same.
There’s a lot that, when you’re watching the final product, you might overlook and take for granted as a viewer. Is there anything else that maybe gets overlooked but took a ton of time to really nail down on the production side in Star Trek: Picard?
I think M’talas Prime, the big exterior city streets with Raffi and Worf, that was a massive thing. We basically built an entire city block of alien stalls and things. 90% of it you just see in the background behind smoke and the dark and lights, but it sells, it. You feel like you’re in an alien world and everything, but there was just so much detail that Shauna Aronson and her team brought to that. All the alien languages and that Orion shop had Orion writing and Orion details.
Also, I would say, the Borg. Kit Stølen, the art director who oversaw the the Borg ship, did a phenomenal job recreating all the original textures from the Borg ship, the vacuform panels that were used on the original series — all the different alcoves and all the nuance of it. And again, it’s dark and we’re moving quickly and you don’t see as much of it. But he put in so much time and effort and it looked exactly like what our vision was — a blending of all the different Borg ships that we had seen over the history into one set. I think he did a brilliant job with that.
Another thing you and your team really nailed was bringing back the U.S.S. Enterprise. Having the original cast there had to be such a thrill. I saw this lovely Facebook post you did where you showed the original TNG production designer, Herman Zimmerman, the recreated sets. How much did that mean for you to get to show him that and get that seal of approval? It seems like a real full circle moment?
It was, and it was challenging. Because we were in Covid, in order to get him there, we had to test and do all this stuff and it was like a whole deal and we weren’t going to be able to do it. So I had to sneak him in on a Sunday. I remember trying to drop my resume off at Herman’s office back when I was starting the business. Here’s this guy that I idolized because he had the job that I wanted, and to invite him to the show and, for a moment, to be peers with him, it’s like … he’s an icon. He was just so gracious.
He wrote me this wonderful letter after that. He said, “You did what I did with Matt Jefferies . He said I took what Matt Jeffries had done and evolved it and improved it. And, “What we did on The Next Generation was monumentally better than the original series. What you’ve done is just insane compared to what we did.” So it was such a wonderful thing, and Herman and Dan Curry were just brilliant together.
Star Trek’s Future is very interesting because it’s all rooted from when the original series came out. Some of the designs are kind of dated by modern standards, but it’s still very futuristic. How challenging was it, especially in Season 2, to stay true to that original style while being able to tell these new stories?
It’s a challenge, especially when you get into time travel and stuff. We had a wonderful, annoying nerd conversation you get to have on a show like Star Trek that people who are not nerds on the show get really annoyed by. We were talking about how Picard as a kid … we had a scene that was originally in his bedroom, and it’s like, “Okay, well he should have a computer in his bedroom, but based on his age and the time, it should be something similar to what was the TOS computer on the old Enterprise” — that kind of boxy, Macintosh-looking thing that you put little cassettes in. And people were like, “But that doesn’t make any sense because that’s not what we would have in 400 years.”
I’m like, “But what is reality? Are we in the Trek world or are we in our world? How do we balance that?” I think that’s something that Star Wars has done that very well with their things, because they stay in the same time period and their tech just looks like the same tech, whereas Star Trek has tried to evolve and stay congruent with the visual time — especially with J.J. Abrams and what his team did. So it’s always something worth playing with. But again, we wrangled that a lot in Season 3, where I said to Terry, “I think we should make our sets look like Star Trek sets and not try and make them look like a new, cool sci-fi set. Let’s just make it look like 20 years after Voyager.” An elevator looks like an elevator, so let’s make a turbolift look like a turbolift, a transport room look like a transporter room. So that worked really well for us.
You worked on the first season of The Boys, which has become such a huge hit. Now it’s getting spin-offs. How was it, establishing that live-action look and feel for that series? That was the first adaptation of it, so you really got to set the tone.
That was a phenomenal show. That was my second collaboration with Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogan. I had previously done the Preacher series with them, and that was also a Garth Ennis comic that had been adapted. It was phenomenal. I loved working with Eric Kripke — he’s just a genius on so many levels and really got the tone of the comic books and the grounding of the show and not making it seem like this crazy comic book thing. It felt like superheroes do exist and it’s more of a matter-of-fact type of thing. So getting to work with him was really such a fun experience. But I’d say working with Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg … they’re just two of the best and smartest guys in the business.
