Sounds Like Jonathan Frakes is Ready to Engage for ‘Star Trek: Picard’!!

While we can’t be sure if Jonathan Frakes‘ recent Twitter post means he’ll be reprising his role of Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s first officer Commander William Riker as well as slipping into the director’s chair for 2 episodes of CBS All Access series Star Trek: Picard, we’re pretty excited by the possibilities.

Frakes has his fair share of Trek episodes (8 of TNG, 3 Deep Space Nine, 3 Voyager, 2 of The Orville, and 4 of Discovery) under his belt, as well as films (Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection), so his engaging the hot seat for Picard makes perfect sense.

Back on the floor w this guy ⁦@SirPatStew⁩ ⁦@startrekcbs⁩ pic.twitter.com/zPvHltPUts

— Jonathan Frakes (@jonathansfrakes) May 21, 2019

According to Frakes’ IMDB listing under his directorial credits (eek, we know, never the most reliable source of information), he’ll be helming two episodes of the upcoming Star Trek: Picard series, which will see the return of Sir Patrick Stewart as the former Enterprise captain Jean-Luc Picard.

Last we heard, Alison Pill (The Newsroom), Harry Treadaway (Penny Dreadful) and Isa Briones are the newest faces to join the show.

Hanelle Culpepper will be directing the first two episodes in a historic move for the Roddenberry franchise, as she will be the first woman to launch a Trek series, as well as showrunning.

We already knew that Santiago Cabrera (Heroes, Che) and Michelle Hurd (Marvel’s Daredevil, Blindspot) were on board for the series. There are of course, no details yet about who Cabrera and Hurd will be playing.

Star Trek: Discovery showrunner Alex Kurtzman, who will be serving as an executive producer on Picard, had this to say about the show; comparing it to DISCO, and how it’ll be totally different:

“It’s an extremely different rhythm than Discovery. Discovery is a bullet. ‘Picard’ is a very contemplative show. It will find a balance between the speed of Discovery and the nature of what Next Gen was, but I believe it will have its own rhythm.

Without revealing too much about it, people have so many questions about Picard and what happened to him, and the idea we get to take time to answer those questions in the wake of the many, many things he’s had to deal with in Next Gen is really exciting. ‘More grounded’ is not the right way to put it, because season 2 of Discovery is also grounded. It will feel more… real-world? If that’s the right way to put it.”

We will of course let you know what else we hear about the series.