Star Trek: Picard's Writers Had Another Name In Mind For The Enterprise-G
The bulk of the final season of "Star Trek: Picard" took place on board the U.S.S. Titan-A, a ship commanded by Captain Liam Shaw (Todd Stashwick) and with Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) as its first officer. The Titan-A was called a Neo-Constitution-Class starship, having been reconstructed using a lot of old parts from the original Titan (a ship commanded by Captain Riker). The ship has a blocky, utilitarian look, with a semicircular saucer section. The ship's look fitted the personality of its captain; Shaw was a former engineer and adhered strictly to safety and protocol. He had no patience for "gut instincts" and doing favors for the visiting Admiral Picard (Patrick Stewart).
By the end of the series, Captain Shaw will have died — a grievous tragedy indeed — and the Titan will have survived a great number of near-misses and battle scenarios. After all was said and done, Seven of Nine would be promoted to Captain and would take the Titant out into the cosmos once again to do the usual bout of peaceful Starfleet exploration. Jack Crusher (Ed Speleers), Picard's son, would also be serving on board.
Before heading out, however, Picard finds that the Titan has be rechristened the U.S.S. Enterprise-G in tribute to the ship Picard once commanded. There is some dialogue discussing the importance of names in the "Star Trek" universe.
Showrunner Terry Matalas started the third season of Picard rejecting notions of legacy, but ended the show wholly embracing them. Rather than turning away from the past, "Picard" welcomed it by passing the torch to Picard's son, and renaming his son's ship. But, according to a recent interview with Comicbook.com, the ship wasn't necessarily going to be the Enterprise. The Titan was almost named the U.S.S. Picard.
The U.S.S. Picard
When comparing Captain Kirk's original Enterprise to Captain Picard's Enterprise-D, one sees a lot of differences. The older ship, for one, is much, much smaller. It's also constructed with a lot of sharp angles and jutting pylons. It has a submarine-like quality. The Enterprise-D, meanwhile, is all ovals, sweeps, and smooth curves. It looks comparatively loungey and a lot more comfortable.
Matalas went to great lengths to restore the Enterprise-D for the finale of "Picard." The Enterprise-D was destroyed in the 1994 film "Star Trek: Generations, but the resourceful Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) spent several decades rebuilding it as a hobby. The reveal of the D was a blast of nostalgia for many Trekkies, and the climax of the season. Despite all this, though, Matalas admitted that he preferred Kirk's Enterprise. Matalas assured fans that the Titan name would live on, but that the blocky, sharp angles of the Titan-A were a perfect fit for the Enterprise name. He said:
"I love seeing the origin story of the new Enterprise. At the same time [...] I would be clear to the fans that the Titan name will live on. There will be another ship, the Titan-B, that will go on, and probably be a cool version of a new Luna-class out there. But this ship is definitely a Constitution-class throwback, and we wanted it to feel like a scrappy Enterprise. It wasn't as bulky as the E, and it wasn't a battleship like the E or the F. It was an underdog like Kirk's ship was.
Riker's original Titan looked quite a bit different from the alien-centric-crewed Titan-A, and was a different class of ship altogether.
The aesthetics of the Enterprises
Matalas, however, seemed to like the idea of an Enterprise that was more technical and less aesthetically "easy on the eyes." The Enterprise-D was gentle and round. The Enterprise-E, an ugly, stretched-out pancake of a ship, was armed to the teeth and didn't seem to have any families on board. The briefly-seen Enterprise-F was the largest Enterprise yet, and shared the D's smooth surfaces and elegant, flowing design. For Matalas, the G needed to get back to basics.
He admitted, though, that it wasn't until he saw an SFX test that he considered renaming the Titan. He wanted it to be the U.S.S. Picard. He said:
"[W]e wanted to have that feeling back, and so we didn't know if it was going to work. We always wanted it to be the Enterprise, we did play with a couple of names. At one point, we even discussed, 'Does it become the Picard?,' but when we got to the visual effects and we saw NCC-1701-G on it, and U.S.S. Enterprise, we all gasped. We all got chills because it looked so perfect on that Constitution class saucer, and then we were like, 'Nope, we did the right thing. This is the thing.'"
Matalas admitted that he and the other makers of "Picard" had Enterprise-G models mocked up immediately. The premiere maker of "Star Trek" ship models, Master Replicas, has yet to make an Enterprise-G, although their predecessor, Eaglemoss, had made all the previous Enterprises. It stands to reason we'll see Titan-A's or Enterprise-G's soon enough.
Matalas has been very open about wanting to make a TV series about the Enterprise-G called "Star Trek: Legacy." Whether or not the show gets made remains to be seen.