Star Trek Fans Never Got To See One Of The Most Impressive Parts Of Picard's Set
One of the central locations of the 2017 TV series "Star Trek: Picard" was the winery of the title character. The retired Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), after a long career in Starfleet and a bitter extraction from the organization, moved into his ancestral family home and turned to wine-making as a hobby. In a fun marketing tie-in, Trekkies can buy bottles of Chateau Picard for themselves. Picard's home is, as fans of the character may have intuited, a low-tech locale, replete with old-fashioned paper books, wooden beams, breakfast nooks, and a lot of natural light. Picard, after all, was frequently seen thumbing through paper tomes, listening to centuries-old music, and drinking Earl Grey tea, a drink not invented until the 1830s. Throughout "Star Trek," Picard mentioned his ancestors, noting that Picards fought at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The man, however much he may dislike the fact, has a legacy. He did, however, seem to enjoy living in the ancient past.
According to David Blass, the production designer for "Picard," the low-fi construction of Chateau Picard used to contain scenes set in a large, broad room that, alas, wasn't included in the final cut of the series. Blass, it should be noted, was the one largely responsible for accurately recreating the set of the U.S.S. Enterprise-D's bridge for the series' final two episodes. Whether or not you were a Trekkie who loved the reappearance of the Enterprise-D or a Trekkie who hated it, one cannot deny that Blass got every tiny detail 100% correct.
In a recent interview with TrekMovie, Blass revealed that the third season of "Picard" began with a scene in a lovely, large, two-story in-home library that he and his team actually constructed. Sadly, the library never saw the light of day.
Picard's library
David Blass noted that he designed the sets with the edge of the production's capabilities in mind, wanting to push right up against the boundaries and take advantage of every opportunity. When asked if there was anything he was proud of that got cut from "Picard," however, he responded with an air of weary acceptance, acknowledging that "it happens," and went on to share one of his set regrets:
"One of the things that made me pull my hair out was in Picard's library, it was a two-story set with a whole walkway up above with all this detail and bookshelves and history knickknacks, and you never saw it. Initially, Picard was looking for a book in the first scene, and my idea is we see him up top and he's walking around trying to find the book and then he comes down the spiral staircase and we reveal the whole room."
Personally, this author is a fan of large libraries in general. There might even be many readers who share this author's frustrations when a film or TV scene passes through a library without pausing for an extended period to look at all the books. A brief library scene in "Picard" would not only add a lot of intellectual and rustic charm to the series, but it would have reestablished Jean-Luc as a wise collector of knowledge.
Sadly, it was nixed. Blass said:
"[I]t was like, 'too much shoe leather.' It takes too much time out of the episode to shoot all that so he's just on the ground floor and does the thing. And so in the end, I think there was just one shot where you could kind of see there was a second floor."
Blass noted this happens on every show he works on, sadly. R.I.P. library scene. C'est la vie.