Warning: SPOILERS Below For Star Trek: Picard Season 3, Episode 2 – “Disengage”Star Trek: Picard season 3 star Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut explains how the pivotal scenes in episode 2 where the crew of the USS Titan-A meets the villainous Captain Vadic (Amanda Plummer) were filmed. Chestnut plays the Titan’s helmsman, Sidney La Forge, who is also the daughter of Star Trek: The Next Generation icon Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton). Sidney is on the Titan’s bridge when Admiral Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) comes face-to-face with Vadic, the mysterious marauder chasing his son, Jack Crusher (Ed Speleers).
In an exclusive interview with Screen Rant, Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut gives some behind-the-scenes info on how Star Trek: Picard season 3, episode 2‘s Vadic scenes were produced. Ashlei clarified whether Amanda Plummer visited the Titan bridge set or if everything was done using green screen. Read her quote below:
Just the lines in the green screen. It’s us acting. (laughs) I didn’t really see… No, I don’t think… Well, that’s not true, I think at one point, Amanda actually did come to set just to say her lines for, like, a viewpoint. But for the most part, it was just the green screen.
Captain Vadic’s Scenes In Picard Call Back To Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan
Star Trek: Picard season 3, episode 2’s tense confrontations with Captain Vadic call back to similar moments in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Ricardo Montalbán famously never physically shared the screen as Khan opposite his nemesis, William Shatner’s Admiral James T. Kirk. All of their scenes were shot separately, with the actors simply “acting,” as Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut puts it, as if the other person was on set. Star Trek: Picard utilizing the same filming technique is one of season 3’s many homages to The Wrath of Khan.
It’s a testament to the talent of Star Trek: Picard‘s cast that the results are seamless, with the USS Titan’s crew reacting with appropriate horror at the scarred visage of Captain Vadic. Chestnut also gets to say one of the best lines of Picard episode 2 when Sidney confirms that Vadic’s starship, the Shrike, “threw a ship” at the Titan in a startling use of a tractor beam. Later in the episode, Sidney La Forge also shares a lesson she learned from her father, Geordi, that there’s “no law of physics that can’t be broken by another law of physics” to explain how Vadic accomplished her tractor beam attack.
It’s unclear thus far whether Captain Vadic will remain on the Shrike for the remainder of Star Trek: Picard season 3, or if Starfleet heroes will confront her in the flesh. Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut did confirm that Amanda Plummer visited the Titan set so that she got to meet her fellow cast members. Meanwhile, Sidney La Forge is definitely one of the new characters in Star Trek: Picard season 3 who is worth watching to see how her character arc progresses.
Star Trek: Picard Season 3 streams Thursdays on Paramount+.