The Star Trek canon got a little more united as season 2 of Star Trek: Picard debuted on Paramount+ with ships featured in Star Trek Online in the show. The franchise has been growing in various directions and exploring new characters and places, and in putting ships that players will recognize into a TV show, it cements the relationship between these two projects.
The four starships that were featured in the show are the guard Gardgarin Miracle Worker Battlecruiser, the Legendary Ross Command Exploration Cruiser, the Sutherland Advanced Research Vessel and the Reliant Advanced Light Cruiser at the end of the episode called "The Star Gazer”.
This was the first time that original content made its way from STO to a live action Star Trek show, which also establishes those four ships as part of the greater canon. Last year, influence from the animated Paramount+ series Star Trek: Lower Decks made it into Star Trek Online, but this is the first time we see ships originating in the game in live-action TV.
In a release discussing their collaboration, Dave Blass, the Production Designer for Star Trek: Picard, talked about working with Cryptic Studios on the collaboration, “They know how to design a Federation starship and it’s so important, both to me and the fans, to work with collaborators who can capture the nuance of these ships, down to the last detail”. In turn, also featured in the episode (a small spoiler here) is a brand new ship called the U.S.S Stargazer, which made its debut during the episode. While this is an original element of Picard, Star Trek Online developers Thomas Marrone and Hector Ortiz collaborated with the show's team on the design of this ship.
For fans, it’s a treat seeing these two properties come together with designers who love the franchise contributing input across the collaboration. Could there be more collaborations with Star Trek Online in the future? We’ll have to keep an eye out.
