Star Trek: Picard season 3’s third episode gifts fans a truly special exchange between Patrick Stewart’s Jean-Luc and Gates McFadden’s Dr Beverly Crusher.

In it, the reunited Picard confronts Crusher over a secret she’s had in her back pocket this whole time, and the raw emotion on display from these actors makes it a standout scene from across the new series.

Exclusively chatting to Digital Spy, the pair took a deep-dive on the filming of it.

McFadden, who first portrayed Crusher over 35 years ago in Star Trek: The Next Generation, went on to share: “Well, first of all, I’m glad it felt special to watch.

“For me, I was thrilled to have a scene that was filled with that kind of conflict because when you’re working with people that you’ve worked with, you love their work and you know it’s going to be fun, and I had a great day and we did it pretty quickly.

“And Jonathan [Frakes, known for playing Commander William T Riker] was directing. So it was really nice.”

Meanwhile, lead actor Stewart, who believes a Picard movie continuation would be “interesting”, chipped in with: “It was, it was nice. And what I particularly enjoy was the unease that lay at the very base of our relationship in that scene, because it hadn’t really been seen before.

“Yes, we had disagreements,” he pointed out, “but there were fundamental changes and I thank, with admiration, our writers and producers who allowed that to penetrate and to percolate everywhere into Picard so that we were not just rewinding Next Generation.”