Brent Spiner To Return As Lore, Daniel Davis As Professor Moriarty, In Star Trek: Picard Season 3

"Star Trek: Picard" appears to be pulling out all the stops for its third and final season. For months now we've been hearing about how the next installment of the Paramount+ series is set to reunite several more members of the crew from "Star Trek: The Next Generation," and today another familiar face has been added to the cast list. 

/Film's Ben Silvero attended a panel on the series at New York Comic Con, where the cast revealed details about their return appearances. Notably, Brent Spiner will apparently be back not as beloved character Data but as Dr. Noonian Soong's android Lore, while another memorably piece of AI, the hologram of Sherlock Holmes character Professor James Moriarty, will also return with original actor Daniel Davis in the role.

Moriarty first appeared as a hologram created by Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) in the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" season 2 episode titled "Elementary, Dear Data." At that point, he was a clever bit of code intended to lead Geordi and Data through a Holmesian game, but eventually he started to yearn for sentience and freedom from the virtual space. The last time viewers saw Moriarty he was living in a holodeck memory cube, where he was under the impression that he had finally escaped his digital realm.

While Spiner's presence in "Star Trek: Picard" season 3 has been reported on for some time, the NYCC panel and accompanying trailer reveal that he will be back as Lore, as opposed to the other three characters he's played. Another unstable piece of tech that ended up out of commission by the time "Star Trek: The Next Generation" drew to a close, Lore was essentially a brother to Data, and an evil one at that. There's not much chance that Lore's return will not be a peaceful one.

Moriarty, meanwhile, makes his appearance at the end of the trailer that debuted today, saying, "Greetings ... old friends" before grabbing an old-fashioned pistol and pointing it off screen. Presumably, this means the Holmes character isn't happy with the crew he might see as his longtime captors.

The third season of "Star Trek: Picard" is set to be a major reunion for the 24th century Enterprise crew. In April, a teaser confirmed that pretty much the entire team will be reuniting, including Spiner, Burton, Gates McFadden, Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, and Michael Dorn. "Star Trek: Picard" season will premiere on Paramount+ on February 16, 2023.