The executive producer offered some details on how the second season had to be rewritten based on feedback from Paramount+:

“We wrote nine episodes at one point and the network was like, ‘No, we don’t really understand this, it’s a bit too sci-fi, it’s a bit too in-Star Trek.’”

Matalas shared some details about that first version of the season and described why Paramount+ asked for a change:

“There were Romulans—there was a whole thing. The idea was that Guinan’s bar was presented as a normal bar in Los Angeles, but if you knew the right thing to do, you could go into the back through the telephone phone booth and that was Rick’s Café and it was a stopping point for all these different species that were actually there on Earth with a ‘Do not interfere’ thing happening. So you had a lot more Star Trek happening in the backdrop of it. Ultimately, the powers that be at that time were like, ‘This is too much.’ But there were some really good ideas there that were pretty cool.”

While this sort of Men in Black idea of undercover aliens in contemporary Los Angeles would have upended some of the lore of Star Trek when it comes to first contact, it does sound like an intriguing idea that might have been more successful with fans than the final version of season 2. Of course, season 3 of Picard was full of connections to Trek lore, and it survived studio scrutiny. It’s likely the nostalgia factor and buzz expected with the return of the TNG cast mitigated any concerns.