Star Trek: Picard's season 2 time travel sends Jean-Luc's crew to 2024 Los Angeles. Meanwhile, DS9's' Sisko is in San Francisco during the Bell Riots.

Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Picard Season 2, Episode 3 - "Assimilation"

Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) time-traveling to 2024 in Star Trek: Picard season 2 ties into the infamous Bell Riots on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, although Picard won't encounter Commander Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks). Thanks to Q (John de Lancie) causing a divergence in the timeline, Star Trek history has been rewritten and the authoritarian and xenophobic Confederation of Earth rose instead of the United Federation of Planets. Picard and his motley crew have to travel back to 2024 to set the timeline right, which curiously brushes up against a well-known time travel story from DS9.

The Bell Riots were seen in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 3. In the two-part episode, "Past Tense," Sisko, Dr. Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig), and Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) were sent to 2024 as a result of a transporter accident. They landed in San Francisco, where Sisko and Bashir, who had no identification in the 21st century, were sent to Sanctuary District A, a walled-off area where thousands of the city's homeless and unemployed were banished. After a violent altercation, a man named Gabriel Bell (John Lendale Bennett) was killed. Bell is pivotal to Star Trek history for leading a protest against the Sanctuary Districts during one of the most violent civil disturbances in American history. Sisko had no choice but to impersonate Bell and perform his role to ensure the timeline wouldn't be violated. Even after Sisko, Bashir, and Dax returned to the 24th century, it's Benjamin's image that history records as "Gabriel Bell" during the Bell Riots of September 2024, which finally prompted the United States to deal with his homelessness problem.

Picard and his motley crew also travel to 2024 in Star Trek: Picard season 2, which was the year identified by the Borg Queen (Annie Wersching) as the divergence point caused by Q. The Borg Queen also charged Picard with finding someone called "the Watcher" who can help him. Fittingly, when Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), Raffi Musiker (Michelle Hurd), and Cristobal Rios (Santiago Cabrera) beamed into Los Angeles, they encountered the city's homeless, which ties into the national issue that caused the Bell Riots on DS9. A homeless man even unsuccessfully attempted to mug Raffi, just as Sisko and Bashir were accosted in Sanctuary District A. It's not clear when in 2024 Picard's crew arrived in Los Angeles but even if Star Trek: Picard season 2's events take place in early September, the Bell Riots happen in San Francisco, not Los Angeles.

Unfortunately, Picard won't meet Sisko in 2024. Jean-Luc is physically in La Barre, France, where he crashed La Sirena after their successful time travel to 2024. Picard stayed behind with Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill), who allowed herself to be assimilated by the Borg Queen to steal the Watcher's coordinates. So even if Picard and Sisko are somehow in 2024 at the exact same date, they're thousands of miles apart on different continents, and it's highly unlikely Jean-Luc will beam into San Francisco in Star Trek: Picard season 2. Captain Picard and Commander Sisko only canonically met once in the premiere episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek history is likely to remain that way.

Even without a crossover with DS9's Bell Riots, Star Trek: Picard setting its time travel adventure in 2024 is novel because it's a rare chance to see Star Trek history in the early 21st century. Although Picard's depiction of 2024 Los Angeles looks just like our real-life present day, in the Star Trek version of history, this was the period after the Eugenics Wars and immediately before the advent of World War III, which began in 2026 and lasted until 2053. Following that devastating global conflict, the human race would be in tatters for 10 years until April 5, 2063, when Zephram Cochrane (James Cromwell) achieves humanity's first warp flight and makes First Contact with the Vulcans, with a lot of help from Captain Picard and the USS Enterprise-E's crew in Star Trek: First Contact. Still, it's worth keeping an eye out to see if Benjamin Sisko as Gabriel Bell is sighted in Star Trek: Picard season 2 while the motley crew is in 2024 Los Angeles.

Next: Picard Reveals Star Trek: DS9's Darker Timeline

Star Trek: Picard Season 2 is streaming on Paramount+.