Star Trek: Picardâs third and final season had a lot going onâand thatâs even before you throw in half the regular cast of The Next Generation, and then some, showing up as the weeks went on. But it turns out, there were almost even more returning facesâand not necessarily just from TNG.
Speaking to Master Replicas Collectors Club members in a Zoom Q&A recently (via TrekMovie), Picard showrunner and perpetual hoper-for-a-spinoff Terry Matalas revealed that Picard almost brought back several figures from across TNGâs sister series, Voyager and Deep Space Nine, at various points across the third season.
One prominent addition wouldâve been the return of Scarlett Pomersâ Naomi Wildmanâthe Human/Ktarian child who became the first baby to be born aboard Voyager during its time in the Delta Quadrant, growing into a young acting ensign, regular confidant of Seven of Nine, and Captain Janewayâs assistant. According to Matalas, Naomiâs return wouldâve been an important character beat for Seven, but the seasonâs 10-episode runtime necessitated the episodeâs removal.
âThere was an episode once the Titan was on the run and it needed to hide. And so we had this idea of Seven bringing them to sort of like space Tortuga, like spacedock for pirates where the Fenris Rangers were. And she gets help from an older Naomi Wildman who had also followed in her footsteps as a Fenris Ranger and was a badass. But Seven realizes she sort of created a monster because Naomi had become harder than she was,â Matalas explained. âAnd so it was it was a Seven/Naomi story. We broke the story and we had reached out to the actress who played Naomi. But it just didnât feelâif you had 13 episodes, you were doing this for sure. But if you had 10, youâre like, âI need to get to LeVar [Burton].â Itâs time to get there.â
Further cut cameos wouldâve come in the climax of the season, when the Federationâgathering Starfleetâs finest to celebrate Frontier Dayâfound itself under attack and taken over by a rogue Borg infection targeting the younger generations of Starfleet officers. But as they were mostly related to Star Trek: Voyager, the concurrently airing Star Trek: Prodigyâs narrative dealing with those legacy characters presented a potential conflict.
âHarry Kim appeared as the captain of the Voyager-B in the first draft of Frontier Day. But Prodigy was telling a lot of Voyager stories and we didnât know if Harry was going to appear and we didnât want to step on their toes,â Matalas continued. âBut yeah, for me, I would have had as many as we could get. I would have made that Star Trek Avengers: Endgame. I would have made Frontier Day with many ships⊠I would have Kira [Nerys, Nana Visitorâs character from Deep Space Nine] there, even if all you get is a bridge shot. But all of that is very expensive. We were already way too ambitious.â
This also included Kate Mulgrewâs Kathryn Janeway, who also appears on Prodigyâin both a hologram of her captaincy days and in physical form as a current Starfleet Admiralâand almost appeared to set the stage promoting Seven to the new captain of the Titan, rechristened into the Enterprise-G. âIt would have felt like if we had put Janeway in the in the finale, specifically in the last scene where [Seven of Nine] is promoted… it might have overwhelmed the scene and made it more about Janeway and less about Seven of Nine,â Matalas concluded.
It makes sense to remove a lot of theseâespecially given how much Picard was already doing weaving in the Next Generation cast at large already. Plus, as nice and nostalgic as it wouldâve been, it wouldâve detracted that this is at least a very specific goodbye to Picard and that very specific set of TNG characters. Well, that is until that movie Patrick Stewart keeps talking about comes out, I guess. Maybe we can get some cameos then.
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