Star Trek Cut A Fan-Favorite Voyager Character From Picard
The fans will miss her.
With Star Trek: Picard‘s third and final season on the way, there are a lot of fans hoping for their favorite characters to show up. We already know almost the entire lead cast of The Next Generation will star in the series, but as soon as Picard‘s final season was announced fans started lobbying for the return of TNG recurring characters as well as fan-favorites from the two series set in the same era: Deep Space Nine and Voyager. While we can’t say yet who will or won’t show up from those two spinoffs (besides Michael Dorn’s Worf, obviously, who was a DS9 regular for its last four seasons), we can tell you someone who was going to show up on Star Trek: Picard from Voyager, but who sadly got cut. In a recent interview, showrunner Terry Matalas said he fought hard to include the first child born aboard Voyager–Naomi Wildman–but they just couldn’t make it work.
For their All Access Star Trek podcast, TrekMovie recently interviewed Picard showrunner Terry Matalas, who explained how Voyager‘s Naomi Wildman came up in discussions of the final season and why she was cut. “There was a moment where there’s a specific thing that’s happening, what if they had to turn to a grown-up Naomi Wildman and it was a very, very intense three weeks in the room because it was a great story,” Matalas explained. “And had you had 13 episodes, you were going to do this one, and it was going to be great if you could produce it because it was rather expensive. And so that’s hard.”
If you’re unfamiliar; Naomi Wildman of Star Trek: Voyager has an interesting origin. Naomi is a half-human, half-Ktarian child conceived just before the titular ship is lost in the Delta Quadrant. Her birth is an event of great importance on the ship. With a trip back to Earth they expect may take over 70 years, the crew sees Naomi as likely the first of many children to be born on Voyager. She develops an endearing relationship with Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), and in alternate timelines, adult versions of Naomi (played by Vanessa Branch) become Starfleet officers.
It’s too bad the Star Trek writers couldn’t fit this nod to Voyager into the final season of Picard, but perhaps they’ll get another chance. There have been rumors of Kate Mulgrew and her Voyager cast mates getting their own revival series, so who knows? Assuming it happens, Matalas’s Wildman story might be an even better fit there. They might even be able to get Pomers back to play the role. In 2019, she told StarTrek.com she had more or less left acting behind, but we suspect she might be willing for at least one more go.
Of course that leaves us wondering what other Star Trek characters might make their way into Picard from Voyager, TNG, or any other series. What about the holodeck-obsessed Reginald Barclay (Dwight Schultz)? What new addictions have the 25th century introduced him to? How about the rebellious Ro Laren (Michelle Forbes) or Will Riker’s duplicate Thomas (Jonathan Frakes)? Did either of them survive the Dominion War? How about Wil Wheaton’s Wesley Crusher? Denise Crosby’s Tasha Yar has been dead for decades, but what about her villainous half-Romulan daughter Sela? Did she survive the Romulan supernova? The questions are all but impossible to answer now, but that doesn’t mean we’ll stop asking.
