Showrunner Terry Matalas and actor Kirk Thatcher explain how an iconic character from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home returned for Star Trek: Picard season 2. Picard is the eighth main series in the Star Trek franchise, and a part of executive producer Alex Kurtzman's five-year deal with CBS Television Studios to expand the Star Trek Universe. The series sees Patrick Stewart returning to his role as Jean-Luc Picard and is set twenty years after the events of Star Trek Nemesis. Picard debuted on CBS All Access (now Paramount+) in January 2020, and the streaming site is currently airing Star Trek: Picard season 2.
This season, Picard brought back an iconic Star Trek character who has not been seen for more than thirty-five years. In the opening scene of season 2 episode 4, "Watcher," Seven (Jeri Ryan) and Musiker (Michelle Hurd) encounter an unnamed punk on a bus who first appeared in Voyage Home. In Star Trek IV, Kirk and Spock ask the bus punk to turn down his music, but when he refused, Spock solved the problem with a Vulcan nerve pinch. The punk's encounter with Musiker and Seven recreates his first appearance in the Star Trek franchise, except this time, when Seven asks him to turn down his music, he agrees after touching his neck. Kirk Thatcher reprises his role as the punk on the bus in Picard.
Picard season 2 co-showrunner Terry Matalas and Thatcher sat down with TrekMovie to explain the classic character's reappearance in the franchise. Matalas and Thatcher revealed that they both were excited to include the bus punk in Picard. The hardest part of bringing the character back was making sure Thatcher, who is a working director, was available. Thatcher designed the punk's evolved appearance and also wrote the lyrics to the song he blasts. As for the idea to include the bus punk at all, Matalas shared that it was one of the first things he pitched. Read Matalas's explanation of his original idea below:
"It was one of the first things I had pitched actually. We loved the idea that maybe this guy migrated from San Francisco to Los Angeles at some point. Now technically, Star Trek IV wouldn’t have happened in this alternate timeline, but maybe SOME part of him remembers his encounter with Spock in the Prime Timeline. And it made me chuckle that he’d go up against Seven of Nine. I reached out to Kirk right away, who was absolutely game to return."
The bus punk's return was a fun addition of old Star Trek lore into one of the franchise's newest series, and it is yet another example of the producers' love for the Star Trek franchise. The scene connected Picard to the original series, even if the moment was just a brief echo. Matalas added in his discussion with TrekMovie that he would have included even more callbacks to older Star Trek if he had been allowed.
Unlike Paramount+'s other Star Trek series like Star Trek: Discovery, Picard focuses more on the show's characters' than their space-faring adventures. The series' slower pacing may give it better opportunities to include more small characters than other series in the franchise have. Matalas' words don't offer much hope of seeing other iconic characters return in season 2, but still Star Trek: Picard introduced the punk on the bus to the next generation of fans.
Source: TrekMovie