Star Trek: Picard brings back a character from Star Trek IV

Warning: This post contains spoilers from Star Trek: Picard episode “Watcher.” 

Very few Trekkies didn’t love Star Trek: IV: The Voyage Home. The humor in it rivals any of the other movies even to this day. One of the best scenes in the movie is when Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) and Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) are riding the city bus and are sitting across from a punk rocker who has a rather large boom box and is playing an obnoxiously loud heavy metal song called “I Hate You”. When asked to lower the music, the punk only increases the volume and adds a rude gesture, leading Mr. Spock to take matters into his own hands or hand, rather, and deliver a Vulcan nerve pinch that renders the punk unconscious and silences the music.

That punk was played by Kirk Thatcher who returned to the role in the latest episode of Star Trek: Picard.  The recreated scene took place with Seven of Nine and Raffi aboard a city bus and Thatcher’s punk once again playing music at a deafening level. This time, though, when asked by Seven to turn down the music, the punk immediately does so and apologizes at once, something which, according to an interview with TrekMovie, made showrunner Terry Matalas chuckle.

"“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.”"

https://twitter.com/KirkThatcher/status/1507015630666403841

Kirk Thatcher was happy to return to the role on Star Trek: Picard.

When Matalas reached out to Thatcher to ask him to recreate the role, Thatcher was happy to oblige, telling TrekMovie that it’s the role he’s most known for. And not only did he bring the spiky hair and loud music back to the role, he even wrote the sequel to the original song he wrote for Star Trek IV. Instead of “I Hate You,” it was “I Still Hate You.”

"“It was funny, the original version I wrote really quickly. This time I kind of had a model to base it on… So the lyrics are essentially the same kind of rhythm song and music. And the lyrics are: “35 years later and nothing much has changed. Those in charge of living large, the rest are all deranged. I still hate you. Can’t wait to eviscerate you”… And so on, and so forth. And I don’t think you hear it, but it does end with the opposite of “Peace, live long, and prosper.” It’s “Make war, die young, and fail.” So again, very nihilistic.”"

And the Star Trek universe might not be done with the punk on the bus as Matalas said he’d love to see him again. Maybe in another ten years.