The Back to the Future connection in Star Trek: Picard transcends just time travel

Star Trek: Picard and Back to The Future go beyond just their time travel connection.

Star Trek has always been way too involved with time travel. It happens every season practically. It’s rather bizarre, as there’s supposedly a Department of Temporal Investigations, as well as Temporal Agents who worked loosely with Starfleet. Basically, they’re two groups who did everything to stop time travel.

They basically had the same efficacy as a movie theater usher trying to stop a popcorn fight.

Time travel was always used in Star Trek, and maybe to an absurd degree at times. Yet, whenever it happens in Trek, I and many others like to remember our favorite time travel movie of all time; Back to the Future.

Back to the Future is a classic, and really brought time travel as a fun idea back into the pop culture zeitgeist in the 80s. Back to the Future made time travel cool and hip, and it’s fair to say that if the trilogy was never around, then maybe a lot of science fiction shows like Star Trek wouldn’t have done so much of it.

After all, nearly every show had multiple episodes where the crew messed with time to some degree.

Even the newest show, Star Trek: Picard, has taken fans on a time travel journey. And wouldn’t you know it, one of the show’s directors happens to know all about time travel.

Star Trek: Picard is going through time with a Back to the Future Legend

Back to the Future featured Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd as Marty McFly and Dr. Emmett Brown. It also featured a few other notable names like Crispin Glover as Marty’s dad Goerge, Thomas F. Wilson as Biff Tanner, Lea Thompson as Marty’s mother Lorraine.

With the size of the impact Back to the Future had on science fiction, it shouldn’t come to anyone’s surprise that Picard has tapped Thompson to help direct the episodes in which Picard and crew travel through time.

Thompson isn’t just a woman who starred in a hugely popular time travel movie series, she’s a hugely accomplished director as well. She’s directed episodes of The Goldbergs, Mom, Young Sheldon, Katy Keene, Stargirl, and Resident Alien.

She’s become very in demand as a television director and that doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon, especially with how successful the shows she’s worked on have been.

She’s in good standing for a reason.

Sure it may not have anything to do with her time-traveling fun during Back of the Future, but the fact they had her, of all directors, direct time travel episodes in Star Trek is just too sweet to not mention.