Star Trek: Picard was going to give another Voyager alum a chance to shine.
Star Trek: Picard was always kind of a mixed bag when it started. It still featured Jean-Luc Picard obsessing over all things cybernetic but the entirety of the main cast for season one had nothing to do with Star Trek aside from Picard’s actor, Patrick Stewart. That was until it was revealed Voyager’s Jeri Ryan would return to the franchise as Seven of Nine.
Granted, many thought Picard did Seven of Nine, her character arc, and her Voyager-made family a disservice, and they’re right, but still, they brought a Voyager crew member on board. How cool is that? (Sarcasm).
Ryan’s turn on the series was met with general disappointment, and fans weren’t too happy with a complete re-writing of the character to fit a different set of writers’ standards. It didn’t come off too well at all, so thank god Picard head honcho Terry Matalas decided against damaging any other Voyager cast member.
Speaking to TrekMovie.com’s All Access Star Trek (transcript from Cinemablend), Matalas went on to explain that the young Naomi Wildman herself was almost brought in to Picard;
"This is not a spoiler because it doesn’t happen–but Naomi Wildman. 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. 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."
Wildman of course was the first and only member of a Federation species to be born in the Delta Quadrant, and her relationship with her godfather Neelix over the last portion of the series was some of the better character work on the show.
Thank Googily Moogily that Terry Matalas didn’t ruin yet another Voyager character
I’m not going to pretend Picard is a well-made show. I can’t, I won’t. If you like it, more power to you, I think it’s a steaming pile of dog trash. What they did to Seven of Nine, undoing four years of work all to make her more “edgy” was pathetic. For such a progressive show, it felt like it was made by a bunch of edgelords.
Picard’s an android! The Romulans are pretty decent! The Borg are good guys! Smoking is cool!
Ugh, this show can’t die fast enough.
Then the biggest coup de grace of suck belongs to how they did Icheb. They first replaced the original actor Manu Intiraymi, then killed off his character, and did so in such a violent way that fans were taken aback and mortified that this is what Star Trek had become.
Thank god Wildman doesn’t have to suffer the same fate of being disrespected as a character by Matalas and Picard.