Thomas Dekker’s return to Star Trek was not intended as a cameo

Star Trek: Picard had an unintended cameo with Thomas Dekker’s return to the franchise.

When most sci-fi fans hear the name “Thomas Dekker” they will instantly go right to Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which featured Lena Headey as the titular main character, and Dekker as her son, John Connor. The would-be hero of the evil robot uprising. Many, may not remember his time in Star Trek.

So when he popped up in Star Trek: Picard’s third episode as Titus Rikka, you’d be forgiven for not remembering his first stint with the franchise. It was a very minor role in Star Trek Generations when Dekker was just seven years old. He played one of the could-be/would-be children of Jean-Luc Picard, Thomas Picard, who existed only within the Nexus.

It would be nearly 30 years before he’d return to the franchise, this time in the aptly named Picard series. However, his return was not part of some grand scheme. In fact, it sounds like Terry Matalas didn’t know Dekker’s history with the franchise until it was already late in the filming process, telling Digital Spy;

"It didn’t actually dawn on us until we were shooting that that was the case, that [Dekker] had been […] part of it before."

Star Trek: Picard missed a real opportunity to bring back Thomas Dekker as Thomas Picard

Half-cooked and still too burnt to eat, that’s the basic generalization you could use to talk about Picard as a franchise. With decades of unsolved, and dangling storylines out there to explore, Picard showrunner Terry Matalas opted to tell a story involving Changelings and not something like The Nexus returning. Could you imagine Jean-Luc meeting his own, alienated son, only for his “perfect” son to pop up and cause havoc?

It’s really not that hard to come up with some deep and unique ideas, and that would’ve been one hell of a reason to gather the old cast back up; the Nexus is back and it wants Jean-Luc Picard. Nope. Nothing that cool.