In the season 1 finale of Star Trek: Picard, Brent Spiner played Data — the fav-favorite character he’d debuted on The Next Generation — one last time. After sacrificing his body in Star Trek Nemesis, Data had his brain uploaded into a simulation where he would wait for the day he could help his dear friend Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart). After accomplishing this goal, he asked Picard to unplug the simulation. Picard obliged, allowing Data to finally die.
But just because Data is dead doesn’t mean Brent Spiner is finished with Star Trek. Speaking during a Deadline event, Stewart talked about reuniting with his Next Generation castmates and teased what the future may hold for Spiner in Picard season 2.
“It was a very desirable and a very emotional experience, to be reunited with Jonathan , with Marina Sirtis,” Stewart said. “And with Brent too, although he doesn’t appear that often, he has a very significant role in season one, and maybe he might again in season two. But I can say no more than that. Sorry to be so coy.”
Besides reprising the role of Data on Picad, Spiner also played a completely different character named Doctor Altan Inigo Soong, brother of Noonien, the guy who created Data in his own likeness. Soong — a scientist who lives among the synthetics on their homeworld of Coppelius — played a pivotal part in Jean-Luc’s story, so he’s got to be important going forward, right?
And speaking of The Next Generation characters showing up in new Trek shows, the animated comedy series Lower Decks is set in the same timeframe as TNG, and the show’s writer, Mike McMahan, has hinted that some familiar faces could show up from time to time.
“There are a lot of recognizable characters in the galaxy at that point,” McMahan told Entertainment Weekly. “Next Gen is my favorite era. And as a huge Trek fan, I would definitely want to try to use some of them so that I could not only build out the world, but also work with some of my heroes. But I can’t get more specific than that. You’ll have to wait and see.”
Lower Decks will follow the misadventures of low-ranking crew members on the USS Cerritos. “The big stories are happening in the bridge crew and there’s more kind of social-emotional stories happening to the Lower Deckers,” McMahan said. “So it’s like their job and the world they’re in get affected by these sci-fi stories.”
"But the funny thing too is that whatever menial job you have to do in Star Trek, it might be something that they do every day, but it’s still sort of a fascinating look into stuff that happens onboard that haven’t been highlighted in another series. So instead of being on the turbolift — the elevators in Trek — our guys are repairing the turbolift. We also spend a lot of time in the bar. You’ll also see the Lower Deckers go on away missions doing things that the bridge crew doesn’t have to deal with."
This genuinely sounds like a lot of fun. Star Trek generally has a fairly serious tone. There are strict sets of rules the crew of each ship must follow, but what happens when someone who isn’t part of the deck crew meets a new alien race for the first time? Do they break the Federation First Contact rule, or is that a rule that every Starfleet officer knows and lives by and could never violate?
Pictured: No’l Wells as Ensign Tendi; Eugene Cordero as Ensign Rutherford; Tawny Newsome as Ensign Mariner; Jack Quaid as Ensign Boimler of the CBS All Access series STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS. ©2019 CBS Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out when the show comes to CBS All Access at some point this year.
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h/t TrekMovie