Marina Sirtis Is In Star Trek: Picard But Fans Aren’t Happy With What They’ve Done To Her
According to fans on social media, Marina Sirtis hasn't appeared enough in Star Trek: Picard.
Marina Sirtis, the actress who played the half-Betazoid empath Deanna Troi in Star Trek: The Next Generation and its related films, has returned to her role in the final season of the nostalgia-laden series Star Trek: Picard. Fans are upset that the much-beloved counselor — who was reintroduced as a hostage to the series’ changeling antagonist Captain Vadic in Season 3 Episode 6 — was not seen for the entirety of episode 7. Writer Terry Matalas is fed up with the fans’ nagging.
Matalas, who has also worked on the TV series based on the film 12 Monkeys, expressed his frustration that fans would base their opinion on how he’d use Marina Sirtis in Star Trek: Picard based on her absence from a single episode. He reportedly has big plans for Deanna Troi as the season goes on, yet fans are willing to immediately voice anger before they see how it plays out.
According to Matalas, getting Marina Sirtis involved in Star Trek: Picard was no easy feat. The series is filmed in California, and Sitris lives in London, England. It turns out that the schedules of people who live more than 5,000 miles apart is fairly difficult, which led to Marina Sirtis’ absence from episode 7 of Star Trek: Picard’s final season.
Interestingly, you can gain some insight into the mindset of these fans by looking into the replies to the original tweet. The Twitter user claimed that her overtly negative tweet was intended as a “compliment” toward the quality of the season’s writing — despite the fact that she made no such indication in the tweet itself. The fan must have believed Matalas had the same empathic powers as Marina Sirtis’ character and could intuit their real feelings about Star Trek: Picard.
Marina Sirtis is far from the only much-beloved Star Trek character to appear in the last season of Picard. Michael Dorn revived his role as Worf in what might be one of the series’ most effective (and hilarious) character introductions yet. Jonathan Frakes also returned to his role as William Riker, LeVar Burton returned as Geordi La Forge, Gates McFadden returned as Doctor Beverly Crusher, and Daniel Davis even reprised his single-episode role as a holographic version of Sherlock Holmes antagonist Professor James Moriarty.
Of course, the third season is hardly the only time loved performers from the past, such as Marina Sirtis, showed up in Star Trek: Picard. Jeri Ryan has appeared for the entire series as Seven of Nine, the former borg drone whose humanity was returned in Star Trek: Voyager. On top of that, John de Lancie played the omnipotent Q in Season 2, the same season that had Whoopi Goldberg appear as Guinan, Brent Spinner return as Data, and Wil Wheaton appeared as Wesley Crusher.
With as many returning fan favorites as the series has, it’s clear that writers care what fans think about the series. But with reactions like the ones fans had towards Marina Sirtis’ single-episode absence in the latest episode of Star Trek: Picard, it’s clear that fans can be difficult to please.
