Star Trek: Picard Finale Cut Out A Ton Of Stars Because Of Money
Star Trek: Picard showrunner Terry Matalas admits that there were more cameos and guests planned for the show and the finale, but there wasn't enough money for them all.
Did you think the Star Trek: Picard finale would have more cameos? Turns out showrunner Terry Matalas’ original plan was to have more surprise appearances — including from Star Trek: Voyager‘s Kate Mulgrew and Garrett Wang — as well as the return of one actor who did show up in the final season. ScreenRant reports Matalas said the problem was that there wasn’t enough money in the budget.
At a roundtable discussion about the Star Trek: Picard finale, Matalas discussed who he’d wanted and why their appearances weren’t possible:
In the original finale script, it was a giant movie that we were building on a television time schedule… But there was a scene with Soji and Data that we could not afford to do and bring back another actor. There is a scene in which they found Ro Laren in the dungeons of the Intrepid with Tuvok and that she had survived we weren’t able to pull off. Harry Kim had appeared at one point. We wanted Kate Mulgrew to be part of Seven of Nine’s promotion.”
-Terry Matalas, Star Trek: Picard showrunner
The mention of a Star Trek: Picard finale cameo from Soji is an interesting one, because it would mean the return of Isa Briones, one of the Season 1 and 2 cast members who were written off the show to make way for the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast. Briones plays a number of characters, mostly the synthetic daughters of Data (Brent Spiner). While she plays Soji briefly in Picard‘s second season, for most of it she instead plays Kore Soong, a clone created by Dr. Adam Soong (Spiner), the 21st century ancestor of Data’s creator.
Considering in Star Trek: Picard we learn that Soji, and the late Dahj, are Data’s daughters, such a cameo would have been fitting. Alison Pill arguably would’ve also made a fitting appearance somewhere in the final season considering at the end of the previous one she becomes a new Borg Queen of a somehow more benevolent collective.
It’s not surprising that Terry Matalas was hoping that the Star Trek: Picard finale would include a Kate Mulgrew cameo for the scene in which Tuvok (Tim Russ) promotes Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) to Captain. Janeway is mentioned a number of times in the final season, including as someone the heroes are hoping to contact for help.
I have to admit to a bit of theorizing with Matalas’ mention of Star Trek: Picard “at one point” featuring a Garret Wang cameo as Harry Kim. Before the penultimate episode revealed Admiral Shelby (Elizabeth Dennehy) to be the Enterprise-F’s commanding officer, I predicted four possible choices with Kim being my top prediction and Shelby the number two. With Matalas revealing that he actually did want an appearance from Kim, I can’t help but wonder if Enterprise captain’s chair is where he wanted to put him.
