Posted in: Paramount+, Preview, streaming, TV | Tagged: Colm Meaney, Deep Space Nine, Miles O'Brien, paramount, Picard, star trek, The Next Generation

Star Trek: Picard Showrunner on Miles O'Brien: "We Have An Idea"

Star Trek: Picard Showrunner Terry Matalas dropped a ten-ton tease regarding what's happening with Miles O'Brien during a recent Reddit AMA.

Published Sun, 23 Apr 2023 09:29:11 -0500

by Ray Flook

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Now that anyone & everyone is openly discussing the series finale of Paramount+'s Sir Patrick Stewart-starring Star Trek: Picard, we've reached that stage when fans start looking to the still-hypothetical "Star Trek: Legacy" as a chance for "Picard" showrunner & EP Terry Matalas & his creative team to continue to weave various franchise "generations" together in meaningful ways. During a Reddit AMA this past week, Matalas was asked what's up with one of those beloved characters – Miles O'Brien (Colm Meaney), the oft-suffering transporter chief of the USS Enterprise-D ("The Next Generation") and chief of operations on "Deep Space Nine." By the time the final credits rolled on "Deep Space Nine," we learned that O'Brien and his family were heading back to Earth and that he was going to be an engineering professor at Starfleet Academy. Asked about what happened to the "most important person in Starfleet history" (a title O'Brien was given during a look to the future in "Lower Decks"), Matalas dropped a brief but ten-ton tease that makes turning "Star Trek: Legacy" into reality just that much more of a priority: "A great question. I hope one day to find out! We have an idea!"

Star Trek: Picard Showrunner on Original Series Finale Plans

So just how much of what Matalas wanted in the script ended up making it onto the screen for the series wrap-up? "These are all things that are all in the first script, and then your line producer says, 'Are you out of your f***ing mind? You can't afford these things. You are not 'Avengers: Endgame." So they gotta go away,' Matalas shared during a roundtable interview. "And so, those are regrets, but I'm very happy with what we are we were able to pull off." But if it wasn't for the bottom line, who else could we have seen before the final credits rolled?

"There were characters I really wanted to see again. In the original finale script, it was a giant movie that we were building on a television time schedule," Matalas shared. And who were some of the characters and scenes that unfortunately didn't make the cut? "There was a scene with Soji [Isa Briones] and Data [Brent Spiner] that we could not afford to do and bring back another actor. There is a scene in which they found Ro Laren [Michelle Forbes] in the dungeons of the Intrepid with Tuvok [Tim Russ], and that she had survived, [but] we weren't able to pull off. Harry Kim [Garrett Wang] had appeared at one point. We wanted Kate Mulgrew to be part of [SPOILER] promotion." We would be lying if we said that Janeway attending the even for [SPOILER] would've definitely been a highlight for a whole bunch of viewers.

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