While Star Trek: Picard mostly brought back old Next Generation stars, it also brought on board a fan favorite from Voyager, too, in the form of Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine. With the Ex-Borg sticking around with Jean-Luc’s crew on La Sirena, it feels like we could get more former Voyager actors showing up in future seasons and one who’s kept circling the series is Robert Picardo, who played holographic medical man The Doctor.
In his latest comment on the possibility of it happening, Picardo told TrekMovie.com that he would love to reprise the Doctor on Picard. In particular, he thinks there could be some great stuff to mine between his character encountering Seven again and discovering how much she’s changed in the years since their service on the U.S.S. Voyager.
“Needless to say, it would be great fun to play the character again,” he said. “I’m sure The Doctor would be as shocked and impressed with the now fully human Seven as I was!”
Of course, the issue with bringing The Doctor back would be that, as an A.I, he shouldn’t age. Picardo went on to admit that hitch, but said that it’s possible to get around it as Picard season 1 already managed to get Brent Spiner back – CGI was used to de-age him for his appearances as Data and he was able to look his age when playing secondary role, Alton Soong, the son of the android’s creator.
“Like Data, The Doctor has a ‘creator’, the engineer who designed his program, Louis Zimmerman, who would age in real time. What was perfect about what they did with Brent on Picard is there was a hint of Data to set the story in motion, but then he was primarily playing a different character. That was very smart,” Picardo continued.
It’s getting slightly confusing keeping track of where Picardo stands with Picard. He initially stated he was in talks to appear in season 2, but then more recently said there are no plans for him to turn up. Now, he seems to be teasing the possibility again. Clearly it’s not out of the question that The Doctor could drop by, then, but maybe we shouldn’t get our hopes up too much to see him next year.
In any case, according to Jeri Ryan, Star Trek: Picard season 2 is looking to head into production this fall, so we should learn more soon.
