WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Picard Season 2, Episode 4, “Watcher,” streaming now on Paramount+.
As Star Trek: Picard Season 2 continues its time travel odyssey into the past, it brings back plenty of familiar faces from across Star Trek history as Jean-Luc Picard and his friends set out to undo alterations caused by the omnipotent Q. As the characters scramble around 2024 Los Angeles to find the source of the timeline divergence, Raffi Musiker and Seven of Nine encounter a punk that memorably crossed paths with Spock in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. And while the nod to the classic Star Trek movie is a nice wink to the franchise’s time-bending past, it also is a reminder to the Star Trek Universe’s strange connection to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Associate producer Kirk Thatcher had a small cameo role in Star Trek IV as James T. Kirk and his crew traveled back to 1986 San Francisco to recover a pair of humpback whales and use them to save the 23rd century Earth from an unstoppable alien probe demanding their presence. Thatcher’s character was a punk noisily blasting a song on a mass transit bus who gets Vulcan nerve-pinched by Spock when he rudely refused a request from Kirk to turn his music down. And though Thatcher’s appearance was a throwaway gag at the time, he has resurfaced as a punk character both in the MCU and Star Trek Universe.
Over 30 years later, Thatcher briefly portrayed a similar character for an even briefer role in 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming. In a direct nod to Thatcher’s punker in The Voyage Home, his MCU character is seen carrying an identical boombox, successfully asking Spider-Man to perform a flip for him as he patrols the New York City borough. In contrast to his Star Trek role, Thatcher’s MCU role has a big, bushy beard, long hair and wears slightly distressed street clothes rather than the colored hair and leather attire.
Thatcher’s appearance in Picard Season 2 is much more explicitly connected to his past Star Trek character, boasting a similar hairstyle and clothing as his role in The Voyage Home, complete with spiked choker. However, when asked to turn his music down by Raffi and Seven, the punk sheepishly complies, suggesting that he does indeed recall being rendered unconscious when faced with a similar request nearly 40 years prior. Picard Season 2 has humanity falling into increased divisiveness in 2024, in contrast to the utopian ideals of the Federation but even the punk is capable of learning from his mistakes.
There is nothing in Homecoming that suggests Thatcher is playing the same character as he portrayed in the Star Trek Universe. For his part, Thatcher subsequently mentioned online that he saw his MCU role as spiritually linked to his fan-favorite character. The MCU has always worn its outside pop culture influences on its sleeve and Thatcher’s cameo role in Homecoming is a prime example of this.
With Picard Season 2 only getting started with its time travel narrative, even more obscure characters from the franchise’s past are poised to make an appearance. In bringing back its bus-riding punk rocker, Picard not only honors its past but unearths the franchise’s surprising link to the MCU through Thatcher’s boombox character. Picard has provided its own twist on many classic Star Trek elements, putting them in a self-aware light as the series embraces the franchise’s extensive history.
Created by Akiva Goldsman, Michael Chabon, Kirsten Beyer and Alex Kurtzman, Star Trek: Picard releases new episodes Thursdays on Paramount+.
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