Chakotay Could Have Appeared on Star Trek: Picard
Robert Beltran as Chakotay.
MARCH 13, 2023 - As fans of the legacy series, we look forward to actors reprising their roles in Star Trek: Picard. Of course we have Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine as a regular, but we’ve also seen other characters reprise their roles in smaller degrees. Casey King as Icheb, Jonathan Del Arco as former Borg drone Hugh, Brent Spiner as a digitized Data, Wil Wheaton as the Traveler formerly known as Wesley Crusher, Marina Sirtis as Deana Troi, and Jonathan Frakes as Will Riker. (You’d forgotten just how many there’d been!)
There was an extension to one more legacy character, but the actor gave it a hard pass. Robert Beltran said no to Picard. The actor revealed on Twitter that he’d had an offer, but turned it down:
I was offered an episode (first 2 then 1) in Picard but I simply did not like what they had written for Chakotay so I turned them down. I won’t go into detail but I have no animosity toward the Picard producers at all. ST Prodigy offers a Chakotay that I AM enthusiastic about.
He was referring, of course to the animated series Star Trek: Prodigy and is expected to return in the second season, where the disappearance of Captain Chakotay is on the top of the to-do list for Admiral Janeway and the Prodigy kids.
Our friends at TrekMovie did a little digging and found this jewel: No Fascist Chakotay
TrekMovie turned to Picard season 3 showrunner Terry Matalas to see if there are any details behind the story that could be revealed. The executive producer confirmed that a part was offered to Beltran; however, it was not for season 3. The role the team had in mind for him was in the second episode of season 2 titled “Penance,” co-written by Matalas. In that episode, Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of La Sirena found themselves in an alternate universe where the pluralistic Federation was swapped out for the fascist Confederation of Earth. Each Picard character found themselves taking over their alt-universe counterparts, which included Seven finding herself as the President of the Confederation. The first draft of the script had Chakotay as the Confederation’s “First Magistrate” and husband to President Hansen.
So, we could have gotten the romantic payoff that had begun in the concluding episodes of Voyager’s final season, in a not-quite-but-really-sort-of-is mirror universe way. To read the full story from the group themselves, warp over to TrekMovie.com for extended coverage of the story.
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