Star Trek: Picard keeps serving up Easter eggs for longtime Trek fans, from nods to
Picard and Worf's family histories, to a notable figure from The Original Series.
It also has Brent Spiner playing yet another character in a Star Trek show.
Here's all the references you may have missed.
In the fifth episode of Season 2 we finally learn more about what the crew must do to
get back to 2024, and the reason for the divergence in the timeline.
We learn that the woman reading a Dixon Hill novel in the previous episode wasn't just
a random passerby – she's Renee Picard — an important thread in the tapestry of history,
and a key figure in the family tree of Jean-Luc Picard.
She is the lead astronaut for the upcoming Europa Mission, which we now know is more
than a simple Easter egg referencing the series' fictional history of space flight.
It is also a critical moment in the development of Earth towards their brighter future.
Renee Picard also fits in nicely to what we know of Picard's ancestors.
In the "TNG" episode "Family" we met his brother and nephew, and it was said then that Picard's
exploration of space went against the family's tradition.
We know from the episode "Journey's End" that he was descended from a 17th century Spanish
soldier, Javier Maribona-Picard, while a later Picard fought for the French at the Battle
of Trafalgar.
In the film "Star Trek: Nemesis," Picard looked back at his family history and noted that
there weren't many Picards who were explorers; he was one of the few who was.
"I was the first Picard to leave our Solar System.
It caused quite a stir in the family."
It would seem that Renee Picard — who shares a first name with Jean-Luc's male nephew René
— seems to fit in perfectly on the Picard family tree.
While she is apparently one of the rare explorers that Captain Picard mentioned, it seems her
exploration will be limited to our own solar system.
Since arriving in the 21st century, Picard and the crew of the La Sirena have been seeking
a mysterious being called the Watcher.
After Guinan leads Picard to her doorstep we're finally introduced to a woman who somehow
bears the likeness of Picard's Romulan companion Laris.
But this is not Laris, as the Watcher — who introduces herself as Tallinn — seems as
mystified as we are by the resemblance.
Instead, she describes herself as a "supervisor" of Earthly events.
She has been assigned the task of watching over historical events, and monitoring the
destiny of Renee Picard in particular, who she describes as "a single thread" of the
tapestry of history.
Picard recognizes Tallinn’s self-description right away, recalling a similar human who
was once encountered by Kirk's Enterprise.
"Gary ... Gary Seven.
He too was recruited by superior beings as an agent who would, in your words, protect
the tapestry of history."
This is the season's second reference to Kirk's adventures on the Enterprise, this time a
nod to the episode "Assignment: Earth."
The episode saw Kirk and crew travel back to 1968, where they met a man called Gary
Seven, who also called himself a supervisor — tasked with completing another agent's
mission to ensure that humans did not annihilate each other in nuclear war.
With the revelation of the Watcher as one of Gary Seven's people, we now know that the
Supervisors do more than just help mankind on a broad historical level.
They are also on Earth to watch over and protect important individuals whose lives could impact
the Earth's destiny.
We had heard that actor Brent Spiner would be reappearing in Season 2 even before it
began, but some fans had assumed he would be reprising his role from Season 1 as Altan
Inigo Soong, the son of Data's creator Noonian Soong.
Instead, he plays someone from much earlier: Adam Soong, one of the scientist's ancestors.
We saw a glimpse of him in the dark future, with a holographic monument to a man named
"Adam Soong" who preached that "a safe galaxy is a human galaxy."
Now, we meet Adam Soong in the flesh, who is not a man from the far future, but rather
our present.
In 2024, the ancestor of Noonian Soong is a scientist and geneticist apparently looking
This human daughter suffers from a rare condition that makes sunlight fatal to her.
In this episode, Soong is a leading geneticist, with delusions of curing all of the world's
diseases with his research into eugenics.
This meshes with the universe's fictional history, specifically the aftermath of the
1990s Eugenics Wars.
This also tracks with what we know of the Soongs, and like Renee Picard, Adam Soong
fits perfectly within the Soong family tree.
On "Star Trek: Enterprise," set less than 150 years into Adam Soong's future, his descendant
Arik Soong is a brilliant genetic researcher, a mad scientist who genetically altered embryos
to become human super soldiers.
It would seem now that the Soong family's obsession with improving humanity stretched
further back than we ever suspected.
Ultimately, this Soong has his medical license revoked for a number of ethical violations.
Adam Soong's work in eugenics leads to a number of important breakthroughs, but it hasn't
been without its controversy either.
Having apparently experimented on ex-soldiers through a private contractor, he's been brought
before a medical review board to explain himself.
Among the panelists however, is a man with a surname that fans of "The Next Generation"
should know well.
A dark-haired man sits silently with a cold stare, and his nameplate reads "Vassily Rozhenko,
Vice Chair."
This can not be anything other than an Easter egg referencing TNG's Lieutenant Worf, the
orphaned Klingon officer.
After being found by humans at the site of the Khitomer Massacre as a child, Worf was
raised by human foster parents on Earth, a kind Russian couple named Sergey and Helena
Rozhenko.
Sergey, of course, appeared in the episode "Family," mostly a story about Jean-Luc Picard
returning to France; but in the B-story, Worf has a reunion with his Earth parents, too.
We learn that Sergey was an enlisted Starfleet crewman aboard the USS Intrepid, and after
marrying Helena, they had one biological son, Nicholai, who was played by Paul Sorvino in
the episode "Homeward."
Later, Worf's son Alexander would take the Rozhenko surname as well.
Little else was revealed about the Rozhenko family on TNG, but here we learn they have
a rich family history, with Vassily being an important figure in the world's medical
community in 2024.
Vassily Rozhenko wasn't the only Easter egg on the medical review board, though.
The panel's chairman is a woman named Diane Werner, and her appearance is a clever nod
to the series' time travel roots.
Not just any guest star, the woman who plays Werner is an actress with some experience
in time travel shenanigans herself.
She also happens to be the woman who directed the episode, and the episode prior: Lea Thompson.
Science fiction fans will know the name from the 1980s time travel trilogy, "Back To The
Future," where Thompson played Marty McFly's mother, Lorraine McFly.
"You know what I do in those situations?
I don't worry."
With episodes of "Star Trek: Picard" under her belt, she's re-entered the world of science
fiction, on the other side of the camera this time – a perfect fit for the woman who starred
opposite Michael J. Fox in one of the most celebrated time travel classics.
Now that Picard has discovered the Watcher and learned just who and what their mission
to restore history involves, he gathers the La Sirena crew to go over a plan of action.
Some, including Rios, are perplexed at how Renee Picard, a single woman, could be so
crucial to history that she's the difference between a bright and hopeful future and a
dark totalitarian nightmare reality.
Picard says he's not sure how or why his ancestor is so important either – but he knows there's
a reason why she's apparently so unknown.
As he reminds the crew, "the history of this time period is wildly incomplete."
"The century leading up to first contact was just rife with chaos."
And Picard would know, as this is a clear reference to the events he took part in during
the film "Star Trek: First Contact," another time travel story that saw the Enterprise
go back to 2063 — just 39 years after this episode is set.
In that time, it's said that the Earth was still recovering from the Third World War,
and most records of the era were lost or incomplete.
Here, all Picard claims to know of his ancestor is that she commanded the Europa mission,
and that while exploring the solar system, it was said that she discovered a microorganism
that she believed was sentient.
Clearly this is a hint of things to come in the second half of Season 2, but if "Trek"
history is anything to go by, it sounds like records of the day will be lost during a major
global catastrophe.
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