Set phasers to kill... as a last resort.
The phaser shotgun used by Dr Beverly Crusher in the opening moments of Star Trek Picard Season 3 was heavily inspired by classic first-person shooter Star Trek Voyager Elite Force, according to showrunner Terry Matalas.
“It’s just awesome,” Matalas told TrekMovie.
“With this opening scene, we wanted to show Beverly active, commanding the moment. It was meant to be surprising, we don’t find her in sick bay on a starship as one might expect. So there is just something inherently cool about the protective heroine that signals her change here… we decided that simply pointing and shooting didn’t seem sufficient. The physical act of racking a load into the chamber, Linda Hamilton by way of Annie Oakley in the Wild West of space.”
Matalas pointed out that Crusher’s departure from Starfleet twenty years ago meant she sometimes needed to improvise.
“Because the Eleos is a Doctors Without Borders craft that travels through the less traveled sectors, because they’d be equipping themselves as they go with whatever’s available wherever they might be, it felt logical that the weaponry onboard might be slightly unfamiliar or outdated,” he continued.
“It’s also a bit of a fun nod to the weaponry in some of the old games like Voyager Elite Force that was meant to feel more tactile to players. So it was, at least to us, both cool and understandable given their situation.”
Gates McFadden, the actor who has played Crusher since the debut of Star Trek The Next Generation back in 1987, took to Twitter to defend the character’s use of said shotgun.
“[Crusher] has been hunted by people trying to take her son for a long time, escaping and not killing—HOWEVER having been betrayed time after time—she now is desperate and feels she must protect her son at all costs,” McFadden explained.
Star Trek Picard airs weekly on Thursdays on Paramount Plus in the USA; it airs on Paramount+ and Amazon Prime here in Australia the following day.
If you’re looking for more coverage, we did a SPOILER-FREE preview of its first six episodes here and covered all the Easter eggs we could spot in the show’s closing credits after watching the first episode here.
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