10 Most Unusual Demands Made By Star Trek Guest Stars
These Star Trek guest stars knew exactly what they wanted from the writers.
Star Trek has had a huge number of guest stars over the years. Many, like Whoopi Goldberg and John De Lancie are incredibly fleshed out characters who, often, are integral to the plot. Other guest appearances, such as that of Stephen Hawking are basically just there to gloat over the fact they could get Stephen Hawking.
Regardless of their reason for being there, guest stars will often have their own demands for their characters, either to make them more interesting, or simply to make their own lives easier during the production. Some of these demands are fair and end up changing the show for the better, while others are merely self-serving or distract from the plot.
This list will be going over some of the most unusual demands from guest stars appearing on Star Trek and the reasons why the writers chose to go along with them. Whether these ideas were good or not though, it is admirable that the writers were willing to hear out the guests' suggestions.
10. John De Lancie Wanting Q To Stay Original
John De Lancie played the lovable fan-favourite, Q since the pilot of The Next Generation in 1987 and has a great deal of respect for the character.
When John was requested to return as Q once more for season two of Star Trek: Picard, he agreed on the condition that his return mean something and not be simply a cheap way to pull in old fans. His exact words (during a guest star panel for the Trek Talks Telethon) were, "I am very concerned about recreating, that has a lot of potential disasters attached to it." Afterwards, he says that the executives agreed to this.
This quote is very encouraging to fans looking forward to the upcoming season. Q's story was wrapped up perfectly at the end of The Next Generation but the plot left it open-ended as to whether or not he would ever return to face Picard again. Because of this, it's great that John is such an advocate for doing something new with the character because if Q's just there to say some funny one-liners and teleport people through space and time for no good reason, it will slightly cheapen the impact of that original goodbye we saw of the character in All Good Things (much like his cameos in Deep Space Nine and Voyager did).