10 Star Trek Characters More Important Than You Realised

Icheb – or Itchy – was a beloved character first introduced in the sixth season of Star Trek: Voyager. As an adolescent drone prematurely disconnected from the collective, he was rescued, along with the rest of the Borg children, and made an immediate impact on the crew and Seven in particular.

The character is more important than you realised, however, for events both on- and off-screen that happened years later. In the Star Trek: Picard season one episode Stardust City Rag (the one where Picard plays every French stereotype at the same time), now Lieutenant Icheb appears in a flashback sequence in which his Borg technology is being brutally extracted as parts for sale.

Seven arrives, but it’s too late to save the suffering Icheb, so she phasers him (and not on stun!). The scene is explicit, gory, and gratuitous in its depiction of torture. It was also the first time we had seen the character in years, only for him to be killed off. Suffice it to say, fans were not happy! They took to Twitter to express their grievances, and their love for Icheb.

On-screen, his rapid exit serves little more than to give Seven a reason to shoot up Freecloud because – revenge is edgy! Off-screen, the original actor – Manu Intiraymi – had been replaced by Casey King – perhaps owing to Intiraymi’s decidedly controversial history of Tweets. Nevertheless, the fans made it clear that Icheb, the character, deserved more.