10 Times Pop Music Was Heard In Star Trek

Warning! There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Picard season three.

Take me on a space trip, mon ami ! It's just another starship, or so it would seem. And who's the baby-faced bloke alone at the helm? That would be Jack Crusher, two weeks younger, son of Beverly, who we met at the end of the first episode of Picard's season three, aptly titled The Next Generation.

In this opener of the season's second outing, Disengage, the song Starchild by Texan rock band Baby plays as the always-London-lad arrives aboard the SS Eleos XII to deliver medical supplies to 'bureaucracy-immunoresistant' sufferers of 'Galarian fever' on Sarnia Prime. The song continues and two Fenris Ranger vessels drop out of warp for a little inspection.

As the scene progresses, the music also switches back and forth from non-diegetic to diegetic mode. We can clearly hear that the track is being played from within the Eleos itself as Jack hails the planet and communicates with the Fenris Rangers over the viewscreen. Presumably, the 'kid' picks his playlists with at least some degree of irony: this is definitely not "just another starship," as the lyrics go, and our star child (Jean-Luc's son, we discover later) turns out to be a marked man, sought by "The Marked Woman," who we assume for the moment to be Vadic.