Vague spoilers follow for Star Trek: Picard Episode 2.
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Star Trek: Picard is taking its time rolling out its main cast members, but by the end of Episode 2 we got to meet Michelle Hurd’s character Raffi Musiker. Not much has been said about her in the show yet, though it’s clear from the way she reacts to seeing Picard that she isn’t too happy with him these days. But the prequel comic Picard: Countdown fills in some of that backstory.
Raffi used to be Admiral Picard’s First Officer aboard the USS Verity, which was Picard’s command during the Romulan emergency which saw the planet being threatened by a supernova. We know from the events of Star Trek: Picard that the rescue mission Picard had planned never fully moved forward after a group of synths (androids) attacked Mars, where Starfleet was constructing a fleet of ferries to evacuate the Romulans. According to the comic, Lt. Commander Raffi Musiker was an expert in Romulan affairs, and thus a natural to serve as Picard’s Number One during that mission.
Hurd explained to IGN recently that her character’s feelings towards Picard are… complicated.
“It’s funny because the comic books, I’m literally like [reading them], ‘Oh, OK. Good to know. I didn’t know. Oh, OK!,'” she laughed. “I think like any relationship that you have with someone who you work with, and you honor, and you almost think is your mentor, it becomes all of the above, right? It becomes your best friend, your enemy, your lover, your… It becomes all of those things. So I think she has a very complicated, layered relationship with Picard from her past.”
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Hurd also said that the Picard show continues to do what Star Trek has always done, which is to reflect back on the viewer a dialogue about the issues that are currently facing us.
“Because our writers are so amazing and we can’t help but be influenced by life, we are diving into the reality of the disillusion of what you thought was law,” she said. “That questioning things that don’t seem correct anymore — immigration, inclusion, exclusion, diversity, humanity, life, the preciousness of it. Hope.”
Hurd’s co-star Evan Evagora, who plays the Romulan Elnor, chimed in as well, saying that, in considering the year 2020 while creating this show, the hope is to maintain the vision of Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.
“It’s able to show the worst of humanity, but also what we could be, the possibilities, the greatness that we could achieve if we all come together,” he said. “That’s always been like Gene Roddenberry’s vision. It’s always to hold a mirror to our world today and the possibilities of what our future could be.”
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For more on Star Trek: Picard, check out what’s going on with Jean-Luc’s parietal lobe (!), find out why Seven of Nine has turned against Starfleet, and catch up on all the different versions of Data out there.
Source: IGN.com Star Trek: Picard – Who Is Raffi Musiker?