The Rock Star Laureate of a Grammy that you have probably forgotten was in Star Trek

In the episode “Star Trek: Voyager” “” Good Shepherd (March 15, 2000), Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) finds that three members of his crew – Mortimer Harren (Jay Underwood), William Telfer (Michael Reisz), and Tal Celes (Zoe McLellan) – have not been heard through many people. Curmudgeon.

When she enters the bowels of the USS travel to locate the members of the crew in question, she is welcomed by an officer in blue uniform. It is the Mitchell crew, and Janeways asks him where the junction room 16. She also stops to ask him how he goes, because the two did not interact before this moment. He says, in a semi-sardonic way, that he has never been better.

Rock fans will instantly recognize the Mitchell crew as no one other than Tom Morello, the guitarist of the raging groups against the machine and the audioslave. Morello has long been admired for his style of play, and his Rage Against the Machine Foundation with the Rocha’s main singer Zack in order as one of the most direct political musicians. It is good enough to have been the guitarist on tour for Bruce Springsteen. Rage Against The Machine was inducted into rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2023. The group won two Grammys.

And, in this case, Morello is a huge trekkie. The story tells that in 1998, he contacted the executive producer of “Star Trek”, Rick Berman, and asked to be included in a next film or television program. Berman was happy to include Morello, although his appearance in “Voyager” was preceded by a fake minor departure, spoken in EW in 2000.

When Morello contacted Rick Berman in 1998, the producer was preparing the feature film by Jonathan Frakes “Star Trek: insurrection”. This film concerns a nasty species called the Son’a – which are struck with chronic toxic ailments and require constant cosmetic surgery of the skin – which watches over a peaceful agrarian species called Ba’ku. The Son’a has teamed up with Starfleet to light up a forced resettlement plan for the Ba’ku and steal a form of unique and medically restorative radiation from their native world. The company gets involved to prevent Starfleet and the Son’a from removing the Ba’ku.

There is a scene towards the end of “the insurrection” in which several soldiers of Son’ infiltrate a village of Ba’ku with their flamboyant weapons. Unfortunately, there are no close -ups on any of Son’a soldiers, so occasional viewers can never say that one of them was Tom Morello. We can see photos of Morello in his makeup of wires in behind the scenes included on the “insurrection” DVDs, but we will not be able to recognize it in the final of the film.

Berman realized that his “favor” in Morello was not really a favor if no one could see him, and decided to offer Morello an appearance of makeup on “Star Trek: traveling” in 2000. The delay of two years was probably because Rage Against The Machine worked on their 1999 album “The Battle of Los Angeles” or their album of 2000 “Renue”.

For his second appearance, Berman wanted Morello to be close to the camera, to have real lines and to deliver them to an important character. In addition, Morello played a human this time, so his face would not be covered by any extraterrestrial prosthesis. This is why its appearance as a Mitchell team was so cheeky. He contributed nothing to the intrigue of the episode, but he was able to speak to Captain Janeway, and the camera lingered on his face. There was no mistake this time. It was Tom Morello.