Spock has always been one of Star Trek's most famous figures - in-universe and out - but Star Trek: Picard reveals the Vulcan's hidden importance to franchise mythology. Star Trek: Picard season 2 has barely even started but, already, Patrick Stewart's Starfleet veteran is fending off another galactic-level threat to humanity. Following an unfriendly encounter with the Borg, Picard initiated self-destruct on the Stargazer, but Q interjected and sent his favorite plaything to a dystopian version of Star Trek's Prime timeline. The Picard Pals figure out Q changed history somewhere in 2024, meaning they need a method of time travel to go back and fix things. Picard suggests a slingshot maneuver, pointing out, "Kirk's Enterprise did it on more than one occasion."
Picard's not wrong. The Enterprise's first slingshot came during Star Trek season 1's "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" as a means of returning home after an accidental trip to the 1960s. They repeated the trick off-screen during Star Trek season 2's "Assignment: Earth," this time visiting the 1960s intentionally. Not content with merely performing the feat in a standard Starfleet vessel, Kirk completed his slingshot hat-trick with a Klingon Bird of Prey during Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Introducing the slingshot maneuver created somewhat of a problem for Star Trek - why didn't Starfleet vessels use it more often? Across the franchise's subsequent output, numerous scenarios have prompted audiences to ask, "Why doesn't [insert ship here] just use the slingshot maneuver?"
Various explanations have been put forth over the years, from Federation law restricting when the slingshot technique can be used, to the maneuver carrying too great a risk to be wheeled out on a whim. Ron Moore (Star Trek writer) even suggested the necessary slingshot calculations would've been kept hidden by Starfleet, preventing other ships from recreating the Enterprise's time warp antics. Star Trek: Picard season 2's "Penance" offers another justification, as Dr. Jurati replies to Picard's slingshot suggestion with, "For that, you need an intelligence that can isolate the divergence and micro-shift for any chronotonic radiation. They [the Enterprise] had Spock."
Jurati's line tallies with the Enterprise's aforementioned trio of slingshots, as both "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home show Spock science-ing away to ensure his crew traverse time safely. The latter even reveals how Spock committed some of the necessary calculations to memory, which impressed Kirk as much as it deeply concerned McCoy. However, Jurati's Star Trek: Picard line essentially confirms Kirk's slingshots would've been impossible with any other science officer in Spock's place. Jurati herself is one of the greatest scientific minds on Starfleet's books during Star Trek: Picard's era, and she's accompanied by Seven of Nine, who's no scientific slouch. But even their combined smarts apparently don't amount to having Spock around, meaning the Vulcan's supercomputer-like brain was the only reason Kirk's Enterprise made slingshot time travel look so easy. In a further compliment to the Enterprise's Mr. Spock, Jurati proposes the Borg Queen - a technologically advanced cyborg ruler connected to a hive mind - as a suitable equivalent.
Not only does Star Trek: Picard's slingshot discussion clear up once and for all why Starfleet didn't make more frequently use of the slingshot maneuver (unless you've got Spock's cell number or a spare Borg Queen lying around, you're outta luck, basically), but Jurati proves Spock's Starfleet importance was even greater than we already knew. He opened doors to other timelines that would've remained inaccessible for Starfleet otherwise - even if Kirk's crew didn't always give his efforts the recognition they deserved. This would support that argument that, even among other Vulcans, Spock was a special kind of genius due to his part-human heritage.
Star Trek: Picard continues Thursdays on Paramount+.
