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How Alfre Woodard Missed Out On Becoming A Star Trek: The Next Generation Regular

By Witney Seibold

May 19, 2026 8:45 pm EST

Paramount

In Jonathan Frakes' 1996 film "Star Trek: First Contact," the USS Enterprise travels back in time to the year 2063, right after the Earth had been devastated by world wars that nearly drove humans to extinction. This was also the year, in "Star Trek" lore, that an inventor named Zefram Cochrane (played by real-life extraterrestrial enthusiast James Cromwell) developed the very first faster-than-light engine, something he had been tinkering with in a small town in Montana. The plot of the movie involves the crew of the Enterprise trying to stop a vicious Borg attack in time for Cochrane's flight to take place as historically scheduled.

During the Borg kerfuffle, Cochrane's assistant on the project, a woman named Lily Sloane (Alfre Woodard) is injured and taken to the Enterprise for medical treatment. She then ends up sneaking away from sickbay and meeting Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) while he is attempting to fight the Borgs that have infiltrated the ship. As a result, Picard and Lily only have the other to talk to for a chunk of "First Contact." Picard explains the situation to Lily, and Lily observes, quite astutely, that Picard is behaving a lot like Captain Ahab in his quest for revenge against the Borg.

The original intent of these scenes was to allow a Picard/Lily romance to develop while the characters traverse their adventures together. Sadly, the inevitable kiss scene was cut early in the writing process, and the romance was put to an end. This is a pity for Woodard, though, because a romance between Picard and Lily would have been carried over into more "Star Trek: The Next Generation"-era projects. Indeed, as noted in the December 1996 issue of Cinefantastique Magazine, Lily would have become a recurring character, allowing Woodard to secure a regular "Star Trek" gig.

A scrapped Lily/Picard romance would've led to Woodard appearing in more Star Trek projects

Paramount

Watching "Star Trek: First Contact," it's hard to see any romance, so the love story was presumably written out prior to production. Picard is in a bad mental space in the movie, full of wrath and eager to harm the Borg, with Lily serving as his conscience. Despite knowing little about Picard or the Borg, she clearly recognizes what's going on with him. When Lily compares Picard to Ahab, right to his face, he has a brief outburst, followed by the realization that Lily is right.

In Cinefantastique, "First Contact" co-writer Ronald D. Moore described the removed love story and how it originally played out. The romance, Moore explained, would've taken place while Picard and Lily repair Cochrane's warp ship together in a calmer, less Borg-infested setting. However, in the end, he felt that a speedy love story was implausible:

"Picard [represented] this idealistic, great man of the future, and her character [was] more in the here-and-now and really starting to lose hope and faith. In the conflict between the two, they found a certain romance. We'd even talked about bringing her back to the 24th century at the end of the picture, but ultimately we decided that, [because] the timespan of the movie took place over the course of two days at the most, it would be difficult to believe they would fall so deeply in love that he would bring her back to the future."

It's worth noting, too, that in the next movie, 1998's "Star Trek: Insurrection," Picard has a new love interest in the form of Anij (Donna Murphy). Keeping Picard single throughout the "Next Generation" films allowed writers to give him new girlfriends, "Seinfeld"-style, as often as they wanted.