The Grammy-Winning Rock Star You Probably Forgot Was In Star Trek

In the "Star Trek: Voyager" episode "Good Shepherd (March 15, 2000), Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) finds that three members of her crew — Mortimer Harren (Jay Underwood), William Telfer (Michael Reisz), and Tal Celes (Zoe McLellan) — haven't been heard from much. She finds they are all located in isolated parts of the ship and don't really contribute much, either through incompetence or through a curmudgeonly attitude. Janeway, who sees her crew as an ersatz family, takes it upon herself to reach out to the three crewmates in question and see what their deal is. Maybe she can warm them up, train them more closely, and get them to participate more warmly with everyone else.

When she goes into the bowels of the U.S.S. Voyager to locate the crew members in question, she is greeted by an officer in a blue uniform. This is Crewman Mitchell, and Janeways asks him where Junction Room 16 is. She also pauses to ask how he's doing, seeing as the two haven't interacted before this moment. He says, in a semi-sardonic way, that he's never been better. 

Rock fans will instantly recognize Crewman Mitchell as none other than Tom Morello, the guitarist for the bands Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. Morello has long been admired for his playing style, and his founding of Rage Against the Machine with lead singer Zack de la Rocha has him in good standing as one of the most forthrightly political musicians currently working. He's good enough to have served as the touring guitarist for Bruce Springsteen. Rage Against the Machine was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 2023. The band has won two Grammys.

And, as it so happens, Morello is a huge Trekkie. The story goes that, back in 1998, he reached out to "Star Trek" executive producer Rick Berman and asked to be included in an upcoming movie or TV show. Berman was happy to include Morello, although his appearance in "Voyager" was preceded by a minor false start, talked about in EW in 2000. 

When Morello reached out to Rick Berman in 1998, the producer was in the midst of preparing Jonathan Frakes' feature film "Star Trek: Insurrection." That film is about a wicked species called the Son'a — who are struck with chronic toxic ailments and require constant skin-stretching cosmetic surgery — who watch over a peaceful agrarian species called the Ba'ku. The Son'a have teamed up with Starfleet to hatch a forced relocation plan for the Ba'ku and steal a form of unique, medically restorative radiation from their homeworld. The Enterprise gets involved to stop Starfleet and the Son'a from kidnapping the Ba'ku. 

There is a scene near the end of "Insurrection" wherein several Son'a soldiers infiltrate a Ba'ku village with their weapons blazing. Sadly, there are no close-ups on any of the Son'a soldiers, so casual viewers will never be able to tell that one of them was Tom Morello. One can see pictures of Morello in his Son'a makeup in behind-the-scenes footage included on the "Insurrection" DVDs, but one won't be able to recognize him in the final cut of the movie. 

Berman realized that his "favor" to Morello wasn't much of a favor if no one could see him, and decided to offer Morello a make-up appearance on "Star Trek: Voyager" in 2000. The two-year delay was probably because Rage Against the Machine was working on their 1999 album "The Battle of Los Angeles" or their 2000 album "Renegades."

For his second appearance, Berman wanted Morello to be up close on camera, to have actual lines, and to deliver them to a significant character. Also, Morello was playing a human this time, so his face wouldn't be covered by any alien prosthetics. It's why his appearance as Crewman Mitchell was so brazen. He didn't contribute anything to the plot of the episode, but he did get to talk to Captain Janeway, and the camera lingered on his face. There were no mistakes that time. That was Tom Morello.