Watch Boldly Go! the Star Trek parody musical, directed by Bruce Maddox actor Brian Brophy

Boldly Go! the Star Trek musical parody, from Caltech Theater (TACIT)

While the crew of the La Sirena are searching for Bruce Maddox on Star Trek: Picard, you can find him yourself, a little closer to home.

One of my listeners recently wrote to me and connected a few dots that I hadn’t connected myself before, and now that Bruce Maddox is in the public consciousness again, I thought I’d share. Commander Bruce Maddox, for those of you who don’t remember, was a character in the Star Trek: The Next Generation season two episode “The Measure of a Man”. In that episode, Commander Maddox attempted to assert that Data was not sentient, and therefore should be reassigned to be studied and eventually disassembled. Of course, Picard and crew were able to successfully argue that Data was, in fact, a sentient being, with full rights under the law, and while Maddox left unsuccessful, he and Data nonetheless remained friends.

In “The Measure of a Man”, Commander Maddox was played by the actor Brian Brophy. Since his role in Star Trek, Brophy has held a number of one-off roles in Hollywood, and is currently the Director of Theater at the California Institute of Technology. Brophy is also a Fulbright Scholar, among many other academic accolades.

Back in 2016, Brophy directed a feature-length musical parody of Star Trek at Caltech, called Boldly Go!, which you can view in its entirety on YouTube. In Boldly Go!, according to its description, “The United Federation of Planets encounters a grave threat from an unknown source. The Starship Enterprise, with its intrepid crew [...] is dispatched to investigate, going to the very edge of the Neutral Zone. [...] Assumptions will be confronted, paradigms challenged, alliances tested, and new contacts made – whether for good or ill as yet to be seen.”

Once again, you can view Boldly Go! the musical on YouTube now, and you’ll have to watch Star Trek: Picard on CBS All Access to find out whether Maddox will make a return appearance in the series.