Star Trek: Who is Naomi Wildman?

Key Takeaways

• Naomi Wildman’s origin involves a heart-wrenching tragedy on Star Trek: Voyager.
• She shares a unique friendship with Seven of Nine, despite her initial fears.
• In Lower Decks season 5, Naomi is listed as an honorable mention for Starfleet’s “30 Under 30” at 10 years old.

In the first episode of Lower Decks season 5, Star Trek fans heard a familiar name they probably haven’t thought about for a long time: Naomi Wildman. Fans of Star Trek: Voyager are familiar with Naomi, but those who haven’t watched Voyager, or haven’t rewatched it in years, might need a refresher to understand this Lower Decks deep cut.

When Voyager was unexpectedly transported to the Delta Quadrant, one of its crew members, a human named Samantha Wildman, did not yet know that she’d conceived during her last rendezvous with her husband on Deep Space Nine, prior to leaving on Voyager’s assigned mission. When she learned she was pregnant, she told Captain Kathryn Janeway, who promised her that they’d do everything they could to keep her safe during her pregnancy and ensure she had a healthy child. Janeway kept that promise, and Samantha named her child Naomi.

Are There Two Naomi Wildmans? Sort Of

Though Naomi grew up on Voyager, she was not technically the child Samantha gave birth to. The Naomi that Samantha raised as her own, the child the Voyager crew came to love as their own collective child and beacon of hope, was actually a duplicate Naomi from a phase-shifted duplicate of Voyager.

The Death of Samantha Wildman’s Baby

In the second-season episode “Deadlock,” Voyager encountered a plasma drift while Samantha was in labor. Samantha struggled with labor complications because her baby was half Ktarian, and the Doctor decided to try a risky procedure: using a transporter to beam the baby out of the uterus. The procedure caused a complication, but one that was easily treatable. The Doctor and his nurse Kes put the baby in an incubator to start treatment.

Soon after, Voyager hit massive subspace turbulence, disabling the warp engines and resulting in power failures all over the ship. As the Doctor dealt with the injured crew members, Kes tried to tend to the baby, but all treatments failed. As the ship endured random proton blasts and the doctor scrambled to treat the crew, the baby fell unconscious. After multiple attempts to revive her, the baby died.

The Duplicate Naomi Wildman

The proton blasts Voyager endured eventually opened a hull breach on Deck 15. When Ensign Harry Kim and Chief Engineer B’Elanna Torres tried to repair the breach, Kim fell in and died. The hull breaches expanded, threatening the whole ship, and the crew was forced to evacuate.

But before they did, Janeway saw a ghostly image of herself, and her bridge crew, on an undamaged ship. The turbulence that Voyager hit was a subspace divergence field, which created an exact duplicate of Voyager and every crew member onboard. On the duplicate Voyager, duplicate Samantha Wildman had the same labor complications, but the fetal transport procedure didn’t cause any complications. Her baby was born healthy.

Eventually, the original Voyager crew and the duplicate Voyager crew figured out how to communicate, and collaborated to correct the phase shift. During this collaboration, they discovered a spatial rift that would allow crew from both ships to travel between the duplicate and original Voyagers. When Vidiians boarded the duplicate Voyager and started killing the crew to harvest their organs, Duplicate Janeway decided to initiate the auto-destruct sequence on the duplicate Voyager. This would kill the Vidiians, but also her entire crew, which wasn’t supposed to exist in the first place.

Right before the duplicate Janeway enacted her plan, the original Janeway asked her to send the duplicates of Harry Kim and the Wildman baby through the spatial rift, since the original versions of both had died during the phase shift. Duplicate Janeway agreed. Kim took the baby through the spatial rift, and they both arrived on the original Voyager safely, before the duplicate blew up.

Kim brought the baby to sickbay on the original Voyager, and gave her to the original Samantha. She thanked him profusely, and she cradled the duplicate baby. Naomi’s name isn’t actually revealed until her third appearance in Voyager, the season 4 episode “Mortal Coil.”

Growing Up on Voyager

Because of her Ktarian genes, Naomi grew quickly. Just two years after she was born, she’d developed into the equivalent of a grade-school aged human child. Naomi was doted on by the crew as she was the only child on the ship, and they indulged her when she wanted to help out around the ship, playing “Captain’s Assistant.” As a result, Naomi learned quite a bit about science and engineering, showing an aptitude for both subjects.

Naomi is best-known by Star Trek: Voyager fans for her unlikely friendship with Seven of Nine, the ex-Borg the Voyager crew rescued from the Borg Collective. Initially, she was scared of Seven of Nine, but eventually Naomi became fascinated with her. She decided to study Seven of Nine, following her around the ship and imitating her, and one day, Seven noticed. They spoke briefly, but they didn’t really hit it off until Seven, affected by a pathogen in the central processor of a Borg ship, was taken over by the personality of a child assimilated by the Borg.

They played together, and Naomi told Seven about her dream of becoming a Starfleet captain. Seven was stunned by the child personality’s ability to socialize. When cured, Seven promised Naomi that she would help her study to be a captain, if Naomi would teach her how to socialize and play. Thus began the odd but endearing friendship between the only child and the only ex-Borg aboard Voyager.

Naomi became Seven’s shadow, following her around the ship as she performed her duties. Seven initially saw herself as an instructor for Naomi, but eventually developed a deep affection for her. By the time Voyager returned to Earth, Seven and Naomi had been friends for years, and were so close they considered each other family.

Life After Voyager

Though Star Trek fans haven’t seen Naomi since the last season of Voyager, there are some clues in both canon and non-canon Trek sources about what her life looked like after Voyager returned to the Alpha Quadrant. In the first episode of Lower Decks season 5, Boimler laments that he was bumped from the Starfleet “30 Under 30” list, adding that one of the honorable mentions went to Naomi Wildman, who is “like ten years old.” In an example of how thorough the Lower Decks writers are with their research, Naomi is indeed 10 years old in 2382, when the events of the fifth season takes place.

The timeline also matches with the Star Trek: Voyager novel Full Circle, in which the Doctor tells Seven that Naomi has been accepted to Starfleet Academy. Though ten years old seems early, Star Trek canon does not specifically mention age requirements for attendance. Most of the cadets studying there are in their mid-teens to early 20s, but there is no official minimum age. It’s possible that Naomi was accepted early because of her exceptional experiences on Voyager. Her fast growth due to being half Ktarian may also have been a factor.

However, the Star Trek novels’ place in the Star Trek canon is highly debated, so Full Circle’s mention of Naomi’s acceptance into Starfleet isn’t technically canon. It also contradicts the Star Trek Online storyline, which states Naomi entered Starfleet in 2392, at the age of 20, which makes a lot more sense. That said, Star Trek Online isn’t canon either. So, the only canon mention of Naomi’s life after Voyager is in Lower Decks. It’s unclear whether she had actually entered Starfleet Academy at that point, or whether she made the “30 Under 30” list for her experiences on Voyager.

Star Trek: Picard showrunner Terry Matalas said that the show’s writers worked on an episode that revealed Naomi Wildman had followed Seven’s lead and become a Fenris Ranger. However, the idea was scrapped, so that doesn’t provide a canon answer about Naomi’s future either.

Lower Decks is the only Star Trek show currently on the air that could bring Naomi back to the Trekverse without some sort of time travel or alternate universe storyline. However, with the show in its final season, fans are unlikely to see the Star Trek: Voyager prodigy again. At least, not unless Star Trek: Legacy finally makes it to production.

Sources: IMDB, Star Trek: Voyager episodes “Deadlock,” “Mortal Coil,” “Infinite Regress,” “Once Upon a Time,” and “Survival Instinct,” Memory Beta Fandom