Speaker 1: The show has begun since your phasers, the fun you
Speaker 1: ry for.
Speaker 2: Trip Trip Trip trips Indo Dcon.
Speaker 3: With Carridom It's the d Conchamber.
Speaker 4: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Trekky's and trekkers, welcome
Speaker 4: back to a very special episode of the Decon Chamber.
Speaker 4: I'm your co host Dominic Keating, joined as always by
Speaker 4: my best mate and my fellow co host mister Connatraneers
Speaker 4: in the house here today on the Decon Chamber. We
Speaker 4: are so delighted and honored to be joined by mister
Speaker 4: Robert Picardo himself. He first appeared as the Doctor on
Speaker 4: Star Trek Voyager in nineteen ninety five, over thirty years ago.
Speaker 4: If you can believe that there were seven seasons. That
Speaker 4: character went from a short term emergency hologram to a
Speaker 4: complex character with a defined identity and a place in
Speaker 4: the crew. Quickly became a fan favorite and has since
Speaker 4: returned to the Star Trek universe more than once, with
Speaker 4: appearances in First Contact, Deep Space.
Speaker 1: Nine, and Prodigy. I'm not at all jealous.
Speaker 4: Today we're speaking to him as part of the cast
Speaker 4: of Star Trek's newest show, staff Leet Academy where he
Speaker 4: reprises the role of ill doc Drre now hundreds of
Speaker 4: years older and in some ways wiser, though as it
Speaker 4: turns out, he still has some growing to do.
Speaker 5: He's serving as chief medical.
Speaker 4: Officer on the USS Athena under Academy Chancellor Nala Ake,
Speaker 4: played by Holly Hunter. Season one's just aired in its
Speaker 4: entirety and we're now so looking forward to seeing what's
Speaker 4: in store for season two, which is just rapped.
Speaker 5: We're so pleased to have you with us, Bob, and
Speaker 5: welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Pal. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to talk
Speaker 3: to both you guys. You are terrific interviewers that I
Speaker 3: remember that from last time, and we are longtime friends,
Speaker 3: colleagues and brothers in the Star Trek family.
Speaker 4: We're sure so was a sort of dendum, and the
Speaker 4: news came out yesterday although season two, and we're looking
Speaker 4: forward to seeing that. Sadly, the snip came from the
Speaker 4: higher ups yesterday. So you got the call on Sunday
Speaker 4: am I rising thinking I.
Speaker 3: Would say the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater.
Speaker 3: We just found out yesterday. In other words, the day
Speaker 3: before we're recording this, we found out yesterday that the
Speaker 3: show will not be going forward, that season two, which
Speaker 3: we have completed, will be our last season. When we
Speaker 3: chatted before we started recording this podcast, I said, let's
Speaker 3: deal with the eight hundred pound gorilla immediately rather than
Speaker 3: talk about it as if it hadn't happened. We got
Speaker 3: the whole cast, got an email from Alex Kurtzman's assistant
Speaker 3: saying that all the producers would like to have a
Speaker 3: zoom meeting with us this past Sunday at four pm.
Speaker 3: And it sounded a little ominous, a little sad, and
Speaker 3: it turned out to be the moment we saw everyone's
Speaker 3: face on the zoom with all of the cadets, by
Speaker 3: the way, with one exception. The cadets were all together
Speaker 3: in one of their apartments in Los Angeles, all sitting together,
Speaker 3: which just shows their tremendous solidarity and affection they developed
Speaker 3: over the course of shooting the two seasons and Alex
Speaker 3: our leader, Alex Kurtzman, along with no Glandau, Guya Violo,
Speaker 3: and the other producers Tunday and Aaron Byers, all of
Speaker 3: the team at Secret Hideout, which is Alex Kurtzman's production company,
Speaker 3: were there and as I said, it was written all
Speaker 3: over their faces that we were getting some bad news
Speaker 3: that was going to drop the next day Monday, which
Speaker 3: is only yesterday as of this moment, that was speaking
Speaker 3: that the show was not moving forward. It was sad,
Speaker 3: he said. He made it very clear that he was
Speaker 3: delighted with the show. He felt so strongly about the
Speaker 3: work we had done, how beautiful the show was, how
Speaker 3: everyone was doing their best work, and it had nothing
Speaker 3: to do with equality of the show. Not enough people
Speaker 3: had found us, he said, you know that the reason
Speaker 3: you'll hear is that we never cracked the top ten
Speaker 3: shows in streaming, which is true. However, they gave us
Speaker 3: literally two weeks or less after we aired our tenth episode. Now,
Speaker 3: often people have their own viewing habits and streaming, they
Speaker 3: sometimes wait so that they can binge watch the show.
Speaker 3: Maybe they wouldn't have heard about it because there was
Speaker 3: really a no advertising push behind our show. There was never,
Speaker 3: to my knowledge, a commercial on any broadcast television channel,
Speaker 3: on any other outlet. And I talked to so many
Speaker 3: people who said, oh, yeah, you have a new show.
Speaker 3: Where is it. I haven't found it. So in any case,
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, perhaps because our show was created during
Speaker 3: a prior administration at CBS Paramount. For whatever reason, they
Speaker 3: decided to take a pause in new Star Trek, and
Speaker 3: that Star Trek will be reintroduced again after a period,
Speaker 3: a fallow period, which, as we all know, is what
Speaker 3: happened after your guys.
Speaker 4: Show Crazy to the QUI mate, now that we know
Speaker 4: the smart of cancelation, well before it's time, that's for sure.
Speaker 6: I feel like the cooler Bob because a couple of
Speaker 6: years ago I interviewed Doug Jones on the ship and
Speaker 6: they had found out and I are an hour previous
Speaker 6: to that that they had been canceled, And now talking.
Speaker 3: To you, so h Connor, Connor, Angel of death Trenier.
Speaker 3: He wields his mighty what is it a sight or something?
Speaker 1: Yes, oh it's right here. I can grab it.
Speaker 3: The killer franchise killer anyway, so I listen. I also,
Speaker 3: speaking of killing franchises, I was also in uh uh
Speaker 3: Stargate Atlantis.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: I was a season regular the season before that got
Speaker 3: canceled too, So it might not just be you, Connor.
Speaker 3: It could be the two of us working together.
Speaker 1: You stink of cancelations.
Speaker 4: Well, I have to say I saw the whole show
Speaker 4: season one, and I really liked it a lot.
Speaker 1: It took me.
Speaker 5: It took me, so I've gotta be I'll be honest
Speaker 5: with you. It took some warming up for me.
Speaker 4: The first three episodes, I was like, Okay, this is
Speaker 4: a bit c W in space. There were two scenes
Speaker 4: at the end of episode three that got my attention
Speaker 4: when the the war faction and the Cadet faction was
Speaker 4: sort of set up and I started to see the
Speaker 4: planning and where this was going to go. And I
Speaker 4: got to say, by the end of it, it truly
Speaker 4: got my attention, and there was some, as you say,
Speaker 4: just fabulous acting going on.
Speaker 5: Tell me, Bob, when did they come to you and
Speaker 5: say what are you doing?
Speaker 3: It was a while ago. It was during the after
Speaker 3: we had hit the peak of the COVID pandemic and
Speaker 3: we were on the downward curve. I want to say,
Speaker 3: I guess it was March of twenty twenty three. It
Speaker 3: was shortly before the actors strike, so that was the
Speaker 3: year that we went out on strike. In July, so
Speaker 3: I got a call from my voiceover agent saying that
Speaker 3: they want to have a conversation with you about a
Speaker 3: new Star Trek series and I'm thinking Prodigy is only
Speaker 3: on now. They want to put me in another animated series,
Speaker 3: and so I had the voiceover agent call the production
Speaker 3: company and say, no, this is for a live action.
Speaker 3: I said, they want me in a new live actions
Speaker 3: That doesn't sound right. So I had a zoom meeting
Speaker 3: with Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau and the showrunners to be.
Speaker 3: They told me about Starfleet Academy. They told me about
Speaker 3: their idea of bringing the Doctor back, that it was
Speaker 3: eight hundred years beyond Voyager's future in the thirty second century.
Speaker 3: They schooled me because I had seen some discovery, but
Speaker 3: I wasn't strong on what the burn had been. The
Speaker 3: Burn when there's this terrible thing where all of di
Speaker 3: lithium goes nuclear and millions and millions of people died,
Speaker 3: and warp travel was eradicated, and basically all of our
Speaker 3: star Trek's imaginary future of space travel was set back
Speaker 3: hundreds of years by this terrible tragedy. And this Starfleet
Speaker 3: Academy it was now one hundred and twenty years after
Speaker 3: the Burn, and it was reopening, and it was the
Speaker 3: first entering class in that long a time. And my
Speaker 3: character was an eight hundred year old, continuously activated artificial intelligence.
Speaker 3: He was Voyager's doctor, not a backup program, because it
Speaker 3: could have been a backup program that was launched in
Speaker 3: the future. That's what some fans thought it was going
Speaker 3: to be, because we did a Voyager episode where another
Speaker 3: version of my program was sent into the future. So
Speaker 3: everybody knows that's in the same timeframe.
Speaker 1: Seven hundred years. What about my ship? What happened to
Speaker 1: my crew? It's safe to say the long.
Speaker 3: Dead, long story short. They pitched me a concept. They
Speaker 3: told me what the arc of the first season would
Speaker 3: be and how the Doctor would basically become a parent
Speaker 3: to the one hologram Cadet, and it sounded in interesting
Speaker 3: and you know, and she was, by the way, the
Speaker 3: first Cadet cast, Caris Brooks, wonderful fire, very magical actress
Speaker 3: with this incredible energy and zest that just bursts out
Speaker 3: of her. She was the first one cast. And they
Speaker 3: had this idea that my character would, through a technological reason,
Speaker 3: would parent her, would have an accelerated she would go
Speaker 3: through an accelerated childhood. That would be the eighth of
Speaker 3: the ten episodes.
Speaker 4: Well, they already had that mapped out that storyline.
Speaker 3: That's why my character was so resistant to her in
Speaker 3: the pilot. You're our first holographic student, the first of
Speaker 3: our kind, at least no one's mentor. She assumes that
Speaker 3: because I'm a hologram and she's read all about me,
Speaker 3: and she comes from a planet of only holograms. Interesting backstory,
Speaker 3: her plan and all of the organic beings that created
Speaker 3: these holograms to basically assist them, serve them, these artificial intelligences.
Speaker 3: There was a terrible some sort of a tragedy like
Speaker 3: a pandemic, because remember this was all conceived during the
Speaker 3: end of the COVID pandemic that wiped out all the organics.
Speaker 3: So her planet was nothing but holograms living together, developing
Speaker 3: their own society, living in isolation. Because he didn't quite
Speaker 3: know what to do, and they were sending her out
Speaker 3: as an emissary.
Speaker 2: And made you they're amissary.
Speaker 3: It is as the first effort to make contact with
Speaker 3: this newly reconstituted starfleet to see if they wanted to
Speaker 3: basically be part of the federation rather than live in isolation.
Speaker 3: That was the backstory.
Speaker 4: It reminded me of the Edo period in Japanese history.
Speaker 4: That those two hundred years where they just cut off
Speaker 4: from the rest of the world, and that this was
Speaker 4: the first, as you say, necessary reaching out to see
Speaker 4: if they were going to rejoin.
Speaker 1: It was very clever writing.
Speaker 3: So of course, very rude to her. That was the
Speaker 3: beginning because people couldn't understand why I was being so dismissive,
Speaker 3: and you know, but they they wanted to plan that,
Speaker 3: to lay that in that something was bothering my character,
Speaker 3: that we couldn't know what it was, but it would
Speaker 3: make sense later. To be honest, it's never my purpose.
Speaker 4: Well, it was always going to heart back to the
Speaker 4: there's a couple of episodes from Voyager Real Life in particular,
Speaker 4: which is a very fantastic episode where you have a
Speaker 4: hologram family goodbye, all goodbye, and then of course a
Speaker 4: blink of an eye.
Speaker 3: For each second that passes on Voyager, nearly a day
Speaker 3: goes by.
Speaker 1: On the planet because the time changed on Cask.
Speaker 5: Every three days on it.
Speaker 2: It was five years in that he had a lifetime
Speaker 2: of experience, a human lifetime of experience in what was
Speaker 2: eleven or twelve minutes it was, you know, he married,
Speaker 2: he had a child.
Speaker 3: They never explained to me how he could father a
Speaker 3: child that was glossed over.
Speaker 1: He was my.
Speaker 3: Son, but drew hologram.
Speaker 1: It's a long story.
Speaker 3: I don't know how a hologram would be anatomically correct.
Speaker 3: I don't know what kind of emergency medical procedures they
Speaker 3: were envisioning if they had given him. But that was
Speaker 3: we couldn't We couldn't quite address that, whether he whether
Speaker 3: one of his talents was being a sexual surrogate. When
Speaker 3: in my forties it excited the imagination somewhat now at
Speaker 3: my present age, I really but in any case, yes,
Speaker 3: blink of an eye, this same thing, and that's a
Speaker 3: Star Trek you know. That's a time game that they've
Speaker 3: played in many Star Trek episodes, in other iterations of
Speaker 3: Star Trek, where time passes at a different rate of
Speaker 3: speed so that you can have all these experiences and
Speaker 3: then return to your ship. I mean, let's face it,
Speaker 3: when we send someone off to Mars and back again,
Speaker 3: I'm the worst person is figuring out but a lot.
Speaker 3: Once we go beyond Mars, we're capable of doing that time.
Speaker 3: When we can travel at warp speed, you'll come back
Speaker 3: to a planet that you were, all of your colleagues
Speaker 3: and friends and family have died, So that's always been
Speaker 3: part of the Star Trek writer's imagination. I think different
Speaker 3: rates of speed in different environments, and then you come
Speaker 3: back and you've had a whole lifetime in a few minutes,
Speaker 3: or in the case of the Starfleet Academy, I think
Speaker 3: it's like twelve or thirteen days where seventeen years have passed.
Speaker 4: Eighteen years right, right, and you've become her parent. And yeah,
Speaker 4: there's some lovely acting in that episode.
Speaker 3: Please, you're absolutely right. It referenced both those episodes, but
Speaker 3: especially real life, and in fact, they showed little images,
Speaker 3: wispy images of the daughter that I had created eight
Speaker 3: hundred years prior. Bell from the moment you first walked
Speaker 3: up to me at the Operacle of Booth with the sweetest,
Speaker 3: most hopeful smile.
Speaker 1: I saw my daughter and the way she used to smile.
Speaker 3: And in this randomized program, a tragedy happens and I
Speaker 3: cannot save her life, and I have a deathbed scene
Speaker 3: with her. And when the writer of that episode, I
Speaker 3: believe was Joe Minowski, said, this is the birth of
Speaker 3: the doctor's human soul, is what he told me. This
Speaker 3: episode because of this tragedy and the depth that that
Speaker 3: it opened up feelings that the depth of which he'd
Speaker 3: never had before. Gone yes, and they built on that
Speaker 3: they wanted. Alex Kurtzen made it very clearly said we
Speaker 3: want to see I don't know how he phrased it,
Speaker 3: but we want to see a level of emotion that
Speaker 3: we have never seen in your character before.
Speaker 6: It really worked. I teared up at the end of
Speaker 6: that episode. I thought, I thought, both, you know, the
Speaker 6: A and the B story were fantastic. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was very interesting to use the thorough good
Speaker 4: the the play Our Town as a as a sort of,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 5: Be story, but also a backdrop to the whole story that.
Speaker 4: You were going through, and that each one of the
Speaker 4: cadets their story was kind of referenced in that play too.
Speaker 4: It was some of the cleverest star trek writing i've ever.
Speaker 3: I agree, it was very deep. It's an American classic,
Speaker 3: that play. Just the notion that a play that the playwright,
Speaker 3: even in our moment in time, the playwright is long
Speaker 3: dead and the play is still done. It was being
Speaker 3: done on Broadway as we were shooting that episode, as
Speaker 3: we were about to and to their great credit, Alex
Speaker 3: Kurtzman and his company brought all of us to New
Speaker 3: York to see Jim Parsons from Big Bang Theory playing
Speaker 3: the stage manager and to see that production, and then
Speaker 3: we met the cast after, so we were all we
Speaker 3: not only you know, re read the play, but we
Speaker 3: saw it produced and then as a framing device with
Speaker 3: my character being starting out as the stage manager, but
Speaker 3: then the stage manager kind of becomes our chancellor Nala
Speaker 3: at the end, because the doctor has gone from being
Speaker 3: an observer of life to a participant in life by
Speaker 3: accepting this challenge, by daring to be a parent and
Speaker 3: to be part of the story rather than an observer
Speaker 3: of the story. All of that was very I thought,
Speaker 3: very smartly rendered.
Speaker 1: And the call.
Speaker 5: How did you feel about some of the vernacular?
Speaker 1: They were so modern and.
Speaker 4: Not what we're used to hearing in Star Trek, and
Speaker 4: some of it jumped out and smacked me in the face.
Speaker 4: What was your feeling generally speaking about that aspect.
Speaker 3: Because we are all from the Rick Berman generation of
Speaker 3: Star Trek where we spoke in this futuristic you know,
Speaker 3: mid galactic speech is what I called it. And in fact,
Speaker 3: your show had Hipper. You seem to have hip or
Speaker 3: speech on your show than we ever had on Voyage,
Speaker 3: So they were kind of moving in that direction, you
Speaker 3: know a little bit. But yes, it's a huge difference
Speaker 3: from what we're used to. My character had a scripted
Speaker 3: you know, said chicken shit in so three or something,
Speaker 3: and I literally went ooh, that'll be And obviously none
Speaker 3: of us I know you guys well enough to know
Speaker 3: that none of us are prudes with language without language
Speaker 3: in any way in our regular lives. But because of
Speaker 3: that instinct, we had that inner, you know, Star Trek
Speaker 3: motor that we were used to speaking a certain way
Speaker 3: from that generation of Star Trek that now is totally different.
Speaker 3: And it was a decision, obviously a creative decision made
Speaker 3: starting in Discovery. It's almost like the universal Translator is
Speaker 3: being used on us, the audience. Right, we don't know
Speaker 3: how to talking eight hundred years in the future, but
Speaker 3: it sounds like this to you now because it's contemporary
Speaker 3: speech for eight hundred years in the future. So why
Speaker 3: shouldn't it sound contemporary to you watching the show. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know how you want to justify it, but
Speaker 3: the point is it was an adjustment for me some
Speaker 3: old school Star Trek fans do not like it. They
Speaker 3: don't like the contemporary language. They made that clear to me.
Speaker 3: They also, I mean, let's face it, there we're in
Speaker 3: a moment in this country, a culture and political moment
Speaker 3: that's very different from three years ago when this show
Speaker 3: was conceived, right, and I think that it can safely
Speaker 3: be said that our show was out of step perhaps
Speaker 3: with the cultural and political moment that we are in now.
Speaker 3: Start tres core print. Value of diversity has always been
Speaker 3: the engine in my opinion, and now with diversity under
Speaker 3: attack and the whole notion of DEI having been kind
Speaker 3: of slimed, you know, diversity equity inclusion, which was an
Speaker 3: important goal and important value. Now it's being used as
Speaker 3: an excuse to say, oh, that person didn't deserve their job,
Speaker 3: they had an unfair advantage, they took a job away
Speaker 3: from this person, all of that stuff, which has nothing
Speaker 3: to do with the values of diversity, equity inclusion. It's
Speaker 3: like you're just taking a word, and like a word
Speaker 3: like woke and turning it into a dirty word. Who
Speaker 3: doesn't want to be woke? Who would rather be asleep
Speaker 3: during life? I would like to be aware, I would
Speaker 3: like to be aware of important values in life. I'd
Speaker 3: like to be aware to kindness, I'd like to be
Speaker 3: aware of equality. So I think woke is a good thing.
Speaker 3: But you can take any word and turn it into.
Speaker 4: It's been weaponized and uh and the it's been othered
Speaker 4: and and that's a shame.
Speaker 3: Well, it happened to be in the nineteen eighties with
Speaker 3: the word liberal. Liberal used to be a rule. Is
Speaker 3: God's love is liberal?
Speaker 4: You know geez, when you actually say that out loud,
Speaker 4: it's laughable, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Liberal, Yeah, they had to change it to progressive and
Speaker 3: now they're now progressive being made in a bad word.
Speaker 3: But yes, I think that Star Trek's core values are diversity, equity, inclusion.
Speaker 3: When you remove when you surgically remove them, I don't
Speaker 3: think it's Star Trek anymore. But that's uh, that's just me.
Speaker 6: Hey everyone, Connor Trenier here, Hey guys, Dominate Casing here.
Speaker 4: We want to thank you all for tuning into our
Speaker 4: Star Trek podcast, the Decon Chamber.
Speaker 6: We've officially opened our merch shop and we wanted to
Speaker 6: show you some of the T shirts you can get
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Speaker 4: There are many designs, including these two wonderful ones.
Speaker 5: I went to Riser and all I got tied up.
Speaker 1: In a basement with him. And let me tell you,
Speaker 1: this is just the beginning. We've got so much more
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Speaker 6: If you want to check them out, head to the
Speaker 6: dcon chamber dot com slash shop and if you.
Speaker 4: Are a patroon you get a discount on all of
Speaker 4: It's a great way to support the show and wrap
Speaker 4: the decon Chamber at the same time.
Speaker 3: And you no new.
Speaker 1: Bob.
Speaker 6: Can you speak to the similarities and differences between the
Speaker 6: two sets, two shows wherein you played the same character.
Speaker 3: What's that? Of course? Well, you know, I thought it
Speaker 3: would seem really weird and to go back thirty years
Speaker 3: later and in many ways it's completely different. Our magnificent
Speaker 3: Atrium set. You could have taken every set of Voyager
Speaker 3: and not filled and not filled that one major set
Speaker 3: that we had. It was stunning. It was it gave
Speaker 3: you sometimes when we were shooting with a steady cam,
Speaker 3: you just you couldn't see the light. You felt like
Speaker 3: you really were in that world. It wasn't. And of
Speaker 3: course all of the things we used to do shooting
Speaker 3: in front of green screen, never seeing what we were
Speaker 3: actually looking at whether it was a planet surface or
Speaker 3: a giant monster. We all, you know, I remember when
Speaker 3: I'm in a Voyager episode when I'm supposed to be
Speaker 3: fighting this evil creature. The visual effects guy said, I said,
Speaker 3: what does it look like? He says, well, it looks
Speaker 3: like kind of like a giant blob of glowing linguini.
Speaker 3: And I, okay, does the glowing linguini have eyes? He goes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: kind of up here. So they got like a broomstick
Speaker 3: and put a ping pong ball and that was the
Speaker 3: That was the head of the glowing linguini and I
Speaker 3: had to, you know, fight that. Now we see the
Speaker 3: glowing linguinie. We see everything, you know, the when we
Speaker 3: look out the window in our giant set, all of
Speaker 3: what's happening in the San Francisco skyline in the thirty
Speaker 3: second century, all of the different kinds of craft, but
Speaker 3: is all happening right there in real time, in high
Speaker 3: depth and is shot so there's no there's no green screen.
Speaker 3: When you work on the augmented reality stage, which I
Speaker 3: only did very little. I did not get to do
Speaker 3: it like the cadets who are going off on missions.
Speaker 3: But all of the background is shot is in high
Speaker 3: definition on this curved these tiled four K or maybe
Speaker 3: eight K digital screens that are tiled to form a
Speaker 3: completely seamless sort of curved panorama, isn't it? Yeah, and
Speaker 3: everywhere you look. But it's based on gaming technology, so
Speaker 3: the camera is the player. But what that means if
Speaker 3: you're a fixed person in front of the background and
Speaker 3: the camera moves, then you see the background whooshing behind
Speaker 3: the person you're talking to, but it looks great to
Speaker 3: the camera, so's.
Speaker 4: Tract for the actor to moves behind the camera. On set,
Speaker 4: you're like, stay filled exactly.
Speaker 3: It's like I'm looking at you and your background's going
Speaker 3: like that, and it gets you a little seasick. I
Speaker 3: didn't work enough on it to have to face the challenge,
Speaker 3: but obviously people who worked on the Mandalorian and people
Speaker 3: who worked on the Cadets on our show, who were
Speaker 3: on Planet Surfaces and all that, they dealt with it
Speaker 3: much more than I did. But all so, but still
Speaker 3: you're doing the same kind of you know, imaginary future
Speaker 3: that Star Trek has always presented. So yes, the sets
Speaker 3: were more magnificent, yet the shooting technology, the actual craft
Speaker 3: of making the show was way advanced, thirty years beyond
Speaker 3: my Voyager experience. Still, the storytelling is similar enough that
Speaker 3: you feel you still feel like you're in that the
Speaker 3: same world. It's just on a much bigger, more expensive,
Speaker 3: and more fully realized basis. That makes your acting ultimately
Speaker 3: makes it easier. It wasn't hard to get back in
Speaker 3: the camera. I'm in the camera in the character. I mean,
Speaker 3: let's face it, I am thirty years older, twenty pounds heavier,
Speaker 3: three inches shorter than when I did Voyager, playing a
Speaker 3: character who's not supposed to change.
Speaker 4: Right, you're letting good night, And I got to say,
Speaker 4: showed me that video of the.
Speaker 1: Test, the video when they were making you younger looking.
Speaker 3: Yes, I wanted to do an episode. Now we can
Speaker 3: talk freely about it because the show's canceled. The fans
Speaker 3: reminded me in social media throughout when Discovery was on
Speaker 3: the air and Discovery jumped into the thirty second century,
Speaker 3: all of these fans were saying Picardo could be on
Speaker 3: the show.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: Remember in the episode, the Voyager episode, Oh Gosh, Living Witness,
Speaker 3: when his backup program is discovered seven hundred years in
Speaker 3: the future and then he goes off at the end,
Speaker 3: helping people. I'm a doctor. He took a small craft
Speaker 3: and set a course for the Alpha Quadrant, attempting to
Speaker 3: trace the path of Voyager. So the fans remember this
Speaker 3: one episode, this one detail. Well, I wanted to meet
Speaker 3: my voyager, back up my old self and be as
Speaker 3: I looked at forty one, and play off myself as
Speaker 3: seventy one or now seventy two. So I wanted to
Speaker 3: play opposite my younger self and basically have my younger
Speaker 3: self ruthlessly insult my older self, saying, why would you
Speaker 3: possibly want to alter your opinion appear? Why would you
Speaker 3: want to look like that?
Speaker 4: Well, you jumping out of the bushes at Alex Curtisman,
Speaker 4: much like you did with Randon Rager.
Speaker 3: I did. I was jumping out of the bushes. I
Speaker 3: pitched this whole idea. Noga asked, and I told them,
Speaker 3: and they loved the story, and they said, they said
Speaker 3: something like it sounds like a season three story. They
Speaker 3: told me a long time ago. So now season three
Speaker 3: won't happen. So now you've heard the story. And I
Speaker 3: would love to have done it, to have digitally corrected
Speaker 3: my one performance to look like that and to insult myself,
Speaker 3: but then it would turn into something else. It would
Speaker 3: be My idea was that it would turn into a
Speaker 3: kind of a because my two characters are technological brothers.
Speaker 3: They're the same program but they started out with the
Speaker 3: same basic programming, but they've had different experiences in the
Speaker 3: interim that have changed them. But they're still like identical
Speaker 3: twins that have been raised separately. Right. So the idea
Speaker 3: is that because we both had a conflict leaden relationship
Speaker 3: with Daddy, who was our programmer, Doctor Lewis Simmerman, and
Speaker 3: my character on Starfleet Academy resolved that because we did
Speaker 3: a Voyager episode that was very much where the doctor
Speaker 3: tries to save his programmer who's dying. I traveled halfway
Speaker 3: across the galaxy to treat you. The least you could
Speaker 3: do is show a little gratitude, thank you, get out
Speaker 3: of here, and the programmer treats him terribly like he's
Speaker 3: a failed experiment, and the doctor has to prove himself
Speaker 3: to us. It's the play I never sang for. My
Speaker 3: father borrowed and put in star Trek, and that was
Speaker 3: my story idea on Voyager years ago. But I wanted
Speaker 3: to do a riff on that and these two, the
Speaker 3: doctor and his backup program, are children of the same parent.
Speaker 3: One has resolved the issues, the other hasn't. And after
Speaker 3: eight hundred years, those daddy issues, those parental conflicts, they
Speaker 3: don't go away if you don't deal with them, right,
Speaker 3: So it was a kind of a therapy message. Right.
Speaker 3: The baggage never goes away, folks, unless you deal with
Speaker 3: the baggage, right.
Speaker 4: It would have been a terrific episode, I gotta say.
Speaker 4: And that's a shame.
Speaker 3: It's too late now, damn it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, were you nervous?
Speaker 4: I mean, you seem to say that you weren't going
Speaker 4: back on set and being there were some heavyweight access
Speaker 4: there too. You've got mister j Matsey and.
Speaker 3: Ms Hunter, Holly Hunter, who I've admired, I mean, who
Speaker 3: doesn't know her film career and broadcast News is one
Speaker 3: of my favorite movies. So working with Holly and you know,
Speaker 3: I got the few Holly is a very well she's
Speaker 3: obviously incredibly self assured and talented actress, but you kind
Speaker 3: of have to prove yourself to her. Since I was
Speaker 3: kind of baked into the deal. I was this old
Speaker 3: guy who was from Star trek and she didn't really
Speaker 3: know anything about me or my character. I kind of
Speaker 3: had to prove myself to her. But once I did,
Speaker 3: once she kind of went Okay, I see why this
Speaker 3: guy's here or I understand now, then I felt totally
Speaker 3: embraced by it.
Speaker 4: Do I understand that she would be have been part
Speaker 4: of the casting of the show the general you.
Speaker 3: Know, I've heard Alex say on stage that they wanted
Speaker 3: her from day one, that was their dream casting, from
Speaker 3: from the early conception of the character. That he's always
Speaker 3: been a fan of her, and he and Noga wanted
Speaker 3: wanted her from the get go.
Speaker 1: That's sick, I have to say.
Speaker 4: I mean, I yeah, it's amazing these people's cleverness in
Speaker 4: thoughts and casting that they.
Speaker 1: Would Gamatti is a perfect example. And he did he
Speaker 1: lobby at all for.
Speaker 3: This, He did he It's funny. You remember about three
Speaker 3: years ago three he was nominated for Best the Best
Speaker 3: Actor Oscar for a movie called The Holdovers. Yes, which
Speaker 3: he's just terrific, but he's terrific everything. I'm a huge
Speaker 3: fan of his since I saw him play John Adams
Speaker 3: on HBO right or more years ago. And also he's
Speaker 3: a famous name to me because his dad, Bartiomotti, was
Speaker 3: not only the commissioner of Baseball before that, he was
Speaker 3: the president of Yale. So when I graduated Yale, his
Speaker 3: predecessor Kingman Brewster. How's that for a name for a
Speaker 3: president of Yale, Kingman Brewster. His successor was Bartiamatti, who
Speaker 3: was Paul Giamatti's dad. So I'd always heard the name,
Speaker 3: and then when I saw he was an actor, Oh,
Speaker 3: he's so good, you know, and all that, But I
Speaker 3: had no idea. He was a hard core Star Trek fan,
Speaker 3: and in some of the interviews when he was nominated
Speaker 3: for Holdovers, apparently they said what else would you like
Speaker 3: to do? What are your dream roles? He said, I'd
Speaker 3: really like to play a klingon on Star Trek. He
Speaker 3: said it, and they reached out to his agent and said,
Speaker 3: we can make this happen. They actually heard through the
Speaker 3: media in an interview that that was a life dream,
Speaker 3: and so that character obviously was built for him. He
Speaker 3: loved doing it. He was like a kid in a
Speaker 3: candy store on the set. He just had the best time.
Speaker 3: He was so warm and complimentary to me, he said,
Speaker 3: just I talked to him after our Zoom meeting. He said,
Speaker 3: one of the joys of doing this has been getting
Speaker 3: to know you. I think the world of your work
Speaker 3: and all that, because he watched Voyager. His favorite his
Speaker 3: favorite track, he will tell you is Deep Space nine favorite.
Speaker 3: But he knew my work really well from Voyager. He
Speaker 3: was so complimentary to me and made me feel you know,
Speaker 3: you work with someone like that who's had such a
Speaker 3: glorious career, especially a character actor, right, I mean, let's
Speaker 3: face it, neither Paul Giamatti. None of us really look
Speaker 3: like Tom Cruise, although you know you guys looked a
Speaker 3: little like him when you were younger, saw never having
Speaker 3: been the leading man type. When I see a character
Speaker 3: man like Paul Giamatti who has had such a just
Speaker 3: a really great.
Speaker 5: History career, I mean really yeah.
Speaker 3: That when they look at another character guy like me
Speaker 3: and pay me that kind of compliment, and he only
Speaker 3: I mean he may have seen me in other things,
Speaker 3: but he really knew me from my character on Star Trek.
Speaker 3: So that's always a kick. And I'm sure it's happened
Speaker 3: to you guys, where some famous actor that you've admired,
Speaker 3: you meet them and then you find out they're a
Speaker 3: Star Trek fan, I mean Jason Alexander.
Speaker 4: I met at an Emmy party back in the day
Speaker 4: when we were the Hot Show, and I was at
Speaker 4: this party and he started waving and made a bee line.
Speaker 4: I actually looked behind you to see he was waving
Speaker 4: at straight up to me.
Speaker 3: When Dominic keating God, I love you.
Speaker 1: In that show.
Speaker 4: I got to say it was the biggest you kick
Speaker 4: as you say you can possibly imagine, yeah, because I remember.
Speaker 3: The first time that happened to me Voyagers, first or
Speaker 3: second season with and now he is now gone, but gosh,
Speaker 3: he's one of the stars of Goodfellas.
Speaker 1: Paul Oh, Sylvina.
Speaker 3: Paul Servino, forgive me for getting his name. Paul Servino
Speaker 3: came up to me. This is nineteen ninety six, and
Speaker 3: it said a SAG. It was the first SAG Award.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you guys know this, but the
Speaker 3: Screen Actors Guild Awards were created in ninety six. In
Speaker 3: the first year of them, Star Trek as a franchise,
Speaker 3: was given a special award for diversity in casting and
Speaker 3: all of the Star Trek family were there at the
Speaker 3: first SAGA Awards. Bill Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and members of
Speaker 3: all of the casts, so there were like fifty of us.
Speaker 3: I think on stage. You can dig up that picture somewhere.
Speaker 3: Voyager was in its first or second year. But in
Speaker 3: the dining hall, Paul Servina was there because he was
Speaker 3: nominated for the first SAG Award for something. But he
Speaker 3: stopped me and talked to me. He was wringing his
Speaker 3: hands like nervously, like he was meeting them like the pope.
Speaker 3: And I'm going the whole time. I can't believe Paul
Speaker 3: Servina knows who I am. I can't believe he knows
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: That's right?
Speaker 6: And I asked, So, you guys shot ten episodes a season,
Speaker 6: and was your the length of your shooting schedule similar
Speaker 6: to what it would.
Speaker 1: Have been on Voyager or our show?
Speaker 6: And how many day business days did you take to
Speaker 6: shoot an episode?
Speaker 3: All good, yeah, all good questions. We as you know,
Speaker 3: back in our day, we shot a show in seven days, correct,
Speaker 3: seven shooting days. But our episodes were basically forty three
Speaker 3: minutes long forty three change a few seconds because of
Speaker 3: credits and commercials. Now, the episodes can be any length
Speaker 3: that they target for an hour, but probably our shortest
Speaker 3: episode is fifty six minutes. Our pilot is seventy five minutes.
Speaker 3: So but basically we shot a ten day schedule for
Speaker 3: an episode. Some of them went over the pilot obviously
Speaker 3: took extra days because it was long. It was an
Speaker 3: hour and a quarter and bigger picture stuff, more effects, whatever, so,
Speaker 3: but basically they were scheduled of for ten shooting days.
Speaker 3: The days were long, just like the old days. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, if you're in the last shot on a
Speaker 3: Friday night, you finished, you know, sometime between two am
Speaker 3: and five am on Saturday morning. And the old guy.
Speaker 3: I literally in season two, which I can't talk specifically about,
Speaker 3: I had a very complicated shot with a giant techno
Speaker 3: crane that was a little dangerous that I'm running in
Speaker 3: and I'm thinking, I've been here fourteen and a half hours.
Speaker 3: I'm seventy two years old. I'm running into a shot
Speaker 3: with a techno crane going around my head. I wish
Speaker 3: we'd done this a little earlier. But you know, the
Speaker 3: great thing about it is working with first of all,
Speaker 3: with all that young talent, it does keep you on
Speaker 3: your toes. It keeps you sharp. My goal was always
Speaker 3: to know my lines better than all the kids, which
Speaker 3: I often did, but not always. And Holly of r
Speaker 3: was immaculately prepared. You know, she worked because she had
Speaker 3: a huge burden and you know, and she just you know,
Speaker 3: she nailed it. She knew her lines cold and that
Speaker 3: you know, that's great because she's the leader, you know,
Speaker 3: the captain is always the cast. And that was the
Speaker 3: biggest similarity between this and Voyager because Kate Mulgrew was
Speaker 3: always immaculately prepared. Ever had to look at the script.
Speaker 3: Ever on the set. It was amazing.
Speaker 4: How was miss Hunter's character development discussed? Was it was
Speaker 4: that something that she came to set with on on
Speaker 4: the pilot or does it mean that did it more
Speaker 4: often evolve?
Speaker 3: She made it clear I believe that she was going
Speaker 3: to be her own captain. That was that was baked
Speaker 3: in when she talked you know, I think when she
Speaker 3: talked to Alex and Noga about the role, she I
Speaker 3: think because she I mean, she never said as much
Speaker 3: to me and but but but she basically was not
Speaker 3: going to she was going to go her own way
Speaker 3: in this role. And I know there was a lot
Speaker 3: of hay made on the internet about how she sat
Speaker 3: in the captain's chair. First of all, she's an incredibly
Speaker 3: petite person. She doesn't have an ounce of fat on
Speaker 3: or she probably weighs maybe ninety eight or ninety nine pounds.
Speaker 3: She's really trim, has amazing energy for being only I
Speaker 3: think five years younger than me. But she, you know,
Speaker 3: she had her own vision of how she was not
Speaker 3: going to obey. You know, these the rules for a
Speaker 3: captain and I'm going to do my own thing. I
Speaker 3: thought that was pretty. I was shocked sometimes right sometimes
Speaker 3: I went, holy shit, I wonder that's going to set
Speaker 3: the internet ablaze. I can't say what they are, but
Speaker 3: there are two episodes in particular that jump out at
Speaker 3: me that Holly has. They feature her amazing acting skills,
Speaker 3: unbelievably there. Each one is like a movie, and she
Speaker 3: has an extraordinary challenge. In two of those tenets episodes,
Speaker 3: they just they just went, we've got a great actress.
Speaker 3: We're going to give her a boat load of challenge.
Speaker 4: I noticed, particularly that first big scene between her and
Speaker 4: Paul Giamassi where he's just berating her and she's just listening,
Speaker 4: and she I've never seen an actor listen so artists
Speaker 4: arduously and with such intent before she just barely a
Speaker 4: flicker of the eye, but it was it was notable.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And the scene the scene that I'm the episode
Speaker 3: I'm proud of the eighth one that we talked about earlier,
Speaker 3: where the doctor is parents a child. She witnesses my
Speaker 3: whole deathbed confession over my apparently dead you know, Hologram Cadet,
Speaker 3: who we cannot save. And I'm explaining to her quite emotionally,
Speaker 3: why I couldn't come through for her, why I could
Speaker 3: not I couldn't offer her the kind of support that
Speaker 3: and that she was asking for. And then she holly
Speaker 3: observes that and she is she really I don't know
Speaker 3: how else say it, but you look in her eyes
Speaker 3: and she has what is empathy? How do you play empathy?
Speaker 3: How do you act empathetic? She in just looking in
Speaker 3: her eyes, she has wells, just deep wells of of empathy,
Speaker 3: of emotional support. Even if she feels helpless and doesn't
Speaker 3: know how to, you know, she is listening, and you
Speaker 3: know she gives a shit in a way that you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know how, I don't know how it could
Speaker 3: be acted any more powerfully because she had to do
Speaker 3: a lot of that you know in that episode and others.
Speaker 3: So she has deep wells of that. And part of
Speaker 3: that is that her understanding character, having four hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty years of life experience and you've seen she's seen
Speaker 3: a lot, and that has informed her empathy. So, you know,
Speaker 3: she did a I really like the fact that she
Speaker 3: just went, you know, way off the she went way
Speaker 3: off the farm. As far as of starfleet captains, she
Speaker 3: just like, you know, I'm going to go way over.
Speaker 1: It was scripts.
Speaker 4: It wasn't that she was barefoot in the first scene,
Speaker 4: and that was a sort of you know.
Speaker 3: Jumping out point again. Whether that was I don't I
Speaker 3: can't honestly say whether that was the off the writer's
Speaker 3: idea and she ran with it, whether that was hers
Speaker 3: it was scripted. I think in episode two where she's
Speaker 3: walking barefoot, she they really wanted to create a contrast
Speaker 3: between her and the head of the war college. Wonderful
Speaker 3: actor Raoul Yes who plays Kelrich. You know, he's supposed
Speaker 3: to be sort of shocked with in the same way
Speaker 3: that much of our audience was shocked by the way
Speaker 3: she sat in the captain's chair. He's supposed to have
Speaker 3: never seen a Starfleet captain like her and criticizes the
Speaker 3: fact that she's walking around barefoot, and then she gives
Speaker 3: us long talk on the health benefits of being barefoot,
Speaker 3: you know, and the free ions that are being absorbed
Speaker 3: in your feet or your body, whatever the heck.
Speaker 1: It is, it's surrounding.
Speaker 3: I can say whether that was the writer's idea and
Speaker 3: Holly just took it and ran with it, or whether
Speaker 3: that was one of her asks. You know that she
Speaker 3: liked that idea, but clearly you know she and also
Speaker 3: the glasses wearing. You know, we've healed all eye problems
Speaker 3: post Dardan LaForge, Right, we've fixed everybody's eyes jump out. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but remember when you're a four hundred year old creature
Speaker 3: and you're only half lanth and I presumably her dad
Speaker 3: we don't know yet, but her dad is thousands of
Speaker 3: years old. Why wouldn't he have a pair of readers
Speaker 3: in his top drawer that all kids go through. Your father,
Speaker 3: your parents' top drawer. I know I went through my
Speaker 3: dad's and even though those readers were probably, oh, I
Speaker 3: don't know, eleven or twelve hundred years old, he didn't
Speaker 3: need him. He just left him there from centuries ago.
Speaker 3: You might play with him as a kid. You know what,
Speaker 3: I'm taking a long walk around the block. But my
Speaker 3: point is, we don't know how a four hundred year
Speaker 3: old creature with a thousand year old father would behave.
Speaker 3: They might like antiques. She certainly had a victrolla yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean the exactly the record player was a lovely note.
Speaker 4: And I love the fact.
Speaker 1: That she had a sort of drinks cabinet.
Speaker 4: And you know they weren't shy and having a whiskey
Speaker 4: now and again, why wouldn't that, Why wouldn't that still
Speaker 4: be around in five hundred years time?
Speaker 3: And what an amazing set her office was, just glorious,
Speaker 3: And all of those sets, I got to tell you,
Speaker 3: I feel for those sets as I feel for my
Speaker 3: fellow actors. I feel sadness that those sets are just
Speaker 3: going away. I mean that my fellow actors were moving
Speaker 3: on to other parts of their career. All of these
Speaker 3: wonderful young talents will have will have great careers in
Speaker 3: the future, but those sets are being dismantled and cut
Speaker 3: in pieces now, and that like breaks my heart. They
Speaker 3: were so spectacularly crafted, they really were.
Speaker 1: They're just beautiful.
Speaker 5: Tell me a little bit about Guya Viola Violo. I
Speaker 5: couldn't find much about her on the internet. She seems
Speaker 5: to be sort of, you know, an enigma.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's I don't know exactly all. The thing I
Speaker 3: found most fascinating about her is that she's born in Italy,
Speaker 3: in a town. She's born in Sicily, in a little
Speaker 3: rural town, and came here in her teens sometime I believe,
Speaker 3: maybe her late teens. She spoke perfect English. I mean,
Speaker 3: if you heard her talk for five minutes, you might go, oh, maybe,
Speaker 3: you know, you might hear just a little something that
Speaker 3: made her sound. But the first two or three times
Speaker 3: I talked to he, I had no idea that English
Speaker 3: was her second language. Super smart, very youthful. I have
Speaker 3: no idea how old she is. She looks like she's
Speaker 3: in her mid thirties. And she wrote the pilot. It
Speaker 3: was really you know, she's She is not one of
Speaker 3: the two show runners, and I don't think she has
Speaker 3: been a showrunner before. But the pilot episode is her
Speaker 3: soul writing.
Speaker 5: Credit created it.
Speaker 4: I mean I thought her, Yeah, she's credited as creator.
Speaker 4: But it surprised me that she wasn't one of the
Speaker 4: show runners. But she've written me Absentia and a couple
Speaker 4: one other show that I noticed, but other than that
Speaker 4: she's there is no presence of her.
Speaker 3: On the innet. Yeah she is. And when I told
Speaker 3: her that I'd been in Sicily with my wife and
Speaker 3: my daughters and my brother about two two and a
Speaker 3: half years ago, and I told her some of the
Speaker 3: places she went. We saw these more recently excavated this
Speaker 3: estate that had all these incredible baths in all these
Speaker 3: mosaic child baths, and she said, oh, that's right near
Speaker 3: where I grew up. I was like, because it was
Speaker 3: a very kind of remote part of Sicily, and I thought,
Speaker 3: how amazing that I'm working with someone who was born
Speaker 3: you know, we're both Italian heritage. All four of my
Speaker 3: grandparents came from Italy. But here I'm working with someone
Speaker 3: who was actually born there. Even though she's in her thirties,
Speaker 3: maybe forty at the most, she has become so ad
Speaker 3: at English that she has written this amazing pilot with
Speaker 3: students speaking in today's vernacular, even though they're said in
Speaker 3: the future. You know what. I was completely impressed with
Speaker 3: everything about her, and she was very easy to talk to.
Speaker 3: They listened to me because they knew that I know
Speaker 3: my era of Star Trek certainly knew my character. I
Speaker 3: pitched them jokes relentlessly, and some of them got into
Speaker 3: the pilot. There's a in the pilot episode I say
Speaker 3: exactly the same line I said in Voyager thirty years prior.
Speaker 3: I said, The fans with me. Well, it's the first
Speaker 3: laugh I get in Voyager. They've just activated me. My
Speaker 3: character has no affect, no personality. He's in the middle
Speaker 3: of a crisis. And I say it. And I start
Speaker 3: looking at all of these injured and I call for
Speaker 3: a tricorder. Tricorder, and Harry Kim hands me one, and
Speaker 3: I look at him with an incredible withering look, and
Speaker 3: I said, medical tricorder, Medical tricorder. And then he goes
Speaker 3: and gets me the appropriate one with a detachable sensor.
Speaker 3: I said to the producers, we have an opportunity here.
Speaker 3: When the when the cadet has swallowed her combadge, that
Speaker 3: was the out of the scene, she said, I the
Speaker 3: descripted line. She goes, I think I've swallowed my combadge
Speaker 3: and I say, already that was cut out, right, And
Speaker 3: I said, can we just shoot something you can cut
Speaker 3: it out if you don't like it. So I say, already,
Speaker 3: and I go trycorder medical, trip, trycorder medical, try quorder
Speaker 3: and then I and then I scanned her and I
Speaker 3: and when I give her a shot, and I also
Speaker 3: did another line I did in voyage her. I said, oh,
Speaker 3: don't be a baby when she winces at the shot.
Speaker 3: So I just I just kept throwing in things from
Speaker 3: three thirty years ago, and they they left them in.
Speaker 1: So oh blast.
Speaker 6: It was great to see Tony knew some penless.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's great. First of all, she is hilarious. She's
Speaker 3: got an amazing improv background, so she's very funny, but
Speaker 3: also an accomplished dramatic actress, so it was great. She
Speaker 3: co wrote that episode that she appears in playing that character,
Speaker 3: and she's also a big Deep Space nine fan, and
Speaker 3: she knew my character well and wrote some of the
Speaker 3: fun interaction I had with Tig Nataro was written by her,
Speaker 3: and that was really fun. I mean, I love Tig's
Speaker 3: stand up comedy, and I thought she's a natural character
Speaker 3: for me to annoy the crap out of because my
Speaker 3: character gets very enthusiastic and that's annoying when he's enthusiastic
Speaker 3: about something, and she as dry as a bone. So
Speaker 3: I said to her, because I don't think she knew
Speaker 3: anything about, you know, my old days on the Old Show.
Speaker 3: And I said, when my character is excited about something,
Speaker 3: he's completely annoying and overpower. He wants you to be
Speaker 3: as enthusiastic as he is. So we could really have
Speaker 3: some fun with this. So we did. You know, I
Speaker 3: coached her on how much I was going to annoy
Speaker 3: her because you know my backstory and any I even
Speaker 3: pitched her a piece of comic business, which she executed
Speaker 3: just brilliantly, and we get a really nice laugh on that.
Speaker 3: Because I have these little megaphones in this little we're
Speaker 3: doing this special it's almost like a satire of a
Speaker 3: satyr in the Jewish faith. We're doing this ceremonial meal
Speaker 3: that has all these ridiculous ridiculous that has all these
Speaker 3: important you know, rich place setting a place for you know,
Speaker 3: in case Elijah shows up, we need an extra place
Speaker 3: at the table, and we wrap up the yff coach.
Speaker 3: I mean, whatever, the all these things that are part
Speaker 3: of the meal. And again, I love going to satyrs,
Speaker 3: so I'm not all I'm saying that you have to
Speaker 3: learn when you go to a satyr as a guest,
Speaker 3: you have to learn the meaning of everything. Well, we
Speaker 3: were doing that in this episode. And we had this
Speaker 3: ceremonial meal with little megaphones that you talked through and
Speaker 3: and I kept trying to force Tiggs character Reno to
Speaker 3: talk through the megaphone and she finally grabs it out
Speaker 3: of my hand and goes, no, that was funny.
Speaker 1: That was a scene.
Speaker 5: That was a scene who was coming to dinner?
Speaker 1: I forget who the the.
Speaker 3: The We never meet the person coming to the from
Speaker 3: a another Holly. Holly is standing in for the diplomat.
Speaker 3: And it really was a nice episode for kel Rex's character,
Speaker 3: the head of the War College, because we saw his
Speaker 3: vulnerability and we saw the beginning of a friendship developing
Speaker 3: between him and and Nala. So that was great, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, because he's the one who feel, you know,
Speaker 3: like we're supposed to be helping him prepare for this event,
Speaker 3: and by making fun of it a little at the end,
Speaker 3: he gets very angry and walks out. So it was
Speaker 3: it was a fun plot.
Speaker 4: Well, it's too bad that they you know, shopped it
Speaker 4: and it's I think this had at least another two
Speaker 4: seasons in it, but I got to say I really
Speaker 4: enjoyed watching it. I saw it all and the Furies
Speaker 4: episode alone was just wow, Wow, what an hour of TV.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, Look, first of all, thanks for watching it.
Speaker 3: We've all, god knows, we've all spent a lot of
Speaker 3: our lives lives in science fiction, so it's not always
Speaker 3: at the top of your list to watch more. But
Speaker 3: I appreciate you watching it, and also shows how well
Speaker 3: prepared you guys are as interviewers, which is what makes
Speaker 3: doing your show such pleasure to do. Thank you, min
Speaker 3: Thank you for doing your work.
Speaker 1: You know well, you look great.
Speaker 4: I'm really glad you had the experience to go back
Speaker 4: and play this character again and you do it so
Speaker 4: well and resting bitch face or not.
Speaker 3: Thank you. I feel grateful, you know. I feel grateful
Speaker 3: to the fan community, grateful you know, to the franchise
Speaker 3: for having been so good to me. And I'm grateful
Speaker 3: for my family, for you guys, and all the wonderful
Speaker 3: actors and friendships I've made, all the actors that I've
Speaker 3: gotten to know, the friendships I've made over the course
Speaker 3: of this thirty years have been you know, the best
Speaker 3: bonus of the of the job.
Speaker 4: It really comes down to roost, you know, as each
Speaker 4: decade passes as it were, and what a family this is,
Speaker 4: and that we're forever joined in something quite wonderful.
Speaker 1: And there's been the sixtieth year, God bless.
Speaker 3: And one quick side note for you, Connor, remember the
Speaker 3: short film we made called ben Frankly that where you're
Speaker 3: you're the history teacher and you want to pitch a
Speaker 3: movie about Benjamin Franklin. I am playing Benjamin Franklin right
Speaker 3: now in seventeen seventy six, the musical So I think
Speaker 3: of you all the time.
Speaker 1: Let me go Wonderful. Where's that being put on here?
Speaker 3: It's just in my theater club here. I do it
Speaker 3: just for joy, not for money. We rehearse for a
Speaker 3: couple of months and we do like three performances. But
Speaker 3: it's my skills up. Some of the actors are professionals,
Speaker 3: some of the miameters. It's really just for me and I'm.
Speaker 4: Seeing beautifully and it was lovely to see them bring
Speaker 4: the opera back into the Academy.
Speaker 3: I wish it hadn't been so early. It was a
Speaker 3: lot to learn for someone who doesn't read music and
Speaker 3: sings by ear, but I was happy they did that too.
Speaker 3: I thought that was really nice touch.
Speaker 5: Well, bless you mate.
Speaker 4: I love to seeing you again and it was nice
Speaker 4: to see you on the cruise just now, and we'll
Speaker 4: see you in Vegas.
Speaker 3: I hope yes you will.
Speaker 4: Okay, thank you so then thanks you love mane no noyebye.
Speaker 3: It's commos
Speaker 2: Commos, it's commis.