THE ENSEMBLE CAST :
INITIAL CASTING

pictures and interviews are not contemporaneous

CONTENTS

GLOSSARY OF TERMS AND ABBREVIATIONS THE STAR TREK QUALITY SEARCH FOR THE CAPTAIN, PART 1 THE CASTING PROCESS TIM RUSS (ROLE: TUVOK) ROBERT 'ROBBIE' DUNCAN McNEILL (ROLE: TOM PARIS) ROXANN DAWSON (ROLE: B'ELANNA TORRES) JENNIFER LIEN (ROLE: KES) GARRETT WANG (ROLE: HARRY KIM) SEARCH FOR THE CAPTAIN, PART 2 ETHAN PHILLIPS (ROLE: NEELIX) ROBERT PICARDO (ROLE: THE DOCTOR (EMH)) ROBERT BELTRAN (ROLE: CHAKOTAY) SEARCH FOR THE CAPTAIN, PART 3

GLOSSARY OF TERMS & ABBREVIATIONS
Term	Definition
dailies	All the footage shot on a particular day. The dailies are screened the following morning, on [Star Trek Voyager] by the producers, Peter Lauritson, the supervising editor J.P. Farrell and others. Screening the dailies followed a set pattern every morning: Berman would comment, and "J. P." would take notes and later give them to Bob Lederman and Tom Benko, who would then begin editing (assembling) the footage into scenes.
producers / executive producers	Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor
read / read for	audition for an acting part, almost always by reading the would-be role from a part of the script (a scene or part of a scene) pre-selected by those carrying out the casting
sides	just the pages with the relevant scene, or part of a scene, required for the audition, as opposed to the whole script
prosthetic / appliance / prosthetic appliance	Rubber-based make-up created to form a mask or part-mask that goes over the head and/or face and/or body. Ethan Phillips as Neelix wears a prosthetic appliance on his face and head, and the appliance worn by Roxann Dawson as Torres is what gives her her half-Klingon forehead ridges.
the Studio	Paramount Pictures; Rick Berman's two bosses at Paramount - there are Tom Mazza and above him boss Kerry McCluggage.

THE STAR TREK QUALITY

Rick Berman: "There is something very specific and unique about acting on Star Trek. This is true for our cast regulars as well as for our guest stars. Star Trek is not contemporary. It's a period piece. And even though it's a period piece in the future as opposed to a period piece in the past, it still necessitates a certain style of acting and of writing that is not contemporary. It's not necessarily mannered like something that would take place in a previous century, but it's probably closer to that than it is to contemporary.
      There are many actors who are wonderful actors, gifted actors. But to play a character, to play a Starfleet officer in the twenty-fourth century is very difficult for them. They've got a "street" quality about them. They've got a very American twentieth-century quality about them. They'll have a regional quality about them, or a Southern accent, or they'll have a New York accent or a Chicago accent. They will have certain qualities about them that's very contemporary, that just doesn't work when you're trying to define this rather stylised, somewhat indefinable quality that makes somebody "work" as someone who lives in the future. One of the first things that destroys futurist science fiction for me, whether it be movies or other television series, is when you see actors who are obviously people from the 1990s America. We're always looking for people who have a somewhat indefinable characteristic of not being like that. And it's hard.
      It was long and difficult when we were casting Patrick Stewart (for [TNG]) and Avery Brooks (for [DS9]), too. This one was maybe a bit longer, maybe a bit more difficult than either one of those."

SEARCH FOR THE CAPTAIN, PART 1

There were other continuing roles to cast, but it was the captain who was the hot topic of conversation whenever the subject of [Star Trek Voyager] casting came up, but it would be the part of the captain that would be filled last, and then only after principal photography had already started.

The role of captain was a very high-stakes piece of casting. There was enormous pressure to find the "right" person to follow in the footsteps of Kirk, Picard and Sisko. If the casting did not prove a 'hit' with viewers, and a strong 'hit' at that, Paramount's investment would be in serious jeopardy. In addition, [Star Trek Voyager] was the centrepiece of programming for the launch of Paramount's new network UPN, which added to the pressure. In addition:

Michael Piller: "The available pool of talent who are willing to commit to do a series that's probably going to run for seven years is not as deep as you might think. There are a lot of wonderful actors and actresses who don't want to do episodic television for seven years."

Furthermore, [Star Trek Voyager] would be the first starship to have a series built around it since the Enterprise-D in [TNG]. Who sits in the captain's chair would be crucial to the series' success. Rick Berman, Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor knew they could find the right woman, but Paramount boss Tom Mazza and his boss Kerry McCluggage had grave concerns. These concerns were such that to head off these concerns from as early a stage as possible, the producers' pitch went along the lines of: "If we find the right person and it happens to be a woman, can we cast her?" Paramount insisted, via a request-cum-command, that men be auditioned too. The search began and continued through June, July and into August, with 15th August 1994 being the scheduled start date (later put back).

Michael Piller: "Every available actress for this part was read or spoken with. Everywhere. Anybody. We could not find somebody that all of us agreed on."

They could not find someone that all agreed on either amongst themselves, or between the three producers and the Studio executives. The dozens of possibilities considered included Blythe Danner, Linda Hamilton, Patsy Kensit, Kate Mulgrew, Susan Gibney and - among the men - Nigel Havers of 'Chariots of Fire' fame.

Rick Berman: "Michael, Jeri, and I felt that unless somebody had a really strong negative feeling, we were open to pretty much anybody that would attract two of us. The only people we had to convince were one or two of the Paramount executives (Mazza and McCluggage) who were gonna be involved in approving our selection. The actors in the beginning that they were not crazy about I believed they were right. They were actors that none of us felt all that strongly about to fight for. They (the Paramount executives) wanted, they were maybe more interested than we were in a "name". They were maybe more interested than we were in a "babe" - in an attractive, sexy woman."

pictures from auditions:

THE CASTING PROCESS

Piller and Taylor were virtually sequestered with casting sessions throughout June, July and August. The routine was fairly straightforward - the initial screening of actors for the pilot was done by the independent casting agency of Nan Dutton & Associates, along with Kathryn Eisenstein and Libby Goldstein for Paramount. All who 'survived' this initial round were then scheduled for a reading with Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor. Those who made it through that step were called back for a session that included Rick Berman. If the actor successfully went through that round, there was a third callback for a reading in front of the casting people, the producers, Kerry McCluggage and Tom Mazza representing the Studio, plus executives from the United Paramount Network.

TIM RUSS (ROLE: TUVOK)

One of the first actors to sail through this process was Tim Russ. The actor was already known and well-liked in the Star Trek universe. He was nearly cast as Geordi La Forge in [TNG] some eight years previously, but that role went instead to LeVar Burton (who has a cameo role in [#100 Timeless]).

Rick Berman: Tim Russ was the first runner-up for the role of Geordi eight years ago, and I always liked Tim. I liked his acting, I liked his voice, I liked his looks. So we were always giving him roles. There was really no role for him in [DS9], but we gave him roles on [TNG] as a guest star (as Devor in [TNG: Starship Mine]). And we gave him roles as a guest star on [DS9] (as T'Kar, a Klingon mercenary in [DS9: Season 2: Invasive Procedures] and later as mirror Tuvok in [DS9: Through The Looking Glass]). I gave him a role in the movie [Star Trek VII: Generations] on the Enterprise-B with Kirk and that gang. And then finally we got an opportunity to put him into a role on [Star Trek Voyager]. He's a wonderful actor."

See also Behind-the-scenes: Tim Russ.

Tim Russ about auditions: "I always equate this business to standing in line (i.e. queueing) at a movie theatre and not knowing how close you are to the doors. You know you're in line, but you don't know how many people are ahead of you. So you wait. If you get out of line you're dead. If you choose something else to do you're not ever going to get there. If you stay in line, and stay with it, you may get there. In some cases the movie may be sold out once you get right up to the door. In that case you've got to wait until the next movie. You can do anything you want while you wait, but the one thing you must never do is get out of the line."

ROBERT 'ROBBIE' DUNCAN McNEILL (ROLE: TOM PARIS)

Another actor called in for an early reading was also no stranger to the producers: Robert Duncan McNeill (on the set he is called Robbie). He had portrayed Nicholas 'Nick' Locarno in [TNG: Season 5: The First Duty]. The call could not have come at a better time for McNeill personally. In that June of 1994 he was living in a tiny apartment in New York City, doing a play in a small non-profit, off-Broadway theatre, and earning just $300 a week and at that time was broke. His wife had just had their second child, a son, that April and was staying in Connecticut with her family because they had no money for furniture. McNeill was sleeping on the floor. The play was getting great reviews, but not bringing in enough money to live on. At the end of June his agent called and said he needed to go to a casting office and get videotaped for a possible Star Trek part.

The screenshot is from [#130 Pathfinder]. This picture of Tom Paris that sits on the desk of his father, Admiral Paris, shows Paris as a younger man because it cleverly uses a shot from [TNG: Season 5: The First Duty] in which Robert Duncan McNeill plays Nick Locarno, a Starfleet cadet.

Robbie McNeill: "They faxed me the "sides", just the pages of the scene they wanted me to do. I didn't get to see the whole script, just the sides. No character breakdown or anything. For some reason I thought it was for [TNG] or something. I didn't know about [Star Trek Voyager]. Going on tape is a long shot because you don't usually get anything from tape. So I didn't really work on it very much. When I got to the casting office the director told me it was for a regular in a new Star Trek series, and that they had requested me. Oops. I said, "Uhhhh, I think it's best that I don't read for you right now, because I didn't prepare." This was on a Friday. "Let me take this home over the weekend and really learn it, and come back in here on Monday. Can we do that?"

The casting director agreed. McNeill spent the weekend studying the scene, returned to the office Monday, and went on tape. At the end of that week his agent called and said the producers wanted to do a test deal.

Robbie McNeill: On television shows they usually audition lots of people, and then pick two or three to test with the Studio people. It was very exciting for me because I knew I'd made the cut. Especially under the circumstances, because I had no money, and was getting nowhere with other auditions in New York. So when Star Trek said they wanted to do a test deal I was thrilled."

A couple of weeks went by, and McNeill was still doing the play. Then he got a call saying the test was for the following week. They would fly him out and back. Naturally McNeill was thrilled but the timing was bad for him - it meant he would miss one or maybe two performances of his play. The problem was that there were no understudies for his role (an understudy learns a character's part, more if the parts are minor, and appears if the main actor is unavailable). If McNeill left, even for a day, the play would be forced to close, and no one would get paid. He asked if the audition date could be changed but the answer was no. He talked it over with his fellow-actors at the theatre, his agent and his wife. McNeill finally told his agent to call and say he could not make the date because he was committed to the play. The producers would have to understand that if the situation were reversed, and he had a commitment to Star Trek and walked away, that would not be the right thing to do.

Robbie McNeill: "So I took a really big risk and said "no," in favour of my $300-a-week job. But I felt like it would be wrong to leave, because it would force the play to close, and put everybody there out of work."

McNeill was lucky. His agent called and said the test would be rescheduled for the day after his play closed. When he arrived in Los Angeles it was a Sunday evening, for the test at noon the next day. He felt very nervous - he had suddenly realised the stakes involved. On Monday morning he looked through his clothes and his heart sank - he had nothing presentable to wear. He took a deep breath, and decided to go to a shopping mall and buy some new clothes to wear for the test. He had no ready cash but he did have a credit card whose credit limit he had not yet reached. McNeill reasoned that if he did not get the part he could return the clothes but if he got the part he would keep the purchases. At noon he showed up at the Cooper Building in his brand new clothes and discovered there were ten other men reading for the same part. In conversation with one of them he learned he was the only one actually testing.

Robbie McNeill: "I thought it meant one of two things. Either they have decided this test is a waste of time but they flew me out here so they're gonna go through the motions. Or they haven't found anybody else but me to test, so they're still looking in case I don't work out."

He was indeed the only one testing, and was asked to go in the room (the same one used for production meetings) and read through the scene once as the warm-up before the Studio people arrived. This had never happened to him before, to be the only one testing. In fact, it rarely happens in the business because the producers usually want several options for the Studio to choose from. When McNeill went in to warm-up read with Berman, Piller and Taylor, he still had a short beard he was wearing for the play. Berman asked if he always wore a beard. Robbie said no, only for the play he had been in. Berman wanted him to shave off the beard because it was hard to picture how McNeill would look for the part. McNeill was willing but he did not have a razor.

Robbie McNeill: "I went in and did my warm-up read, and thought I fell flat on my face. I knew the lines cold, but for some reason I kept having to look at the page. I was so nervous. So I walked outside, and I just knew they were thinking, "Boy, have we made a big mistake." And I'm thinking, "I'm the only one testing and look what I just did in front of these people. They don't like me with a beard, and I just blew the scene."

Outside, in the hallway, he caught his breath and thought, "Okay, that was just the warm-up. It's not too late." Then Michael Piller came out, and said he had a razor in his office. McNeill followed Piller to the Hart Building and shaved off the offending beard, all the while mentally beating himself up and thinking that he could not blow the reading again. Clean-shaven and back in the Cooper Building, McNeill realised he was okay. Apparently he had needed to release his nervous energy during the warm-up. In any case, he went in to read for the two Paramount bosses Tom Mazza and Kerry McCluggage, and "just had a great time." McNeill felt the reading had gone well and that he had won the role. Several hours later he got a telephone call saying the role of Tom Paris was his. (He could keep his new clothes!) After more than ten years of working in the trade, Robert Duncan McNeill finally had a steady job.

ROXANN DAWSON (ROLE: B'ELANNA TORRES)

Like McNeill and Russ, Roxann Dawson (Biggs-Dawson as she was then) was also an early choice for a role. For her, the casting process would be straightforward and easy - one audition and two callbacks.

Roxann Dawson: "I was very interested in the part, mostly because it shoots in L. A. and it would be nice to stay home and have a life and see my dogs and my husband. I had never done a science-fiction show, didn't know anything about Star Trek. The first time I saw an episode was the night before my test."

She became an avid Star Trek fan immediately, even before she knew she had landed the role of B'Elanna Torres. She was amazed at the subject matter covered in Star Trek episodes, and could not believe she had lived her life on the planet oblivious to what Star Trek was doing. Somewhere she had formed the impression that Star Trek shows were not rooted in anything real.

Roxann Dawson about Star Trek: "I thought of Star Trek as more of a cartoon before I got involved and then I realised, 'My God, it's almost like these are the myths of our times. I realised there was all this depth here. It was really shocking to me. I didn't realize that I missed so much of this lore. From the moment I got the role, I would watch [TNG] every night, and if I missed it, I'd tape it. I just became completely taken by these shows. .... Actually I think the subject matter in the show is much more real and pertinent than most of the other things that are on television. I think it's the modern mythology of our time. I think it deals with subject matter in an elevated kind of way that enables us to look at it with a new perspective, and examine everyday moral and ethical decisions and choices that we have to make, but in a way that allows us to be a little bit removed from them, so we can see it with more objectivity."

Roxann Dawson about auditioning the role: "It was one of the easier jobs I've ever gotten. I know that it hasn't been like that for other people in the past on other shows or on this one here, but I just went in for my first audition and I was one of the first people to read. I didn't hear for a couple of months and then I went back and they gave it to me. It wasn't full of all this kind of angst. If I had known all the implications, I might have been more nervous and unable to do the work I needed. I thought it was just another show. I didn't know what I was stepping into at the time."

JENNIFER LIEN (ROLE: KES)

Another early selection in the casting process was Jennifer Lien. Aged nineteen, she would be the youngest member of the cast. Her age was precisely what intrigued the producers. They wanted a young woman who looked somewhat childlike and fragile, to fit the profile of an alien with a nine-year life span. Lien was new to Star Trek, but not a newcomer to acting. By age thirteen she was doing Shakespeare and musical theatre, and guest-starring on Oprah Winfrey's 'Brewster Place'. At sixteen, she moved to New York for a continuing role in the soap opera 'Another World'. (Roxann Dawson also had a role in that soap opera, but not at the same time as Lien.) By the time Lien's agent called and asked her to audition for the part of Kes, she was definitely a professional. The call changed her life - at least for a while - because she had planned to leave the next morning for New York, to appear in a short film.

GARRETT WANG (ROLE: HARRY KIM)

Garrett Wang's first [Star Trek Voyager] audition was 1st July 1994. It was almost his last. Although Wang had been acting for seven years, he had only been auditioning professionally for about the previous two. He had just landed what he felt was a great part in an independent feature film when he received the call to read (audition) for [Star Trek Voyager]. His mind was on the feature, not television, so when he went to read for Nan Dutton (the regular Star Trek casting director is June Lowry-Johnson but she was away on maternity leave at the time), he was not at all prepared. Dutton was furious. After a severe tongue-lashing, she sent Wang home to study his sides. It took five callbacks before he made it to the stage where he read for the Paramount bosses Kerry McCluggage and Tom Mazza. He did the read and left with lots of notes, but without the part. Astonishingly, he was called back a sixth time. Again he was told he did not get the part, but that he was still in the running. By that time he was beginning to ask himself if he really needed the grief. A week later Wang was called back again. This time he felt he had nothing to lose. He read the scene the way he believed it should be done, and left the Cooper Building. That was on 6th August, and on the next day his agent called and told him he had the part.

Wang is a fan of [TOS]. What Wang found amazing at first was getting used to the fervour of the Star Trek fans.

SEARCH FOR THE CAPTAIN, PART 2

Finally, two captain candidates emerged whom all three executive producers had good feelings about. One was Susan Gibney, whom Rick Berman was particularly fond of. She appeared as a guest-star in [TNG] and in [DS9]. But although the Paramount Studio executives, Tom Mazza and his boss Kerry McCluggage, agreed she was good they felt she was too young for the role. See TIDBIT STORAGE LOCKER: How Susan Gibney almost played Captain Janeway. Mazza and McCluggage also rejected the second actress, obliging the producers to go back to square one and start the search for an actress or actor to play the captain all over again.

It was about that time that Kate Mulgrew came in to read for the role (pictured at audition). Her acting credentials were impressive: she was a veteran of both theatre and film, and was well versed in episodic television. She had a reputation for being a hard-working professional, easy to get along with, and was well thought of by other cast members and production crews alike. The producers liked her, but in view of the resistance they were experiencing from the Studio who still wanted others including men to be auditioned, they opted to continue the search. For Kate Mulgrew, it was a heavy personal disappointment, for she needed the work, indeed she needed steady work, had had to put her house up for sale, and life as a working actor had been a struggle for a number of years. But Mulgrew was not about to leave the profession. After the audition she thought, "Well, if they don't pick me, it's their loss."

ETHAN PHILLIPS (ROLE: NEELIX)

When Ethan Phillips got the call from his agent telling him about the [Star Trek Voyager] audition, he was living in New York, but attending the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. Phillips was already known at that time as having impressive experience on the stage, in feature films and in television. He is no stranger to episodic television, having spent five years playing Pete Downey in the hit USA sitcom 'Benson'. And he was already known to Star Trek, having played a Ferengi in [TNG: Menage à Troi] (pictured, with Lwaxana Troi played by Majel Barrett-Roddenberry). (Later he would play the Talaxian, Neelix, disguised as a Ferengi in [#47 False Profits] and later still another Ferengi in [Enterprise: Acquisition].) Phillips flew back to New York on a Thursday, picked up the sides, and looked over the scene that night. On the Friday morning he went into the casting office, read for the part of Neelix - on tape - and left.

Ethan Phillips: "I can't tell you the number of times I've read for a series on tape in New York, and nothing comes of it. There's an old actor's joke in New York that the tape always disappears somewhere between here and L.A. There's probably some huge bar in Kansas that's filled with actors' audition tapes. So I just dropped it. It was just one of many I go in on."

The next day the [Star Trek Voyager] casting office called and asked Phillips to read for the part of Doc Zimmerman (the holographic doctor; the name Doc Zimmerman would remain only in the scripts for Season 1 and did not occur in dialogue), also on tape, and so the following week he wentin and read again, this time for Zimmerman. About a week later his agent called from L.A. and said the producers wanted him to fly to California and test for the role. The agent did not know which role he would be testing for. Two days later his agent called again and confirmed that the test would be for the part of Neelix. There was now serious interest in him, so Phillips put additional effort into studying for the audition. At the same time, he did not want to change anything he had done on the tape. He knew that the reason the producers wanted to see him was because they were happy with what they saw on tape and probably did not want any adjustments at that point. Phillips flew to L.A., hired an acting coach named John Kirby (whom Phillips regards as one of the best acting coaches in the city) and worked on the scene. When he went in for the read, there was a woman sitting next to him who was auditioning for the part of captain. She asked if he had seen the pictures of what the producers were planning for Neelix. In that way, Phillips discovered that he was auditioning for "a prosthetic guy". Until then, he was still thinking that the Neelix character probably looked like Phillips in a Starfleet uniform.

Ethan Phillips: "But it didn't affect the audition. I was nervous and I read the scene. They smiled and seemed to like what I was doing. I went back out and there were three other actors there at the time. Two testing and one reading. A gentleman from England and another guy. They read, then the producers told us all we could go and they told the English guy to stay. So I knew it was all over. I got back to New York, and the next night my agent called and said they wanted to see me again the next Monday. I had these plans I'd been working on for months and it would be really tough to cancel them. He got back to me later and said never mind, it wasn't necessary. They don't need to see you again. Then I really knew it was over. They didn't like me. I knew they had five days to pick up the option.^* On the fifth day I called my agent and said, "What's going on?" He said, "Well, you're still very much in the game. It's between you and Robert Picardo for the role of Neelix." I didn't know Bob was reading for the role. Bob and I have gone up against each other for parts for twenty years. Sometimes he gets them; sometimes I get them. I think he has a little more cachet in the industry than I do, so that depressed me. At 3:30 P.M. Los Angeles time, 6:30 New York time, I called back once more to see if he'd heard anything, and my agent said, "I don't know, but I have it from a source at Paramount that the role could be yours." Then he got a phone call so he put me on hold. When he came back he said the call was Business Affairs, and that I had the role."

The producers wanted Phillips back in Los Angeles the very next day, Tuesday 9th August. He then spent that week doing make-up and wardrobe tests. Since the producers still had not cast the captain, he flew back to New York to pack and move out to Los Angeles although he would not return there until 30th August.

Ethan Phillips: "And it was great, because, you know, sometimes, you just work so hard, and it doesn't happen. You don't get the part."

^*According to Screen Actors Guild rules, if an actor tests well, the producers have five days to confirm the deal. During that time, the actor is not allowed to sign with anyone else.

Perhaps Phillips was destined to play the role of Neelix, whose duties aboard Voyager include being in charge of the wardroom (referred to as the messhall in the series), and cooking for the crew. He did, after all, have on-the-job-training for the part some years earlier. At age sixteen, Phillips spent a year traveling around the world as a crewman aboard a merchant marine vessel working in the officers' wardroom.

Phillips has long been a fan of Star Trek and to win the part of Neelix was beyond his wildest dreams.

Ethan Phillips about Star Trek: "I never saw [TOS] when it was first on because I was in high school, and then in college. I was very busy growing my hair, reading Proust, and all that. .... When I was at Cornell, sharing a house with eight other grad students, somehow we started this ritual of watching the original Star Trek. We were just blown away by this show. We would crowd around this television .... I still get chills thinking about how powerful that series was. I was a drama student; everybody else was studying art, political science, biology. But the show spoke to all of us, no matter what our fields of endeavour were. We all responded to it. It was the most exciting moment I've ever had in television except maybe when I was a child and saw that CBS show 'Panic' in 1957 and it scared the hell out of me. We were all very much into "theatuh." I found myself saying, "Man, if this stuff is going on in television, gcesus that's a lot more interesting than the plays we're doing here!" For me it validated the whole idea of going into television as an actor. You can tell stories that really affect people. Reach out to people. It validated the medium of television in a way that I don't think any other series could have done at the time. It was wonderful. And now to find myself twenty years later on the show is bizarre, and wild, and fantastic."

ROBERT PICARDO (ROLE: THE DOCTOR (EMH))

In late July 1994, Robert Picardo was getting set to open a play at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. He was heavily involved in several other projects as well, and the last thing he had in mind was auditioning for more work. Then he received the [Star Trek Voyager] pilot script from his agent, who suggested he read for the Zimmerman role. Picardo was not very knowledgeable about Star Trek, and did not know its history or the traditionally important role that non-human characters have always played. Without the benefit of that background, he looked at the script, noticed Zimmerman had a rather small part in the pilot, and decided the role did not look very interesting - he would just be playing a humourless guy. He was ready to say, "Thank you, but no thank you," until he spoke with a friend who was auditioning for the part of Janeway. Having guest-starred on [DS9], she gave him an enthusiastic synopsis and description of Star Trek and urged him to read for the part.

Robert Picardo: "So at her behest I stayed up late that night and read the script. I fell in love with the part of Neelix, because Neelix is so charming in the pilot. He was described as humanoid, but that didn't scare me away, because I'd worn appliances several times before. I told my agent I wanted to read for Neelix. The producers said physically I wasn't right for the part. They wanted someone a bit shorter, maybe on the stout side."

The producers were familiar with Picardo's work and liked him enough as an actor that they indulged his request. He read for Neelix, felt he was successful, and was optimistic until he found out a day or two later that he had failed to get the part. He thought, "Well, okay. It's over." Then his agent called and told him the producers really liked him, and wanted him to reconsider reading for the Doc Zimmerman role. Picardo looked at the part again, but still didn't see the potential. He also spoke to other friends about Star Trek, and was told how the producers develop the roles of all the cast members equally. That did it for him and he agreed to read for the part of Zimmerman.

Robert Picardo: "I was impressed enough with the quality of the script and all of the producers and people I'd met who were attached to the production. And I'd heard such great things about what a nice family they were to work for, by friends who had made guest appearances on the show, so I decided to pursue it."

Because he had already read for the producers, albeit for the role of Neelix, Picardo was required only to read once for the part of the Doctor, being fast-tracked through the casting process so that when he read for the part of the Doctor it was before the producers, Studio and network executives.

Robert Picardo: "Then it was quite a wonderful surprise to find that the actor who'd been cast in the role of Neelix was an old friend of mine (Ethan Phillips) whom I greatly admire. Now I have the pleasure of working with him."

ROBERT BELTRAN (ROLE: CHAKOTAY)

Being cast as Chakotay for [Star Trek Voyager] was one of the least painful casting processes that Robert Beltran had ever experienced. At first, he was indifferent to the idea of playing Chakotay, or any role, in a Star Trek series. His was also one of the last roles cast.

Robert Beltran: "I was never a science-fiction fan, but I told my agent okay. I felt neutral about the audition, didn't much care one way or the other. I went in the first time and wasn't really trying to get the part. They asked to see me again, said thev wanted to see more of an edge to the character. I thought okay, I'll give them a little more edge. After I'd read the two scenes the second time, Michael Piller said do it again, but pretend like this guy is the villain of the piece. Right away I understood what was lacking in the previous readings, and it made me relax more and have more fun with the character."

The producers were apparently pleased with Beltran's response to Piller's suggestion. After the second run-through, he was told he would be notified when to come back to read for the Studio.

Robert Beltran about Star Trek: "I was not a big Star Trek fan at all. In fact, I was not a science-fiction fan. I only got into it while I was preparing to audition for this role. And then I realized what a lot of people had been talking about. People in my family, my friends, people that I had a lot of respect for, seemed to be in love with this show. I never could figure it out until I really got into it and then I realised it's the stories, it's the writing, and that's the main thing. People have their theories about the success of Star Trek: Well, it's because humanity is seen in a very positive light or it speaks about the human condition in a very scooby-dooby way and all this. I just think it's good stories."

SEARCH FOR THE CAPTAIN, PART 3

Jeri Taylor: "The search for the captain was a long and difficult one. This is the person that gets the white-hot glare of publicity as the first female ever to head one of the Star Trek series and she had to be just right. We considered, auditioned, looked at tapes of what seemed like every actress between the ages of probably thirty and fifty-five in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Canada, London and Europe. We had several people we were happy with. Some of the Studio executives didn't necessarily share our feelings. Finally, with days to go, we were made aware that Geneviève Bujoid was interested and we were ecstatic. So we went ahead with that and thought, 'Wow, we've got it.'"

On paper, at least, Bujold seemed to solve everyone's objections: she was attractive, the right age, and an Academy Award-winning actress, had name recognition and had a pleasing voice and accent (her accent is French Canadian), she was experienced, strong, intelligent, charismatic. She had impressive credentials in feature films.....but she had never done episodic television. She was offered the role without even reading a scene in deference to her career stature. The search was at last over. Suddenly everyone was optimistic, enthusiastic even. Everyone, that is, except Rick Berman. He told her: "I want to play a major devil's advocate here to you." and explained in painful detail what a nightmare episodic television is - up at 5:00 A.M. on Mondays and Tuesdays, working till 1:00 A.M. on Thursdays and Fridays, almost no rehearsal time, and instead of doing one or two pages of script a day like in feature films she would be doing seven or eight, never knowing her directors and having to work with them whether she liked them or not. Bujold went home to Malibu to talk with her children and to discuss it over the weekend. She called Berman first thing on the Monday morning and she said, "Reek, Reek, I have an answer for you. And the answer is Oui."

On the second day of shooting, Bujold decided to quit. See STARTING THE SERIES: The first captain, Bujold.

Jeri Taylor (continues directly after her quotation above): "....and, of course, when that (Bujold as captain) didn't work out it was distressing for everybody. I am deeply grateful to her that she did this after a day and a half instead of after six weeks or two months, because that would have destroyed us. She did what she knew in her heart was right, which is the way she functions as a person and as an actress, and she was right."

The reason for Bujoid's departure was attributed to "the rigors of episodic television", which were more than she was accustomed to. But there is also evidence that she was interpreting the role differently from the way the producers and director Rick Kolbe saw it.

Rick Berman: "Every reason she gave us (for quitting) was one I had warned her about. She really didn't have a clue. It's (episodic television) just an entirely different style of plying her trade."

With shooting already under way, the producers needed to find a new actress, and quickly. They revisited many of their previous candidates who had done well in the auditions. Kate Mulgrew was looked at a third time, and she and four other actresses were (re-)auditioned, with Mulgrew reading a scene comprising Janeway and Tuvok. G&A says that Mulgrew "had been sidelined by a cold on a previous audition" but the cold and the sidelining is not mentioned in Poe. I might be misinterpreting G&A in that "sidelining" may have a different nuance in American English to British English, but Mulgrew was never politely shelved (or even impolitely shelved), and it seems implausible in retrospect considering (a) that she was shortlisted and was one of five called back to make the ultimate decision on casting following Bujold's departure, (b) Rick Berman: "We went back to the drawing board and the first runner-up had always been Kate Mulgrew."

Kate Mulgrew: "It was a scene with Tuvok, a very comfortable familiar scene which I liked very much, when I get everybody lost in the Delta Quadrant, her wonderful monologue, "We're lost, in an uncharted part of the galaxy...." ......you do a knock-out one by one. We (she and the other actresses) were all there at the end of the day. Go figure. Nobody could conclude who had won this, so we went home. It was Yom Kippur. The town shuts down, as you know, for this high Jewish holiday and I gave it up. I just thought, "Well, probably not. Forward and onward." And it meant very little to me. However, when I got home at the end of the second day of the holiday, I was greeted by my sons who screamed at me to answer, to play my answering machine, and he was on it. He said: "Rick Berman. Just wanted to welcome you aboard, Captain." "

Mulgrew is forgetting that her monologue "We're lost, in an uncharted part of the galaxy" actually occurs in a scene (the pilot's final scene) on the bridge with a number of the newly-combined crew present - all the ensemble cast except the Doctor and with Ayala (unnamed in that story).

Jeri Taylor: "The third time she (Kate Mulgrew) absolutely nailed the part. She was so right and in all of her work she has continued to validate that choice. (After praising Bujold as a features actress) But television is a fast-paced business. It doesn't stop for anything or anyone. In retrospect, you need someone exactly like Kate Mulgrew, who is a seasoned, veteran performer, who understands the rig ors, who understands the discipline required, who has the incredible ability to focus, to shut out all the distractions and just do her work."

Kate Mulgrew, asked how it feels to play the first lead female captain in Star Trek: "Well, after a few alterations to my stretch uniform, minor changes in my hair, it feels absolutely terrific. I'd say I average fifteen-, sixteen-, eighteen-hour workdays and I'm aware that the work schedule will continue to be difficult, but I think the price is worth it. It's a wonderful role, and I'm very grateful to have it."

And Mulgrew got to keep her house.

See also KATE MULGREW INDEX: Interview (the audition, getting the role, about the role).