BEHIND-THE-SCENES : [#146 & 147 UNIMATRIX ZERO]

REPRISING THE ROLE OF THE BORG QUEEN

I watched a little bit of [#109 and #110 Dark Frontier] just to remind myself of speech patterns and things but didn't find it too difficult to get back into her. This time, though, it feels like there's a more emotional side to her. She's very aggressive. She's obsessed with finding out where the weak spot in the Borg society is.

Susanna Thompson, who plays the Borg Queen in [#146 and #147 Unimatrix Zero] and the earlier [#109 and #110 Dark Frontier]

Brannon Braga, executive producer

We thought that it was mandatory to see the Borg Queen in this show, and we ended up coming up with some great stuff for her, particularly in the second hour, which gives her character a slightly different dimension in that she starts to become more desperate and unravelled at the prospect of her Collective turning into chaos. It was a great challenge for her (Susanna Thompson). Any time someone's playing the same character you try to give them new dimensions, not only for the actor but for the audience. I think she enjoyed it very much. The resistance is taking control and Janeway, her old nemesis, is involved. The Queen does some pretty nasty things in Part Two, and Susanna did a great job.

Susanna Thompson: Brannon (Braga) came in after I'd already filmed quite a bit and said: "You know, she's a different Borg Queen." and I said: "No, I didn't realise that!" Then he said: "Oh, well, maybe she's not!" Brannon Braga: I don't think that I ever meant she was a different Queen. The end of [#109 and #110 Dark Frontier] was ambiguous; it's never clear that she was killed even though her ship is destroyed. Even if she was killed they probably used a special genetic template to reconstitute a new Queen, so she was different in that regard, but I don't think that her character is all that different, although she does become more emotionally unglued as she begins to lose control of the situation. right: Susanna Thompson, who plays the Borg Queen in [#109 and #110 Dark Frontier] and [#146 and #147 Unimatrix Zero]; screenshot from [#109 and #110 Dark Frontier]

[#109 and #110 Dark Frontier]

The main problem for the actress, on [#109 and #110 Dark Frontier] and [#146 and #147 Unimatrix Zero], was the contact lenses she was required to wear. The following paragraph is from the interview with Susanna Thompson reported in the behind-the-scenes article on [#109 and #110 Dark Frontier]: It's really not fair for someone to put on contact lenses that have metal in them and expect that their eyes will survive the type of day of shooting that they ask of you. So I told them I just really needed to have it paced. And they were pretty good at limiting the days, the hours, but still they were always very long days.

Michael Westmore, make-up designer and supervisor: Hard mirrored lenses are never comfortable. We actually hired an eye technician whose only job was to put those lenses in and take them out, from the time Susanna walked on set until she wrapped at night. They had soothing eye drops and desensitizing eye drops and all kinds of things to make everything work, and it was their responsibility to make sure she didn't hurt her eyes or rub them and that the show didn't keep shooting too long, because there's a limit. You're only supposed to leave them in for a maximum of about three hours and then take them out, but with Susanna it got to the point where she really couldn't tolerate them, so they had to come out after every scene until the camera was ready to roll again.

Susanna Thompson: I think it's like childbirth, even though I have not had children. You forget about the pain! I knew from last time what workd and didn't work for me, and my manager and I discussed some of those things with the Star Trek people and we all agreed it could be less painful, and it has been. Certain issues were addressed, like how long a day we could shoot, and I allowed myself to accept it all a little bit more. Last time, so much was coming at me at the very last minute - the costume, the make-up, the script - and the hours were unbelieveable! This time they scheduled me on a Friday, gave me a weekend, and scheduled me on a Monday. I can keep the lenses in maybe 15, 20 minutes at a shot, and I realised there's no way that my eyes can handle consecutive days. Even so, by the last hour or two I was really ready to get out of everything.

Susanna Thompson: This time the hair stylist didn't put in as many hairpins and she didn't slick it down so tough and hard, and it worked beautifully. I realised if it's painful before you put the head on, then it's going to be painful the whole day. So the hairdressers were very conscious of that, and I appreciated it.

Michael Westmore, make-up designer and supervisor, on the rest of the Borg Queen make-up: Basically it's a match to what we did before. A little adjustment to it was that we accentuated the front of her throat a little bit where there's the illusion of a tube running down it.

[#146 and #147 Unimatrix Zero]

Susanna Thompson: I personally had one of the worst experiences as an actor. I could not get the technobabble into my head. For me it was horrible, but everybody was understanding. They're a great group of people over there. They've all worked with this stuff on a regular basis and for some reason I had had very very little sleep, but those are all excuses. It just wouldn't stick into my brain. Then everything else ran smoothly the next couple of days.

[#146 and #147 Unimatrix Zero]

Susanna Thompson: I thought we did a lovely job with it (Part One), I really did. In particular, I just loved those gory head scenes! They were filmed very nicely. To tell you the truth, I was more impressed with that first episode than with the previous two-parter I had done (i.e. [#109 and #110 Dark Frontier]), so I'm hoping that this Part Two will feel the same for me. She (the Borg Queen) never quite cracked up but she was heading there. I think it is very very hard to make sure that you maintain that machine-like mechanism in filtering all the thoughts and being the brain for the whole Collective, and yet still showing organic bits, bits of humanity, coming through.

Mike Vejar, directing [#139 Child's Play]

Allan Kroeker, who has directed several [Star Trek Voyager] episodes, and directed [Unimatrix One, Part One], had to withdraw for family reasons and was thus unable to direct Part Two. Mike Vejar, who, like Kroeker, has directed numerous [Star Trek Voyager] episodes, directed Part Two. Susanna Thompson: It actually gave me a little bit more time for vacationing before I showed up! Mike was absolutely great. Everybody has a different style. He observes a little bit more slowly and then as we start to work on it he may see something else that really starts to spark something for him and then he goes with that. Quite often he was right there watching and not even looking at the monitor, and I appreciate that kind of attention from a director. Allan was the same in many, many ways. He and I had developed so much together in that first part that I really wanted his hand to be there for the second part, but Mike did a great job.