Robert Duncan McNeill Talks 'Body And Soul' & Voyager Ending

Over at Fandom, Anna L. Kaplan has put up an interview with Robert Duncan McNeill, who of course stars as Tom Paris on Voyager. In the interview, McNeill talks about the upcoming episode 'Body and Soul', which he directed, and of course also provides his opinion on the show's end.

Talking about 'Body and Soul', McNeill says that it might well turn out to be a Voyager classic. ""I think it's going to be one of the couple of episodes that's going to be a classic from our show. It's really that strong. They are bumping it up and pushing it for November sweeps, trying to finish it up and get it ready for Nov. 15. It was a broad comedy, which we don't often do. We were as successful as Star Trek has ever been with a comedy like that. It's funny. It's fast-paced. It's entertaining. I think for the fans who really watch the show a lot, they will certainly get more out of it than people who don't know the show. But even if you don't know the show, you still get the humor and the spirit, and it's still very entertaining."

Continuing to talk about some recent developments on Voyager, including the wedding between Paris and Torres, McNeill also moves on the end of the series, which he believes will have the ship coming home. "It seems like we are going to get back. That seems to be the consensus. But how and when, I do not know. If it were my vote, I would say the very last possible moment, I think, would be a nice way to end it. But I have no idea, honestly. My feeling is, it would be much more interesting to stay in our journey, get home, and leave it to the audience's imagination and characters' imagination of what happens back home. Maybe we'll do that in a movie some day."

Continuing about this, McNeill says, ""For the series, we started by getting lost, and it would be nice to end it with the very last episode getting us home. Carry the whole series, start to finish, that way. It seems to be the theme of our show. We're lost in space, it would be nice to stay lost in space. It's the classic sort of premise that we need to sustain until the very end. That's my feeling. Some people would love to get back and play out some stories with their parents or their ex-lovers, or their relationships they had back home. To me that's not quite as interesting as sustaining that feeling of wanting to get back. Are we going to get back? We are getting a little closer. I've heard rumors that someone is going to die this year getting back, maybe one person. Maybe only one person makes it back. Maybe everyone else seems dead, and only one person gets back. There are endless possibilities. I'll be just as surprised as the audience when we finally see it."

In the full interview, McNeill also talks about the prospects for a Voyager movie, which he doesn't necessarily think will happen, though he would like to see the ship featured in an upcoming Trek movie also including the other Trek series. Click here to read more about it.

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