Linda Park: Hoshi Sato And I Are So Similar

Linda Park has the dubious honour of being the youngest person on the set of the youngest member of the Star Trek franchise family. In a new interview, she talked about why this helps her relate to the character she plays on board the Enterprise, communication's officer Hoshi Sato.

"It was one of the big things I called upon to use for the pilot, because there was a lot of parallels between my character, Hoshi Sato and me," she told Gregory L. Norris & Laura A. Van Vleet for Trek Galaxy. "Both being the youngest of the crew and of the cast - Hoshi having little space travel experience, and me having little on-set experience. And she's an academic with kind of a savant level of genius for languages, which is why she got the communications job on the crew. For me, I have a sense of training and I've been training my whole life, which was all I had when I came here as a real novice to the set. Both Hoshi and I are scared and excited and nervous - all those emotions that she is feeling, I'm feeling, too, in this parallel world."

The actress hinted at future possible conflicts between her character, and the stoic Vulcan T'Pol, played by Jolene Blalock. "There are two females on the bridge of Enterprise, my character and the Vulcan, and we really play opposite spectrums of each other," she explained. "We are the most polar opposites among the whole crew, which is great for me to perform to. Both women are very strong in their own individual ways. Hoshi is, I would say, the most human of the crew in that she's not good at hiding her emotions. She speaks what's on her mind and often times she just acts or speaks impulsively, which is a nice departure from a more formal etiquette on a ship."

"This is the first time Starfleet really goes out there, and we're kind of a motley crew, trying to figure our way around space and around each other. Hoshi really has a passion for language. Every time she gets freaked out by these aliens and she wants to leave, even though she feels like this is not the place for her, that she's a translator and not a super hero, she is drawn in again by her love for these languages and discovery. Everybody on the ship has a love for discovery, but hers is for these different languages, and that's so alluring and seductive to her. That really plays important part of why she's in space, why she doesn't turn around and leave."

But it's not all hard work on the Enterprise set. "Often, we act like little kids, so we have a lot of inside jokes," said Park. "But on one day, we were filming this very intense action sequence in a snowstorm. Jim Conway directed this episode. He was yelling directions to everyone and it was very exciting. He called to tell me where my mark was, but instead of yelling 'Hoshi' in this huge room filled with people, he shouted over the snow machine, 'And Sushi enters frame.' Everybody just about died from laughter. So now everybody calls me Sushi or Sushimi. [...] The whole cast and crew stopped and doubled over. I have this little nickname now because of that incident."

More Enterprise thoughts from Linda Park can be found in the original interview with the actress online at Trek Galaxy.

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