Beltran On Romantic Appeal To Braga

A conversation with Jeri Ryan may have sown the seeds for a Chakotay/Seven romance, according to Robert Beltran.

The actor was interviewed as part of the latest batch of interviews posted at the official site. "There's been very little [romance] for Chakotay," Beltran said. His disappointment in the first officer's love life led him to plant an idea with Brannon Braga, former Voyager Executive Producer.

"I tried to challenge Brannon through Jeri," he said. "I remember having a conversation with her, and I said 'I guess now that you're with Brannon, there won't be any Chakotay/Seven of Nine kissing scenes - you can throw that out the window.'"

And Ryan's response? "'I'm going to tell him, I'm going to tell him what you said'," Beltran recounted. "I said 'Tell him, maybe he'll take me up on the challenge.'"

In the end, the result seems to have worked out to Beltran's advantage. "It took a long time, but finally there might be something happening," he said. "Maybe there'll be some kind of romance in Chakotay's life."

Robert Picardo also spoke about exploring new facets of his character over Voyager's run. Originally, he wasn't too impressed with the Doctor's character. "It's just like, he's a colourless, humourless guy with 9 lines in the two-hour pilot," he said.

But Picardo quickly realised how much of the Doctor's character there was to explore. "Had I been a knowledgeable Star Trek person I would have recognised the potential of the Doctor being an artificial intelligence character," he said. "I just started thinking about what might give the Doctor his lousy attitude, and it all kind of came together, and then I discovered half-way through the first year that not only had I not gotten the worst part in the show, but maybe I had gotten the best."

Of course, the Doctor is not the only outsider character to have walked Voyager's corridors. From the early days of The Original Series, the Vulcans have always been a trademark of Star Trek. Despite their long-running association with the franchise, Tim Russ (Tuvok) feels that there has still been plenty of character material to explore.

"The storylines we've had in the past seven years have surprised me even as to what the character has experienced," he said. "The Vulcan veneer is something that we've explored on several occasions - the violence and anger and aggression that exist below the surface."

Russ recounted the various moments throughout the series that defined Tuvok's character. "We went back into his past, his professional past, his relationship with the Captain, with Starfleet, his family, his children, his wife, himself as a child, exploring the very beginnings of his emotions coming to the surface, and how to control them." Overall, he said that "we've done quite a good job with this character over the past seven years."

The full video interviews, which also include Russ and Picardo talking about the Trek phenomenon and Roxann Dawson (Torres) on the end of the series, can be found here at StarTrek.com.

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