Bakula Misses 'Enterprise', Mocks Shatner

Scott Bakula (Archer) finally appeared at a Star Trek convention last weekend, attending Creation's 40th anniversary celebration in Las Vegas, where he discussed the Enterprise finale, reminisced on his past work on Quantum Leap, described his upcoming plans and even sang a little.

StarTrek.com covered the appearance in a two-part article, saying that because it was Bakula's first appearance at a Star Trek convention, his comments warranted full coverage. Bakula was put on the spot by Michael DeMeritt an assistant director on Enterprise, who got the actor to admit that he had dressed as Frank-N-Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show for Halloween one year. He also spoke on a cell phone to the wife of a convention attendee who couldn't be there herself.

Bakula had kept the long hair and scruffy appearance of his character Charlie from Shenandoah, the Civil War musical in which he appeared last spring in Washington, DC. "It's been worth the wait. It's really great to see everybody. I've heard so much about all of you from everybody else," he told conventiongoers. Recording Archer's voice for Star Trek: Legacy had given him "a little trip down memory lane", he explained, saying that he missed the show and answering a question about whether he had wanted the series to be cancelled by declaring, "Nobody in the cast wanted it to end. We were all working hard to keep it going, for all of you."

The finale, he reiterated, "was a challenge for everybody", and although he appreciated the efforts of Jonathan Frakes (Riker) and Marina Sirtis (Troi), "Last episodes, you know, no one is ever happy. You're not happy. It's the last episode!" He said that when he first received the script, it took some readjusting before he understood what the producers were trying to do. "But, ultimately, I think it worked out."

Bakula said that he did not do any research to play Archer because, as the earliest captain, he did not have the others as role models. "Obviously, I could have looked at what everyone has done and every other Captain's choices and ways of being Captain," he noted. "Shatner's...Captain is so vividly imposed in my brain, I needed to get away from that...there was no way I could have looked at all of the Star Trek material available. I'd seen several movies. I love Star Trek and I wanted to be the first Captain."

He also appreciated the opportunity to work again with his Quantum Leap co-star Dean Stockwell, a good friend of his, who appeared in the episode "Detained." Though he said he would be interested in returning if Quantum Leap were revived, he added that he had heard a great deal of gossip but "no one has ever spoken to me about it...my guess is that if they did it wouldn't be with me."

As for why he so rarely attends conventions, he explained that he is very involved in his children's schools and teams, so "weekends are precious to me." Part of the appeal of playing Archer, he admitted, was being able to film in Los Angeles steadily, where his family is.

Though he joked that he had been invited to play the other four captains on Legacy, Bakula claimed to have declined that job "because Shatner, he needs the work. And Patrick [Stewart] wouldn't let me do it." He feigned grief over never having won an Emmy Award for Quantum Leap and deadpanned that he would not pose for Playgirl again because "they made me wear too many clothes." Instead Bakula will appear in two episodes of The New Adventures of Old Christine and is looking into doing more theatre in New York.

The two parts of the StarTrek.com interview are here and here.

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