Doctor In The 'Lyon's Den'

Robert Picardo has kept very busy in the past few months, working on episodes of The Dead Zone and Lyon's Den and making appearances including one tomorrow at the Shock & Awe Sci-Fi Road Show in Salina, New York.

There he and former co-star Ethan Phillips will perform their one-hour Voyager skit, in which they revive their roles as The Doctor and Neelix.

"Ostensibly, it's to bring everybody up to date with what happened to the Voyager crew members once they've gotten home," Picardo told the Syracuse Post-Standard. "But it's really an excuse for Ethan and I to make jokes and have fun at each other's expense and, to some extent, have fun at the expense of the Star Trek world."

Though Voyager aired its series finale two years ago this month, the show's legacy remains with the actors, Picardo said.

"I'm very proud of the work we did on the show," he stated, citing the first female captain and the spirit of adventure on the series.

"We found ourselves on a journey home through a totally new and unfamiliar part of space", he added, "very much in the spirit of the original series."

Discussing comparisons between his character and The Next Generation's Data, Picardo noted that The Doctor underwent a similar evolution.

"But Brent Spiner's characterization and mine were so different — on the surface, he was so childlike and enthusiastic and lovable, and I was so curmudgeonly and cranky and such a windbag — that we were able to re-examine those stories and make them feel new and different," he said.

Picardo expressed admiration for the pilot script of NBC's Lyon's Den, the new fall series with Rob Lowe on which Picardo will play Detective Nick Traub, a recurring character: "I've never read a pilot that has more elements — you know, legal drama, murder thriller, office place romance. And it has quite a bit of humor."

For more on the convention and Picardo, visit the Post-Standard web site. Previous Trek Nation news items on Picardo's guest appearances may be found here and here.

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