Picardo Considers Life After 'Voyager'

After seven years of slaving away in Voyager's sickbay, Robert Picardo (The Holodoc) is taking a well-deserved rest.

"I've been enjoying the freedom of not having to go to work every day," he told John Barnes at BBC Lancashire Online. "[I've been] taking some of the wonderful travel and personal appearance opportunities that come with Star Trek and just giving myself a little bit of a break."

Although Picardo is unsure of what the future may hold, he has a strong interest in getting behind the camera. "I've taken some time off and done a lot of travelling and thinking a lot about what I'd like to go after," he said. "I did some directing on Star Trek, and I'm interested in directing in the future and that involves kind of redirecting your own career to make that a priority. You have to sort of take some time off from acting work."

"I'm struggling with the decision whether to do that or to pursue other acting roles in film and television," Picardo continued, "or to simply take a brief hiatus from film and television work and go back and do something on stage. There's so many things I'd like to do."

Recently, the actor has been working on 'The Hologram's Handbook,' a guide to interacting with humans for socially naive photonics. "In the immediate future, I have a book commitment for Simon & Schuster. I've completed the book, and I'm just doing final notes on it and I turn in the manuscript in about a week. So most of my focus of the last five weeks has been on that."

Still, Picardo isn't rushing into anything. "Once that's done, in the late summer and the beginning of september, I'll have to get serious about deciding what my next goal is," he said.

The full Real Media audio interview, in which the actor also talked about working on the Voyager set, can be downloaded here at BBC Lancashire Online.

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