Ryan: Voyager Pluses And Minuses
2 min readEven though Star Trek: Voyager’s Jeri Ryan worried about typecasting as a result of working on the show, she loved her time on the show including her relationship with her co-workers, but certain elements of the series finale didn’t work for her.
When Ryan thinks about Voyager, the first thing on her mind was that catsuit. “The costume,” she said. “They didn’t let me keep the cat suit. I would have loved to have burned it; not so much the cat suit as the corset that was under it. But, no, they didn’t let me have that. I do, however, have an alcove. I figured, “That’s the least you can give me! Give me my alcove.’ So I have it in my game room.”
One thing about her time on Voyager that Ryan loved was her relationship with her co-workers. “…How much fun I had working with all the men on the show. They were all psychotic, all lunatics, and I loved them. I loved every single one of them and they were all so much fun to work with. It’s hard to stay in touch because we’re each all over the place, but we see each other once in a while at conventions, and they’re as crazy as ever.”
Ryan spoke about the Voyager finale and the romance between Seven of Nine and Chakotay. Like for many fans, the romance didn’t work for her. “My problem with that relationship was that it came out of the blue,” she said. “They had started the set-up of the relationship a few episodes earlier, in the episode (Human Error) where Seven was experimenting with her humanity on the holodeck. And so she sort of fell in love with Chakotay there. They said something like her could never have these sorts of relationships because she would die, or whatever. The next episode that we shot after that (Natural Law), Seven and Chakotay were stranded on some planet together. We specifically asked the producers – Robert and I – “Now, are we going to play this? Is this going to go somewhere? Because, obviously, we’d need to carry something over from…’ And they said, ‘No, no, no, no! Absolutely not. Don’t play any of that. Nothing’s going to happen.’
“So, after that one episode we never played any sort of attraction or anything between the two characters. And then, out of the blue, all of a sudden, they’re dating (in Endgame). That was a little annoying, especially when you’ve specifically asked about it and they said, ‘No, absolutely not.’ Then, suddenly they’re in love. That was a little… It’s one of the frustrations of network television. And it’s how you learn, also. You have to try to be the babysitter and the protector of your character.”
Ryan is now appearing in Body of Proof, which premieres tonight at 10 PM on ABC.
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