Alexander: A Celebrity Star Trek Fan
3 min readStar Trek has had it’s share of celebrities who love the various series and Jason Alexander, one of those celebrity fans, turned his love of Trek into an appearance on Star Trek: Voyager.
Alexander played Kurros in Think Tank, which aired in the fifth season of Star Trek: Voyager. He spoke about his love of Star Trek, which dated back to his childhood. “I was probably ten years old when I first discovered Trek,” he said. “I had three cousins who were big fans and they introduced me to it. I was hooked on the first episode. Originally, it was the escapist fantasy of being a superhero/spaceman that intrigued me. But later, yes – it was the quality of the writing.”
Star Trek may have been set in the future, but the stories touched upon important issues of the day in which the show was created. “It was the dedication to use the genre to explore the social issues of the day in dramatic form [that intrigued me], said Alexander. “There was always humor and poetry in the writing of Trekisodes.”
Of all the Star Trek series and movies, Alexander prefers the original series. “It’s kind of original recipe for me,” he said. “I am a devotee of TOS and a dabbler beyond that. I was not a big TV watcher when the followup series came about, so I never was religious about any of them. I’ve seen all the films. My faves outside of the original series would be Wrath of Khan and Voyager.”
Alexander’s favorite captain was Kirk. “I can tell you as a staunch heterosexual, Shatner rang my bell,” he said. “I wanted to be him. And I literally impressed his essence into my cells.”
But Janeway was another captain that Alexander grew to admire. “I fell in love with Kate’s Janeway,” he said. “To me, she was the bastard step-child of Kirk himself and I loved her for it.”
Making it known that he wanted to be a part of Star Trek in some way, it took until Star Trek: Voyager until the right part came along for Alexander. “I had put the word out that I wanted to be part of the Trek world,” he explained . “Each of the series would come to me and either the dates were not good for me or, more often than not, they wanted me to play a human — and kind of a “George”-like human. I told them the big departure for me would be to play an alien. I did so much histrionics as George, I was kind of hoping I’d wind up as a Vulcan so that I’d get to play some great intellect. It was finally Voyager that understood that and called with the perfect part.”
Kurros was that perfect part and Alexander explained why he loved playing the character. “They gave me everything, an alien guise, great intellect and evil. The tri-fecta. What more could you ask for?”
Alexander currently has several irons in the fire, including a talk show/game show hybrid project, a one-hour series pilot script, directing projects and his work as an artistic director of the Reprise Theater Company in Los Angeles.
About The Author
