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Robert Beltran Convention Reports

By Christian
April 8, 2000 - 11:33 PM

The official Robert Beltran Homepage has put up a set of reports about conventions recently attended by Robert Beltran (Chakotay). The reports (dealing with cons in Portland, Sacramento and Phoenix) mostly consist of Q&A transcripts, but also contain a few photos. Below are a few highlights from the Q&As, in which Beltran appears, as always, a bit negative about the whole Star Trek phemenon:

Q. Do you know, are you are going to make it back from the Delta Quadrant?

A. You're talking about the Star Trek series, Voyager? Because this is my first convention sober so...I'm just kidding, actually. I have no idea what these writers are up to, I don't know who they are any more, and frankly I wish they'd all just go home. I'm sick of them. I have no idea. Sorry.

[...]

Q. One of the criticisms of Star Trek is that it's such a perfect universe. All the main characters are so really perfect. They go through really traumatic experiences and a week later they seem perfectly fine and they go on with life. Can you tell us about a few of Chakotay's redeeming character flaws, and how he has changed since you first met him?

A. Well, I always re-route my flaws to the positive matrix. It's easy to do, all you have to do is route them through the warp coil and up through the kazoo and it's fine. Well, I've always had that problem with Star Trek. Things get wrapped up so easily, and the crisis we're in seems to get wrapped up so easily at the end of the 60 minutes. All I can say is, it seems to be the tradition of Star Trek and nobody seems to mind it too much except you and I. It's part of the style of the writing, and, I guess, when you only have 42 minutes, if that much, to tell the story, then I suppose you have to shortchange things here and there occasionally, but I agree with you, it does happen too often. Most of the time they fix everything by Janeway saying [Janeway voice] "Reroute power to the scoobie doobie." ...."Oh, Captain it worked!"... "Of course it worked, I'm Janeway!" Of course, there's always the recurring fight scene between her and Seven of Nine.... "Captain we should kill that beast or else it will kill us." "No, it's a sentient being. That's not Starfleet." "But it's going to kill us. I'm going to kill it." "You will not". "Yes." "No." "Yes." "No." "Yes." Commercial break. Then, "No." "Yes." "No." "Yes." "Go to your cargo bay!" "Fine. But I'll kill it anyway." I guess you can tell that six years are kind of getting to me!

Always nice to see a man enjoy his work. You can find the full report here. In it, Beltran talks some more about Voyager, but he also talks about things such as the lack of minorities on television and his work for the Down's Syndrome Foundation.

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