Only days after announcing that they'd be hosting a chat with Alice Krige, the Borg Queen in First Contact, British publication 'News of the World' took some time out to speak with another Star Trek actress, this time 'The Next Generation's' Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi).

Marina was in London, her birthplace, for the opening of a Star Trek exhibit at the National Science Museum. "It's not just things to look at," she told the magazine, "It's interactive. The funny thing is that they have touch-screen computers that the people can use. They look like the ones we had on Star Trek, but the difference is that the ones we had on the Enterprise didn't work."

She describes herself as "being terribly flattered" to be thought of as 'Trek totty', as interviewer Spider puts it. "I was a very ugly child and if you had said to me at the age of 12 that I would be a sex symbol I would have laughed in your face, so it's weird the way it's turned out but I still can't help being terribly flattered by the whole thing."

When asked to describe her favourite storyline for her character, her answer is unequivocally "the first time we saw Deana be strong and kick some butt." The episode, "Face of the Enemy" saw transformed to look like a Romulan officer. "It was nice to be in charge," she said, especially after being "purely decorative" in quite a number of episodes. "After that episode, that feeling stayed with the character and she became more respected and I felt that was a very important story for me."

Not all was good on the show, however. "There was one episode which was very early on," that she thought was more than a bit ridiculous. "I don't want to sound like a raging feminist, although I am a bit," she said, "but we landed on this planet run by women and Commander Riker comes down and does one speech and they start considering changing their form of government because it's Riker and he's so gorgeous. That actually really annoyed me because it was too ridiculous. That episode was obviously written by a man." Something else she has few fond recollections of is her time spent in prosthetics - particularly for the episode where she had to play an amphibian. "I didn't like that," she replied, understandably adding that, "I will never play an amphibian again. If anyone has written a part for an amphibian, don't give it to me."

All Sirtis knows about the next movie so far is that she knows it's going to happen - and that she thinks it'll be the last. "All I know is that there probably will be a film next year and for the Next Generation cast, it will probably be the last one." Both Stewart and fellow actor Brent Spiner (Data) are said to be reluctant to return for a fifth Next Generation movie, which is actually the primary reason Sirtis thinks this one will be the last. "I don't think Patrick wants to do any more after that because he has two franchises, Star Trek and the X-Men." She herself may be reluctant to return for a Trek XI - she describes herself as "totally sci-fi out right now."

The full interview with the actress, can be found by following this link to 'News of the World' magazine online.

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