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Actors Show Collaborative Spirit in Las Vegas

By Michelle
August 27, 2005 - 11:23 PM

Stars from The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager spoke last weekend at the Creation convention in Las Vegas about their friendships, work and plans since their series ended.

StarTrek.com reported on the panels that followed those of several Enterprise actors and directors (story), which included three DS9 actors together, three TNG actors together and separately and one Voyager actor.

Rene Auberjonois (Odo), Nana Visitor (Kira) and Armin Shimerman (Quark) appeared together on Sunday, speaking in part about their current shows, Visitor's Wildfire (produced by former Trek exec Michael Piller) and Auberjonois's Boston Legal (which stars William Shatner). "He's just the sweetest guy in the world to work with," Auberjonois said of Captain Kirk. He also advised fans not to wait around for a DS9 movie: "I would not recommend anybody holding their breath."

Visitor said that she had found it tedious playing Kira and the Intendant at the same time, playing scenes with herself, though she enjoyed the narcissism of playing a character who fell in love with herself. Shimerman cited "Little Green Men" as one of the show's best hours, crediting the writing staff with "coming up with such creative ideas outside of the envelope."

Good friends Marina Sirtis (Troi) and Michael Dorn (Worf) appeared onstage together after Sirtis came in first, warning the audience to compliment Dorn's waistline and not to mention his receding hairline. She talked as well about Enterprise finale "These Are the Voyages..." where, she said, her co-star Jonathan Frakes (Riker) ribbed Scott Bakula (Archer) about his high salary. She enjoyed the filming very much but felt that it was not a great series finale: "They should've done a two-hour, you know, like we did. Then I would've gotten double the money, that would've been good."

Brent Spiner (Data), who also appeared on Enterprise during the last season, talked about ideas he had pitched for the film that eventually became Star Trek: Nemesis and talked about his current movie Material Girls as well as the new Brannon Braga series Threshold, on which he is a series regular. ," which will air on CBS on Friday nights. "I am now the oldest living person at Paramount Pictures," he joked. "I've been there through four regimes now...I'm sure, if I can hang on for another year or two, I will be the next president of Paramount Pictures." And then, he promised, there would be multiple Star Trek series on the air again. As for Threshold, he said he believed that the show would be interesting but had not watched any of it himself because "I don't tend to look at anything that I'm in...I want to go on suffering the illusion that I'm fantastic."

The final Sunday guest, Robert Beltran, expressed surprise at seeing so many people still there so late in the day and talked about his new Sci-Fi Channel movie Manticore, which also stars Chase Masterson (Leeta). He plays the leader of a group of American soldiers in Iraq who are sent to save a CNN reporter from a mythical Persian creature. Like many Enterprise actors he remains bitter about his series' finale: "Let's throw two people together who had never had more than three words said to each other, and couple them up...they were so anxious to get rid of our cast and our show."

The original coverage is at StarTrek.com.

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