Melissa Perenson at the Sci-Fi Weekly has put up a new interview with Robert Beltran, who stars in 'Voyager' as Chakotay. Though in the interview Beltran again spends much of the time criticising Voyager ("[the sixth season] was pretty dreary and tedious for me", "I'm bored to tears", "I'd rather not say anything than spew forth some of the stuff they do write"), he does also at least sound a bit positive about Star Trek in general:

Why do you think Trek has shown such longevity?

Beltran: [That's] a hard one to figure out. At times I feel it's worthy of its long life; at other times, I feel it's sort of been able to achieve it by tricks and smoke and mirrors. At times it's first and foremost a television show that has the premise of being in the future. Its premise is a strong premise. What happens, though, in a television show is that you have to write episodes based on this premise and you have to keep it fresh. And it's very hard to do. I feel for the writers and the producers who have to come up with this freshness. It's hard to achieve consistently, and they don't do it always. There are great failures. [But] the good writing, the good episodes, are what the fans come back to over and over again. And they endure the ones that fall short of their expectations, just so that they can hopefully get to one that has some substance to it. It's a matter of the writers and creators achieving something and meeting with the audience that appreciates it, and it's a large audience that appreciates it.

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