Tonight the cast of Star Trek: Voyager reunited for a virtual panel celebrating the 25th anniversary of the show and raising money for The Actors Fund. The panel was full of fun banter from the former crew of the USS Voyager, including Jeri Ryan, who also talked about what’s next for Seven of Nine on Star Trek: Picard.
Ryan talks Picard season 2 and the new Seven
Jeri Ryan had a recurring role on the first season of Star Trek: Picard, reprising her Voyager role of Seven of Nine. She was seen in the final moments of the season, joining Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of La Sirena as they warped off to an unknown destination.
While it has been expected, during the panel Ryan confirmed she will be back as she gave an update on when the show is expected to return to production:
We are waiting to see…We are just in a holding pattern. We were originally supposed to start shooting in the middle of June, but they would have had to start building the sets at the beginning of May, which we can’t do. So, we are just waiting. They are hoping we can start shooting in the fall. I don’t know.
Interestingly, the question to Jeri regarding plans for Picard season 2 came from Voyager star Kate Mulgrew. In her TrekMovie interview earlier in the week, Mulgrew said she has put some thought into Star Trek: Picard and said it would be “delicious” to return to the role of Kathryn Janeway.
During Tuesday’s reunion panel, Jeri Ryan also discussed how she felt about Seven’s portrayal in season one of Picard:
It’s been amazing. It’s certainly not something I ever thought was going to be happening, by any stretch of the imagination. I love how they have written her. I love how she has developed. She has been through a lot of crap and she keeps going. I love her resiliency and her guts and I love that she is trying and struggling. I just think she is awesome. She is real fun to play.
Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine “Stardust City Rag”
Watch the full Voyager reunion panel
Joining the Stars In The House show on Tuesday night were Kate Mulgrew (Kathryn Janeway), Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine), Tim Russ (Tuvok), Roxann Dawson (B’Elanna Torres), Robert Beltran (Chakotay), Robert Duncan McNeill (Tom Paris), Robert Picardo (The Doctor), Ethan Phillips (Neelix), and Garrett Wang (Harry Kim). They talked about what they liked and didn’t like about their characters, joked about the good old days, and generally showed off why they are all still friends. They also were treated to some very old clips of some of the cast in their early musical theater roles, plus a live serenade from Tim Russ. The full virtual panel is available to watch on YouTube.
Keep up with all the Star Trek: Picard news, reviews and analysis at TrekMovie.com.
I really miss this cast. Also, Beltran seemed like he was more of a spectator.
So he’s still playing Chakotay to a tee after all these years!
I never understood the hate for Chakotay? I always found him a good leader with a strong moral compass, despite the fact he was Maquis at the start he was still the sort of man I would’ve been happy to stand shoulder to shoulder with.
Agreed. Though his pronounciation is even weirder than Avery Brooks’, which I like more TBH. Well, maybe not as eccentric, but still strange…
I suspect it was the poor writing. He often came off as very weak, characters were always getting one over on him. They even made a joke about it a couple of times.
It’s because he was Maquis that the character had that strength; the dilution through involvement with Starfleet (along with the real-world issue of writing) seems to have diluted that so he became something almost upsetting at times. VOYAGER failed to deliver on its premise in nearly every episode I was able to watch all the way through (which is less than half, I think), and I think the failure with this character, especially in regard to Janeway, is one of the main reasons. I’ve seen Beltran in other things; whether the projects were good or bad, he was still solid in those, whereas here I think he was stymied artistically. I don’t know the b-t-s on this or much of seaQuest, but I wonder whether he must have spent 7 years feeling the way Roy Scheider spent s2 of that show, thinking it was childish or stupid.
I liked him as well. I guess the real issue with Chakotay is that he wasn’t given the opportunity to shine very often and the main reason for this was perhaps that they wrote themselves into a corner by imbuing him with all these admirable qualities.. The problem is that he wasn’t Starfleet anymore he was Maquis and I think it’s fair to say that the actor and a good sized chunk of the audience were sold on a character who wouldn’t be by the book, who might clash with his Captain and have that sense of danger about him that you associate with people in important positions that you don’t know if you can fully trust. Except, this lasted for all of 5 minutes and then he was acting like a career Starfleet officer for the rest of the show.
You had this very morally honorable commander who defied the supposedly morally honorable Starfleet, and they couldn’t figure out a way to reconcile those things without making Starfleet look bad. So what they ended up with was a character that just ended up looking like he didn’t know what he was doing a lot of the times.
DS9 embraced the contradiction though: they were unafraid to portray Starfleet as morally questionable at times. VOY writers were just too timid to do it.
Evidenced perfectly by how they completely abandoned the entire premise of the show. On only a handful of occasions after the 5th or 6th episodes was there any real conflict between Starfleet and Maquis crew.
Hear hear!
Not hate, just ambivalence because he was an underutilized character.
Because he was a pole smoker and a very nondescript character 😴
LOL — you beat me to it!
Just finished watching the whole thing! It was GREAT! These guys always joke around so much together its fun watching and listening to all the stories. It is amazing they seem like such a close knit family 25 years later! I don’t think I heard any of these stories before. :)
And get more of them on Picard. Seven could use the back up and she and Raffi can double date with Tom and B’elanna (and no one ever mentions Chakotay…awkward).
Anyway a great event and it was cool to see them all there! Funny how much I love Voyager more so today.
And boy did Beltran look uncomfortable.
As for guest-spots on Picard, I know they’re talking the Doctor, and I can see this if the theme of the season is Picard examining what it means to be human, now that he’s not. The Doctor being an artificial life could provide an interesting perspective.
With that said, what I *don’t* want to happen is for Picard’s show to become the vehicle for 90s Trek stars to return. I’d rather they do a series of short treks or a “movie of the week” sort of thing. A series of 90 minute features, 4x a year, on a reasonable budget, to explore more random ideas that might not work in a short, but might not warrant a full season.
“Long Treks”?
Good to hear that someone else likes the idea of another vehicle to permit longer stories anywhere, anytime and any characters in the Trek universe.
I’m a fan of the Short Treks (although some were ‘too’ short in season 2. So a ‘longer Trek’ anthology vehicle that allowed for more of a novella format sounds like a viable premise.
You’re suggesting 90 minute straight-to-streaming, I’ve previously suggested a series with stories running 22 to 45 minutes, with the possibility of 2 to 3 parts and a total of 6-8 hours a year.
So, let’s keep saying this and perhaps Kurtzman will ‘hear the fans’ and champion a new agile, and innovative format.
And they don’t have to be full features, with big bombastic plots: a 90 minute episode with two characters stuck on a ship would work just fine, but allow them to explore different stories and characters without committing to full seasons.
“Star Trek: Picardo”
Add me to the list supporting the ‘Long Trek’ format. I guess the issue is going to be budget. Short Trek’s have the advantage of only needing one or two principle characters, they don’t don’t require new sets to be built, they’re very short shoots and they’re basically very cheap to make. I think once you start going into the reaon of 60-90 minute features the audience expectation level goes up and so does the cost. I still think it’s a great idea though. CBS gets more content to keep fans happy in the long waits between seasons and they could even treat it like the old Amazon pilot season where the most successful features could be potentially get there own series, mini or sequel.
See my response above: nothing to say a “Long Trek” has to be about a full crew on a ship engaged in a daring mission. It could be a handful of characters on a space station grappling with an anomaly, or a small crew investigating some problem on a research vessel: this way it can be more about the characters and the problem they face than about big stories (which I like too, but this allows them to do modestly budget episodes/miniseries’).
Even if you only have a small crew of characters you need to build a space station and that’s expensive. Set redressing of standing sets may work for a short film but the longer you stay the more likely it is that people will realize what you’re doing. Some people won’t care but look at the outrage some people showed when they used a redress of the Discovery bridge for that short Riker cameo in the Picard finale.
The other thing to consider as well is that TV movies are a potential gateway to a new audience. It can be a little less daunting for a new fan to test the water with a stand-alone feature length instalment rather than jump straight into one of the series. So that product has to be compelling, it has to compete with the myriad of prestige TV that’s available through premium cable and streaming platforms. Short Treks is something else entirely, they’re clearly geared towards the existing fan and anybody that stumbled upon them would realistically treat them as they would any of the webisodes that have been released between seasons for the likes of Lost, TWD and BSG.
As I say I think your idea has merit and they could be more ambitious with Short Treks. However, if they were to release “Long Treks” then they really need to ask is this something we want for somebody’s first impression of Star Trek? If the answer is yes then stump up the cash and produce a polished TV movie (It will still be cheaper than a full season) but if you’re looking for something on a shoestring to keep hardcore fans from cancelling in between seasons then just split your low budget movie into webisodes and release them under the ‘Short Trek’ banner. It keeps expectations at a realistic level and you can still sell the feature length version on Blu-ray.
That’s probably the issue though, they may not think its worth to do a ‘Long Trek’ to entice new fans who would just watch that one movie and not bother with the rest. That’s the thing about streaming, the idea is to keep people on the hook as long as possible. A Star Trek TV movie will be a bonus for fans who are already signed up but I don’t know if its going to do anything for new fans who can just watch it with their free week and then disappear again.
That’s why shows are just more appealing in the long term because they can spread stories out and keep people around for months, assuming they watch it when it starts. But yeah I’m not convinced Discovery and definitely Picard really brought in a huge number of new fans. Some obviously but I look at sites like this and similar ones and the only people who come to these message boards to talk about these new shows are the same people whose been watching it for decades already. A new movie may get a few more people but I don’t know enough to justify doing it. When I use to be on Facebook I went to a few of the Discovery fan pages and it was the same thing. Most people talking about it were always long term fans. I think I remember reading posts from 1 or 2 people who were new to Star Trek at the time.
Short Treks are obviously just designed for hardcore fans and reason to keep their subscriptions longer but I still wonder how effective that is? I’m guessing most just waited until Discovery or Picard started an watched them. I don’t mean people on boards like this, I’m talking just casual fans. But they keep making them so obviously enough are tuning in I guess.
I personally would love a Long Trek obviously (who here wouldn’t lol) and maybe a Voyager TV movie or even an Enterprise movie dealing with the Romulan war. Or yes something entirely new!
Agreed on all points really. I just feel that if you were to go down the ‘Long Treks’ route that they can’t use the same approach as they use on Short Treks. I would agree that Discovery and Picard haven’t really brought in new fans but I suspect that could be because there’s just not enough material on CBS AA to attract many people outside of Trek Fandom to the platform. Hopefully that will change when they eventually start showing the shows on network television. With TV and movie production having been brought to a standstill I would not be surprised to see versions of both these shows air on the network sooner rather than later.
@Tiger,
It might not specifically entice new fans, but the bigger the back catalog is when a person checks out the app, the more likely they are to stick around. It also gives existing subscribers a reason to renew each month.
@Digi
you don’t need to build big sets. If the story is small, you can redress DSC or PIC sets, or even use green screen with entirely virtual sets. If the focus is on the characters, the sets aren’t even that important.
That was awesome. I loved Voyager back than and dare I say I love it even more today!
I’m still saddened Jennifer Lien’s health prevented her participation. But I’m definitely looking forward to watching this during my lunch hour later today!
I think it was very interesting the way Mulgrew asked the question. Sort of like she knows exactly what the position is. It was just addressed in quite a ‘delicious’ way. Perhaps I’m just getting my hopes up for a Janeway return and reading into things.
Seven’s return was something I was never expecting, and one of those things I didn’t know I wanted until they gave it to me. Loved what they with her.
Totally agree, Seven has so much potential and growth in season 2.
With writing that bad the only way is up!
No coverage of the death of Richard Herd (Admiral Paris and a couple of other characters)? I read somewhere that “he was frequently mistaken for Karl Malden.”
Came to say the same, but it may not be popping up on their radar because a lot of sites aren’t even listing his name in the headline, and are going with “Seinfeld Actor”. Groan.
I never saw the Malden resemblance myself, but they both did play General Omar Bradley. I think of him mainly for SEINFELD, HOOKER and for V, even though there’s nothing particularly memorable about his work in any of those.
We tend to do RIPs (and birthdays) of guest stars via our various social media platforms. You can see our Twitter feed on the front page of this site.
Here is the tweet we sent out yesterday morning.
https://twitter.com/TrekMovie/status/1265347050335600640
Also reported … nowhere: The death of John “Lt. Kyle” Winston sometime last September or October. I found out about his passing through, of all places, 2 different eBay listings of items from his “estate sale.” There is literally nothing else on the Internet about Winston passing away.
Seven in Picard was unexpected but awesome.
It was good to see them all together again, STLV is/was supposed ti be the 25th anniversary salute to VOY but this may be the way we have to go. I love Roxanne’s ENT episode she directed–Dead Stop.
WHERE IS KES?
Uh well, Jennifer Lien has had some issues.
N
Execellent i would like to see ressurection of Picard cast of next generation from 1988 to 1994
Yes how about Hensen from Enterprise johnathan Archers group?
My favorite part of the Voyager reunion event — and, having been a fan of that show from the very beginning 25 yeas ago, also the part I was most looking forward to getting to watch — was the time given to the doctor from CBS News.
THE BEST SHOW ON TV. THE WHOLE STAR TREK VOYAGER,VOYAGE WAS WONDERFUL. HOPE ALL STARS KEEP SAFE>
What if they did something for Picard S2 where Janeway goes rogue for some reason and Seven approaches Picard for help while the rest of Starfleet are looking to take her in by any means.
We really do need to see more of seven of nine in season 2 of picard…she’s a badass
They have implied that she joins Picard’s crew.
Need a voyager, and Picard crossover