In a new video interview with nuts.tv, Marina Sirtis (TNG: Troi) says that her job was not secure in the early days of Star Trek The Next Generation so she decided to become “the convention queen” to build up her fanbase and ensure her job. She also talks about her role as the sex symbol on the show, revealing a rather risqué nickname given to her by Michael Dorn (TNG: Worf). See below for video.
Warning: interviews below contain many colorful metaphors
Takei on nuts.tv
The above interview refered to a recent interview with George Takei (TOS: Sulu). Here is that interview, but Takei really doesn’t say anything as the host spends most of it talking about crazy fans
saw her at a recent convention in chicago…she’s wonderful
Isn’t she naked in some movie?
Sirtis = gorgeous. That accent and her looks just go so perfectly together.
Mmmm. Love Marina. If our next one’s a girl I’ve thought about that name.
As for the Takei clip……I don’t know who looked and felt more uncomfortable by all that, George or me.
Takei:
‘It‘s the fans that make us who we are. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.’
That‘s true. And it carries a more positive connotation than “not your Daddy’s Trek” or the like.
That‘s true. And it carries a more positive connotation than “not your Daddy’s Trek” or the like.
I tend to agree.
Sirtis is OK – never cared for Troi though. An annoying character at best.
“Not your Daddy’s Trek” is spitting in the face of the long-time fans who, among other things, saved the original series with the letter-writing campaign. If that’s what Young JJ and his gang think of us, we will happily stay home next Christmas.
Funny too, the poll question today: “Would you have prefered another TNG film instead of Abrams return to TOS?” A couple of weeks ago, I would have said no. Today, I voted yes without hesitation.
#8:
Well stop and think about it, it really can’t be your daddy’s Trek. People who originally watched the show in the 60s are at or near retirement age. Or dead. Sci-Fi is a genre whose main target is teenagers and young adults.
Most original fans I know still have fond memories of Star Trek, but they aren’t “into” the show like they were 40 years ago. And who can blame them? They have other interests they have developed throughout their lives.
If Star Trek is to survive another generation, it needs to reach that next generation (no pun intended). And today’s teenagers aren’t really interesting in seeing 80-year-old actors talking alot in a boring movie. They want action, special effects, cool aliens, etc. Can you blame them?
If you make a movie for the original fans, the movie wil bomb. There aren’t enough of those kind of people to go and see a movie. The box office for the last two original castmate movies weren’t very good — and that was almost 20 years ago! Classic Star Trek ran its course, and it’s time to move on. Either as a fond memory, or as a reboot that caters to a new generation of fans.
TNG was always a bit awkward in it’s efforts to be sexy. Take a look at season one’s JUSTICE for example and THE NAKED NOW. Not much organic about the sexy in those episodes. TOS was really good at sexy as was DS9. TNG, VOY, and ENT were all pretty lousy at it.
Marina Sirtis can totally be part of the “not your daddy’s Star Trek” era if TPTB just weren’t afraid to let her be herself, and Sirtis as a person seems like she exudes a lot of natural sexiness, charm, and confidence. The Troi character, as it was originally written, never struck me so much as a bombshell as much as a shapely person to gaze at. Star Trek has, indeed, always had an awkward time portraying sexuality, but now that we have an infusion of new blood via JJ Abrams, maybe that won’t be the case. But the vets don’t have to be necessarily shoved out either, because the actors are most likely not as staid and awkward as their characters were written — and Sirtis provides compelling evidence of this. (Takei is another firecracker, of course, who should definitely be allowed to let Sulu loose.) It would certainly be nice to see some old faces in the revived franchise.
hey. ive been wondering something for years. maybe this isnt the right place to bring it up, but what the hell…
does anybody know what happened to the doctor on tng in its second season?? yknow what im talkin about: she was replaced by pulaski, and then came back the following year. what the hell was that about? i cant belive that i have never read a detailed explanation.
TNG was too bland to be sexy. TOS had it all over it 20 years earlier. Even the first pilot had the most sexual thing ever seen on TV at that point (even for years afterward), the green slave girl. Those miniskirts, the voluptuous women, TNG never came close.
Some people just don’t appreciate the hand that fed you. Marina Sirtis has now become a miss $%^&!@# know it all when it comes to Star Trek. Sour grapes really sour the puss after a while. She was a two bit actress in obscure or shit movies until Generations came a long. Then after Generations, she basically went back to acting in obscure or shit movies. No kidding she rode the convention circuit! She couldn’t get anything else.
Doesn’t take a genious to figure out why Star Trek employed the likes of Marina Sirtis, Jeri Ryan, Jolene Blalock and Chase Masterson. The eye candy from a producers point of view is to attrack viewers, it has NOTHING to do with science fiction. The size of the breasts are inversly proportional to the quality of the writing. Keep that in mind December 25 2008.
365 dtST
#2
She did a small part in Death Wish 3 with Chuck Bronson. Um, she gets naked but not in a good way.
In 1989 at a convention in Denver, someone asked her about that scene in DW3 and she simply said “no comment”. I have a feeling it was one of her first roles in a movie and needed the cash.
#8 EXACTLY
#9 You are wrong. It isn’t about being 80 years old… it’s about knowing a good product that has staying power. Now if the Xbox generation can’t focus without their daily Ritalin then fine go rent Transformers. Trek as it was meant to be requires following a plot and holding a thought longer than 12 seconds.
#14 Without trying to troll here I’ll put this as kindly as possible… your a jerk. Do you know your Trek? Marina knew Gene personally and had as near a daughter relationship with him and especially Majel as one could have. So if anyone is qualified to state things as the Great Bird had intended it would be her. So any opinion she makes has to be spot on, and any contrary to her personal knowledge from the source on what Trek is supposed to be is blowing smoke up the ol’ wazoo.
And at least SHE has respect and appreciation for the fans to appear. Those are NOT big paying gigs and I doubt she has to much worry on balancing her checkbook.
She ganked a bunch of uniforms and props from the show, that’s awesome.
And I just thought I liked her before.
…Marina who?
YUBinit — if you think it’s proper calling someone a jerk just because they don’t have the same opinion as you, then you obviously learned very little all your years watching and thinking about Star Trek.
Wow, Sirtis is like 10,000 times cooler than I realized. Awesome.
13 is right on !!!!
I don’t know Marina Sirtis as a person, so I won’t comment on her.
I will say, though, that I never liked the Troi character. Very bland and (sorry to say) useless. Whenever you really needed her “telepathy” (or whatever you’d call it), she “couldn’t get a feeling” on it. She was clearly just eye candy from the start and, frankly, I never thought she was all that sexy.
But hey, that’s just me.
#9-“Well stop and think about it, it really can’t be your daddy’s Trek. People who originally watched the show in the 60s are at or near retirement age. Or dead. Sci-Fi is a genre whose main target is teenagers and young adults” —
Just tell me what brand are you smoking??? I watched the show in the 60s (like MANY others) — I’m 45 years old and NO WHERE near retirement. What a misguided statemement!!!
Classic Star Trek fans have NOT run their course — all you need to do is look at the postings that have been placed on this website since it went live! If it weren’t for the classic Star Trek fans there would NOT have been 11 movies, 5 TV incarnations, countless novels, comics, etc.
#14: You do know she appeared in Crash, right? It may be a small role but it’s hard to justify calling 2004’s Best Picture Academy Award winner a “obscure or shit” movie.
#23 Sam Belil – If you are 45, then that means you were 4-7 years old when the show was on. I think that #9’s point was that the target audience of that time (teens and young adults) are retirement age. I don’t know what network execs were thinking back then, but I don’t think your four-year-old self was their primary target. Nowadays, clearly things are marketed to children, but that’s beside the point.
I kind of agree with #9’s sentiments. While ye older fans certainly have kept things afloat, that’s just not gonna cut it for the next 40 years, methinks.
Man, I have to think that some of you are just impossible to please. You griped about the TNG films for years demanding a return to the only ‘true’ Trek in your mind – TOS – and they finally give it to you, but even then you can’t be happy. ‘Oh no! They aren’t using the original actors!’ ‘Oh no! They might update the appearance of the show!’, ‘Oh no! They might actually make the film popular with a modern audience!’
Seriously, what on earth did you people expect? An extended version of TOS complete with the original actors (now well into their 70’s), miniskirts, beehives, upside down salt shakers standing in for medical scanners, actors throwing themselves wildly across sets, alien races with paper plates stapled to their foreheads? Come on! Star Trek is about adventure, the human condition, and exploring strange new worlds. As long as all those things are present in the new movie, I could really care less if the Enterprise looks PRECISELY as it did or if Kirk’s uniform is red or green.
Now one of the producers makes an offhand remark and you’re all ready to fillet him. By saying ‘This isn’t your daddy’s Star Trek’, he’s likely conveying the fact that this is a new age for modern Trek. There’s absolutely NO hint of malice in his statement. In fact, every statement these guys have made so far indicates strong reverence for the source material as well as the fans. Lindelof is a producer remember, and Abrams never identified him as a big fan. He could easily be referring to Abrams fresh take on an old story. It just seems that some are SO ready to jump on ANY statement as an excuse to cry foul.
They’ve got a budget bigger than most of the Trek movies ever made the studio in profit, in addition to some excellent acting talents (Bana, Quinto, Ryder [we all seem to forget that she CAN be good given the right project], Nimoy, Greenwood) as well as a strong director who has experience in the scifi/action/adventure category (sorry, but he made the only MI movie that bore any resemblence to the show). The chief scribe is a self-professed repository of Classic Trek knowledge. What more can you ask?
And if you end up not liking it, who cares? Go home and pop in your TOS DVD’s and be happy. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not as though you have to watch it over and over again. I mean, I don’t punish myself by watching an Insurrection/Nemesis double-feature, do I? No.
Troi was the most worthless and unnecessary character created for the show. She was just an expositional tool for lazy writers. And I am not refering to the actress and her abilities, but she was eye candy, nothing more.
“Would you have prefered another TNG film instead of Abrams return to TOS?” A couple of weeks ago, I would have said no. Today, I voted yes without hesitation.
Patooey. Ick. No. Never.
#26 Sean
absoultely agree
14. Pizza – December 26, 2007
Re: Eye candy
Please include in your list the original eye candy… Kirk’s babe of the week. Robots, aliens and boobs… oh my!
Thank you #26, well said.
TheGreatBird
warning for trolling. There was a thread about Lindelof and his comments, so there is no need for you to keep trying to divert every other discussion into one about it
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#25 Shawn P:
Thank you. I was born in 1968 and will be 40 years old next week. The show was over around then. Anybody who watched the show and was old enough to be in the target audience is in their mid-50s and older. That’s my parent’s generation. They go to the movies maybe once every five years. They aren’t and shouldn’t be the people who the newest incarnation of Star Trek should be made for. It should be made for my kids’ generation, if the franchise is to survive another 40 years.
Big budget movies are made for a target audience below age 40. They are the ones who spend more money on that sort of thing. That’s demographics.
If Star Trek is to survive, it must evolve. It doesn’t mean it has to devolve and become mindless shooting and action, but it must somehow reach a younger audience. There’s a reason why people my age don’t listen to Frank Sinatra, and why my kids don’t listen to my old music.
Just like my parents’ Batman was Adam West, and my Batman was Michael Keeton, my kids’ Batman is that new guy (sorry I forgot his name). Same will go for Star Trek
Sirtis has been going on for years how she was the TNG ‘chick’. Sorry Marina, with the other choices being Crusher & Guinan, you won by default. When it comes to Starfleet eye candy I prefer Terry Farrell.
26. sean – “…alien races with paper plates stapled to their foreheads?”
Ha. Those were placemats, and they were glue onto the dudes’ shoulders and chest in Elaan of Troyus.
Your even bigger mistake was to ask whether Trekkies like to complain. Do you have to really ask?
Meanwhile, Marina still looks (and sounds) like Michael Dorn’s description, and I for one am very very pleased.
You young whippersnappers, and your young new actors, and your newfangled see-gee-aye effects! When we were your age we watched Star Trek on tiny 12 inch screen, and the ships were wooden models, the planet sets were styrofoam, and we LIKED it that way!
#25 — I was five and while not a “targeted demo” (at the time), the show immediately went into syndication — so my peers and myself literally grew up with the show — watching it with even greater frequency — because where I live, TOS was broadcast on a nightly basis when it first went into syndication. “Not cut it for the next 40 years” — not so sure that I buy into that since ST is very much a strong brand with strong brand affinity AFTER some 40+ years of still being in existance.
Takei is half in the bag and the interviewer is a moron.
Hey guys, Marina is an amazing actress.. she ROCKED the recently released feature film “InAlienable”. I was there on the set of the film and saw her in person. I -highly- recommend Walter Koenig’s InAlienable (see Renegade-Studios.com) to she what she did to earn a standing ovation by the cast and crew!
regards,
Sarah Char
Post-Production Coordinator
InAlienable
http://www.renegade-studios.com
#32 “If Star Trek is to survive, it must evolve. ”
Why must it evolve? Me, I’m happy there is a new movie and I will be there on Christmas day. But I’m also just as content to watch my 79 episodes on DVD. Because that is what entertains me. No different than my love of Green Acres or I Love Lucy.
Why does a new version of Star Trek have to go on for a new generation? Why can’t it just be the classic it is? Why do young people have to like this new version of Star Trek? The Andy Griffith show is a classic. It has been in re-runs for almost 50 years, picking up new fans along the way. But there are new re-imagined Mayberrys being developed. There are no re-casts of Lucille Ball. Why can’t Star Trek, just be Star Trek? What is so pressing that today’s kids must love a new take on StarTrek, no matter what changes have to take place to make it happen?
Again, I’m cool with it, and I can’t wait to see it. But I wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep if Trek were never made again.
Why can’t a classic TV show remain a classic TV show? Other than a whole new generation possibly liking this new movie and becoming a fan of this movie while Paramount cashes in on the merchandising, what’s the real benefit, if any, to TOS or it’s fans?
Just wondering.
#39 Because the world changes my friend. Your beloved TV shows are evolutions on stories told before there was a television. Stories and myths and archtyple characters have been evolving to fit the times since man first told stories. A fan of Horatio Hornblower might just as easily said,
“Why can’t classic books stay classic books? Why does this young upstart Roddenberry have to cast and actor to take the place of iriplaceable print and rename him to Kirk and put him in space? Can’t Horatio stay Horatio?”
It must evolve because our myths evolve with our culture.
#39
The benefit for a fan is obvious – new stories, new adventures, new experiences featuring the characters you love. Just because the character is played by someone else doesn’t negate that. I can watch Trek VI over and over again and enjoy it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t crave something I haven’t seen before.
The simple truth of showbusiness is this – if this movie isn’t a success, we’re unlikely to hear any new tales for a very long time. And for many of us, that’s a sad prospect. Star Trek isn’t a story with a finite beginning, middle and end. There are endless stories that can be told in that universe, so it’s not quite the same as milking an empty cow. At Trek’s peak in the mid-nineties, there must have been a new Trek novel every other week. They weren’t all gold, but many of them were certainly quality stories.
As for catering to ‘young people’, well, they’re the ones that will make or break this. They’ve got the disposable income, and they’re the ones that will either line up on opening day or pass and go to Saw VII. It may not be ideal, but it’s the reality.
#34
I bow to your superior knowledge of placemat-related costuming, but my remark wasn’t specific to any episode. It was just a fun poke at TOS ‘creative’ alien makeup jobs.
For the curious, Mirina Sirtis gets nude in “Blind Date” (the 1984 one, not the better known 1987 Blake Edwards film of the same title). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086978/
If Tasha Yar is more your thing, she’s in “Eliminators” (1986). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091003/ “Mandroid. Mercenary. Scientist. Ninja. Each one a specialist. Together they are ELIMINATORS!”
#32 I’m your age and I listen to Frank! and Deano!
Go figure!
I take your point though. ;)
Quoting #26 – Sean:
“Seriously, what on earth did you people expect? An extended version of TOS complete with the original actors (now well into their 70’s), miniskirts, beehives, upside down salt shakers standing in for medical scanners, actors throwing themselves wildly across sets, alien races with paper plates stapled to their foreheads? Come on! Star Trek is about adventure, the human condition, and exploring strange new worlds. As long as all those things are present in the new movie, I could really care less if the Enterprise looks PRECISELY as it did or if Kirk’s uniform is red or green.”
Sean, that’s the best paragraph I’ve read on any Trek site in a long time. Although I’d love to see a nice retro-Trek that is comfortably 60s looking, I’m with you 100% on this. You say it all in that single paragraph.
Hey, “Blind Date” is a two-for. Kirstie Alley (the first Savik) is also topless in this movie.
#12
Within the show: Crusher left to become head of Starfleet Medical and was replaced by Pulaski. If I remember correctly there was no explanation as to why Crusher returned for the third season and there was only one reference to Pulaski the rest of the series (Crusher said she was familiar with one of her techniques or something).
In real life: I don’t think it’s ever been positively confirmed what McFadden leaving the show for a year was about, but most people believe it had to do with her not getting along with Roddenberry over the development of her character. The other cast members made impassioned pleas to her to return for the third season and she did.
sean – agreed.
I hadn’t seen Elaan in decades when I read an article on it, complete with pictures of uniforms that look stolen from Mrs. Brady’s kitchen.
Yes, TOS is fun as serious stuff or just goofiness.
#2 Blake powers. Paradise Lost circa 1999.
I also take exception to the comment about stapling paper plates to the actors. They were glued on. Accept no substitutes!