Interview: Nana Visitor On What She Learned Watching All The Star Treks For ‘Open A Channel: A Woman’s Trek’

When Deep Space Nine‘s Nana Visitor was approached about writing a book about the women in Star Trek, the original idea pitched to her was that she’d do short interviews to work into a picture-filled coffee table book. When she started doing interviews, the concept changed to something deeper: a look at female Trek characters, yes, but also a deep dive into the actresses who played them and they times they lived in. We reviewed the book when it came out, then spoke to her in depth about her experience writing it and how it affected her.

Here is part 1 of our extended and frank conversation, where she talks about watching all the Star Treks (sometimes for the first time) and some of her experience when the show was in production. (More to come.)

You described having the Original Series guest stars [BarBara Luna, France Nuyen, Sandra Gimpel, and Tanya Lemani] with [Voyager‘s] Irene Tsu over to your house. The way you set that stage, I felt like there was a whole lot going on there on different levels. I’m wondering about the dynamic of them being interviewed together, and if you felt like they held back because of it.

Yes, there was a lot going on. This happened a lot; They’d say an answer, and then they’d say, “Okay, I’m going to tell you off the record.” So I of course respected that. But there was a lot going on, right? And no one needs details or anything like that, but they all—many of them had stories. But they’re a tight group. I don’t think Irene is part of the group, but the rest of them really hang together, really talk to each other, help each other out, tell each other where there’s a convention that they can go to. So they’re very comfortable with each other.

Had you seen much of The Original Series before?

I had seen an episode or two of Next Gen, and I think I saw one episode of Voyager, and maybe one of the next one, Enterprise, but that was it. And I foolishly thought that I was going to get away with writing this book just from what the women told me, and then that would work.  [laughs] And it dawned on me, oh no, I need to watch all of it. And what was fascinating to me is I became such a fan of it. It was so much more than I expected, so much more, including my own show. I realized I hadn’t watched all of it. I had seen certain episodes, but I had to watch a lot more. And I guess with two boys and filming, I didn’t watch the last couple of seasons. And when I got to watch those episodes it was like, wow, what great writing.

Welcome to the Star Trek fan club!

Yeah, seriously!

I grew up on The Original Series, and I always when I look back at it now, I feel like the main male characters all had very strong feminine qualities.

Yes!

Kirk was a loving person, and Spock was someone who put everybody else ahead of him, and McCoy was never afraid to be super emotional. So it was progressive in that sense, for sure.

It’s interesting, because so much of it… I mean, when you watch the first pilot [“The Cage”] I felt like I was watching a World War II movie. And so many of the creators came from World War II. And I know from my son, having been a Marine, how close and tight and emotional those relationships are. So I think that that really transferred to the men on the show, that tight World War II “we’re in it together” feeling, and that they shared emotions and depth of relationships together.

I think they related the way that women relate to each other. That’s maybe why it had so much appeal to me as a little kid.

And think about how not one iota of performativeness was in Nichelle [Nichols]’s performance. There was never an indication that she’s trying to be seductive, she was business. She was about her job. And that’s something I didn’t notice until I put on these lenses to write the book. I never noticed that. I just accepted that’s just the way Uhura was. But that was a big deal back then for her to play it like that.

From A Woman’s Trek (Insight Editions)

When we move into Deep Space Nine, we get Kira and Dax, a huge shift. They changed the game in a really big way. It shocked me when I heard you say the two of you weren’t talking a lot back then about being the only two main female cast members on a set.

No. Believe me, and I noticed the difference, I had the opportunity… very often they didn’t know what to do with me. My agents were like, “You’re not beautiful. You’re not the girl next door. Don’t know what to do.” So I got into the leading lady. I bleached my hair, and they went, “Okay, now we’ll put you into leading lady stuff.” So I went out on a lot of auditions with beautiful women and the games, the head games, the competition…  It wasn’t everyone was saying “I want to be beautiful.” They were saying “I want the opportunity to have the most lines and to have something happen to be in the show…” to have scenes so and there could only be one beautiful woman, so competition was awful, and that was kind of the way it was.

Now, I went for a character role once, and there was every look, size, shape, and it was a completely different room waiting to audition. Completely different. One person was knitting and laughing, and everyone was talking. They knew each other. They went out to lunch after auditions, because they saw each other all the time and formed relationships. That was not what I was seeing going out for leading ladies in TV, in Hollywood, in the ‘80s.

I’ve heard Terry [Farrell] talk about how they gave her a hard time about her performance, that she was insecure about it. Her character was incredibly important to me, I was about the age that Jadzia was supposed to be when [DS9] came on. And I thought she nailed it from the first day. That it took her a while to feel that surprises me, because she was playing it beautifully.

I love that. It’s something that Terry and I talk about often, going back to your comment that we didn’t hang together, and it really was the culture of the time, and how perfect? Don’t have women talk to each other cause… [laughs] I mean, if women aren’t talking to each other, it’s always benefiting someone else, other than the women, right?

And your take on Seven of Nine. I love that you called her character a Trojan horse, which is the best description I’ve heard of that character. And for you, it must have been quite an experience watching Voyager after just seeing pictures of hottie Seven of Nine.

I was blown away. I was blown away because I was set to go, “Oh, well, here they go. They have a captain, and now they need to do this.” And what I actually saw is that it gave Kate [Mulgrew] the opportunity to—oh my God—be a mentor, and to show a whole other dimension to her character. And not only is Jeri Ryan brilliant in the role, but it’s brilliantly written. It focused on mother, daughter, mentor, mentee… It was so many things. There were so many people who could look at Seven of Nine and put themselves in it.

Yeah, she was one of the most complex, layered characters in not just Star Trek, in TV. She was evolving all the time, too, and discovering who she was, which is a very feminist message.

Yeah, exactly. And allowed to make mistakes and learn.

Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine in publicity pictures before her appearance on Voyager

And I love that you got [Voyager executive producer] Brannon [Braga] to be honest about the fact that they didn’t tell Kate… He told you Kate was out doing all this feminist work and speaking to women, and she didn’t know this character was coming in and was going to be a hot babe. Do you think there still would have been so much of a conflict if someone had had a proper conversation with the cast?

Brannon told me he thought it would make a difference. I think it would have made a difference. It’s a culture, again, of don’t share information, and you know that comes from the top. It’s not helpful. I found out that Michael Dorn was joining the show from a convention, and it put me into a state of “oh…” because Denise [Crosby] said, “Every time I was there, Worf is looking over my shoulder.” [laughs] And sure enough, he takes over when she’s gone. And I thought I may be in danger. I knew that the audience had some issues with me, and I was worried. And so what would it have done to have the conversation, to know, would it have made me feel a part of a team? It would have made me want to help the show in any way, to be included, and it would have stopped me from spending part of my brain worrying about that instead of doing my job. I think, really, every system should set people up to have as much energy and safety to be able to just do their job, just concentrate on that, that’s all

Versus harassing Terry about her weight or her boob size, or whatever the thing was that they decided was wrong.

Not going to help someone’s feeling part of a team.

You talked a lot in the book about [DS9 showrunner] Ira [Steven Behr]’s wife [Laura] and how she had such a good influence on some of the decisions they made for your character. Bryan on the Trek Marry Kill podcast once talked about how a lot of the writers of maybe DS9 and Next Gen were these young single men. I didn’t know how accurate that was, but it kind of rang true… Do you think that that’s part of what was and why Ira sort of was able to take it to another level?

Ira and Laura are both forces of nature. They are both incredible. Just briefly, she’s a physicist and a ballerina, and I have a strange connection with her, although she wasn’t taking class when I was, she took ballet class with my mother, who was a ballet teacher in New York. So it thrilled me that she was a fan of my mother’s and knew about her technique, which was really out there at the time. And Laura is a highly opinionated, smart, brilliant woman, and completely unafraid of telling anyone anything. Ira is—and it’s not just my experience, I interviewed a lot of the women writers, and they all said the same thing. He mentored them. He was kind, he was helpful. So the two of them together, he just wanted to write a human. And I think that she would go, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Is that a human?” She kept him honest about that. And she came up with how I didn’t have to hide my pregnancy, which was amazing and smart and worked for everybody. What I didn’t know at the time was that Gates McFadden, because they had just given me the right to not have to hide behind things… um, she did because we were pregnant at the same time.

And there could only be one.

There can only be one. There can only be one pregnant character in all of Star Trek at a time. [laughs]

Thanks to Laura Behr, Nana didn’t have to hide her pregnancy on Deep Space Nine. (Paramount)

Did you make a conscious decision to stay within the TV universe of Star Trek? There are women in the movies that would’ve been good to talk to as well.

Oh my god, I wanted so much to do it all. But even this, what I got done, was an overwhelming task. I think if I did the movies—I did get to interview them, but because we didn’t do a section, so it wasn’t included. But movies are slightly different to me, and when I thought about it 10 times, I went, you know what? I’m okay with letting it go, because it’s the slow drip of culture that Star Trek was a part of, coming into people’s living rooms every week. Movies are more transient. They may watch them many, many times, but it’s not quite as ubiquitous as all these TV shows that become a part of your…  It’s just on while you’re getting ready to go to bed, and you’re hearing it again for the 10th time. So many people told me that’s how they watch it, it’s just in the background, or it’s their comfort show before they go to sleep. So that made there be a difference between the effect of the movies and the effect of TV. In the end, even though I would have loved to have done it, it felt right to just concentrate on the television.

[Editor’s note: Nana spoke to Alice Krige and Robin Curtis, and when the decision was made not to include the movies, she moved Alice into the TV section.]

More to come…

Read part 2 of Nana’s interview, where she talks about Hollywood culture through the Roddenberry era into the Berman era of Star Trek, part 3, about the “female box” Star Trek actresses were put in and the regression on Enterprise, and part 4, about the new Trek shows and Hollywood’s future.

Buy Open A Channel: A Woman’s Trek by Nana Visitor

Nana Visitor’s full-color illustrated Star Trek: Open a Channel: A Woman’s Trek was released by Insight Editions on October 1. You can order it on Amazon in hardcover and  Kindle e-book.

Check out more exclusive interviews at TrekMovie.com.

DISCLAIMER: We may link to products to buy on Amazon in our articles; these are customized affiliate links that support TrekMovie by earning a small commission when you purchase through them.