At Creation Entertainment's fourth annual Official Star Trek Las Vegas Convention last weekend, the program was bulging with stars from all five Star Trek series. Beside "the four captains" which highlighted the four-day event (related story), a number of first officers and other principal cast members from the various shows were on hand to share their views, insights, experiences and autographs with the fans. Here are a few moments from the co-stars' time on the main auditorium stage.

LeVar Burton

The popular Star Trek: The Next Generation and "Roots" star drew compliments from the audience over his very stylish ensemble, consisting of a subdued greenish-yellow blazer, light blue pants and beige fedora (but in respect to Creation, he did not wear it at a slant). LeVar Burton ("Geordi La Forge") was the first major crowd-drawer of the weekend, taking the stage Thursday afternoon. What has he been up to lately? "Well, I like naps," he joshed. Actually, his family life has been very full lately, with an 11-year-old daughter, a 25-year-old son, and a 4-year-old granddaughter. "Yes, it's true, Kunta is a grandfather."

As far as work, Burton proudly announced that he is going into his 22nd season of Reading Rainbow, the PBS educational series which he hosts. "We absolutely positively refuse to go away."

His other major announcement was a movie project he's working on with Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee. He explained: "Stan is creating 10 new superhero characters never before seen in any medium anywhere for 10 feature films. And I'm directing the first one, called 'The Golden Leopard.' The Golden Leopard is a 17-year-old black female superhero, and to have the opportunity to create some new superheroes for a new generation is wildly exciting to me." He starts shooting the live-action feature next month, "in Las Vegas — New Mexico — of all places." Burton, as we all know, started his directing career on TNG and has shifted his focus almost entirely to that function lately. But he could get back to his first love soon. "I felt for many years that it was really necessary for me to establish in the minds of people in the industry that this is what I did for a living, that I was a director who had the goods. And I feel like I've done that now, so for the first time in a long time I'm actually open to acting gigs. So if you want to hire me for anything, I have pictures and résumés backstage."

Burton asked if he could go on a "rant" on the topic on everyone's mind. "Aren't we sad that there is no more Trek," he began. "I'm so pissed! Because I love Star Trek. Long before I became a member of this family, I was a fan of Star Trek ... I'm a child of the television age, and it was rare when I was growing up to see people of color in the popular culture. It was a big deal for me to see Diahann Carroll with her own television show on CBS (Julia); it was a big deal to see Sammy Davis Jr. on The Rifleman; it was a big deal to see Clarence Williams III on Mod Squad; it was a big deal to see Nichelle Nichols on the bridge of the Enterprise.

"Star Trek was really instrumental in helping me form my own identity in the world. And so I love this thing that we all love. And take it very personally when those who are in charge of driving the ship tend to let it crash."

Burton also took the opportunity to pay tribute to James Doohan, who passed away on July 20 and whom he worked with on "Relics." "Having Jimmy on the set [of TNG] was a joy, he was great to be around, he was great to work with," Burton said. "And we had early days, 'cause Jimmy started drinking at 5:00, and we all went home!"

Connor Trinneer

Connor Trinneer ("Trip Tucker") was the sole representative of the principal cast of Star Trek: Enterprise, stepping in as a last-minute replacement for Jolene Blalock, who cancelled her appearance due to work commitments, according to Creation officials. Blalock was scheduled for Sunday afternoon, but Trinneer was set to fly out on Sunday to Vancouver to film an episode of Stargate: Atlantis ("If any of you could give me a little update on how that show works, I'd much appreciate it," he said). So Creation shuffled the schedule to put Trinneer on Saturday morning.

Besides his Stargate gig, Trinneer's other big news was that he and his wife are expecting a baby boy on October 8. "Gonna name him Trip!" he exclaimed at first. "No, we're not gonna name him Trip. No. The name's a secret."

Taking an out-of-town job is a rarity for Trinneer at the moment, because he's spending most of his time with his wife "settin' up the baby room and going to birth classes." Also, he wanted to avoid doing another sci-fi show so soon. But when he saw the character of "Michael" on Atlantis in the casting breakdowns, he found it so interesting that he called his agent and asked him to get him an audition. "And he called them and they said, 'Well, man, it's his if he wants it.' So, that made me awfully good. Now I just gotta go and deliver," he said.

Trinneer was asked to comment about his character's death in the series finale "These Are the Voyages..." "With the knowledge that the show was gonna be cancelled, it was kind of an honor, in a sense, to be killed off," he said. However, he didn't think the nature of the death was as well thought out as it could have been. "I had gotten through some scrapes that were much more severe than that, and this one was kind of like a slip-up that [Trip] didn't get out of. I would like to have gone out in a blaze of glory, but, y'know, a pipe exploded."

The Enterprise fans were in agreement when he commented that the finale "kinda felt like, 'These Are the Voyages of The Next Generation.' I know they had a difficult job to try to sew up the show... However, we carried this baby for four years and, y'know, let us, as a group, send if off."

And like the fans, he was upset by the premature cancellation of the show. "I know that historically the shows have taken awhile to get their sea legs, and I thought that we did, and by the time we were going on all cylinders, they just pulled out the drivetrain."

Robert Duncan McNeill

Just before it was Trinneer's time to yield the stage to Robert Duncan McNeill ("Tom Paris"), the actor/director stepped out to greet his good friend. "My favorite guy!" "Likewise!" McNeill has directed Trinneer several times in Enterprise, but the two have never acted together. So they committed to teaming up on a play sometime.

As McNeill took over the stage, he briefed the audience on the many directorial gigs he's got lined up on different shows. On Tuesday he would start production on an episode of Desperate Housewives. "Quite an experience," he remarked. "The drama behind the scenes makes the show look dull and boring, I'm telling you."

Also, he'll be doing episodes of Las Vegas (ironically), The O.C., Medium, and a new WB show called Supernatural which he said will be "really scary and cool." Just last week he had gotten a call from Ronald D. Moore's Battlestar Galactica to direct a show in September, but he was already completely booked. "I LOVE that show! I was so disappointed. We're gonna work that out, though, because I would love to go work with those guys." He would even entertain the prospect of playing an on-screen role on Battlestar.

Talking about his acting career with Trek, McNeill revealed that there had been serious discussions about him reprising his character "Nick Locarno" from TNG's "The First Duty," but instead the character evolved into Tom Paris for business reasons. "That was a very popular episode — the studio liked it and the fans liked it, and the writers thought that character was an interesting model for a series regular on another show. When they were creating Deep Space Nine I heard that they were thinking about bringing Nick Locarno out to be, like, a freighter pilot at the space station. That never happened, and then when Voyager came around they brought up the idea again — could Nick Locarno fit into this cast. And they found a way to fit him in. But I think what it came down to was, the writer who created the character gets credit for it, and if they bring that character onto a new series, then he gets paid forever. And I think they just said, 'You know what, let's give him a different name and cast the same guy.' So they didn't have to pay the original writer." [Note: "The First Duty" was written by Ron D. Moore and Naren Shankar. Both are doing extremely well on other series.]

McNeill graced the fans with a rare treat: Upon request, McNeill sang a song from one his early stage experiences. In 1988-89 he toured with the Stephen Sondheim Tony Award-winning musical "Into the Woods," playing the lead role of "Jack" (the fellow with the beanstalk). So McNeill broke out into: "There are giants in the sky; There are big tall terrible giants in the sky ... I have no shame whatsoever!"

Garrett Wang

Another Voyager star, Garrett Wang ("Harry Kim") set out to explain why he's been sporting such a long do since many have seen him last. "I grew my hair out mainly because, on Voyager, I had to have a haircut once a week for seven years, to keep it the exact Starfleet code measurement, to the millimeter," he said. "So once the show ended, I just said, I'm gonna let this 'bleep' grow, and grow. I mean, as an actor, you can always cut your hair, right? And if there's a role that needs longer hair, you'll have it."

"Unfortunately, most people that don't know me have this misconception that maybe I'm part Native-American," he continued. Such a misconception occurred on the set of "Into the West," the Steven Spielberg miniseries that recently aired on USA Network, in which Wang played the lead Chinese railroad worker named Chow-Ping. While sitting in a tent with other actors, the head of extras casting approached Wang and asked, "What tribe are you from?" Wang replied sassily, "I'm from the tribe of Chakotay!" The recruiter kept asking him if he could ride a horse, and it took the help of fellow actor Christian Kane to convince her he was not a Native-American extra.

Despite that incident, "It was kinda nice that they would do a role which portrayed some of the problems the Chinese faced while working on the railroad," Wang commented about his part in the western epic. He explained that when the railroad was completed, the Chinese workers were left in the middle of nowhere, and basically had to walk back. "They shooed the Chinese away, and that's the thanks that they gave them."

Speaking about Voyager, Wang offered up his idea as to how the series should have ended. "If you watched the final episode of Voyager ["Endgame"], the first hour was great. The second hour was like bluhbluhbluh, what happened? ... My advice to them was, the final episode of Voyager on TV should've been the first half, the first hour, that was fantastic. And then they should've shot a nice two-hour movie, and that would've been the actual coming home. That would've made sense!" The fans — who have pined for a Voyager movie for years — enthusiastically agreed.

Rene Auberjonois, Nana Visitor & Armin Shimerman

Representing Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on Sunday were Nana Visitor ("Kira Nerys"), Rene Auberjonois("Odo") and Armin Shimerman ("Quark"). Visitor is now working on Michael Piller's new show Wildfire (ABC Family Network) in New Mexico, and Auberjonois continues to work on Boston Legal with William Shatner. "He's just the sweetest guy in the world to work with, and we're both having a great time," Auberjonois said.

Relating some of their experiences on the set of DS9, Visitor talked about how tedious it was playing both Kira and her mirror-universe counterpart the Intendent at the same time. "It was 12 hours of just me doing a scene with myself. Technically I've never done anything so difficult," she said. "But the character was fun, she was really out there ... When the Intendent fell in love with Kira, it's because she was a narcissist, that's how I saw it."

One the episodes Shimerman was most proud of was "Little Green Men." "We owe it all, really, to our writing staff, in that they were so good in coming up with such creative ideas outside of the envelope," he said. "Sometimes it was difficult for people who didn't follow our show to get involved with it because we were so outside of the envelope. As I like to say, we 'boldly stayed in one place.' Because of that, it made it more difficult, [but also] more creative. Sometimes, when you have less latitude, it allows you to be more creative. And I think that's certainly what happened with our show."

Invariably the topic of a DS9 movie came up. "I would not recommend anybody holding their breath," Auberjonois replied frankly. He continued: "Quite apart from the movie question, I think there's a parable to the whole Star Trek thing that's going on right now and people's disappointment in [Enterprise's] premature demise. When you have a field, and you plant the same thing in the field year after year after year, there's a certain point where the crop just begins to weaken. You have to let a field go fallow for a while. And I think that's what we're seeing right now ... It's not the end of Star Trek, but I think there will be a period now in which it lies fallow. And then hopefully, because of people like you who keep the dream alive, it will come back. And hopefully it will be strong and vital."

Visitor offered up this thought: "Deep Space Nine: The Opera! I swear to God, it would be a good opera."

Marina Sirtis & Michael Dorn

Getting back to the TNG crew, Marina Sirtis ("Deanna Troi") and Michael Dorn ("Worf") were, as usual, set to appear together. But Dorn was running late due to photo ops with fans, so Sirtis went ahead and started on stage without him. She took the opportunity to prime the audience for his arrival. "You have to do something for me. Somebody, when they ask a question, say, 'Oh my, Mr. Dorn, you've lost so much weight!' It'll make him so happy and he won't be all surly for the rest of the day. When there are too many fans he gets a little surly and I have to suffer the rest of the evening. So someone mention how skinny he is, and then he'll be happy. He's lost, like, a half a Dorn."

"Don't mention how much hair he's lost," she added.

Indeed, later on when Dorn joined her on stage, a fan said, "Michael, have you lost weight?" He grinned proudly, "Yes I have."

Sirtis told of some her experiences on the Enterprise finale "These Are the Voyages ..." "Who noticed that Troi was a little perkier in Enterprise? Wasn't she? ... I think I was just having so much fun with Jonathan."

She was performing in Captain Archer's Ready Room with Jonathan Frakes when Scott Bakula arrived to do his scene with Frakes. "And Jonathan goes, 'Oh, here he comes! Big time, high-paid, f'ing TV star! And the crew just laughed," she recalled. "Except one of them, this young guy whom I didn't know, and he goes, '(Gasp) No one's spoken to Scott like that in four years!' And I said, 'Well, he better get used to it over the next week and a half, 'cause that's gonna be happening a lot. But we had a great time."

Sirtis honestly commented that "Voyages" was "a good episode," but not "a great 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."

Dorn and Sirtis are best friends now, but Dorn admitted they hated each other in the first year. "I thought she was just stuck up ... And she thought I was surly." The crowd roared in laughter over the familiar term. Despite their animosity at the time, Sirtis had asked Dorn to play tennis with her visiting brother. Afterwards, "I come over to the house, and it's this woman I have never seen before in a year. She's like, 'Would you boys like more pasta?' I'm going, 'Yeeaahh.' 'How about a little more salad? Would you like a drink?' I'm like, 'Who is this woman? She killed Marina and replaced her with a nice one!' But in all honesty, that's what changed it for me. I couldn't believe it — she was this wonderful, big-hearted woman."

"I was under a lot of stress that first season," Sirtis defended. "I was gonna get fired, don't forget, so I was, like, stressed in half."

Brent Spiner

Rounding the TNG principal guests, Brent Spiner ("Data") came on stage late on Sunday afternoon. He was his usual feisty self, teasing the fans whenever possible. "What was my favorite episode from all the seasons? I tell ya what, I particularly enjoyed the episodes that featured the character 'Data.' I don't know, I just love the guy, something about him," he ribbed.

Spiner, as we all know, worked with writer John Logan to come up with a story for the fourth TNG big-screen adventure, and he revealed an early storyline that was considered for the movie that eventually became "Star Trek Nemesis." "There were two timelines, it was two different worlds. There were two Enterprises, and two Picards and two Datas ... Everybody had two roles, and there were no [major] guest stars ... And the other Picard was the villain of the piece." The only thing that survived from that concept was the character of "B-4" and thus Spiner himself playing two roles, he explained. There was another storyline conceived, but he promised he would reveal that at next year's Vegas convention.

Spiner's latest projects consist of the feature film "Material Girls," where he co-stars with Hilary Duff and her sister, Haylie Duff and Anjelica Huston. "Can you imagine that combination?" he said. He's also a regular on the new Brannon Braga-produced sci-fi series Threshold," which will air on CBS on Friday nights.

"It looks like a really interesting show. I don't know, I haven't seen any of it myself. I don't tend to look at anything that I'm in, because I want to go on suffering the illusion that I'm fantastic, and I don't want to be proven otherwise," he said. "There are a lot of invasion shows this year, so we'll see what happens — hopefully we're left at the end of the year," he added.

"Incidentally, Threshold, of all things, is being shot at Paramount Pictures," he continued. "So I am now the oldest living person at Paramount Pictures — I've been there through four regimes now, literally. Four people have been president of Paramount Pictures since I started working there. I'm sure, if I can hang on for another year or two, I will be the next president of Paramount Pictures. And when I am, things are going to change! Star Trek will be back on the air instantly! There will not be just one, but five Star Trek shows on the air! And each one of the five shows will star myself!" He gained uproarious applause for that. "Thank you, thank you for supporting my ridiculous illusions, thank you."

Robert Beltran

The final celebrity on stage at the convention was Voyager first officer Robert Beltran ("Chakotay"), present, as usual, with his dry wit and infamously cynical outlook. "Don't you people ever go home?" he said as looked out at the packed audience at nearly 6:00 Sunday evening. "Wow, what a nice crowd. I expected to see 10, 15 people here."

"I have one burning question," he began. "I want to know why everybody loves Raymond. Because I don't. I hate Raymond! You know who else I hate is that guy on television who's always telling people how to cheat the government, and he runs around with those question marks on his suit ... If I had a chance, I'd smack that guy."

Beltran stars in a new Sci-Fi Channel movie called "Manticore," coming out Thanksgiving weekend (the movie also features Chase Masterson). He explained the premise: "It's about a group of American soldiers in Iraq who are sent on a special mission to go save a CNN reporter, a woman, a hot chick reporter, and I'm the leader of this American group that has to go rescue her. And during that mission we meet (ominous voice) 'the Manticore.' It's a mythological creature from Persia. It's kind of a nice little metaphor of what's going on in Iraq right now. So I think you might like it." He shot that in Bulgaria, he said.

Beltran said he was initially resistant to auditioning for a new Star Trek series, but he liked the pilot script, and he learned that Geneviève Bujold had already been cast as the captain. "I always was an admirer of hers, and I wanted to work with her." Of course, we all know what happened — Beltran never got a chance to work with her. "I think she was completely out of her element from her first day on the set. Because I would be walking past her, and I'd say, "Hi Geneviève!" and she was just like, 'Grrrr'. So it didn't surprise me that two days later, she was gone. She was not really there, I don't think."

Like other cast members, he was never satisfied with the way Voyager ended, but he's a bit more blunt about it. "Yeah. So, uh, let's throw two people together who had never had more than three words said to each other, and couple them up. And, um, pretend like they are, you know, a pair or whatever." He continued, "They were so anxious to get rid of our cast and our show ... they could not wait to get rid of us so they could do their own show."

NEXT UP: The recurring players of Star Trek: Penny Johnson Jerald, Rosalind Chao, John de Lancie, Grace Lee Whitney, Gary Graham, Max Grodenchik, Chase Masterson, James Darren, Martha Hackett, Vaughn Armstrong, and more!