Uncommonly blue skies met the stars of Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and their fans — at least for one day — as a capacity crowd filled the ballroom of the Bellevue, Washington, DoubleTree hotel last weekend for Creation Entertainment's Seattle-area convention. Though each show has been off the air for years, the reception the stars got was nothing less than warm and enthusiastic.

Ethan Phillips

The celebrity appearances kicked off on Saturday with Ethan Phillips, Voyager's "Neelix," who commenced by observing, "How come it's sunny here? I don't get that. I was here in 1992 playing at the Seattle Repertory Theatre, and I saw the sun once in three months — and that was on TV."

Dressed casually like he was just part of the crowd (when it was time for him to go on, he stepped up from the back of the audience and stood beside the stage, and the emcee didn't even recognize him), Ethan started talking about his recent activities — he just got back from Salt Lake City where he did the second-to-last episode of Touched By an Angel, plus he's recently done Providence and The Jamie Kennedy Experiment and several plays — but he quickly cast off the usual celebrity small talk in favor of a few stand-up jokes. "Everybody's at church for mass when all of a sudden the devil appears..." "There was this kid who was born without eyelids..." "Did you hear about Lorena Bobbit's sister...?" (The jokes were largely off-color, so we'll refrain from repeating them here.)

He revealed where he got his propensity for joke-telling. His great-uncle was a vaudeville comic named Joe Phillips who did stand-up comedy on Broadway in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. Plus, he grew up watching the great classic comics on TV like Alan King, Shelley Berman and Sid Gould, and tried to emulate them as a kid, except for one hitch: "I didn't know that they had writers! I thought things happened to them that were funny! Because they'd start, 'Y'know, funny thing, I'm walking down the street, blah blah blah' and they'd tell a joke ... So I would walk around all day waiting for something funny to happen so I could go home and say, 'Hey mom, I was sitting in second grade...'!"

It was when he learned that people on television were only pretending to be in danger and to be in other situations when it occurred to him that this was a very intriguing way to make a living. But he went into college expecting to be an English or Latin teacher, until his senior year when he started taking the idea of an acting career seriously.

Asked by a fan, what was his greatest challenge as an actor in Voyager? "Gosh, there were a couple of things that really pushed me. One was, I think, 'Mortal Coil'... Neelix has to face the fact that there is no afterlife. This is it? And then he has to realize, through the help of Chakotay, that we have to make the best of our stay here, that we still have to do the right thing. And understanding that he takes a leap forward, he evolves. The other was "Jetrel," where he had to face this guy who was basically his Hitler — his race's Hitler — and he has to forgive him. And that's a very tough moment for him, as it is for anyone who has to face somebody who's been toxic to them in their life ... He doesn't absolve him of his crimes, but he does forgive him, and then he's able to let go of that terrible pain that he's been carrying."

"Anyway, a couple of dwarfs come into some money, and..."

Robert Picardo

Like his friend who preceded him on stage, Bob Picardo quickly dispensed the standard what-I've-been-doing — he recently did a stage musical called "Class Act," plus this coming Friday he'll be shooting the season finale of Sabrina the Teenage Witch where he will also be singing and dancing — and moved on to more direct ways to entertain the audience. He is working on a new CD of comedy songs, "making fun not only of Star Trek this time but other shows as well. I did a Sopranos Christmas song which is extremely mean-spirited..." He plans to premiere the new album on April Fool's Day at Creation's Grand Slam convention in Pasadena, and noted that his friends Ethan, Tim Russ and even Nichelle Nichols have turned in guest performances on the CD.

So to give the crowd a preview, he sang a cut from the album. It was a parody that centers on his suggestion for a new spokeswoman for "those awful wireless communication ads that Catherine Zeta-Jones does that make you really crazy ... I decided to suggest another female pitchwoman who really, when you think about it, would be the ideal pitchwoman for wireless communication — the Borg Queen. Right? She thinks it, you get the message." Sung to the theme of The Love Boat, some of the lyrics were:

"Borg / metallic and blue / are aboard / they're attacking you!
And she / will fill you with dread / once you see / her free-floating head! ...
The Borg Queen / quietly murmuring inside your head
The Borg Queen / she'll instant-message you 'till you're dead..."

Answering questions, Bob talked about the audition process that led to him landing the part of Voyager's Doctor. "I heard they auditioned 900 actors for the part of the Doctor," he began. "The Doctor was the least written role; he only had about a dozen lines in the pilot. And in the audition scene, the description of the Doctor said, 'Colorless, humorless — a computer program of a doctor.' And I thought, 'Gee, that sounds like a lot of fun for seven years!'" He initially turned down his audition for the Doctor and went in to read for Neelix, and did well enough that he did camera tests for that part. But of course, he didn't get it, and at that point the producers asked him to reconsider reading for the Doctor, and though he didn't quite 'get' the part yet, he decided to give it a try. "I'm convinced the reason they hired me was because, when I went in and read, I made a joke that was very much a Bones-ism, without even being aware that I was doing that. At the end of my Voyager audition after my last scripted line — which was, 'I believe someone has failed to terminate my program' — I took a long, droll look at the 22 people watching me in the room, and said, 'I'm a doctor, not a nightlight!'" (The crowd erupted in laughter.)

"I think that one joke got me a nice seven-year job, and indeed is the reason I'm here today!"

When he did land the role, he was grateful for it but thought, based on the pilot, that it would be the smallest and dullest part on the show. So when his character's popularity burgeoned after just a few episodes, it completely caught him off guard. "I think that partly it's because he was in the vein of Data and Spock and Odo — an outsider — and I didn't fully understand how important that was to Star Trek fans. They tend to like and to identify with that kind of character. But also I think that part of it is just luck — if the writers happen to have a great idea for your character, you benefit from that as an actor."

Like most Star Trek conventions, this Creation event took over the lower levels of the DoubleTree Hotel with a colorful crowd that had its share of Starfleet officers, Ferengi and impressively decked-out Klingons, equipped with bat'leths and mak'leths and other hand-made armaments (one Federation officer who looked like Will Riker was carrying a Vulcan lirpa, for some reason). Some of the standout costumes included one by Jeff Neumiller of Spokane, Washington, who dressed as a Capellan High Teer from "Friday's Child." Eric Hall from Midvale, Utah, caught everyone's attention as a Borg drone, but he didn't just rely on visuals — he rigged up a voice modifier so he could talk in a mechanized monotone, which creeped many people out, including some of the celebrities. (Look for pictures of these costumes in the Fan Photo Galleries of Community later in the week!)

The normal convention "dealer's room" stretched from a smaller ballroom through the lower-level lobby into the back portion of the main ballroom. The "autograph room" actually took up most of the lobby space. Some of the Trek stars who were signing throughout the weekend were Borg kids Manu Intiraymi ("Icheb") and Kurt and Cody Wetherill ("Azan" and "Rebi"). Also from Voyager was Martin Raymer ("Dr. Chaotica") and Richard Herd ("Admiral Paris"). Gregory Itzin, who has played several roles in Trek but most recently was seen as the Vulcan "Sopek" in "Shadows of P'Jem," was there, as were some familiar faces from the Original Series such as Arlene Martel ("T'Pring") and Barbara Luna ("Marlena Moreau").

Next up: Roxann Dawson & Robert Duncan McNeill, and those Dominion cads, DS9's Marc Alaimo, Jeffrey Combs & Casey Biggs.

Story & photos by Sandy Stone

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