The publicized highlights of Creation Entertainment's fourth annual Official Star Trek Las Vegas Convention may have been "the four captains" (related story) and other series regulars (related story), but the fans were also eager to see some of the other familiar faces from the various shows, the ones not named in the main credits. In this third of four reports from the Vegas con earlier this month, we look at the recurring players of Star Trek who took the stage over that four-day weekend.

Rosalind Chao

This was the first convention appearance for Rosalind Chao ("Keiko O'Brien"), and she was welcomed on stage by Robert Duncan McNeill ("Tom Paris"), who spoke right before her. The two are friends because they have kids on the same Little League. "Not only is he a great actor, but he's a wonderful baseball coach," Chao said about McNeill.

Chao's character of Miles O'Brien's wife was introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation and made occasional appearances there, but when Deep Space Nine got started, it was intended for her to join Colm Meaney as a series regular, she revealed. "But I, in real life, was about to give birth, and I changed my mind, decided to be a little noncommittal as far as DS9 goes," she said.

Also, executive producer Rick Berman let her out of any permanent obligation to the show so she could film "The Joy Luck Club," which was a pivotal career opportunity. "I'm very grateful to the Star Trek people because they made it possible for me to participate in a movie that really made a difference to Asian-Americans, and it made a difference in my life as well."

But Chao had a number of experiences to relate as a semi-regular on DS9, including an incident during "Time's Orphan," which was the most popular of her episodes among fans in the audience. "We were shooting at Griffith Park, when we were doing the picnic scene. I had some speech to make, and I noticed people talking behind the camera, which was very unusual because the Deep Space Nine crew was very professional. And I noticed people moving around. It turned out that a rattler had been, like, this far away from me, as we were shooting. And nobody cut and had me move! Colm just got up and got out of the way, they got the kid out of the way, and nobody said word one to me! Can you imagine?" She said they shot the "child missing" scene about an hour later, and she appeared shaken in that scene more as a result of the rattlesnake than from any acting choices.

Penny Johnson Jerald

Credited in DS9 as "Penny Johnson," Mrs. Jerald ("Kasidy Yates") is more fresh in people's minds as the evil presidential spouse "Sherry Palmer" in 24. "I've been known in my real life to be the sweetest, nicest person ever," Johnson Jerald began. "But I am your notorious bitch. And the bitch is back today." (It had something to do with uncomfortable shoes, but she managed to rectify that on stage with help from her husband.)

Johnson Jerald said her experience on Star Trek "is so dear to my heart," but she was reticent to sign on in the beginning. "I was never a Trekkie. My husband is the Trekkie. Big-time Trekkie, way back," she said. When she got a call from her agent that the Star Trek people wanted to see her, she initially reacted, "Are you kidding, I can't do that!" She didn't think Star Trek was real acting. Her husband stopped her: "Are you out of your mind? That is the ultimate acting! You know what they do over there?" She confesses now, "I stand corrected!"

Once she came in to audition, she knew right away this was not any old gig. She initially met with Rene Auberjonois, who was directing the episode that introduced Kasidy Yates. "And then in comes this tall, dark, handsome, bass-speaking, intellectual, juicy-lipped man, and I cannot take my eyes off of him," she recalled. "And I'm thinking, 'This is Avery Brooks — this is the Hawk guy! Oh my gosh, I'm in the room with this man. I mean, a voice that could make you melt. I think I said one line, and that was it — the chemistry, we just hooked like that ... and I couldn't wait to get to work!"

Johnson Jerald is starting to make a career of playing Condoleezza Rice. She played the then-national security advisor in "DC 9/11: Time of Crisis," and she announced that she is set to play her again in another upcoming movie (she didn't give the title). She hopes to have the privilege of actually meeting the Secretary of State this time.

John de Lancie

John de Lancie ("Q") had a lot of upcoming work to report to fans, mostly directorial stage work, including "Don Quixote" in Chicago and two operas, in Sacramento and Atlanta. But still keeps one foot in the acting field, and had a story to tell on that front. He was sent a script where de Lancie would play himself. In the story, he is approached by two young filmmakers who want to make a biography of his life. "And we'd like you to play the shepherd," the dialog goes. The character continues, "I understand that you spent some time when you were a young man in Italy and you rode the hills, and we would like you to play the part of the shepherd." "You want me to play the shepherd in my own biography? Why wouldn't I play myself?" de Lancie says. "Well, we just don't think you're right for the role."

The script is very funny, he says, but the real-life story is also funny. De Lancie was talking to the Michigan filmmakers on his cellphone while driving, when he finally said, "Forgive me for asking, but how old are you?" They said they were 17. "I almost hit the person in front of me," de Lancie remarked. "But long story short, I'm doing the show. My agent called me on Monday and said, 'John, you have brought us some very bizarre projects, but I have never had an experience like this. I just got off the phone negotiating for you with two 17-year-olds and their mother.'"

Commenting about his Star Trek character who made such a strong impression on three series, de Lancie said, "I loved the idea that he was an omniscient character with feet of clay. He was mad, bad, dangerous to know — he was omnipotent but too stupid to know it. It was all these juxtapositions that made the character interesting to me."

A fan asked if "Q" would ever be featured in a Star Trek movie, and de Lancie replied that the character was actually in the last one — "if you play it backwards."

Gary Graham

Representing for Star Trek: Enterprise as well as for Alien Nation, Gary Graham ("Soval") has two top-secret projects in the works. He's starring in a new series being prepared in Florida, "but it's hush-hush and I can't talk about it." He's also writing a script with an ex-Special Forces soldier just back from Iraq, based on his wartime experiences. But Graham's keeping quiet about the details on that too.

Graham played the Vulcan ambassador intermittently for four years, and found it to be the greatest challenge of his career, he told the audience. "When I got the role of Soval, I thought, 'What a breeze! There's nothing to being a Vulcan — just stone-face your way though it! And it was the hardest thing I've ever done. One forgets how much one relies on the smile, the laugh, the innuendo ... To express yourself without emotion is very, very tough. And hats off to Mr. Nimoy and all who have come after him."

He was very mindful of Star Trek lore as he developed his character. "Vulcans are not without passion and without love and joy — they experience those things very deeply. It's just the overt expression of them which was curtailed because they were such passionate people, they had to hold it back to save their civilization," he continued. "So that reality alone gives you just huge amounts to play with, in terms of the inner working of how you approach it. But having said that, it's also a veneer of chewing gum and kite string."

Gwynyth Walsh

Gwynyth Walsh ("B'Etor") was supposed to appear with her partner in Klingon crime, Barbara March ("Lursa"). But March cancelled due to a family emergency, so Walsh took the stage by herself, wishing her friend well and attempting to "channel" her during her talk. "Usually first thing we do when we come out is ask you guys to figure out which one of us is which, and now I can't do that," she remarked.

Though Walsh and March won the auditions for the nefarious Klingon sisters for TNG, neither could exactly figure out how such a choice could be made. "You could come into that room with a paper bag over your head, because certainly you don't look anything like that afterwards. In fact, my mother was always a little uncomfortable with me playing a Klingon. She said, 'Gwynyth, why do you have to be so ugly?'"

The actresses were a good pair, because they had worked together before and both had classical theater backgrounds. Walsh said they developed their Klingon personas by likening them to two Shakespearean characters, namely from "King Lear." "We thought of Lursa and B'Etor as 'Goneril and Regan in Space,'" she said. "Those are the two Lear daughters who are particularly nasty... Goneril and Regan are the two who want to take over the kingdom. Doesn't that sound a little familiar?"

However, she added, "Barbara always thinks of us as Abbott & Costello-like. I was never really sure about that, because we weren't really playing for laughs. But there was some humor in them, wasn't there?"