The non-human characters have always been especially been popular with viewers, what�s it like acting against somebody who�s playing that?

It�s frustrating sometimes, �cos you�re the human. The thing that Star Trek does so well, obviously, is science fiction, and the aliens and the non-human characters are the ones that tell those kinds of stories the best.

I remember hearing recently, they�re talking about animation these days, and how sometimes animated movies that are about animals or things that aren�t real, people can relate to that easier than they can relate to an animated movie about people. They don�t want to see people in the animation, they want to see talking animals, and they want to see fantastic creatures. With Star Trek people want to watch to see things that aren�t like they see, every day, when they go to work - they don�t want to see more people on Star Trek, they want to see aliens and robots and holodeck things. There�s also an innocence to those characters.

Look at Data, on The Next Generation - he was like this innocent, young child-like character, in many ways, so people could emphasise with that. In a similar way, the doctor on our show � even though he was brilliant and he was a computer generated hologram and things, people related. I think the audience related to his innocence and his searching for a soul and a meaning in life, in a way that it�s harder for the human characters to have that same attraction to the audience or that same experience.

Jerri Ryan is the epitome of all that, she�s searching for that human soul that�s been lost, through her Borg experience. You know, she�s got that innocence and that child-like quality and that very alien character that the audience loves. Obviously in the package of her figure and her looks � I think that�s a big reason that character was such a success.