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Robert Duncan McNeil - Star Trek: Voyager's Tom Paris
Cameo
What did about Star Trek before you actually had your audition for Voyager?
Well, I had been on The Next Generation. I did a guest star on that show. When I did The Next Generation I had gotten a job on a new TV show that was very highly anticipated. It was by the creators of Northern Exposure and ABC, the network at the time, was really excited about it. But it was put on hold for some casting reasons, so I had some time to kill - I had a few weeks where I had nothing going on.
My agent called me and they said, ‘You know, this show, Star Trek – The Next Generation, they’d love for you to play this role, it’s a guest star role. And since you’re not going to be going off to make this other show for a few weeks we think you should do it. And I went, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do some space show. I’m going to do this really classy, highly anticipated drama in a few weeks, and I’m just going to relax.’ And they said, ‘No, it’ll be good for you – there’s a lot of people that watch The Next Generation, it’s got a real cult following.’ I didn’t know anything about it. They said 'all of our clients that have done this show have really had a great time, and so we think it would be good for you just to go and do it'. So, I grudgingly said, ‘OK, I’ll go and do the show.’ And I had no expectations at all - I had so much fun.
I get to play in an episode where Will Wheaton was guest starring - he had left the show as a regular, but he was guest starring. He was at Star Fleet Academy, and I was this squadron commander, looked like a nice guy on the outside and ended up being the bad guy in the end. We just had so much fun, we laughed, the crew was great it was so much fun - dressing up in the space suit and playing the heightened drama of Star Trek. I just had a great time.
A Robert McNeill-type Actor
When you got the audition for Voyager, had you anticipated getting some work on Deep Space 9?
I hadn’t really – well, I heard a rumour at one point that they were creating this new show, Deep Space 9. I knew they liked my performance on The Next Generation, they liked the character I played and they liked working with me, and I heard a rumour that they were going to maybe bring that character from The Next Generation onto Deep Space 9. I think there was some brief talk of that, and then it never happened. It would make sense because my character in The Next Generation was a trouble maker, he got in a lot of trouble, so he could have been sent off to some space station in the middle of nowhere and it’s the end of the line for him. That would have fit that character. But that never really happened.
When Voyager came around they called me up and they said, ‘Look, we’ve created this role, it’s very much like what you did on The Next Generation, but it’s a different name, it's got a different background, but it's the same tone and the same qualities that you play.’ I actually heard, from friends of mine - actors - that had been called in to audition for Tom Paris, for the role, and they were told that they were looking for a Robert McNeill type actor, which I was very flattered by: that they were using me as the mould for that role.
At the time Voyager came around, I was doing a little off-Broadway play in New York, I’d just had my second child, and I needed a money job - no more theatre, art for no money jobs, I needed a TV job. So I called them up and said ‘I’m Robert McNeill, you’re looking for a Robert McNeill type, I’m Robert McNeill, I can do this.’ They flew me in from New York and at the studio we went through that process and I got the job and it was great. You know, by then – my Next Generation experience was very different, I knew nothing about Star Trek had no expectations. By the time Voyager came around, I knew what a great experience it had been on the Next Generation, and I knew what the whole franchise, the whole legacy of it could mean, so I really wanted that job.
Being Will Robinson?
When did you watch the first series, with Spock and Kirk? Did those characters mean anything to you at that time?
A little time. To me, it reminded me of my father watching it when I was very young - he loved the original series. I never really watched it regularly. I think the only sci-fi show I really watched all the time was Lost in Space, ‘cos I wanted to be Will Robinson, I just thought that would be so cool. But I didn’t know the whole Star Trek world intimately.
Out of the Mould
Did you feel any pressure of the inheritance and legacy, and what you were actually letting yourself into?
I did a little bit, because of The Next Generation, I knew what those actors’ experience had been. That show had been such a phenomenon, I mean, there were no other sci-fi shows really popular at the time. The Next Generation also created the direct syndication mould, no one else was doing that. Paramount created that for Star Trek, they said, ‘Well, if the networks don’t want another series, we’ll just sell it directly to the people,’ and it took off, and now it’s spawned all sorts of syndicated hour dramas or action shows. Hercules, Xena, all those shows came out of that Next Generation mould, no one had ever done that before.
Flying By
Jerry Ryan described joining the series as like joining a speeding train, was that what it was like for you?
Yeah, in some ways it was a speeding train, in some ways it was like a slow local train. I mean, because it definitely flew by- the whole experience just flew by - but then, in other ways, I look back on it and it was so full of memories. Between the relationships we had as actors, me personally, the things that I accomplished professionally and personally over the seven years we did it... It's a real big part of my life, looking back on it, and a very full part of my life.
Having a Hit
Did the team feel particularly under pressure after Deep Space 9 to produce something that was bigger box office?
I didn’t know Deep Space 9 that well before we started doing Voyager. I did get a sense that The Next Generation had been so popular, and then, when Deep Space 9 came out, it was hard for any show to live up to the success of The Next Generation. I think there had been some fans that compared Deep Space 9 and Next Generation, and were disappointed. I think maybe the audience had spread out to those other shows, like Hercules, Xena or X Files, so I think the studio wanted to try to recreate some of the success of Next Generation. There was a little pressure of that.
Rebel Without a Cause
Tell me about the character of Tom Paris, what was he like to play?
Well, he changed a lot over the seven years. When they first brought the character on in the pilot, he was this rebel without a cause guy, he was the trouble maker, he was the one that had the troubled past and everything. That role is very attractive to an actor, because it means that there’s going to be a dark edge, and there’s going to be interesting things to play. Playing the bad guy’s always more fun - not always, but usually more fun than playing a good guy. So they brought him on as the trouble maker, the bad guy. But we realised in the first season that that was hard to play every week as a series regular, especially on Star Trek, where you want all your characters to be heroes, you want them to be action heroes.
So we worked for a few years, I think - it took us a few years to find that balance of how he could be independent and he could question authority, and he could get in trouble every now and then. He didn’t really care about getting in trouble as much as doing the right thing. As long as we made that the central part of the character - that he wanted to do the right thing, that he wanted to help people even if it meant breaking the rules. Whereas the Captain was more in a position of saying, ‘No, these are the rules and we can’t help them because these are the rules and it’s out of our control,’ I’d say, ‘No, we’ve got to help these people and whatever it takes,’ .
Can we save the world this time?
What’s it like taking part in a drama which has such strong female characters?
Well, I think they’re there by design. Initially, they wanted a female captain, obviously they wanted to let this show be the opportunity for them to have strong female characters in a way that they hadn’t really ever done before on Star Trek. For the show and for the franchise and for the audience, I think it’s a great thing. Sometimes, as an actor, it was hard, because all of us, all the guys in the show would talk about it every now and then and, ‘Oh, another episode with the Captain and Jeri and all the women figuring out how to save the day again: can’t we figure it out once?’ I’m sure that’s what the women felt in the other shows - they never got to save the day, it was always the guy.
It got to be frustrating sometimes, ‘cos you wanted to... it was almost like there was a formula to the show, and every week, we may get in trouble, we may do some great things but, ultimately, the Captain or the women are going to come in ‘cos they’re the ones who tend to be a little smarter and a little more the leaders of this show, and that’s just how it was designed.
The Bigger Picture
How much feedback do you give to the writers? How much discussion do you have with them?
I think our writers were great. We had a lot of feedback, we had a lot of discussions with them about character, about stories, things like that. It's hard, because the writers have a bigger plan, a bigger picture in mind sometimes than as an actor. You might come in, in an episode and say, ‘Well, I don’t think I should do this, I should do that,’ and they know that a couple of episodes down the road, they want it to lead to something, so they were great. I really thought our writers were great and our producers were great, with listening your opinions and trying to incorporate them in a way to make you feel comfortable but also carry on the stories hadn’t planned.
Faith in Experience
Does the show work because you have a lot of confidence in the writers?
Yeah, I think any show that’s a big success is a team effort, and I think you have to trust in the people that are leading you - your producers, the studio, everybody - you have to trust in that. Because Star Trek has this history, the crew,– our filming crew, our writing staff, our producing staff, they’ve been doing this for so long that you do have a lot of faith in them. They’ve done it, they’ve been through, making mistakes before that they won’t make again, and it’s not like a new show where nobody knows what it’s supposed to be and everybody’s trying to figure it out. This is something that’s really got a legacy, and so you have a lot more faith in the people because of that - their experience.
Come Together
What about the fans? Who Voyager is aimed at?
I know who they aim at, but I think that we have a much bigger audience than what they just aim at. They aim at the eighteen to thirty-four year old male audience or something, young men tend to be the audience write for, although we have a lot of female fans. We have all kinds of ages, we have all kinds of professions, all kinds of socio-economic levels or whatever.
One thing about Star Trek that’s great is it's whole premise is about bringing people together in the future, that everyone is on the same level, that we work together, that a lot of the things that keep us apart in our real life are gone, and so we can all come together. I think that happens with the fans – that’s one thing I saw this year more than ever was the fans had built their own relationships with each other because of conventions or chat groups on the Internet or all kinds of things like that. They had these relationships that they never would have had without Star Trek, friends that fly from Germany over to California see other fans that they’ve met through Star Trek. I got to see little kids, would come to a convention, they’d bring a picture, ‘Oh, this was the first season, when I was just three years old, and here I am, ten,’ and they’ve grown up with our show. And so we have all kinds of fans – it’s really amazing to see the range of people that like the show.
Stroking the Global Audience
When did it finally sink in how big the audience for Voyager was, getting stopped in the street, etc.
Yeah, I get stopped in the street sometimes, and that’s never been something that I personally have wanted. I tend to be more uncomfortable if I get recognised, than some – some actors really love that attention and stroking and, ‘Oh, you saw me, you like me, that great,’– I never really liked that.
I think the first time I recognised how big Star Trek really is, is when I went out of the country. You know, when you’re here, you see the American press or you see the fans at conventions here, and you expect that because it’s on TV here. But when you go to some place like Germany, to a convention, that there’s five or six thousand people, in the building, and you realise that this show reaches not just America but the whole world. Or you go to Australia or you go to England or you go to any of these places – it's amazing how big the audience is.
Quite a responsibility
Do you think about the legacy of Star Trek that you're contributing to?
I guess so. As an actor, you can’t think about that thing when you’re acting or doing it, you just have to try to tell the best story you can and be as honest as you can, and entertain people the best way that you can. What people do with it after that is not in my control, really. If they want to dissect the episodes and if they want to watch them a hundred times and everything, I that’s great; but you can’t think about all that when you’re doing it.
I suppose it’s amazing, when people have come to visit our set, they come in with these huge expectations of all these experiences they’ve had over thirty years of watching Star Trek, and they see the space ship and they’re like, ‘Oh, my God, it’s so real, I can’t believe I’m here,’ and, for me it’s like, ‘Yeah, it’s work, this is where I come to work, .’ You get a little jaded to it, I guess.
Sentimental
How does it feel now that Voyager has come to an end?
It’s a little of both. I’ll tell you one thing that was surprising to me, and very disappointing - at the end of the seven years... One thing that happens when a franchise or a show like this goes on and on and on forever is that it becomes very business like. At the end of the series, I was getting really sentimental. But I didn’t see a lot of that around me, a lot of the filming crew was just, like, ‘OK, well, we’re moving on to the next series,’ it wasn’t as sentimental as I think as I wished it could have been. You’re going to see the other actors at convention, so it didn’t feel like it was really over, but it was - but no one was acting like it was over, which was strange.
Big Screen?
Marina Sirtis said she couldn’t wait for the next feature film because she was desperate to work with all her friends again. Do you think you will do something together again? Are there any plans?
Yeah, I think we all feel that way. I mean, on our show, I know, we would love to do something together again.
I don’t know. I’ve heard rumours lately about maybe some big multi-cast movie. To me that sounds like the most realistic movie that Voyager would be involved in - to not just do their own feature film but maybe do it with some other casts and some epic story about saving the galaxy or something. And that would be fun, actually. Star Trek’s never done anything like that, really bringing a bunch of different series together.
That’s a rumour that I’ve heard and maybe that’s something the studio would like to see - or the fans, certainly, would like to see it. So that would be great, I’d love to do something like that.
More Responsible
As an actor, how much contact did you ever have with Andre Bomarnis, the science advisor?
I had a bit of contact. You know, I directed on that show a lot of episodes and so I think the most contact I had with Andre was probably when I was directing, trying to figure out either how to shoot something and make it seem real, or at least believable. Or just maybe with the story - does a certain concept work?
That's one thing that was great about Star Trek, was to be able to tell these fantasy stories but let have some root in real science. You felt like you were being a bit more responsible than just a silly fantasy show that just made up its own rules. We really did try to bring in scientific philosophy and scientific ideas that haven’t been proven, or things like that, and bring them into our stories.
Theories and Facts
Explain Andre’s role on the show.
What is his role? I think he’s got a couple of roles. One is to try to remind the writers of scientific theories or facts that they can continually put into stories they already have to give it more integrity, more believability. And another is if they create some scientific idea, [he makes sure] that it has real believability, that they mould it in a way that we could believe in what we’re trying to do, or talking about - that it could be possible.
Blah Blah Blah
Any fantastic techno-babble line you’ve had to struggle with?
I struggle with any techno-babble line. I was the worst, I am absolutely the worst at that stuff. I think they realised it early on, ‘cos they stopped writing very complex fake science language for me. But also it was part of my character. My character was the one when everybody else would say, it’s the blah-blah-blah-blah-blah, and I’d say, ‘OK, so we’re going to blow up, right?’ - I’d say the plain English version. But what’s the difference in learning it? It’s very hard to learn – for me, it was very hard.
Whenever I got something that was describing some, part of the ship, or how the mechanics worked or the science worked, I would always try to figure out something that I could understand like, my car engine, it’s like the transmission connected to the... What I mean is that I’d try to connect it to something so, even though I was saying 'The plasma conduits' or something, I would be thinking, in my mind, that we’re talking about the transmission or the carburettor or something. That was the only way I could feel that when I said it, I was actually making sense of it. Otherwise, I just got lost. Garrett Wong was fabulous at the techno-babble, he could just go, l-l-l-l-l, he was great.
Did you all get your scripts and look through them thinking, my God, this is a good one or a bad one?
Yes, yes, we did. Yeah, we would.
Old Technology
Which of the science aspects of Star Trek do you find most intriguing?
I think the holodeck is interesting to me, although not the most interesting. I think the most interesting, honestly, is warp-drive, the idea that we could travel that far.
I mean, I know it’s an old premise in Star Trek legacy, but to me, if we could just travel with warp drive in real life, the way that we show it on the TV show, it would just change everything we think about space, just bring it all together. That would be unbelievable.
And then all these other questions about intelligent life or, the solar system - I think then we could deal with those things. Warp drive, to me, is just fabulous. Because what we have right now is basically old, very old technology, rocket propelled technology, so we’ll never get past our own little solar system here, unless we can change that.
Myth and Fairy Tale
Explain your on-line interview about space being the final frontier.
I've never been a big science fiction buff, to be honest with you. But I’ve really always loved world mythology and fairy tales and things like that because, to me, that’s our human experience. It's our way of describing our experiences in a way that’s more universal, through mythology, through fairy tales, things like that.
Now, in our modern life, we’ve figured out that there is no Little Red Riding Hood or whatever, that there are no Greek gods, that a lot of these myths are just stories. But the one thing that we can’t say for sure is science fiction - is the future. I relate to science fiction more that way, that we can use the unknown, like people did, a thousand years ago, with fairy tales and mythology,. We can use space and that unknown place to find stories and a way of expressing our human experience now. I’m not a scientist, so all those things are interesting to me, but that’s more for the scientists. To me, being more of a creative person and looking at it almost spiritually, is that we can use space and that open frontier as a palette that we use to tell stories and assess our human experience, now.
Contemporary Moral Tales
Do you think Star Trek is a positive influence in getting people to think beyond science fact?
Yeah, absolutely. It's the classic example of the shows back in the 60s that the original series took on very topical issues, race relations being the obvious one, but all sorts of topical issues.
It used science fiction to tell it in a way that wasn’t hitting the nail on the head quite so blatantly. They wouldn’t come out and say, ‘Well, this is about blacks and whites getting along,’ they’d say, ‘no, this is about the alien race that has, one side is white and one side is black, but the other people, that have it switched around, we don’t like those,’ It would give a very contemporary moral tale – or an ethical tale - and it would tell it in an entertaining way more like a fairytale. That’s what I think Star Trek does very well.
Loving the Alien
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.
Scene Stealers
Was it frustrating that the Aliens got better lines?
Well, sometimes, honestly, over the years, I would hear, ‘Oh yeah, in four or five episodes, we’re going to have this story with Paris doing blah-blah-blah.’ Then the story would come along and they’d say, ‘Well, actually, we’ve changed it to Seven of Nine is doing blah-blah,’ and I’d be, ‘Why? Why, that was a great Paris story.’ ‘Well, it fits better.’ When you think about it, being the alien character going through that experience is much more Star Trekky and you can tell things metaphorically and symbolically. If Paris was going through it as a human, it’s a much more down-to-earth story. And so very often, I would see them switch stories from a human character handed off to a character that was more alien, either the doctor, Tuvoc, Seven of Nine, or Neelix, because it was more of that alien experience.
Goofing Off
Where was Paris at his best?
I think the Captain Proton stuff was very much the essence of who Tom Paris was. He was this adventurer, he loved the retro, old historical space stuff. He had a real sense of humour, which I always loved – that they allowed me to bring in some of my sense of humour to the character, and just a sense of fun. I think they saw that in the dailies when I would goof off, before a take or right after a take. They saw it on the set, and so they brought some of that, sarcastic, ironic sensibility to the character, and it was a lot of fun to be able to play that.
Tedious
Was that really tough doing lots of blue screen?
Sometimes it was, sometimes they would describe something and it was very hard to imagine it, so you’re acting with something you don’t see, or something they would do things where it was so specific, the position you had to be in, to get the right angle for a shot or something, on a blue screen, that it was very – it was... it’s just tedious, work.
Chewing the Scenery
Trying to get Warp 11.
That was a lot of fun for me. I know the audience had mixed feelings, some people loved it, some people hated it, but that’s that way with every episode, I think.
It was a lot of fun for me - it was like The Elephant Man episode, I get to transform into this creature! The episode about Warp 11 was called Threshold. The Star Trek legacy says that we can only reach Warp 10, Warp 10 is as high as you can go, is as far as you can go. It’s like the sound barrier was, fifty years ago, people thought, ‘Well, you can’t break the sound barrier, if you go faster than the speed of sound you’re just going to disintegrate.’ So it was that experience translated into Star Trek. But what happened when my character figured out a way to go to Warp 11, to change the shuttle so that it could go to Warp 11... I went into this euphoric experience, it was like a surreal out of my body experience, so when I came back, it was like I had taken this acid trip and just was having flashbacks, and it was just so – everything was so wonderful. And then it started to restructure my genetic make-up.
So the idea in our story was, once you passed Warp 10, you’re gonna speed up your evolution within your own body, so you’re going to start evolving into what humans will be, a million years from now or something. That’s the effect of Warp 11 in our story. So my character got to go from eager break the sound barrier, to having broken it and the euphoria of that, to, all of a sudden, this confusion of what’s happening. My body starts evolving, my skin starts peeling off, I turn into this bizarre lizard like creature, and everyone’s horrified by what’s happening to me. I just think it’s great and I’m very proud of this whole experience, even though I’m turning into this horror creature.
It was a lot of fun, for me, as an actor, to be able to go through all of those really high level emotions and get to put on prosthetics and act, chew the scenery like The Elephant Man.
Evolution
And what was the antidote? How was that resolved?
How was it resolved? Well, I kidnapped the Captain, I take her to Warp 11, and she turns into a lizard, too, and we actually had babies in that episode - it was a very complex ending. But we left our children somewhere on a planet - the human race has evolved, and we left it somewhere out there, so maybe there’ll be another episode down the road, or a movie or something, about the evolved humans.
Reptile children?
Yeah, lizard babies.
Pulling Off Miracles
Richard James told us about the complexity of making the set, what’s it like being involved with that level of detail in production?
Well, what’s hard on any TV show is that things happen very quickly, and so Richard just pulled off a miracle every week with building these sets. There’s a very high standard for Star Trek sets, they want them to look like a real space ship, not like plywood walls. They want them to have the shape of a spaceship, they want them to have the detail, and the solid feel of metal, instead of wood, which is what they’re all made of. So you had to build these very detailed, very, complicated sets very quickly. Sometimes the scripts wouldn’t come out ‘till a week or less before he had to have the set ready, so he would have to read the script, come up with an idea, draw it like an architect, and have it built in less than a week, I mean, it was amazing how quickly they did it.
What was a lot of fun for me when I directed on the show was to be able to get a script, then Richard would come in with some idea about a set, and to be able to say, ‘Well, what if we had this a little different and this detail or this space, I could have a shot that did this and I could stage it in a certain way.’ And so we’d collaborate. Richard was great, he was very open to collaborating and bringing in great ideas and taking something that you suggest and go, run with the ball. He was great, Richard just did a beautiful job.
Loving Directing
Did you have the same liaison with Bob Blackman and Michael Westmore?
Michael Westmore, yes, absolutely. That’s why I love directing so much. For me, directing was a dream I had for a long time before Star Trek, for years before. When I came on to Star Trek I told Rick Berman during the pilot, ‘I really have wanted to direct for many years, here’s what I’ve done to get to that point, what do I need to do to be able to direct here?’ He told me and I got to learn all those things, I got to sit in on costume meetings, on make-up meetings, on editing, on every part of the production. Star Trek’s the best film school - every department is so good at what they do, and it’s a huge show, it’s got every thing you could ever want to learn.
When you direct on the show, you get to collaborate with everybody. Bob Blackman was great at coming up with things that fit the future, fit the style that we’re trying to achieve, something that didn’t have any contemporary look about it, but yet helped the characters technically get what you need. If somebody’s in a lot of prosthetics, you don’t want to put him in, horrific hot outfits, you want fabrics and things that breathe so they’re comfortable, so they can act better, you have to think about all those things.