Did you ever want more scope to explore your character?

When you do a long series - and we did 179 hours of Next Generation - there is the challenge of keeping it fresh, day after day, week after week.

Especially when you're not featured in the episode very much, there is a danger that you'll get lackadaisical, not read the script and just show up and say the lines, hit the marks, and try not to bump into the furniture. But because of Patrick and his attitude, I don't think any of us ever got to that point. We all looked forward to going to work, which it is unusual after five or six or seven years. There is the opportunity to explore that character what you're playing. It's not like in a movie where, even though you may shoot two and a half hours, and an hour and a half ends up on the screen it's condensed. You have to find everything quickly and it's intense.

On a TV show that runs for so long, because they're throwing things at you all the time, new things, things you never thought the character would do or say or � or be in positions that you never imagined that she would be in - somehow that always keeps it fresh. Of course, there are episodes where I was just standing around saying 'Captain, he's hiding something,'. But even then, they were challenging, because Patrick Stewart would say things like, 'Well, we know that, you stupid cow . Waste of space, come on, get on with it.' and so it was fresh because it was funny and it never got stale.