Report and photos by Katane

Robert did his (by now traditional) mini-tour of the UK on May 11-13th, 2001. This time, he managed to pick a timeslot when I wasn't doing something else already! Thank you, Robert :)

So, on Friday night we went to Bournemouth ('we' is myself, Abby, Clare, Coral and Laura). This was the most interesting of the three appearances we saw; the audience was small (about 95) and asked some relatively intelligent questions (we'll gloss over the woman who asked if he spoke *Mexican*). Although his (very) dry sense of humour was clear, he answered in a similarly intelligent manner and actually gave some real answers. The questions ranged from 'what are you going to do after Voyager' to 'is there going to be another Galaxy Ball', via 'what car do you drive?'.

His answers were interesting - when asked how he felt about his acting on Voyager, was he pleased with it? For the most part yes; he compared it to being a carpenter building a chicken coop and he felt it was a good chicken coop - not the Mediterranean-style house he might have wanted to build, but you do the best you can in building the chicken coop. But then, it's television - it's a business, like building a Volkswagen car. The worker goes to the factory, builds a car which is checked to make sure it's ok, people buy it and they're happy.

Television is selling a product; but he thought that overall Voyager was a good show, even though tv programs involve a lot of constraints on the writers, on the actors. The fact that Voyager was similar to the original series and Next Generation didn't help, there wasn't a lot of new stuff to bring to it. Over the last three years, he didn't feel that the writers had managed to bring a lot of freshness to it and didn't maintain the kind of continuity that the average fan notices. The writers are 'the bosses' and there is not a lot the actors can do; any complaints of his are not related to getting more screentime but rather than the show took seven years out of his life, and he'd like that to have been worthwhile - both to himself and the audience.

He made an interesting comment, regarding Voyager-bashing: he likened it to making fun of your own family, you do it but you don't like it when anyone else does it. With Voyager, "I'm just talking about my own family."

  He was asked whether he ever wanted to leave Voyager before the end of the season; Robert replied that he'd done everything he could to get fired! Although it sounds cavalier, he says he was embarrassed for the show and angry for his fellow-actors because everything was cut to shreds so that the captain and Seven could have the same argument episode after episode - "you will do it; no I won't; you will; no; yes; no".

His views on the finale border on scathing - he'd been expecting the seventh season to bring all the storylines together and he was waiting ... but the writers produced all the cliches ... we got a 'doc episode where he got laryngitis and was depressed because he couldn't sing anymore' and 'then we had a Seven of Nine ... episode where she had laryngitis and Seven of Nine can't save the day, what are we going to do?' and then finally 'there was a Chakotay episode where he needs to talk to his dead father desperately but can't get the right connection' and then the second to last episode is about 'Harry Kim falls in love with a hologram' and so on. When he got the script for Shattered, he protested that it was nothing more than a travelogue with no purpose - shouldn't they have started getting home by then? Robert was wondering what the writers were going to do in the 'two hour extravaganza' finale ... and when he got the script he looked at it. 'This is what we're going out with?! I was right, [the writers] are idiots. So I feel vindicated but unfortunately, you're going to have to sit through it'.

He was asked what he would have liked to have happened to Chakotay; he would have like the Maquis confrontation to last a little bit longer because that would have forced the writers to write inter-personal relationships - but the writers seem to be a lot more at home writing technobabble for the Doctor. One of the things he finds idiotic about Star Trek is the traditional of having Starfleet act like a bunch of overgrown Cub Scouts, all technobabble and no relationships. His preferred episodes were short on technobabble and a little bit more metapyhsical, like perhaps a cross between the Twilight Zone and Star Trek, or maybe the Outer Limits and Star Trek. Something that doesn't rely on the crew at the 52nd minute of the episode saying "shields down to 30%, Captain" and then rerouting the whatsit to the wherever and suddenly they're saved - that's unreal and false; if Voyager is in the third season, the crew is not all going to die! Why not concentrate on the interpersonal relationships; it's that which should draw people in, not the technobabble. 'If you can replicate things, if you can transport ... where's the conflict, where's the crisis?' The show relies so much on the gadgets that it becomes ridiculous when they are not used. He would point that out in a scene, and the writers would be embarrassed - 'it's like a glaring stupidity because they rely so much on the gadgets that when they don't use them, there is a great illogic there'. All he would like to see is something logical, real and consistent.

Apparently most of the cast are happy that Voyager has ended - seven years is a long time and it's nice to get on with the rest of his life; he suggested that Kate was the only one who wasn't happy it had ended 'because she wasn't going to have anyone to boss around ... they had to drag her away from Stage 8' - this was accompanied by a wickedly good impression of Kate clinging to the doors of the Paramount stages! His impressions of the actors - or rather, their characters - are very funny! The photo to the right is taken during his impression of Robert Picardo as the doctor. He does a priceless impression of Ethan Phillips channeling Gene Rodenberry; it's something they used to do on set quite often.

One of the funniest answers was in response to a question asking him whether he thought Voyager would have been better if it had been Captain Chakotay in charge - he did a gloriously over-the-top imitation of a 'Red Indian' Captain: "How .. we come, go through your space ... don't shoot ... got um better technology than you ... many shields ... " (you had to be there - it doesn't translate well into text!) He was happy with his role, he just thought that they shouldn't have made the captain so all-seeing, all-knowing. Between the captain, Seven of Nine and the Doctor, there wasn't much left for anyone else.

People he'd like to work with: Peter O'Toole, Humphrey Bogart, Brando, De Niro, Montgomery Clift, Richard Burton, Ralph Richardson - a lot of English actors were idols of his when he was growing up. Also some French actors - Yves Montand, Jean Gabin (my favourite Maigret - Kat), and the Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni. The Hollywood thing of only ever using the same five or ten actors at the moment bores him; if it's not Nicolas Cage, it's John Travolta or Bruce Willis (although he mentioned the next day in Page's that the best film he's seen recently was The Sixth Sense!)

The Galaxy Ball format is changing a bit - it will be used to continue the charity work of all the actors' charities into one event (still to be called the Galaxy Ball) which will be organised by the charities themselves because, now the show has ended it is harder to co-ordinate. There is no date set yet (although he said the next night that it will be in October/November this year).

He has no immediate plans for the future - he's turned down a couple of things, but the upcoming Screen Actors' Guild strike means everything is up in the air right now. When asked whether he thought there would be a Voyager movie he replied that he didn't think so - the writers are 'so happy that we're out of their hai ... they couldn't get rid of us fast enough'. Even if there was a movie, he'd wouldn't be on it - he thinks that they just wouldn't ask him.

I asked him whether there was any chance of the poetry readings he has done at MOLAA being released on CD/tape; he answered that he'd love to do it but there are no plans to do so at the moment; he will look into it as he enjoys reading poetry.

Most bizarre question of the evening: what kind of slippers does he wear? Answer: none - he wears thick white socks when it's cold and goes barefoot when it's not cold.

Then the signing session - he seemed very relaxed; we went in somewhere towards the middle of the signing queue and this was where I had a decided advantage over Abby & Clare - I've met him before. They did the usual "loss-of-higher-brain-function" inarticulate mumbling when faced with actually talking to him (and both of them talk for a living. Go figure! And they're not going to forgive me :) I found myself in the middle of a conversation with him in (his) fractured Portuguese, since he asked where I was from and - when I replied London - asked what my background was, since I didn't look English. So, that was fun.

Somewhere along the way, sleep became an option we didn't take up - Friday late night/Saturday morning we watched Latino, El Diablo and Trekkies and talked. A lot.

170 miles of England's finest motorways (which is not saying a lot) later, we wound up at Lakeside. A local bookshop, Into the Void, was opening a new flagship store there (low rent, cheap business taxes) and Robert was signing as part of the opening event. I'm still slightly unsure as to *why* we went, given we'd had stuff signed the night before
but hey, whatever. I'm glad we did now.

We queued - don't need to describe that, you've all done it - for about an hour or so. Luckily there was a decent coffee shop nearby, and we took turns to get the coffees. Anyway, the queue inched forward and we got to the front. Good news - they were letting people in three at a time, so they let the three of us in as a group. I got a slight shock when Robert recognised me from the previous night, then remembered I was on crutches - that sort of detail does tend to stick in people's minds. He in turn was somewhat surprised when what we asked him to sign were photographs from the night before! I pointed out the wonders of one-hour processing, and he seemed pleased with the photos.

The evening event was at Page's, the Trek bar in the middle of London, just behind the Houses of Parliament. M'luds and ladies of the House are clearly big Trek fans. Queuing started at , well, it had started when we arrived at 3pm - the event was ticket-only and sold out but queuing was still necessary if you wanted a seat and not just to stand in the crush. We stood for a while, then Manny (organiser and all-round wonderful person) told us to go and find somewhere comfortable to sit down as he'd reserve a table for us so that I didn't have to do pressups on the crutches all afternoon.

So, we sat in a glorious late afternoon sunshine in a pretty square nearby - the sort of place and weather where it's hard to believe you're in the middle of London - until 5pm, when Page's opened. Manny, bless him, got us a great table with a good view - we idled away the next three hours until Robert's appearance with gossip, deconstruction and reconstruction of the world in general, and people-watching. And drank a couple of bottles of champagne - well, Abby & Clare did. I had a glass then moved on to coffee, as the chaffeur for the weekend.

People-watching was interesting; meeting other online fans was great fun - Jana, Rowan, Roberta, the MOOD bunch and many others. Page's is small, and there were a lot of people there. It was a total crush, and felt more like a mosh pit than anything else. Robert appeared at 8pm, and the place was mayhem. Total mayhem. Robert dealt with it all by turning in a performance which owed more to stand-up comedy than anything else - much more obviously so by comparison with the previous night's appearance. The questions were the usual Trek things (as before, he hates the finale and isn't wildly impressed with the C/7 thing - also isn't overly enamoured of Kate Mulgrew at the moment. From his perspective, she got a little over-serious about the whole thing in the last couple of months. On the Friday, he described her as behaving rather like she thought she could cure cancer if she pulled off the perfect performance!) There wasn't anything said on Friday that he hadn't already said before, several times!

The weekend was great fun - we couldn't make the Norwich appearance on Sunday as we all three of us had too much else to do, back in real life, but both Bournemouth and Pages were immensely entertaining. Not just because of Robert, but the opportunity to meet other fans and enjoy the atmosphere.

More photos
Also see Clare's report, Panda's report and Rowan's report as well as photos by SQUK and Roberta