Two Star Trek Legends Reveal Their Fears About Joining The Franchise
Imagine there's no Data. Or The Doctor.
As Star Trek celebrates its 60th anniversary this year, a lot of the attention is correctly on The Original Series. The new documentary, The Sixty-Year Mission, from Mark A. Altman and produced by William Shatner, certainly celebrates and reexamines the original 1960s series, but the reality is, the “old guard” of the Star Trek franchise is no longer the cast of TOS, but instead, the actors from Star Trek’s golden age; the era that resulted in four different Trek shows, from 1987 to 2005. From The Next Generation to Voyager, to Deep Space Nine, and Enterprise, the vast majority of hours of Star Trek come from this era. And so, the characters from those eras have defined and shaped the vibe of Trek even as much as the 1960s crew.
But what if history didn’t go the way we know it? At New York Comic-Con, speaking to Brent Spiner and Robert Picardo — Data and the Doctor in TNG and VOY — Inverse learned that both actors actually, at one point or another, nearly didn’t join the venerable sci-fi franchise.
“For me, because I was in the second iteration, I wasn't sure I was going to be a part of it,” Spiner tells Inverse. “To be honest, I thought, I'm going to now destroy my entire career by being on this. It [the original Star Trek] wasn’t even a popular show at the time. A cult show. But not popular.”
Data (Brent Spiner) in 1987 at the start of The Next Generation.
For Robert Picardo, the hesitation and concerns were different. At that point, in 1993, when Voyager began filming, Star Trek had expanded into a larger franchise. So Picardo’s concern was different. He worried that the character of The Doctor wasn’t going to be the breakout role it was. “The show already had a Vulcan, with Tuvok,” Picardo says of the early days of learning of the role. “I thought I had a sh*tty character because he had no affect, and I didn’t get what they were going to do. I didn’t get that I had lucked into a plum role like his [Brent Spiner’s role as Data]. So I didn’t understand the phenomenon, how lucky I was, nothing when I started.”
Spiner, too, admits that although he had several misgivings before taking the role, but of course, his career wasn’t destroyed. “Actually, the show has afforded me huge opportunities of all kinds. Obviously, I’m very grateful to Star Trek,” Spiner says. “And I have to say that with every additional iteration, I feel more comfortable about being such a huge part of it. I feel like we were the beginning, in some strange way.”
Spiner and Picardo are now fans and supporters of Star Trek, and each has returned to their famous roles in modern sequel shows, specifically Spiner in Picard and Picardo in Starfleet Academy. But to call them huge Trekkies at the beginning of their respective journeys would be simply untrue. It may seem like blasphemy, but the real-life Data and Doctor are nothing if not totally honest at all times, especially about those early days. At one convention in the mid-1990s, just after Voyager debuted, Picardo recalls that he was filling in for Brent Spiner as a headliner, and in that moment he had to be clear with the fans about his feelings.
“I remember being asked the question we're all asked at our first convention, ‘Were you a Star Trek fan before you were cast in the show?’ And I thought: If I lie now, I'll be lying for the rest of my life. So I said, ‘No, I've never seen the original series.’”
Bella Shepard, Holly Hunter, Karim Diané, Robert Picardo, and Sandro Rosta, of Starfleet Academy at New York Comic-Con 2026.
Interestingly, though, Picardo discovered that while filming Voyager, the production team didn’t expect him to do research on TOS, but rather, suggested he check out The Next Generation.
“The producers didn’t send me any original series episodes,” he says. “They sent me the 10 best Next Gen episodes, their best ones. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe how good the storytelling was. So I got very excited after I got the job. I didn’t know what I’d gotten into.”
