Star Trip

"I have a great urge to tip my hat to a large group of people who understood the financial and commercial importance of making the absolute right choice of captain," says Mulgrew. "And they then transcended that. They said, 'This is what we really believe.' " Mulgrew pauses, clears her throat. "And they believed it should be Genevieve Bujold."

Bujold arrived on the set on Sept. 7. By the end of the day on Sept. 8, she had turned in her Starfleet pips. Officially, the reason for her departure was that she was unable to handle the grind of Voyagers 18-hour days. But unofficially, sources say that right off the bat, Bujold was as uncomfortable as a Klingon in a tub of Tribbles. She had problems with her wardrobe, her hairstyle, and even the notoriously difficult Trek technical dialogue. All this merely served to heighten tensions on an already strained set.

"There was this feeling of unease when we were working with her," says Tim Russ, who plays the Vulcan tactical officer Tuvok. "I wrote it off to her getting started, but as it turns out, it probably would have been fairly consistent." Adds Robert Duncan McNeill, who plays ship pilot Tom Paris: "She just didn't fit. It was clear to everybody. Who knows why she chose to accept this job-maybe her agents convinced her to. But it was a wrong decision." (Bujold declined to be interviewed for this story.)

Bujold's abrupt departure created a new set of worries. "At that point, they said they were going to start looking at male captains as well," says Garrett Wang, who plays Ensign Harry Kim. "That put a big scare into me because I interpreted that as, if they get a male, they're going to have to add another woman for balance and ax a male crew member."

Wang had reason to worry. Having nearly exhausted Hollywood's supply of actresses and backed into another delay, Berman, Piller, and Taylor started reading men for the captain's role and indeed considered recasting Chakotay and Kim as women. Meanwhile, Mulgrew was on her way to L.A. for a second audition. In the first go-around, she had submitted a tape made in New York, but it had gone poorly. ("It wasn't clear in my brain what I was doing," recalls Mulgrew. "Is this a series, is it a spin-off, is it a movie?") After meeting with the producers, Mulgrew and three other actresses were presented to the network as the last batch of viable female candidates.

"They were tired, they were nervous, they were behind," says Mulgrew. "They just closed the door and said, 'Who looks strong? Who can stand up to this kind of pressure for seven years?'" On Sept. 16, the producers finally thought they had the right answer — and announced Mulgrew.

"We were blessed to get Kate," says Robert Picardo, who plays the holographic physician Doc Zimmerman. "We were nervous and, literally, a ship without a captain. It truly was the 11th hour."

The Voyager crew is entering the 13th hour of production on this very long Tuesday, five days before Christmas, and Roxann Biggs-Dawson, who plays B'Elanna Torres, the ship's temperamental half-Klingon/half-human chief engineer, is encountering difficulties with that most Trekkish of phenomena: technobabble.

"Vent a couple of LN2 exhaust conduits along the dorsal " She pauses. Cut. "Vent a couple of LN2 " Cut. She blinks. "Vent a couple of LN2 " After she makes a half-dozen stabs at spitting out the line, director LeVar Burton The Next Generation's Geordi La Forge himself — bounds onto the bridge set and kneels in front of Dawson. He tells her to take a deep breath and relax, then casually chats, one chief engineer to another. A few minutes later, he steps off the stage and calls for action.

"Vent a couple of LN2 exhaust conduits along the dorsal emitters," Dawson recites flawlessly. "Make it look like we're in serious trouble." Cut. Print. Biggs-Dawson lets out a whoop.

"Do I miss that?" says Burton later, relaxing between takes. "Nooooo, sir. I don't have to get up at 6:00 a.m. I don't have to get into a space suit. I don't have to put on that visor. Miss it? No." Burton shakes his head, then again: "No."

But one thing that Burton will probably never escape is the crushing attention that all members of the Trekuniverse — past, present, and future — receive, something that's already starting to overwhelm the Voyager crew. Fan mail has been pouring in for months, as have speaking offers from assorted conventions. Picardo has already been asked to appear at a Trekgathering in Ireland. In 1996. Says Picardo: "I told them, 'Gee, I think I'm free...'"

"We haven't even aired yet," says Ethan Phillips, who plays the resident troll-faced alien, Neelix. "We're getting interviewed, our pictures are being taken. It just doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not really prepared for this."

Chances are, Phillips will have a fair amount of time to acclimate himself to the attention. Burton's presence on the set is also a symbolic reminder of how far Voyager could go. Just as The Next Generation successfully sailed onto the wide screen after seven fruitful seasons, so could this new generation find itself admiring its opening weekend grosses, say, in the year 2002.

"Does the prognosis look good to me?" muses Picardo, sounding like the doctor he plays. "Yes, it does. I am definitely looking forward to the possibility that these characters could go beyond television. As an actor, I've never had a job like this, where you think in terms of something lasting that long."

Considering the travails Voyager has already endured, such optimism is nearly warranted, particularly if you take into account the track record of the franchise involved. Or as Beltran, the spiritually tuned-in Chakotay, puts it: "We're going to really have to suck to fail."