For seven seasons Robert Duncan McNeill’s Tom Paris took the helm of the Starship Voyager, and while it’s been 18 years since he last donned his spacesuit, he still finds himself in spaceship corridors on The Orville, though this time he’s behind the camera. Ensign Nick Joy spoke to Robbie during his recent visit to the UK for the Sci-Fi Ball, and found out how his early directing assignments put him in good stead for his future career.

It was 22 years ago that I last interviewed Robbie, and I show him a print copy of the resulting article while he’s resting in the green room of the Sci-Fi Ball in Southampton. Since his initial directorial stint on Voyager he has directed Enterprise, Chuck, two episodes of The Orville and countless episodes of other network shows. 

Robbie, your recent directorial gig on The Orville suggest that Star Trek is still in your blood – there’s just no escape!

Ha ha, yes. And so much of the crew I work with are also from Star Trek. Marvin Rush was Director of Photography on many of the Star Trek shows [Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise] and now he’s also DP on The Orville. I remember one morning I went in to direct on The Orville, I parked my car at Fox Studios at 5 or 6 in the morning. It was dark, I started walking up the ramp towards the elevator and I saw a couple of crew guys who had worked on Star Trek 25 years before. And I just had one of those moments where I felt like nothing had changed. Five in the morning, same guys… it was an interesting moment.

I’m surprised you didn’t also run in to Jonathan Frakes, who’s also working on that show. At the time of our previous interview you’d directed two episodes of Voyager as part of the Star Trek internship whereby cast members get the opportunity to direct the show [Robbie would direct 4 in total and 4 on Enterprise] and one of things you picked up on was that there was a very clear vision on how the show had to be directed. Was that a good training ground for you, working within those restrictions?

Yes, Rick Berman’s [producer] taste, as I understood it back then, was very old-fashioned. There were some rules, like the dolly shot has to come to a stop before you come in for a close-up, you can’t cut out of a moving shot into a close-up, you can’t cut off the tops of aliens heads – you want to see the prosthetic makeup… blah, blah, blah. I forget all the rules.

I think it was a very good training ground because… and I don’t mean this to insult Star Trek… it was very basic – it was just old-fashioned rules. And it was good for me to learn them because then when I would see other things I would go ‘Oh, why did they break the rules? Why is this a better choice?’

Did the same apply to the use of visual effects?

Again, it was good to learn Rick Berman’s taste and rules on visual effects in Star Trek because again they very traditional. They did amazing visual effects, but they were approached from a very traditional, old-fashioned style of effects and so learning that way was really good for me because I took away the ability to talk to visual effects people, knowing the fundamentals and knowing where they came from.

I imagine the technology itself has changed beyond recognition?

Yes, we can do things very differently now. I was filming yesterday [an episode of medical drama The Resident] and we ran into a problem but I knew that visual effects could deal with it. My familiarity with some of those nuts and bolts meant that we could lock the camera off as part of a composite shot. We’d do this part first and then the other part and piece them together afterwards…. we were able to solve the problem. So learning those nuts and bolts on Star Trek where things were so… ‘rigid’ isn’t the right word… there was a ‘structure’… and that was really great.

The whole way that TV is made today is very different from when you were first shooting Voyager, not least in the pacing. But as The Orville is very much a throwback to old Trek, was there a temptation to ape that more traditional look and feel?

Look, I think the most important goal on The Orville… and I’ve done two episodes now [Season 1’s Command Performance and Season 2’s All the World is Birthday Cake]… is to make [creator and star] Seth MacFarlane happy. He’s got a vision of what he wants the show to be and… I love Seth, he’s awesome. He’s a kind man, he’s inspiring, he’s hard-working, he’s got a vision, so I don’t say this with any resentment whatever. I mean it – I want to make Seth happy and meet that vision.

Was that vision clear from the outset? The show has evolved since its early episodes.

When I first came on that show very early in the run [the second episode] I had my own vision of what I thought the show was intended to be, and my first impression was that Seth was going to be making something along the lines of [Star Trek comedy spoof] Galaxy Quest. And then I met him. We started talking before I’d directed a scene, before I even had the job, because Seth didn’t know me personally, only that I’d been on Star Trek.

When I was talking to him and I shared some of my impressions of what it could be, he said ‘No, that’s not what I want. I don’t want it to be Galaxy Quest. I don’t want it to be a comedy – a set-up and punchline show – it’s not that structure. I want to make a show that echoes the strengths of Next Generation and Voyager – the Star Trek shows of the 80s and 90s.’ He really wanted that to be the inspiration and model for what he did with the show, and adding a bit of his personality. There is humour and comedy in the show, but he sits on it a lot – he tries to make the story… the morality tale… the setting of the show – he tries to make that front and centre, and the comedy comes out of the characters and situations.

Star Trek is in real rude health at the moment, what with its recent 50th anniversary, Discovery and other upcoming shows. Does it amaze you just how big Star Trek continues to be? 

It does amaze me actually! When JJ [Abrams]’s features were coming out I thought that they were going to wrap this up in a nice big bow of modern film and we’d be done. But they didn’t. And then I’d heard that Bryan Fuller was developing Discovery, and the premise sounded interesting, and now Patrick [Stewart] is signing on to do another show… it just keeps going. It’s crazy.

And while there’s still the conversation about Star Trek, people will still ask you about Tom Paris and the Delaney Sisters. It’s going to keep following you around.

Yes it will [Laughs]. I think it will!

 

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