October 2003

Star Trek Explorer 

With a new complement of weapons at his disposal (including photon torpedoes!), the Enterprise NX-01’s armory officer and all-round tough guy is looking forward to entering the Delphic Expanse in the third season of Enterprise. Filming has just got underway on the Paramo8utn backlot as we went to press, but Reed’s alter-ego, British actor Dominic Keating, is already aremed, Dangerous and in the mood to kick some Xindi butt! Over the next few pages, he gives Nick Joy the low-down on what’s to come in Season Three.

We now have a crack team of SAS-type military bods on board who are called the MACO. They are Starfleet’s finest GI’s, and that’s put the spanner right up Reed because he’s being undermined and having his position jeopardised. A new character, Major Hayes, is in charge of them and looks like he’ll be Malcolm’s arch nemesis. He’s played by Steven Culp, who played Bobby Kennedy in Thirteen Days and has a recurring role in Jag. (Significantly, he also played Picard’s new first officer Martin Madden in the deleted scene from the end of Nemesis). There’s a lot of action in this first episode and a particularly good scene with these bright young MACO lads. I have a feeling that when they show the first episode, and the fans react favourably to these big action sequences, then we’ll see a lot more of these guys.

T’Pol has had a big makeover to make her more prettified and feminine; it was quite a revelation when Jolene (Blalock) walked on to the set yesterday with longer hair and in her sexy new coloured outfit. There were a lot of ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaaahs’.

No, I’m the only one who didn’t get touched! I’m kinda hacked off about it to be honest. Connor (Trinneer) has a slightly new hairstyle, and so has Scott (Bakula). So has Linda (Park), now I get to think about it. I can never tell with Anthony (Montgomery) whether he’s got a new style, but he assures me that it was changed!

Absolutely. Already we’re off to the save the captain…again. Some things never change! He’s in a fix and we’re going deeper into the Expanse to find him and meet the Xindi. I think this is going to constitute our mission for at least this year. Rather than being an episodic show, Enterprise is now going to have a theme running right through a large part of the season.

Oh yeah! And at least I know that they are now. One fan asked me at a convention whether I had photon torpedoes in my armoury and I went, ‘Dude, I don’ t know anything about them, except that they’re grey’.

It seems fairly self-evident that one of my main dramatic tensions this year will be with Major Hayes, and I’m noticing a brewing dissatisfaction between Malcolm and the captain. He’s upset by the captain’s silence in allowing this team to be put on board and it’s speaking volumes to him that the captain doesn’t think Malcolm is up to the job for this mission. And this, of course, gets right under his skin.

They keep us completely in the dark about what’s happening. I’ve got no idea what next week’s episode is about and whether or not I’ll even be in it. I do hope that they give me some more stuff with Tripp as they’ve set all the groundwork. We’ve got a friendship and a professional respect, but we also rub each other up the other way, so there’s plenty of scope to develop this as this expanse of space starts testing us all.

That’s not going to happen, They’ve left that up to Tripp – the swine! No, the blonde hunky boy gets the hot love interest. There’s a scene in this first episode where Tripp can’t sleep because he’s ailing after his sister’s death and Phlox suggests that he Tripp goes to see T’Pol. There’s a very sexy scene, which I think they are filming even as we speak at twenty past eight in the morning. It’s heavily implied in the writing that there will be some sexual frisson between these two characters this years.

Yeah, but I’ve been in America for ten years now and I don’t feel like an alien – if you pardon the pun! I’m very much at ease and au fait with how Americans are. I really like them; you just don’t want to eat with them (laughs)!

I think Brannon (Braga, Enterprise’s executive producer) proved that when he wrote ‘Shuttlepod One’ and that scene with Scott in Minefield. I know he likes writing for Malcolm, but I think he’s also aware that the main thrust of our show is the Captain, the Vulcan babe and an American blonde six-foot guy. They’re writing an American show for an American audience and I think I’m a nice salt and pepper flavour to mix up the taste here and there. They’ve seen what I can do and they’re happy with that. I’m a good gun on their hip that they can throw in whenever they want, and I’m quite happy with that.

Jolene and Connor work very long hours, and to some extent so does Scott. Scott is there a lot of the time but they do try and make is as easy as possible for the star. I sometimes get four or five days off in a stretch and I love that. I’ve just come back from hiatus after travelling round the world and to be quite hones I’m looking forward to getting back to work to have some rest! I don’t mind that they only throw me three or four good episodes a year that are really meaty for me - I’m a good filler for them.

I haven’t gone arduously looking for other work this hiatus. I think my main thrust now is to direct. Most of last year when I wasn’t actually acting I was sitting in the edit suite, shadowing directors and going to the LA film school. I already know how to act - I’ve done it since I was ten years old - and I’m kind of intrigued about starting a new career at this point in my life.

I just directed a little public access show here in LA called The Heartbreak Café, and a couple of past Star Trek incumbent have done it - Roxann Dawson and Tim Russ. LeVar Burton works very quickly; he doesn’t mess around with umpteen takes and I really respect that.

To date, Malcolm’s inventions have included the red alert sirens and the ship’s shields. Any aspirations to invent anything new this year?

God, I don’t know. Maybe some x-ray specs for when I’m looking at T’pol? Next question!

I just hope that our ratings pull up – it would be nice to be sitting on a bona fide hit show, and not some old horse that it still on the race track. I’ve been around the world meeting fans at conventions and God knows the fan base is healthy. The trouble is that there’s so many channels on cable and satellite these days. There’s even a horse channel and I’m convinced we’ve lost a lot of our regular viewers to that station!

Interview By Nick Joy