Brent Spiner and LeVar Burton Discuss Their Return to Star Trek: "I Don't Think It Was Quite As Raucous As the Old Days"
Brent Spiner (Data) and LeVar Burton (La Forge) in STAR TREK: PICARD. mages: Paramount+.
MARCH 28, 2023 – Besties are back at it! Season 3 of Star Trek: Picard has been a ride, and if rumors come to fruition, it won’t necessarily be a ride off into the sunset. We hope…
I admit that after (in my opinion only) dreadful seasons one and two of Picard, I was leery. Hopeful, but leery. I was afraid that the same production team responsible for the previous 20 episodes would work their same black magic again for the third one.
But…I…was…wrong! It has been a wonderful ride full of ripe nostalgia berries in one big basket.
Fans of the series know the back story for LeVar Burton and Brent Spiner as well as their characters of La Forge and Data. On both sides of the camera, they have been close friends for over 35 years.
In the TNG episode Heart of Glory, Geordi transmits his VISOR (Visual Instrument Sensory Object Replacement – though never identified as that on-screen) to the bridge of the USS Enterprise – D. When he looks at Data and Picard mentions that there is a halo around the android, Geordi replies with “Of course, there is,” as if everyone saw him that way.
It was his unique ability to look at Data that made him accept the android as a shipmate and brother. He didn’t ever see him as a synthetic being, but rather, as a colleague and friend.
So, to get the chance to do it all over again and play their roles was a dream come true.
And so, Picard season three has the band back together and they find that Altan Soong (last seen in Picard season 1) created a new synthetic body for Data before his death. A body that looked like an aged Human, but still Data,… and Lore,… and B-4,… and Soong,… and Lal. But Data was the driving mind of the lot. They reactivate Data and are able to speak to him for the first time in decades.
In a recent interview with our friends at Variety, they spoke about their past and present time in their roles. We excerpt a few items from the Q & A here.
On their onset behavior, during TNG, then on PIC:
Burton: We were rambunctious. But we had no ill intention.
Spiner: We had fun. We were on soundstages with no windows for 14 to 16 hours a day for 10 months a year. If we didn’t have fun, we would have murdered each other and we wouldn’t be friends today. But I wouldn’t say it was exactly the same [on Picard]…I don’t think it was quite as raucous as in the old days.
On what it was like to reprise their roles:
Spiner: It felt very natural for me. We had such a history of playing together, but primarily because we have so many years of being together since we last played the characters. Our affection for each other is no less than the characters have for each other. So, it’s not particularly difficult to have that experience.
Burton: Brent Spiner’s hands down the best acting partner I’ve ever had in my life. There is an unspoken language that we have developed over time that comes quite naturally to us…We are a part of each other’s lives and will be for the whole of our lives. So the opportunity to come back together again and get paid for it? Come on!
On the possibility of continuing in Star Trek after the end of Picard:
Burton: I don’t want to begin to think about that possibility. Because it’s not wise, right? I’m trying to really enjoy this for what it is. There’s no expectation of anything happening beyond this because this is the thing that I never thought would happen….
One of the things that we’ll never get from the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation are books about how bad it was on set, and how they didn’t get along. We’ll never see Burton stating how Stewart was a self-aggrandizing grandstander that took all the best lines for himself because he was greedy and wanted all of the glory. Because in the end, they formed a family.
To read much more and see Burton and Spiner carry on with even more hilarity, warp over to Variety.com and see the whole article.
Thaddeus Tuffentsamer is an internationally selling author. His books have been sold in the US, the UK, Sweden, Germany, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Italy, and France. He has a series of young reader novels, a satirical self-help book, (which, according to reviews, actually has some pretty solid counsel), and has joined the list of professional Sherlock Holmes authors.
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