Voyager, According To Tim Russ

While most “Star Trek” shows are ensemble dramas, one can always tell when the series’ writers favor one character over another. On “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” for instance, Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Data (Brent Spiner) received the lion’s share of stories, while some of the other characters — Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) especially — got hardly any. The same can be said of “Star Trek: Voyager.” The show’s writers clearly loved Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), and she became the crux of most “Voyager” plots. The wealth was shared a little bit on “Voyager,” though, as characters like Chakotay (Robert Beltran), Neelix (Ethan Phillips), and the Doctor (Robert Picardo) all got their moments to shine.

But when Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) joined the show in its fourth season, she more or less became the star, siphoning much of the writers’ attention toward herself. The writers loved Seven so much that they pretty much ceased writing stories for characters like B’Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson), Harry Kim (Garrett Wang, who was definitely underutilized), and Tuvok (Tim Russ).

Overlooking Tuvok was especially egregious since, as /Film has noted in the past, he is the franchise’s best Vulcan. (Apologies to Spock.) Tuvok was a great member of the “Voyager” ensemble and brought a stern sense of seriousness to the show’s desperate premise. He served as the security officer on board the Voyager, which seemed to be a great idea; if someone is going to investigate crimes on the ship, you’re going to want someone with a logical mind. Sadly, Tuvok rarely had episodes all his own, often supporting the other players through moments of crisis. He was a calming presence on the series. It’s a pity he wasn’t often the focus.

In a 2020 interview with TrekmovieRuss mused about why Tuvok was underutilized on “Voyager.” In short, he felt that the cast was too large for everyone to share the spotlight equally. He also pointed out that Seven of Nine got a lot of screen time.

It should be noted that “Voyager” had several main characters (as listed above). With such a large cast, Russ posited, it was hard for the show’s writers to give everyone ample time:

“It could have been different. We introduced other characters — like Seven of Nine, later on in the series — which I think changed the dynamic of how many storylines were going to be allotted to everyone. Plus, we had nine people in the cast. So that’s nine characters to all have backstories and storylines. And then some of them are ensemble storylines. It doesn’t leave a tremendous amount of room for everybody to get that many storylines that are interesting or different, and we don’t know how many stories they might have broken that were not used.”

Tuvok, it seems, was a member of the show’s cast that simply never got to take center stage. Russ was positive, suggesting the show’s writers did indeed think of interesting things for Tuvok to do on “Voyager,” but that they often pivoted toward more ensemble-friendly storylines or momentous “event” episodes. More than anything, though, Russ felt Seven was the real reason he was pushed into the ensemble. Not only did the series’ writers like her, but her late entry to “Voyager” also required a lot of “catch up” episodes to explain her backstory and her character. As Russ put it:

“(T)hey focused on her to do that. And it would have taken a few storylines from everybody just getting (that) process done. That was a decision they made. We didn’t go with that the regular cast the whole entire time through. It happens. That’s the way it works. I have no problem. I got at least three, four, or five storylines out of there that I was very happy with.”

Tuvok eventually returned for a cameo on “Star Trek: Picard,” however, so he was always part of the “Star Trek” family. As for Russ, he seems to be at peace with the size of his role.