How Star Trek Hater Robert Picardo Became An Icon Of The Franchise (Exclusive)

“Star Trek” may be for everyone, prioritizing diversity and strength in different perspectives and a prevailing sense of unity no matter our differences, but it’s not necessarily for everyone, if you know what I mean. From a certain point of view, a franchise filled with goofy-looking aliens and nerdy sci-fi concepts and characters with a penchant for breaking into Shakespeare is bound to keep some viewers at a distance. That, of course, applies equally to actors … even some who’ve gone on to become “Star Trek” royalty in their own right.

“Voyager” star Robert Picardo’s healthy sense of skepticism regarding the series that brought him into the property’s limelight is the stuff of legend. In fact, it perfectly matches that of the character he played, the fastidious and typically ill-tempered Doctor. Although he’s mellowed out quite a bit in the years since his debut, most recently during his return in “Starfleet Academy,” few figures in “Trek” can rival The Doctor in terms of simply not wanting to be bothered by all the zaniness surrounding him. As it turns out, Picardo shared that exact same reluctance when he was first cast in the role.

During this year’s New York Comic Con, Picardo was gracious enough to sit down with me and talk about his unusual, winding path to the Doctor in “Voyager.” 

“I literally didn’t care (about ‘Star Trek’ before auditioning). I wanted a good job. I did everything I could to talk my way out of hiring me. I turned down the audition for the Doctor and read for (actor Ethan Phillips’ alien character) Neelix, because I thought it was funnier,” he explained. “I came this close to spending 6,000 hours of my life in a makeup chair.”

With pitch-perfect comedic timing, he wryly added, “Dodged that bullet.”

It’s clear to see that things ended up unfolding exactly the way they were meant to. Despite his initial protestations, Robert Picardo was brought back by the “Star Trek: Voyager” producers to read for the role of the Doctor, and the rest is history. But perhaps a character as complicated and inhuman as this one — he is, after all, an Emergency Medical Hologram (EMH) originally programmed to operate only in times of extreme duress — needed an outsider’s perspective in order to work so well. Even when the Doctor gained the ability to traverse the starship Voyager freely, unbound by any physical constraints (a change Picardo was personally against), his actual personality and temperament never wavered.

Picardo credits this to his gradual recognition of what actually made the Doctor tick. Naturally, he had several good reasons why he could oftentimes be so difficult and impatient with his fellow crew. Getting to the root of that quirk proved to be the key to unlocking arguably the best character in all of “Voyager.” As Picardo revealed:

“I started to understand the Doctor — what his bad attitude was, that he had the power of this incredible knowledge, and the vulnerability that any idiot could turn him on and off like a light switch. That p***ed him off. I got it. I thought of ‘Paradise Lost,’ (how) the key to Lucifer’s fall is his ‘sense of injured merit.’ So the Doctor had that. And the other half was Humpty Dumpty.”

Leave it to a “Star Trek” icon to find the perfect mix of influences between two very different literary touchstones.