Interview with Denise Crosby and Roger Nygard of "Trekkies"

by Ed Johnson-Ott NUVO Newsweekly Indianapolis, IN

Whether you're filming the founder of the Interstellar Language School, a man who legally changed his name to James T. Kirk, or a group of Klingons dining at a fast food joint, the trick is to avoid making color commentary. That's the philosophy behind "Trekkies," a hilarious documentary about Star Trek fandom. "We knew the audience would get it," explained Denise Crosby, co-executive producer of the film. "Just let them reveal themselves and tell their tales and you'll be touched, you'll be moved, you'll laugh, you'll go 'Oh my God, I thought I had some odd pastimes!'"

Crosby and "Trekkies" director Roger Nygard talked "Trek" during an interview at a downtown Indianapolis hotel. I congratulated Crosby, who just finished a year-long break after appearing in "Deep Impact" and having a baby, on her personal restraint in "Trekkies." Where many actors would have hogged the camera, Crosby served only as a pleasant, subdued host to the proceedings. She responded, "It was refreshing, actually, to be in that position. I can't stand that bombarding ego that actors have, so I was really happy to just kind of... " Nygard finished her sentence, saying "Be the Anti-Shatner?" The pair broke into gales of laughter over the dig at William Shatner, the notorious ham who played Captain Kirk. Crosby threw up her arms and gleefully shouted, "Yes, that's it, I am the Anti-Shatner!"

Denise Crosby gained fame as Tasha Yar on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," considered by many to be the best incarnation of the venerable franchise. Several months into the series' extremely shaky first season, she asked to be written out, frustrated with scripts that left her standing around far too often. "I was going to become sort of lobotomized if I stayed on the show much longer," she said. Ironically, the episode where her character was killed offered her a long, eloquent monologue, exactly the kind of material she had craved for in the first place. "It was very beautifully written, and really hit some personal notes, how I felt about all those actors," she explained. As to the rather arbitrary method the writers used to dispose of Tasha Yar, she said, "I knew the concept that Gene Roddenberry was after, that my character's death should be so unprovoked and so sudden that it would render itself horrific, but in hindsight it just fell flat. I think most people felt that, here you are killing off a well-loved character and it should have been more spectacular."

I asked about one the first season's most notorious episodes, a story which reinforced negative racial stereotypes. "We were just talking about this," Crosby said. "I think that show will go down in history... people will scratch their heads and say 'How did this ever get on the air?' I mean, they finally have a planet that's populated with a black race and then they present them as savage warriors, and the men want the white girl!" Shaking her head and laughing, she went on. "And they speak like the guy from the old Cola-nut commercials! Oh my God, I was just rolling my eyes the whole time."

In subsequent seasons, when the quality of the show radically improved, did she ever regret leaving the series? "You know, I never looked back," she answered. "I'm going to be really honest, I've never seen an episode since I left the show and I've never seen 'Voyager' or 'Deep Space Nine.' It's not that I have some sort of distaste for it, there's just not a lot of TV that I do watch. I watch films." "And documentaries!" Nygard chirped with a grin.

Crosby remained close with several cast members after leaving the show and was pleasantly surprised when the producers invited her to revisit her role in a superb time-travel story. The episode, "Yesterday's Enterprise," caught her by surprise. "When I left the show, that was it," she explained. "I had no plans of ever returning, I was dead. And then they called me up and said they had this idea and would I be interested? I said 'Absolutely.' They sent me this great script and I thought 'This is so clever! This is wild!' I had a great time doing it. And I got to work with Whoopi Goldberg, which I had missed due to my departure."

The success of the episode led to Crosby's idea for another character. Sela would be the child of Tasha Yar, born when she traveled backwards through time (don't ask). In Crosby's conception, the child would be a human raised by the Romulans, enemies of the Federation. "I had a meeting with Rick Berman (head honcho for the franchise after Roddenberry's death) and pitched the story," she said. "He kind of went away and thought about it for a couple of months, then called me and said they wanted to go with the idea, but with the slight variation that Tasha was pregnant by a Romulan general, so she had a half-human, half Romulan daughter." Nygard laughed and added, "Yeah, with the slight variation that you don't get paid for the idea!" Crosby appeared as Sela, and was invited back as Tasha Yar for the series' grand finale. "I thought that was really nice, actually," she said. "That was a surprise. I just had wished that Wil Wheaton was there. He was missing from the last show and it would have been nice if everyone could have been there."

Crosby met Nygard in 1991, when he cast her in the comedy "High Strung." A veteran guest at numerous "Star Trek" conventions, she proposed the idea of a documentary about the fans to Nygard, amazed that one hadn't been made already. Producer Keith Border financed the film through his company and shooting began in 1996.

The team received no help from Paramount, parent company for the "Trek" franchise. Instead, they attended conventions, ambushing cast members for interviews and eventually shooting 35 hours worth of footage. So when did Paramount, distributor of "Trekkies," finally embraced the film? "When we had an offer from a competing studio," laughed Nygard. "We always wanted to give them the benefit of first choice," said Crosby, "because Star Trek is their franchise and I have a history with the studio, but they weren't jumping to the mat, so we shopped it around. Our lawyers got back to them and said 'We're moments away from letting so and so have this film. Does that interest you at all?' Boom. Offer's on the table."

Crosby and Nygard, who is currently finishing "Six Days in Roswell," a documentary about UFO enthusiasts, may do a follow-up "Trek" documentary focusing on the vast European fan base. They're not overly concerned about offending Trekkies. Nygard explains that any fan going out in public in "Trek" regalia knows they'll be noticed and laughed at, and is willing to accept the consequences. Referring to one fan who tools around in a motorized "Trek" space-chair, he said affectionately, "That's just his preferred mode of transportation, because it shows his love of 'Star Trek.'"