Star Trek: Voyager featured Tim Russ as Tuvok, a character that the crew of the Delta Flyers believed deserved more feature episodes.
The Delta Flyers crew of Garrett Wang (Harry Kim) and Robert Duncan McNeill (Tom Paris) are back for another episode of their awesome Star Trek: Voyager podcast. The podcast does a great job reviewing a new Star Trek: Voyager episode every week, while also recanting great stories from the crew and providing interesting backstories to the actors who played these wonderful characters.
On this episode, they talk about how Ethan Phillips (Neelix) is able to accurately impersonate languages even though he doesn’t know them. So even though he doesn’t actually speak said language, to the untrained ear it sounds like he does.
Not newsworthy, but interesting.
As a podcast though, they don’t just share amusing anecdotes. They also share their praise or at times criticisms of the show that brought them into Star Trek canon, like in this week’s review, of the episode Innocence (season two, episode 22). They talk about a lot of things about the episode, namely how the episode put them to sleep, how fun it was to see Tuvok (played by Tim Russ) deal with children, and even how famed 90’s child actor, Tahj Mowry guest-starred.
Yet, the biggest point that they brought up, which is also probably one most fans would agree with, is that Tim Russ/Tuvok just did not get enough episodes centered around him. That’s not to say that he didn’t have any but the ones he did were almost exclusively to do with him being Vulcan.
There was the Pon farr episode where the crew cooked up a steamy holodeck program for Tuvok to deal with his Vulcan need to mate. There was the Lon Suder-arch, which while more about Suder, featuring Tuvok in a large role. Yet, those are just some of the very few episodes to feature Russ as the main character.
This is made even more disappointing when you hear how much they admired Russ’s work and abilities. It’s a shame that someone as talented as Russ didn’t get more time to showcase his true talents.
While Russ didn’t get to showcase much as Tuvok, Russ did get to showcase quite a bit within the larger Star Trek universe. Russ played four characters in Star Trek, across three series and a movie. Not a bad consolation prize.
If you’re interested in listening to the Delta Flyer’s podcast, they post new episodes every Sunday at the following link.