Completing the Xindi: Attack Wing Wave 29

Wizkids continue to refresh older releases and add in another Xindi ship with the 29th batch of expansions for their Attack Wing game. 

First up is the USS Excelsior. One of those release that eBay sellers have been mining at ridiculous prices for a couple of years now it's finally back in the hands of gamers and at a significantly more realistic price. It's one of the packs I've wanted to add since I first opened up the Starter Pack because it's such an iconic craft if nothing else.

I missed out on the Enterprise-B recently due to crazy demand for it and this more than makes up for the disappointment. 

Starting with the model the biggest difference to the original is the new shiny silver paint job that covers the whole ship. It does make the craft more distinctive and is a big departure from the matt finishes of earlier ships. Notably the USS Venture, the USS Enterprise (original configuration), the Nebula Class and the Sabre Class have all made appearances in silver and it allows the hull detailing to shine through a lot more easily. 

Now I might be wrong here but for some reason the Excelsior saucer is slightly eliptical and I'm 100% convinced that it's supposed to be round. On the model here there does seems to be a slight lengthening front to back and while it's noticable I don't think it will interfere with your game play. Most of the remaining ship detail is OK given the small scale that Wizkids has to work with but the rear shuttlebay area does look huge and nowhere near the slim hull hugging fit that we saw on the screen. It may just be easier to mould this way but it does look oddly oversized. 

Even given the couple of model challenges this is still one of those "must have" starships and the re-release in Wave 29 means that a lot more players will be able to enjoy captaining the experimental Excelsior. She's not too badly equipped either for a 23rd Century craft sporting a three attack, one defence, five hull and four shield stats out of the box. This provides a cost of 26 points for the starship leaving lots of room for handy upgrades.

As with all Federation ships the standard Target Lock, Battle Stations, Evade and Scan Actions are available but you can boost the scope of the ship's abilities with three Crew slots as well as singular Weapon and Tech options. If you are using the named USS Excelsior you can also take advantage of it's unique action that allows a free Scan action if you're not within range one of an enemy vessel.

Choosing the generic Excelsior Class as usual loses you a Shield point and a Crew upgrade slot for 24 points. I was hoping that there might be a bit more speed in the experimental vessel but she tops out at a four with the hard right and left turns at speed two and three incurring the Auxiliary Power Token. The one surprise here is the ability to reverse at speed two which is a cheeky little move to save your bacon.

Captaining the Excelsior out of the wrapper there are two obvious choices. Your higher skilled one (six) is Hikaru Sulu with a cost of four points. He'll let you disable a Crew upgrade to remove an enemy Target Lock which is something I find I'm constantly battling. Sulu is neither a disable or a discard so this is one that can be used and used and used again during your mission. As an alternative commander in the set we have Styles who oversaw the Excelsior's test runs. With a skill of three and a cost of two points he's a cheaper option and will allow you to add a second Tech slot to your upgrades bar. Nice touch as this keeps in with the experimental stage of the ship's life during The Search for Spock.

Keeping with the Federation faction trend, the Excelsior comes loaded with Crew options. Dmitri Valtane costs three points and lets you re-roll two attack dice if you have a Scan token next to your ship. Certainly one to equip on the Excelsior with the ship's unique action involving a freebie Scan that will allow you to use more options in the initial phase of the round. Secondly there's Lojur, seen as the helmsman of the ship in Star Trek VI this guy can be disabled to avoid disabling your Weapon upgrade. Perhaps a bit redundant in the days of Time Tokens but a good call if you're stuck with the older Photon Torpedoes cards which do require disabling to work. Two points is ok to spend if you have the latter but otherwise he's utterly redundant.

Finally we have Janice Rand. Making one more appearance in Star Trek, the former Enterprise yeoman allows the captain to perform his Elite Action as a free Action. For a two point discard this is a cheap price to pay to be able to use and can be combo'd in with the ship's Unique Action and  Valtane for a super round.

Positron Beam carries the only photo directly related to the Excelsior or of the Excelsior with a shot from Deep Space Nine's Tears of the Prophets. Another inexpensive discard, this feature lets players drop an Auxiliary Power Token onto an enemy craft at range one. Crucially again there's no specific that this can be the only card used in a round so the Excelsior certainly packs a wallop when it comes to being able to use multiple cards in one turn.

The other Tech option in the pack is Transwarp Drive. Promoted heavily in Star Trek III, the experimental drive system pushes a four or a five manoeuvre into a six when revealed during the Activation Phase.  At a price of three points this is a steal to give you a boost of speed without incurring any penalty. Great concept and a nice tweak although I think it should be given limited use as with the quantum slipstream drive. 

Photon Torpedoes come as standard here with the original disable feature and rounding out the set is the Elite Action, Feint. Targeting a ship at range two or three it is forced roll two less defence dice. Two ways I can see this going - either handy to knock out larger opponents or to give you an easy shot at a weaker opponent. Either way it's used is going to place you in a better position.

Your mission to accept with the Excelsior is Operation Retrieve named after the plan devised to rescue Kirk and McCoy from Rura Penthe in The Undiscovered Country. Federation ships start out at one end of the gameplay area opposite Rura Penthe while the Klingon ships start on the west and east sides. Kirk and McCoy are represented by a mission token which can be beamed aboard with your shields down as an Action.

The Federation player wins by retrieving the officers and escaping while the Klingons must prevent the escape or destroy the starship attempting the rescue. These earlier missions were definitely a lot more intricate than some of the later options and had more variations to be played out. This one and the one for the bioship are great examples of quick-fire scenarios to play out which are great for testing your abilities and also learning the game.

Second of the three from Wave 29 is the Species 8472 Bioship Alpha. I already have the Beta bioship from Wave 18 so I'm looking forward to pairing these two up against a worthy adversary...probably the Borg.

First thing's first. The model is a huge improvement and actually looks organic. Howe they've managed it I'm not sure but when you put it beside the Beta there is a distinct improvement. The final edging, the panelling - everything just seems to have come together here and produced one of Attack Wing's better ships. It looks really respectable and the paint job doesn't look rushed or heavy handed. 

The definition of the fin detail is precise and it's good to spot that different sections have been coloured differently. What does amaze me is the lining between the fins and the forward weapon where we have four colours all representing different pieces and all blocked out very carefully. Eaglemoss should take note.

As with the "B" ship, the Alpha craft is a point-sucking demon starting out of the dock with 38 points just for the hull. It's insane six for attack, two defence, five hull and six (six?!) shields make it a formidable opponent before you consider what to do with the remaining points available for upgrades. You can also add on a further three Tech options and two Weapon abilities. As for standard Actions there's Evade, Target Lock, Scan and Regenerate to keep you going. Bioship Alpha is capable of inflicting an Auxiliary power Token on its enemies should they be hit with at least three damage making any offensive move from this ship above the standard levels of lethality!

The regular version of the ship costs 36 points, removes one shield point and takes away a Weapon upgrade slot. Still stupidly overpowered though.

Movement options mean that while this isn't a fast ship she's good to try everything available and is exceptionally nimble with full left and right turn sets plus a come-about at speed three. Only the speed three sharp left and rights (plus the come-about) will incur an Auxiliary Power Token if used. No reverse here so once you're in the action be prepared to get stuck in. Not that I see that being a problem with such a high powered craft.

Captaining the ship is Bioship Alpha Pilot costing six point and offering a skill of seven plus an Elite Action option. Frankly the unique action he provides is a nightmare. Once all the other players have selected their manoeuvres you can then choose a ship at range one, take a look at its dial and then adjust yours accordingly. It does class as your Action for the round. I'd take that chance any day because this is going to mean you can target each ship specifically and pick enemies off one at a time. It also means your opponents might want to travel in pairs....

The generic version of the captain - Species 8472 - costs a single point, has no action option nor does he cost anything. 

Using the ultra-enemy's catchphrase, The Weak Will Perish is this pack's Elite Action at a cost of five points. Imagine coupling this with your ability to shadow an opponent with the Bioship Alpha Pilot and it's a brilliant if controversial combo. Discard the card and then disable your captain to re-roll any number of attack dice not once but twice. If used on anything apart from a Species 8472 it costs five more points but this could be a true opponent killer and certainly one to employ against the Borg.

As you'd expect from this beast of a pack, there are three additional Weapon choices varying in cost from expensive to ridiculous and then bats-arse. Costing just five points is Biological Attack. It's one of the more original ideas to be used on an upgrade requiring your ship base to be touching an enemy ship base at the end of the Activation. You also need to disable your captain card to drop one critical damage point on your enemy even with shields up. If that's not bad enough then it also allows the Species 8472 player to disable a Crew upgrade. Wowzers.

Shell out six points and Energy Blast becomes your next choice. Using five attack dice as standard it increases a Species 8472 ship's firepower up to seven but does require a Target Lock and has to be disabled to activate. Again another way to overload the firepower of this little ship and you don't have to get particularly close as it'll only operate over ranges two and three. 

Last but not least there's the ace in the pack with the Energy Focusing Ship card. Costing a brain-numbing ten points and again as with Energy Blast, operable at ranges two and three, it effectively pools nearby ships to slam home a massive attack. Your friendly ships at range one are unable to make a normal attack and each gets an additional two dice to attack with for that round. 

Your main ship does incur an Auxiliary Power Token but the benefits for that single round (it's a discard) could outweigh the ten point cost if used well. It will need you to have certain pieces in the right place to be most effective - maybe one to use once you have mastery of this ship and it's other abilities.

Bioship Alpha might be Crew-lite but there are more than enough Tech upgrades to go round. Extraordinary Immune Response (five point cost) actually offers something on the defensive angle. Nor is the usual lose a dice and gain an Evade. Instead this gives an additional extra defence die for every damage card you have. For me that's a totally new concept but one that does mean you become stronger for a round when you really need it and want to avoid "game over". Quantum Singularity for six points is one of those cards which helps reset your game.

By discarding the card, removing all your assigned tokens except any Auxiliary Power Tokens, you can put your ship back into play at the end of the round but not within range three of another craft. There are a fair few variants of this one around the game but they do all tend to be specific to that race. 

Then there's Bio-Electric Interference. Unsurprisingly it's a discard. In fact that's the big negative with this pack. There are some really juicy options but they are all single use so pick wisely and a lot of them are only available for this faction.

This once costs six points and targets all other ships within range three. All tokens except Auxiliary Power Tokens get binned off. If cloaking tech is deactivated then that ship can raise shields and in addition it means you avoid being target locked. This and the other two Tech upgrades are all faction specific meaning that you're going to need to be Species 8472 to reap the benefits of these powerful cards. However, as with the Borg these ship itself will dominate your points tally so pick carefully.

Your mission with Bioship Alpha is Scorpion. A two player game it's a single Federation ship (maximum 50 points) against a single Species 8472 ship (maximum 70 points). Four objective tokens are randomly placed by the players to represent debris while six mission tokens are placed on the Federation ship card. These represent the time it will take to prepare a Class Ten High Yield Torpedo and when three have been removed (one per round), then the weapon is prepped. The torpedo requires a target lock and uses ten dice but is a single use weapon so ready wisely. 

Cleverly if it's fired at close range (one) then the Federation ship has to defend against it as well. This game is designed to last six rounds with the final three mission tokens being removed over subsequent turns. Either the Federation player wins and destroys the bioship or the Species 8472 player wins by destroying the Federation ship, escaping or by having the Federation ship blow itself up with the torpedo. Great concept, simple execution, brilliant mission to play out  and one that is time restricted so you won't get bored.

Last up and it's the jewel in the crown of Wave 29. The third and final Xindi regular scale ship, the Muratas. A Reptilian warship, the 22 point craft isn't quite as impressive as I had expected, leaving your fleet potentially reliant on Weapon Zero to hold the fort. Problem is that the Xindi fleet is p**s poor when it comes to defence. This and the Aquatic Cruiser, the Calindra only have one die for defence as does the bigger Weapon Zero. If you come up against anything that's post-Enterprise era you're screwed. I put those three Xindi ships up against a fleet of the Enterprise-E, Voyager and the Phoenix and Weapon Zero didn't even last one round. Yuk.

Anyway, to the Muratas; I digress.

Offering four in attack, that lone die for defence with four hull and two shield points (cringe) I find this one hard to like at first glance. She carries standard Actions of Evade, Target Lock, Scan and Battle Stations with slots open for two Weapon, one Tech and one Crew upgrade. If you do want that additional edge then you can disable an active shield and re-roll up to two of your Attack Dice. Used with a Target Lock you could have the chance to re-roll twice in a single go. For the unnamed variant you'll lose a shield point, the unique action and one of the Weapon slots reducing your ship cost to 20 points.

She's also less manoeuvrable than the larger Calindra with no reversing move although it's traded for that ever-useful 180 turn at speed three. Indeed as with most ships there are a full set of motions for ranges two and three while only banking at speed one is included and speed four is only a forward move.

The model of the ship is actually damn good and far less flimsy than the larger Eaglemoss variant from the Official Starships Collection. The purple and sandy-brown colour scheme is in full effect with the former highlighting sections of the pointed tails as well as some of the front-end features of the craft. It does look a little basic in form and the line work isn't all that clever but on the most part it all lines up and things that are supposed to be parallel are, well, parallel. The surface detail is a nice finishing piece here giving depth to the Muratas and is, as said, a tad bumpy in places. At least there is depth and texture to the craft and it's as near as you could wish for in something mass produced in this scale. After all it's really just there as a representation. I'm sure keen modellers will be more than able to add in more at their leisure.

Dolim is back again after a first appearance with Weapon Zero. He's still a Captain skill of eight and costs five points. What he does bring to the game is an action which could be a stroke of brilliance or a way to get annihilated right out of the gate. Dolim allows your Weapon upgrades to cost a point less too so you can properly max out the firepower on the Muratas. 

Captain option number two is Degra. Costing three points with a skill of four, he also provides more attack force for the Xindi. Joined with a secondary weapon, Degra he adds an attack die and two if it's used in conjunction with a Xindi upgrade. Both of these captain cards offer very unique advantages to the player and make the faction quite enticing. It also attempts to overlook the fact that you might be able to dish out a beating but you're unlikely to take much back.

Dolim can also field an Elite Action and he's lucky to get a one  in the warship box. Patience for the Dead furthers the "attack madness" that packs this expansion. It disregards the Captain skill and allows you to attack first that round. You do forgo the chance to defend against any attacks but if you're tempted to throw this into the ring I would suspect you know you're either on the way out or it's the last gasp of a dying ship to take something down with it. Suicide? Possibly, but with a bonus.

The Reptilian Analysis Team is a solo Crew upgrade. It allows you to add a Tech slot on, which could be advantageous if you're maxing out on Weapon upgrades with Dolim as captain. It acts as a "buffer" to be disabled rather than disabling the card in play. This upgrade also means that your main card can be reactivated in three turns as you can drop some Time Tokens on it rather than having to use an Action to flip the switch. An unusual one since Time Tokens have been fairly exclusive to the Photon Torpedoes upgrades to this point. Added bonus for the Xindi? Only two Time Tokens if you're staying faction pure. Good offering again here that makes this new faction a real stand out choice.

If you did want to slip four Weapon upgrades onto the Muratas with Dolim you'll have to dig them out of other packs because this ship only comes with two. Particle Beam Weapon costs the same as your Xindi ship's primary weapon value (four here) and adds an additional die to your attack (which would make a five dice attack with the Muratas). Fairly standard but as with Species 8472, there aren't a lot of cards here that you can move onto other non-Xindi ships.

Xindi Torpedoes still offers a four dice attack from a non-Xindi ship and a five dice attack if fired from a faction vessel. This card utilises the Time Token feature and is effective at ranges one to three. It reactivates after three rounds.

Closing out the pack we have two Tech cards both costing three points. Thermal Chamber is an Action card that removes all your disabled tokens from Crew upgrades and increases your Captain Skill by four points for the round. Nicely it's reusable and there's not even the need to re-enable the ability. Definitely a card to add to your ship if you have a low skill factor to begin with but the double bonus of removing disabled tokens has to make this a no-brain addition to your ship. Finally this is a card not just unique to the Xindi but to this class of vessel. Kind of makes the Muratas your go-to Xindi craft.

The final card in the pack is Sensor Encoders and you benefit from an re-roll of a defence dice for disabling this feature. A second option here is that the card can be discarded if a friendly ship is destroyed and the warship (and it is a card for use only with a Xindi-Reptilian craft) gains an addition defence dice for the remainder of the game!!!

The Muratas scenario is Damage and is time limited to just four rounds. Following events from the Enterprise third season, this tale sees a Federation ship (40 points) negotiating with the Xindi. This ship starts out next to the planet token which represents Azati Prime while the Xindi ships (70 points to play with) can set up anywhere else but not within range three of each other or the planet. The Xindi have four rounds to destroy the Federation ship before they are recalled while the Federation player has the same time to either last out the negotiations or eliminate one of the Xindi craft.

For a more recent scenario this one has a lot of promise and certainly more than some of the standard one on one player fights that have marred later waves. Along with Operation Retrieve and Scorpion from this wave it's a good set of games to play if you're stuck for a way to go. Has to be an upside to this set.

Honestly with this pack I don't know how you could resist playing as the Xindi since there are a ton of new and unique options to take advantage of. Everything screams of difference but there's still that issue of putting this ship and her brethren up against anything from the later eras of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine or Voyager. Good but sadly just not powerful enough to be a genuine threat. 

For me, Wave 29 is a godsend. I missed both of the original releases on their first run in the early waves and can now tick them off the list especially the Excelsior which was a must have from day one. I need to get more time now to get to grips with the finer points of the Xindi faction and to get hold of the Xindi Insectoid fighter.

Wave 30 is out shortly in the UK and will return us to three ships from days past. There's the Klingon Bird of Prey, IKS Koraga a K'Vort class ship destroyed in the Dominion War (Penumbra from Deep Space Nine), the IRW Valdore Warbird from Nemesis and one that you just have to have, the USS Reliant complete with Khan captain option. Cracking selection and certainly the latter two are very exciting to see back. Not too sure if I need another Bird of Prey but I'm sure it can't hurt.

Fan of the Xindi? Are there key cards you must play as that faction?

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The Miller's Tale: Prey Trilogy Revives the Dead

As a starter, THIS should have been the official trilogy for the 50th anniversary. Beware SPOILERS abound.

Written solely by John Jackson Miller who most recently produced Takedown for The Next Generation, the three Prey novels are one of the highlights of the last few years of the expanded universe of Star Trek. Yes, they are.

I can understand that Legacies drew on The Original Series which was itself 50 years young but as mentioned in my review of that batch of books, the longer it went on, the weaker the trilogy began to feel. Not so here and that may well simply be due to the fact that only Miller had a hand in the story across the three books.

Staying away from creating a new alien race, Miller chooses to keep the story with familiar parties, bringing conflict between the Federation and elements of the Klingon Empire. Now here's the clever bit. Miller hasn't gone all the way back to The Original Series to pull together an immersive plot rather he's stepped into the stomping ground of both The Next Generation and The Search for Spock to dial in to some untapped threads that have never really been unravelled or attempted to be used - at least not in the same place at the same time. Also if you're a fan of the machinations that took place in Devil's Due then this will in no way disappoint.

With the interruption of a Klingon ceremony, the re-emerging of a dishonoured group of Klingons and the apparent return from a fiery grave of one legendary Klingon, Miller has a toolkit literally overflowing with opportunity. With this much going on from the start I was immediately concerned that it would be too much, I might lose track of a thread or that the author might well get lost within the story but I couldn't have been more wrong.

As you may have gathered this series really grabbed me and I flew through the first two books at warp speed to coin a phrase. Bringing in the crews of the Enterprise-E and the USS Titan, it's a series that needs three books to make use of all the characters effectively and build a convincing arc with a logical and tempered conclusion. As you would expect, the first novel does a lot of scene-setting and notably establishment of the dishonoured Klingons referred to herein as the Unsung. At the heart of their agenda is to be re-accepted into the Empire and strike out against those who took their honour many years ago utilising some secret bird-of-prey technology but once this is set out you find that there's more than just the one layer to the story.

This is the genius of the Prey books in that just when you think there's enough going on or that something seems to be resolving itself there is another twist in the tail that adds another item. It might be the inclusion of another character (trust me there are a few that turn up I'd forgotten about from other novels) or it could be that we have another part of the bigger picture revealed that spins off a new line. You never quite know where the story will take you but it never gets out of control and always comes back on course.

Prey is incredibly action-packed all the way through from the bloodbath at the initial ceremony all the way to the third book conclusion passing planetary attack and attempted ambassadorial assassination along the way. As you might expect with this being a Klingon novel series there's a fair bit of narrative assigned to Worf and in line with that we do get understand a lot about the Unsung from his perspective. We do get a lot of the story from the perspective of the Klingons both the Unsung and those other factions of the Empire and you do find yourself rooting for the underdogs from the off. 

It is absolutely unrelenting from start to finish and this is where it has a massive win over Legacies. With those I did feel that by the third novel it was running a little out of steam but here it keeps on giving right to the final page. The pacing is superb, continuing to drop something every few pages to keep you involved. Prey's third book (The Hall of Heroes) is just as good if not better than the first but it doesn't unnecessarily drag out plot elements to their extreme across that final 300+ pages. There are some resolutions within the pages of the second novel but there's still enough guts remaining to make a resoundingly enjoyable finale.

Miller has also provided the series with some truly great Klingons in the form of Korgh and Valandris in particular as key exponents of the Unsung plotline but just when you believe that there's everything uncovered something else drops into place and you're off again on a new line of inquiry.  There's no real "whodunnit" slant to Prey either with the story distinctly explaining all the different angles and views as it progresses. Rather than work it out we get to see each piece gradually drawing together and how each protagonist is working their angle for better or worse.

The Federation characters - Picard, Riker, Vale, Tuvok and Ezri Dax most prominently seem to act as second fiddle to the Klingons but are true to their established TV personas. Aside from some very action-orientated appearances it actually seems that the lower ranked regulars (Tuvok for one) as well as La Forge are given much more active roles within the story and are more integral to the story notably in its later stages.

Tuvok's age and link to previous generations of the franchise is well-used within the trilogy to bring in other elements from the past but Miller has also added time to nod to some more recent guests to the Star Trek universe both individuals and alien races and not shoe-horned either. Each is carefully placed and involved where necessary and it does make very, very clear sense by the end with even the possibility that this story isn't quite over. I might even go so far as to say that Miller might have created one of modern "book Trek's" most interesting and devious villains with more to give. I can't wait to see what direction future writers take that thread in.

I can't recommend this series enough and while some readers may wince at the thought of diving through another trilogy so soon after Legacies I would encourage them to take the leap and get stuck in. Prey will take the reader back to Worf's discommendation, Kirk's defeat of Kruge on Genesis as well as those tender Khitomer Accords and a whole array of warrior traditions etched into Star Trek lore. It's undoubtedly one of the clear Star Trek literary masterpieces and deserves a great deal of recognition. 

The Prey trilogy is available now from Simon and Schuster with each novel priced at £7.99. Book 1 ISBN 9781501115790; Book 2 ISBN 9781501115806;  Book 3 ISBN 9781501116032

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FCD 2017 Interview: Voyager's Doc - Robert Picardo

"Didn't I speak to you earlier...?"

Voyager actor Robert Picardo is heading across the room from where he's just finished a photoshoot at FCD 2017. I've been granted - nay I'm honoured to be granted a few minutes with a man who is in great demand today.

The thing that has really impressed me is that he's remembered speaking to me earlier in the day when I queued up for his autograph. It might be a small thing and it was only a matter of seconds but with the hundreds of people he must see and chat to every day it's a "wow" moment for me. 

As we Star Trek fans know. Picardo is known for his role as the Emergency Medical Hologram for the whole seven seasons that Voyager aired, probably receiving the most character development of the cast and in turn creating one of the great characters of the franchise. Indeed, Picardo must be in possession of such holographic tech himself as he looks exactly the same as he did then and very well for it too.

An actor for over 40 years, Picardo's experience takes him through film, TV, theatre and while the Doctor had a penchant for opera it's not something he's tried himself although it's not the thing he looks back and considers that he might have done; "I have very little experience in classical theatre," he explains as we take a seat in the green room, out of the main event room for a few minutes. "I've done a fair amount of new plays, musical theatre, but if I had a regret it would be that I've never done any Shakespeare professionally only in training.  

"Frankly it applies to theatre in general. Once you work in television you go several years without being able to do a play because you can't schedule it entirely for your own schedule between seasons of a television show. Since Voyager ended quite a while ago I've been able to do more theatre as I did before I was a series regular on television."

In fact Picardo will be appearing at the Edinburgh Fringe festival for the first time this year alongside Sylvester McCoy - another TV Doctor(!) in a play written by Dan Freeman called A Joke. "We are having a crowdfunding campaign for it and will be performing across the last few weeks of the festival." he continued. "It will be my first time ever being at that festival as a performer."

While a good chunk of my memories of Robert Picardo are filled with him stating the nature of the medical emergency, his back catalogue of appearances is a true treasure trove - the model for "Johnny Cab" in Total Recall, appearing in Gremlins 2 and as The Cowboy in the classic Innerspace. What I wanted to know was if there were particular roles away from the Doctor which he was recognised for?

"Innerspace is a funny movie and it also came along at that moment in technological history where people could buy movies on video cassette...and it was quite expensive if you bought movies so if you got one you watched it over and over again. I've met many, many people in their late twenties through early thirties and forties that have watched Innerspace multiple times either they bought it or have downloaded. It's a fun movie and such a strange role that I play (The Cowboy). 

"I'm also very proud of my first series which was China Beach. It was a Vietnam drama that won a lot of awards in the States, was also popular in Australia I guess because next to the US there were a lot of Australian soldiers in the Vietnam conflict. It was a great show as my first series role."

Before heading out to Hollywood Picardo also walked the stage on Broadway with two successive lead roles in show seasons; "The second of which I played second fiddle to the great Jack Lemmon playing his son. That was an amazing experience for a young actor to work with someone of Jack's talent. He'd been an established movie star for 25 years by that time and he could not have been more gracious to me as a young colleague. If I could wish any part of my career on any young actor it would be to have an experience like that and work with someone whom I personally admired so much and had been a fan of his films."

I asked Robert Picardo if he felt that having such an incredible experience with Lemmon had influenced his roles after that point, perhaps including the Doctor on Voyager; "Things I remembered that he did, things that he thought were funny...you know Jack had an amazing way of taking dialogue and making it sound off the cuff . He always said look for the humour in any role and it's more important in a drama to find those moments of lightness so the audience doesn't get worn out.

"I remember he told me - and I think I did it in Voyager once - he had a theory that one eye was very funny on stage."

Now this might sound a bit odd but Picardo went on to explain how Jack Lemmon could use rolling one eye to create humour in the moment as part of the play they were performing. "I remember stealing that," recalled the actor, "possibly in Voyager.

"In fact it was always fun on Voyager when we got to do physical comedy. It was very rare in Star Trek although my character had more of a licence to disrespect the officer mould because he was a hologram. I could change up the audience's expectations; they don't expect to see a Star Trek medical officer acting as silly as I did and I had the freedom to play all these negative qualities that you don't see in a regular Starfleet crew-member.

"The Doctor could be cowardly, he could be arrogant, he could be self-involved, very puffed up, very disdainful. I had the capacity to play these negative sides because of the concept of the character because he was a willful computer program where they were working the kinks out of it and it didn't quite work.

"His much vaunted algorithms and sub-routines to give him a bedside manner didn't quite work and most of his feelings were focused in on himself rather than on you [the patient]. I had such freedom that I could overact, be over-expressive then I could underplay in a moment. For the audience I think it was delightful that I could be unpredictable."

Certainly this versatility with the character helped make him, in my opinion, fairly central to the show and its success. "I started with nothing," said the former EMH, "a blank slate. Very little affect; he rarely smiled. He was a fairly narrow palette and a single joke early on. He had a problem with everything and then as he grew and developed he had a much wider emotional palette. I got to smile, I got to change and go from being a pompous, self-important defamatory doctor to being recklessly excited about some new addition that I was going to make to myself that would make me invaluable to the crew.

"The saving grace of the character was that he wanted to be better. He wanted to be more useful."

Certainly classic Voyager episodes such as Darkling - which exposed a shadowy side to the hologram - and Living Witness - which gave the Doctor a chance to defend his crewmates in an errored historical record. For note in Darkling, Picardo got to use his contact lenses from his role as Eddie Quist in the 1981 werewolf movie The Howling.

In an earlier question and answer session, Picardo had talked about how he used to "jump out of bushes" to give ideas of what could be done with the Doctor to series producer Brannon Braga and I wondered if the inclusion of the mobile emitter had been one of the things he had campaigned for in the early seasons; "I made some suggestions that they took and some they didn't." said Picardo; "I was dead wrong about the holoemitter."

It transpires that Picardo was concerned that taking away the Doctor's limitations - in this case the physical limitation of being confined to Sickbay - that he would just be another crewmember; "At first he [Brannon Braga] flattered me," he recalled, "It's always a good way to get to any actor and then he said that your character's become so popular we want to put you in more storylines and we want to be able to do this.

"He basically prevailed by saying that I'd still have my limitations and I'd still be different but that I would be able to be put in more storylines."

Picardo joked that appealing to his ego was definitely the way for Braga to go and that he turned out to be completely right; "It was great to be able to get out  of Sickbay and/or the Holodeck and be able to go on real away missions."

One of the other questions he had been asked during the morning FCD session was whether Picardo had been approached in relation to Star Trek Discovery. He hadn't as you might have suspected but he did allude to something called "stunt casting" which is where you drop an actor from another show into an episode for extra ratings etc etc.

Now if you recall, Picardo himself appeared in First Contact as the EMH and in Deep Space Nine as Lewis Zimmerman. I wondered how those two instances came about considering what the actor had mentioned earlier; "The movie one came about because I kind of planted the seed and said why does Voyager have more advanced technology than your flagship, the Enterprise? How come we have this emergency medical hologram and your flagship doesn't?"

Picardo asked Rick Berman this question and in turn he was asked why they would all look alike.

"Because he's first generation, a new piece of technology and he'd be like a popular screensaver so of course they would look alike."

This of course nicely links into the end of Author, Author where we see the EMH Mark 1's resigned to mining duty rather than being in the sickbays of starships. Fortunately it also means neither instance was a "stunt casting" rather a cool way of knitting the franchise's various threads together.

Berman thought it was an interesting idea and left it at that. Picardo managed to successfully plant that seed again with both the writers of First Contact (Brannon Braga and Ronald D Moore) and also the director (Jonathan Frakes). 

Shortly after, Picardo received a note in his trailer saying that they had decided to put the Doctor in the movie. "I paused and said...that's a very interesting idea....!!!"

In regards to the Deep Space Nine appearance in Dr Bashir, I Presume? that was something born from the minds of the writers. "It made total sense," said Picardo, "My programmer Doctor Lewis Zimmerman was a real person who was back at Starfleet. I had that other ability...because I had a creator who had based the EMH on his looks, he could appear on Voyager as a hologram instruction manual and be on Deep Space Nine."

His most recent brush with Star Trek has been in relation to the fan series Renegades (in which he played Zimmerman again in the pilot) but with recent rulings that webseries has now evolved into its own identity outside the franchise sphere. 

"Paramount [and CBS] has put the brakes on and it doesn't surprise me. I was surprised they didn't do it earlier. They really flexed the corporate muscle on the 50th anniversary of the franchise. I think the studio understands that the fan-created stuff delights the fans and keeps their interest during the dry spells when there is no new television series or no new movie but I have a feeling that this cooling is going to last for some time."

Thanks to Robert Picardo for sparing the time to speak to me

Thanks also to Wil and David from FCD for giving me this golden opportunity.

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