Roxann Dawson

Let us start with two points, before we really get into Roxann Dawson herself. The first is that, yes, we’re starting a new theme today. For the next two months, we’ll get into Star Trek: Voyager. The other is that I wrote about Kate Mulgrew before I considered doing these. I’d already started theme months, I think, but I might’ve said then that I would never do Voyager on the grounds of, I’ll be honest, not particularly liking Voyager. However, as will become clear over the next two months, that has nothing to do with the actors themselves, many of whom have shown themselves to be extremely talented over the years.

Roxann Dawson has been working a long time and under four different last names. We’ll refer to her exclusively with the current one, as it’s how she’s been credited since 1997. She was born Roxann Dawson Caballero, and she made her Broadway debut as Roxann Cabalero in A Chorus Line. She is one of the dancers in the movie. She then married actor Casey Biggs and acted as Roxann Biggs for seven years. She divorced Biggs and married casting director Eric Dawson. She’s in Darkman III as Roxann Biggs-Dawson and has been simply Dawson since then. Are we up to date? Okay.

Frankly, most of her credits before the current last name are of dubious quality. A lesser Aaron Spelling series, which is where she met Eric Dawson. An episode of a lesser Stephen J. Cannell series, the plot description of which fascinates me. (Per IMDb, “After their cop parents’ deaths, three young boys are adopted by another officer and join the police’s Hat Squad to hunt dangerous criminals, while seeking vengeance.”) A made-for-TV movie directed by Bruce Paltrow that IMDb doesn’t even have a plot for but which was the debut of a certain daughter of his and also Zach Braff and which also has Craig Ferguson in it.

For almost everyone, it’s trivially easy to divide their career as “pre-Star Trek” and “post-Star Trek.” At least since, at a conservative estimate, since the days of the first movie. You literally don’t have to do anything else; cons and other fandom tributes will pay your bills until the end of time. And it is true that Dawson has acted considerably less in the years post-Voyager, at least on the screen. However, the reason for that is not what you think. It is that, since The Next Generation, Star Trek has been allowing the actors to direct episodes of the show, and Dawson has been directing considerably more than acting.

Honestly, that may be some of the best that Star Trek has ever done for its actors. Everyone Knows about how the movies let Leonard Nimoy direct, and of course there’s the contract shenanigans that meant that Shatner did, too. But seriously, look at most of the major cast members of a Star Trek show, and you’ll discover they’ve directed at least an episode of that. Dawson has mostly directed television, and she’s mostly directed shows I don’t watch. But I’ll also give her credit for two seriously great episodes of Crossing Jordan, another show with tribute articles coming up this year.