Robert Picardo

It’s reassuring to realize there were some nice, healthy people on Star Trek: Voyager who don’t appear to have traumatic back stories or unresolved mental health problems or unpleasant personal stances or what have you. From what I can tell, Robert Picardo is like that. Not even fooled into recording the narration for a geocentrist documentary. Now, he’s extraordinary in a few good ways, and not just for being, you know, a Star Trek actor who’s been working solidly for nearly fifty years. Arguably more than that, if you count the singing he did at Yale.

So let’s start there, because I’m quite sure he’d like it acknowledged. Yes. In 1973, Robert Picardo was a student at Yale; I don’t know if he’d yet switched from pre-med to drama. But he was a member of the Society of Orpheus and Bacchus, the Yale a capella singing society. Presumably because of that, he was given a prominent role in Leonard Bernstein’s Mass when it had its European debut in Vienna, the recording of which was routinely played on PBS through the ‘70s. He doesn’t seem to have a recording career as such, but by all accounts he easily could.

And, yeah, he waited tables and did theatre and generally worked the lower end of the professional acting spectrum after that. He frankly had some incredible breaks early in his career. He was the lead in a long-running Broadway play and acted in a different play with Jack Lemmon. Still, his screen appearances tended toward the less notable, though he’s a major character in his first movie, Joe Dante’s The Howling. He worked his way through the Standard ‘80s TV Career, with time out for such movies as Munchies, Innerspace, and The ‘Burbs, even appearing briefly as the phone voice in L.A. Story.

In the ‘90s, he was a recurring character on The Wonder Years and a regular on China Beach, beloved by Jenny Nicholson. It’s doubtless that success which led the way to his casting on Voyager. Though in fact he initially auditioned for the role of Neelix. Still, China Beach is one of those shows that gave full range to show what acting chops you have, and Picardo certainly showed them. The Doctor also has scope for development that goes beyond what I think is expected in even most Star Trek characters, inasmuch as he’s basically not expected in-show to have character development but has to in order to stay interesting to viewers.

Meanwhile, Picardo keeps developing as well. He’s apparently the only recurring cast member on a Star Trek show to have written an episode of the show on which they appeared. Directing is fairly common; writing is not. He’s also continued to act since then, has done more writing, has done more singing. He absolutely steals his only scene in Hail, Caesar! He doesn’t coast. He has 255 IDMb credits and two more in production and shows no signs of slowing down. And good for him, and good for him for not being terrible or complicated.