https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp198
Lojur is one of the handful of characters we have covered on this segment which became recurring characters thanks to Voyager revisiting the Excelsior and Sulu's command in the Tuvok-focused episode Flashback. Although Lojur is not one of the main characters in either this episode or the movie The Undiscovered Country, he does provide consistency between these two, lending authenticity to this part of the backstory created for Tuvok's character in the Voyager show.
Lojur is a Lieutenant Commander who appears to have Eastern European descent, but the novelization of The Undiscovered Country established this character as a Halkan. He appears again in the novelization of the next movie Generations, but his appearance description in the books as a Halkan is more consistent with how that race appeared in Journey to Babel rather than his appearances on screen. It's what happens when the canon and the non-canon collide on smaller characters.
Knowing that Sulu probably insisted on the highest-quality helmsmen in view of his own background, one would figure that Lojur's assignment to the Excelsior went well . The Lieutenant Commander certainly plays a significant role in the battle with General Chang at the end of the movie appearance, and it was a good excuse to trot out those awesome movie uniforms again.
Speaking of inconsistencies in character, the same actor Boris Lee Krutonog plays Lojur in both appearances, but his accent is much more pronounced in the second Voyager appearance as shown here:
Sulu: Helm, set a course for the Klingon homeworld. Take us through the nebula.
Lojur: Aye sir.
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Lojur: She is not answering the helm
Sulu: Use thrusters! Turn her into the wave!
Lojur: Aye Sir.
Krutonog is best known for another appearance as a helmsman on a ship around this time, specifically the helmsman on the Russian ship in the 1990 movie The Hunt for Red October. Another Star Trek actor crossover from that movie was Gates McFadden, AKA Dr. Crusher. He's also appeared more recently in the TV shows 24 and Dog The Bounty Hunter, the latter of which he was an executive producer on.
It will be interesting to see if the trope of one-off characters from movies appearing in TV shows continues at any point for the newer Abrams movies. I think it would be fun to see more on a character like Carol Marcus as played by Alice Eve, but it seems unlikely for the roads to cross again thanks to the movies becoming more action-oriented than character-oriented. As for those movies, stay tuned next week for episode 199, which will be this segment's second-ever movie review!
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