Character Insight No. 262: Azan and Rebi

Welcome back to Character Insight!  This week, we review Azan and Rebi, twins who were recurring characters on the latter seasons of Voyager.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp262

In the episode Collective, Voyager discovers a Borg cube that is disabled with a pathogen, leaving only five drones in charge.  Voyager rescues these drones and Seven of Nine helps bring them back to individuality, including two twin children Azan and Rebi. 

After rescue, Azan is often seen in a blue shirt and brown overalls, while Rebi is in a red shirt and blue overalls, so they are kind of like an alien Mario and Luigi.  Interestingly, the outfit Rebi wears is the same one Jake Sisko wore in initial episodes of DS9, so that's an interesting legacy of costuming.

While on board, these two twins are only involved in a small handful of episodes and adventures.  One of these is caused by a power failure to the deck with the Borg regeneration alcoves, and Neelix has to keep them company by telling ghost stories.  In another episode, Voyager runs a science fair and the twins initially want to clone Naomi Wildman as their project.  Seven of Nine thankfully steps in and guides them to clone a potato instead.

QUOTE (from Child's Play)
Janeway: Why Potatoes?
Seven: They originally wanted to clone Naomi, but...

Azan and Rebi are Wysanti, and Voyager encounters their original people a few months after rescuing them from the cube.  These twins rejoin their people, along with Mezoti, who decides to help look out for the twins as they grow up in Wysanti culture.  One figures it will be an interesting life re-adjusting to the home culture, just like we saw for Seven.

Although some of the episodes featuring these characters felt a bit like late-season filler, the concept of repeating the success of saving drones from the Borg was a natural conclusion of stories that had stemmed all the way back to TNG.  Reclaiming drones from the Borg Collective is just one of the many ways the Federation gained the upper hand on one of their greatest adversaries.

Azan was played by Kurt Wetherill, who had limited child acting roles before becoming a cinematographer and production assistant from 2001-09.  His actual twin brother Cody Wetherill played Rebi, and Cody also followed a similar career path by working on many of the same projects as Kurt.  Little info can be found on Kurt online, but Cody is living a normal life in Portland Oregon now, as revealed by mother's day and golf outing pictures on Facebook.

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