Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review a background character from Voyager named Lydia Anderson.
We've covered a number of these regular background "face in the crowd" characters from Voyager, and Lydia Anderson is a crewman who serves in the engineering and security divisions. As such, many of her appearances are as part of teams working on ship problems or escorts for guests and hostiles.
Unlike some of the other background characters of this variety, Anderson appears in episodes spanning from the first season to the last. In her only first-season appearance in the episode Fury, Anderson wields a phaser rifle and helps other security officers in a firefight with invading Vidiians. This leaves a memorable first impression that likely caused the show writers to use her more and more for background in future seasons.
Many of Voyager's two-part episodes involved crises where the Voyager crew would have to abandon ship or be abducted or the like. So it should come as no surprise that crewman Anderson plays roles in these episodes as security detail in Equinox and as a brainwashed crew member in Workforce. It is in this latter two-parter where her image appears on screen in Tuvok's computer files, and the name Lydia Anderson is finally applied to this character.
While crewman Anderson has no speaking lines in her 16 appearances, and thus is uncredited throughout the show's run, she ranks in the top 10 of recurring characters in number of appearances. It may be hard to believe, but she shows up as much as Naomi Wildman.
Joyce Lasley played Lydia Anderson, and this was her most notable role as a regular background and stand-in character for Voyager and Deep Space 9. She played a number of aliens throughout Voyager as well, often wearing prosthetics with no nose holes and no ear holes! She also recurred as a background Starfleet instructor in the 2009 Star Trek movie, and most recently has served as a stand-in for the TV show Glee.
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