Character Insight No. 339: The roles of Rebecca Romijn and Jerry O'Connell

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review the career and roles of Rebecca Romijn, a recent notable addition to the Star Trek family, as well as her husband Jerry O'Connell, who she is bringing into Star Trek with her.

https://archive.org/details/characterinsightep339  

Unlike other actors and actresses we've done profiles on in this series, Romijn has not yet appeared in multiple different character roles.  However, she was a surprising recognizable face added in season 2 of Discovery and she reprised her role as Number One in a great Short Trek for this season entitled Q&A.  To celebrate her continued appearance on the show, this segment will look at her background for those unfamiliar.

Romijn was born in 1972 in California, and her father was a former Dutch national who was a custom furniture-maker while her mother taught English.  In high school she was known as the jolly blonde giant thanks to her notable 6 foot height and positive demeanor.  She went to college to study music but dropped out to pursue a modeling and later acting career.  

In her modeling career, she grew to become one of the famous Victoria's Secret models, also making the first appearance in body paint in Sports Illustrated, a precursor to the body-positive ESPN magazine body issues we see two decades later.  During this time she was also married to John Stamos of Full House fame, but they divorced a few years later.

The body paint turned out to be a ticket to one of her biggest film roles when she started acting, that being the villain Mystique in various X-Men movies.  While a younger version of the character was eventually taken over by Jennifer Lawrence, Romijn became one of the defining faces of that franchise in the 2000's, alongside acting greats Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart.  In this time she also met and married her current husband, Jerry O'Connell, and had twin daughters with him.

Although Romijn has played in a number of TV and film roles in the last 20 years, more recently she has taken on a regular voice role as Lois Lane in Superman and Batman videos.  She then added Star Trek to her resume by playing Number One on Pike's Enterprise in Discovery.  As stated earlier, she has shown more than capable of carrying on the intrigue of this character originally portrayed by Majel Barrett.

Interestingly, it appears Romijn has also brought her long-time acting husband into the Trek ranks as well.  Jerry O'Connell is perhaps best known for his role in the 1986 film Stand By Me, but he has continued to be a prolific film and TV actor for the last 35 years.  His Trek role will be as Commander Ramson in the first episode of Star Trek Lower Decks, which is in pre-production at the time of this segment.  Perhaps this will become another power acting couple that will add several memorable characters to Trek, we can only hope.

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Character Insight No. 338: Christopher Brynner

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review a key character from the two-part episode Past Tense of Deep Space 9, Christopher Brynner.

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Christopher Brynner is the wealthy businessman and owner of Brynner Information Systems, a company based in San Francisco in the 21st Century on Earth. His past is not revealed in any detail on screen, but a short story in one of the Strange New Worlds compilations posits that Brynner was previously a lieutenant in the US Army in the early 2000's, serving in the Iraq war. Whatever his background is, he turns out to be in the right place at the right time to help Jadzia Dax when she and two other DS9 crew members are transported back in time to this history of Earth.

Ben Sisko and Julian Bashir were being held in the city's sanctuary district, a place where the homeless and mentally-ill were interned. Outsiders thought this was a good solution with ample care being given to these people, but on the inside, it was basically a prison. Dax convinces Brynner to help her find and retrieve Sisko and Bashir from this prison-like setting.

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But because a Starfleet crew cannot let injustice stand for no reason, Dax also works to convince Brynner to restore computer access for the residents at the sanctuary district. He does help achieve this in the end, allowing residents to reveal their poor condition to the outside world. It is left as an open question where Earth will take this information from there, and given the current political nature of our society, who knows how this would be handled in real life today.

The little additional bits of character we learn about Brynner come from his dialogue with Dax, including some about his life experiences of skiing on Mount Cook and obtaining and later removing a Maori tattoo from his body. He may not be the most likeable character, but he does have power and influence and he is convinced to use those for the greater good. His character name was derived from Chris in The Magnificent Seven, who was played by actor Yul Brynner.

Brynner was played by Jim Metzler, who enjoyed a long acting career with many small appearances in television shows. He's appeared in shows ranging from NYPD Blue to Grey's Anatomy, and he was nominated for a Golden Globe for one of his supporting roles in the 1982 film Tex.  His final TV appearance credited was on Mad Men in 2014, and he's been enjoying retirement since then.

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Character Insight No. 337: The roles of Cameron

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review another actress who played multiple roles on Star Trek, that being Cameron.

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Cameron is the stage name for Roberta Jean Oppenheimer. Not much is known of her pre-Hollywood background, although we know as a child she always dreamed of being a stage star, leading to her move to Las Vegas to appear in several stage shows. Most of her television and movie appearances came in the 1990's. Some of this work was as a stand-in, but she also earned some significant screen time as a background character in Trek.

Her most notable recurring role was as Ensign Kellogg on Picard's Enterprise. She appears in over 40 episodes over the final four seasons of the show, with further appearances in the movies Generations and First Contact. She was only identified by name in the episode The Drumhead, and her appearances are usually in the mess hall or as a security officer.

As a stand-in, she served as one of the Beverly Crusher stand ins over her four years on the show, and she also worked a little as a stand-in for Seven of Nine when that character was first added to Voyager. She was replaced in latter seasons of Voyager in this role, but this was near the end of her short acting career in TV.

As for other bit roles in Trek, Cameron ran the gamut through the alien races of the show. She played a Klingon aide to Gowron in TNG, a Cardassian officer in another TNG episode, a Prytt guard and a human unnamed officer on Voyager. She also participated in many live and print Trek marketing materials, including promotions tours for DS9 and as a crew character for Star Trek The Experience in Vegas.

Outside Star Trek, Cameron appeared in several movies including Coneheads, Tales from the Hood, and Tomorrow Man.  She also relived her Vegas show girl days in one of the worst-reviewed movies of all time entitled Sunset Strip.  After wrapping up her TV and movie career, she appeared as the show creator and writer on the burlesque show Cameron's Bump and Grind. She retired from public view following this self-made show.

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