Posted in: Audio Dramas, Star Trek, TV | Tagged: star trek, Star Trek: Khan

Star Trek: Khan: Tim Russ on Making Tuvok More Audio Drama-Friendly

Star Trek: Khan star Tim Russ discussed revisiting his Voyager role of Tuvok as an ensign, making him audio drama-friendly, and more.

While we've had an array of Voyager returns throughout Star Trek canon with Kate Mulgrew, Robert Beltran, and Robert Picardo on the animated series Prodigy, Robert Duncan McNeill and Garrett Wang on Lower Decks, Picardo's live-action return in the upcoming Starfleet Academy, and Jeri Ryan's return in Picard. Tim Russ also made his triumphant return to the live-action sphere as Tuvok, who we discover is now a captain at Starfleet, and helps promote Ryan's Seven of Nine to Captain to helm the USS Enterprise G by series end. However sweet and nostalgic that moment was, we've barely scratched the surface of what Russ is doing as we revisit Ensign Tuvok in the podcast audio drama Star Trek: Khan that expands his time only previously explored in the Voyager season three episode "Flashback."

The story from director-writer Nicholas Meyer, following the events of 1991's The Undiscovered Country and revisits the ghosts of The Wrath of Khan's (1982) past as an archaeologist Dr. Rosalind Lear (voice of Sonya Cassidy) is tasked to investigate the events following The Original Series episode "Space Seed" chronicling the lives of Khan Noonien Singh (voice of Naveen Andrews), mutineer Lt. Marla McGivers (voice of Wrenn Schmidt), and his Augments after Kirk allows them to colonize Ceti Alpha V before an explosion devastates the planet, leading the former tyrant on his revenge quest against the Enterprise captain who exiled him in TWOK. Russ spoke to Bleeding Cool about exploring Tuvok again at a younger age, how he used his expertise in voiceovers to alter his performance to fit the audio drama format, working with Cassidy, and reuniting with George Takei's Captain Hikaru Sulu.

Star Trek: Khan Star Tim Russ on Finding Tuvok's Voice for Audio Drama

You've played Tuvok for 30 years now, and you're revisiting him at a time where it's you have so much history with him, but have to unpack all that. How do you revisit him like that since you only had played this incarnation of the character as an ensign in that Voyager episode "Flashback?"

It's pretty easy, because the Vulcan lifespan is pretty long to begin with, and playing him as an ensign, I pitch him a little differently, in terms of tone and attitude, so he appears younger than he was when he was on Voyager, so it's a tiny tweak, terms of the way I played his voice, tempo, pace and all that stuff.

Since you started playing him on Voyager, was there some wisdom you have acquired as far as how you approached the role in general in terms of what you weren't doing then, and what you're doing now that enhanced the character after the fact?

Not really. What I needed to do, because it's audio only and it relates to voiceovers in general for characters, you must focus a lot more on your nuances in the dialogue in the way that you speak. The emotional nuances are the biggest difference between working on camera compared to working on VO. If I came back and did an on-camera version of this character, I'd have the camera doing a lot of work for me. Whereas when you're doing voiceover, you don't have it. It's your voice, it's important to do this character, particularly as an ensign on [Star Trek: Khan].

Not only do I need to portray him as perhaps, obviously younger, not as experienced as he was as lieutenant commander on Voyager, but also to be able to not only portray the information he's saying, but the emotion, and way he feels has got to be done a certain way so that it's readable to the ear since all you have is just the ear. This character is also his attitude, which is going to be a little bit different from what he would have been on Voyager as well.

Did you record individually in the booth, or did you record with your co-stars?

I recorded two sessions for this, maybe it was three. The first session I recorded opposite the archaeologist character [Dr. Rosalind Lear] that I'm in the scenes with the most, and the second time I went in on my own, because we did pickups and it was scattered pages here and there, we had to deal with. The first time I did the majority, the heavy lifting was with [Sonya Cassidy], who played the archeologist, so we did the scenes while she was there, back and forth, which I appreciated, by the way [laughs]. It's a lot better to have that opportunity to record with the other actor doing the lines.

What did you like about recording with Sonya and playing off her?

Oh, it was great. It's much easier. To have the actress who's portraying that role feed you the dialogue before your line to set it up is much nicer for me, and I think for artists in general. It's a lot nicer to have that delivery so that you can react to it a certain way with the emotional content and nuance you want to put in. It's much easier, it's much better to do it that way.

I know you also had scenes with George. Did you interact with him at all at any point during production, even though you're recording lines separately?

I only had a few scenes opposite George's character. In those cases, he wasn't there. I had to bounce off the director, who was reading and feeding me the lines prior to that. The only thing playing opposite to George's Sulu was that I had to keep in mind playing the character of Tuvok that who is his superior, and he must make a case for what he's doing. He must request something from him or ask him if he can go down this path. It's a different approach in terms of his attitude towards George's character compared to the archaeologist's character. That's a different situation. Working without him being there, I just had the content of what the dialog is, and it does change the way in which you play the characters, with the way I play Tuvok a little different when opposite of George's Sulu.

Star Trek: Khan, which also features the voices of Olli Haaskivi, Maury Sterling, Mercy Malick, and Zuri Washington, is now available with new episodes on Mondays through November 3rd.

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