A Regrettable DS9 Cameo Hamstrung Star Trek: Voyager's Initiations Episode

In the "Star Trek: Voyager" episode "Initiations" (September 4, 1995), Chakotay (Robert Beltran) undertakes a personal mission on a shuttlecraft only to be attacked by a Kazon teenager named Kar (Aron Eisenberg), an adolescent out on his first mission. In the brief battle, Chakotay accidentally destroys Kar's ship, but takes the time to rescue him. Kar explains that the Kazon are an honor-bound species and that Chkotay, in rescuing him, robbed him of his ability to prove his worth to his elders. Kar is furious and embarrassed. Kar's superiors find Chakotay and explain that the only way to restore Kar's honor is for Chakotay to kill him or for Kar to kill Chakotay. The Starfleet officer and the Kazon go on the lam, trying to find a solution to their plight that doesn't involve murder.

Aron Eisenberg was already known to Trekkies as Nog, the Ferengi teen on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," which debuted in 1993. Eisenberg was 26 when he filmed "Voyager," but his youthful features and boyish voice allowed him to play adolescents for many years. They also, rather unfortunately, made him immensely recognizable. His striking features allowed fans to spot him in films like "House III" and "Puppet Master III" and TV shows like "Parker Lewis Can't Lose," but made his presence distracting in "Initiation." Trekkies would have trouble relating to the young Kar if all they saw was Nog.

In the oral history book "Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages" edited by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, longtime "Star Trek" scriptwriter Jeri Taylor expressed trepidation to this very point. "Star Trek" has always been good about offering multiple gigs to its myriad supporting players, but Eisenberg was too major a player in "Deep Space Nine" to play a one-off character in "Voyager."

Jeri Taylor pointed out that casting a 14-year-old on "Star Trek" was troublesome. There had been many kids on "Star Trek" in the past, but writing Kar was an issue as they needed a young actor who could convincing play a Kazon murderer. The Kazon, some Trekkies have said, are essentially Diet Klingons, making them brutal and honor-bound in a very similar way. "Star Trek" had never featured a Klingon teen before (Alexander notwithstanding), so there was no precedent. When it came to the casting process, Taylor said the following:

"I thought it was reasonably successful. [...] We gave ourselves a very difficult task by writing a part for a 14-year-old young man. We ended up casting Aron Eisenberg, who plays Nog on 'Deep Space Nine,' and more people were aware of that than I would have thought. He didn't look anything the same, but he has a very distinctive voice. It broke the suspension of disbelief and made people say not, 'Oh, there's a young man in pain,' but 'Oh, it's Nog from 'Deep Space Nine.” As soon as the mind is doing that, it's not involved in the story."

The Kazon have orange-ish skin like Ferengi, but sport outsize Klingon-like foreheads and shell-liked "horns" on their heads. Ferengi, meanwhile, have outsize ears, large ridged noses, fangs, and lumpy, hairless heads. Despite the makeup, though, Eisenberg was easy to recognize.

Something similar happened in "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" in 1991. Michael Dorn was, at the time, better known to Trekkies as Worf, the Klingon security officer on "Star Trek: The Next Generation." In "Country," however, he played an unnamed Klingon defense lawyer in a key courtroom scene. Only fans have postulated that the lawyer was directly related to Worf in any way; there hasn't been any on-screen canonical connection between the characters.

Additionally, actor Ethan Phillips, who played the jolly Talaxian Neelix on "Voyager," had a cameo as a human maître d' in "Star Trek: First Contact." Except, because Phillips appeared out of makeup, he might not have been instantly recognizable to audiences, making his appearance a cute cameo rather than a major distraction. For Eisenberg's appearance in "Voyager," sadly, it was a distraction, seeing as he was playing the main character of the episode. Taylor was happy with Eisenberg's performance but not with the pigeonholing:

"Aron is a wonderful actor, and we cast him because the boys that we read were simply not able to bring to it the richness and depth that we wanted. We got the good actor, but we got a recognizable one."

The first few seasons of "Voyager" flagged in ratings and no one really liked the Kazon as the show's greatest threat. Luckily, the premise of "Voyager" required the ship to fly away from new enemies as they traveled back to Earth, so eventually, the Kazon was abandoned. "Initiations" remains, then, an oddity for the series, providing a great Eisenberg performance and little else.