FUTURE'S PAST

THE FINAL SEASON OF STAR TREK: PICARD INTRODUCED NEW CHARACTERS - AND POSSIBLY NONE MORE SURPRISING THAN ED SPELEERS'S JACK CRUSHER

- DARREN SCOTT

PLAYING THE SON OF STAR TREK royalty could've gone an entirely different way for Ed Speleers. In fact, he could've ended up playing another game-changing role altogether. "Initially I was actually asked to go up for a different part in a different Trek series. I think it was Strange New Worlds," he recalls, when looking back at his journey to playing Jack Crusher. "I did a tape and nothing came of it. I was a bit disgruntled, if I remember correctly!" 

As he was only given certain excerpts of dialogue - known as "sides" - he can't swear to the role he first auditioned for. But he thinks he might know...

"This would be completely hazarding a guess," he stipulates. "I'm assuming based on what I've seen of Strange New Worlds that it's the Kirk character that Paul Wesley played. Maybe I'm backing myself far too much there. But I feel that that's right, judging by the sides that I had at the time. That sounds very conceited of me, doesn't it? I thought I must have been going up for Kirk, it has to be!"" he howls with laughter.

SPELEERS ALERT

Though that wasn't to be, it was because greater things lay only a few weeks away. "It was pretty clear that it was something to do with Picard just because of some of the names being bandied around in the email, and I felt I was right for the role."