Connor Trinneer Revisits His Enterprise Days, Part 2

Yesterday, Connor Trinneer took the time to recall his four years spent on Star Trek: Enterprise. Today, in the second half of the conversation, he contemplates the circumstances surrounding the show’s early demise and dismisses the notion that Enterprise “killed” the franchise. Trinneer also updates us on his current endeavors, which include recovering from knee surgery, providing the voice for Nike Golf’s commercials and his appearance later this week at Creation Entertainment’sOfficial Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas.

There are fans out there who loved Enterprise and rank it among the best of the Trek series, and fans who hated it and blame it for “killing” the franchise. Do you see both sides of that conversation and, at the end of the day, do you think Enterprise gets a bad rap?

Trinneer: I haven’t heard anybody who blamed our show for doing that to the franchise. I think our show, in a sense, got kind of burned. Look, as far as I know, if our ratings weren’t equal to Voyager or to DS9, they weren’t very far off. We were doing the same thing as far as fans, people watching our show, that everybody else was doing in regards to the business side of it. It didn’t’ seem that different to me. If you look back at that network and what was airing on that network, we were just the elephant walking through the room. We were not the thing that that network was looking to do by the time we showed up. Voyager was the cornerstone for it. So was our show, for the network, in certain sense, probably in a matter of making money. But in terms of the audience they were trying to get, it certainly wasn’t a science-fiction audience. You know what I mean? And that didn’t help. When you have shows on networks, you want people to stay there because they watch advertising, show after show. You had to go watch our show. That’s not to say that other shows don’t have to have that happen as well, but at the time, on the network we were on, that was the deal. If you were looking for young teenagers doing whatever and then we showed up, you were going to change the channel. But if you were looking for us, you’d watch it.

Responsible for any demise? I think that was nonsense. When you look back on it, all of the shows took a couple of years to find their sea legs. And I think, absolutely, we got our sea legs. Is there an argument that you can only go to the well so many times? Absolutely. It’s also an argument I’d agree with. How many years in a row can you keep it going? We happened to be the show that, for whatever reason, they said, “Stop.” They were expensive. They were all expensive. But in terms of what we did and what we accomplished, I think everyone involved with it, myself included, has nothing but pride for what we did and we hang our hat on that.

What are you working on these days?

Trinneer: These days I’m just sort of out of the woods recovering from having knee surgery and getting a blood clot as a result of it. The last work I did was a few months ago, when I did an episode of a Lifetime show called The Protector. I pushed my surgery a couple of weeks because late spring/early summer is kind of a dead time here in Hollywood. So I did my surgery and, as luck would have it, I got a blood clot out of the deal. That kept me out of the action until basically now.

Are you better? Fully recovered?

Trinneer: Blood clots are funny. I don’t think it’s gone, but I’m on medication that thins it and ultimately dissolves it. But that can take up to a year. The knee was going to be the knee anyway, and it was going to be about now anyway before I was back chasing anybody. Long story short, I’m fine. I’m back in the gym exercising. I can’t run yet, but that was going to be the situation anyway.

And are you still the voice of Nike Golf?

Trinneer: I am! My dulcet tones ring out every time you see a Nike Golf commercial. About three years ago I booked it. It was just one of those things. Then, Tiger Woods fell off everybody’s moral compass and they stopped doing them. Then they started back up doing them with all of Nike’s golfers, including Tiger Woods. I had to audition for it again, and I got it. Over the course of a couple of weeks I did about three hours of voiceover work for them, and that’s how they got the spots.

Overall, how satisfied have you been with the opportunities that have been available to you since Enterprise ended its run?

Trinneer: Any out-of-work actor wants to work. So, any time you’re not working, you want to be doing something. I think everybody who’s been on a show as a series regular would love to step back into that scenario, and I’m no different. I’d love for that to happen. It hasn’t at this point, but by no means am I discouraged. And I have had some nice work to do. Stargate Atlantis (on which he played the recurring character Michael) went on for four years. I did upwards of 15 episodes. That was a great part. After that, it’s been catch as catch can. You take what’s out there and the rest takes care of itself. Would I like to work more? Yeah. If I didn’t want to work more, I’d be retired. But I think my most satisfying work since Enterprise has been on stage. I did a play here at the Geffen in L.A. called Equivocation, and that won Production of the Year at the Ovation Awards. That was one of those roles I got to play that was, for lack of a better way to put it, a bucket-list thing. I got to play several amazing characters in this play.

You did an episode of The Mentalist that reunited you with John Billingsley. How did you enjoy that?

Trinneer: That was fun. It was his episode and he was great in it. It was awesome to work with John again. Funny enough, I think I worked more with John on that one episode than I worked with him on (all of) Enterprise.

You’re going to be in Las Vegas this week for Creation’s Official Star Trek Convention, and for part of it you’ll be sharing the stage with Dominic Keating. For fans who’ve not seen the two of your do your comedy act, give them a little preview…

Trinneer: It’s the two of us just having fun. It’s all improvised. We just get out there and wing it. We have no set plan. We’re really good on stage together. Dominic and I like to have a lot of fun. We both have good senses of humor. We’re not intimidated by getting up there and making fun and having fun. We’ll kind of riff off what people ask us and off each other. We’ve done it quite a bit this year. Creation hired us for five shows, I think it is, where we’re on stage together. It’s nice. Dominic and I are pretty close anyway, and it’s nice to get to see each other again and get on stage and have playful banter.

To read part one of our interview, click HERE