Internet Mystery - "Bridge Lady" · 6:17am Sep 23rd, 2019
This, is Bridge Lady. She appears in all but 3 episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, SOMEWHERE in the episode's background. She has speaking rolls in 20 episodes, including a conversation with Captain Janeway in a hallway in the episode Relativity.
I was able to discover her actress, Miss Caroline Gibson. Her character is unnamed on her Memory Alpha page.
This is her photo on Memory Alpha.
As you can see there, she's the focus of a scene, getting flowers, with named crew members in the shot. In spite of this... Bridge Lady has NO NAME!
She is a Bridge officer, who serves along side and looks similar to Crewmen Dorado, who only appears in five episodes, yet has a name. Bridge Lady, who is in all but THREE episodes, has NO NAME!
*angry bug noises*
The people who helped me find her actress insist she's supposed to be Dorado, just with a different actress since they look very similar. But this isn't the case. We see them interact once. She is next to Dorado in the episode where people get mail from home and says "I hope they decrypt mine soon!" to Dorado, so... She's someone else...
Who are you, Bridge Lady? Why do you, a minor reoccurring character who's suggestion once saved the ship, not have a name? Why do character far less important than you have a name, but you don't? Why don't we even know your rank? We never get to see your collar clearly.
Who are you? What do you do? I need to know so I can ship you with Seven properly!
What? Bridge Lady looks at Seven once and shyly blushes. It's cute.
There is a fellow that was seen in the background of many episodes of ST:TNG, but I don't think he ever had any lines.
consults Star Trek Encyclopedia
Okay, that didn't work... let's try Memory Alpha...
Well, so much for that idea. He was usually seen in the background, either on the Bridge or walking down a corridor, carrying a PADD. I remember seeing his name once, but I forgot where I saw it...
5125576 Oh yeah... Isn't he that kinda balding white guy who looks kinda german?
5125579
I believe so. Somewhere, I heard the actor's name was Pete Vardaman, or something like that.
She's a member of a near-human alien species. They posses a mild degree of telepathic ability similar to Betazoids , which manifests as a perception field that renders them seemingly unimportant and makes it nearly impossible to retain clear memories of them. "Bridge Lady" is the most specific moniker anyone can remember, and sounds nicer than "Hey You".
Sadly, name tags are not a part of Federation uniform regulations.
shipping intensifies
5125584 That's actualy a species they encounter in Voyager XD
5125597
Well there you go. They picked up a hitchhiker and promptly forgot about her. There's probably a story in that somewhere...
"Hey, that crewmember over there, do you remember her name?"
"Not off the top of my head, I think she's part of the bridge crew or something. She's been there for ages now."
"Yeah, but has she been there for ages last week?"
5125601
Come on Nobby, Im starving. Up for Sausage inna bun?
If she interacts in Voyager, shoudlnt her name be in the script file, or even in listed script, are her words only marked by Unamed Bridge Lady? Sorry, I have the script book.
Somewhere.
She has appeared in more percentage episodes than AJ?
5125613
She's marked as "Engineer#11"
Almost certainly.
I am Shining Armor in this scene
Next generation was best. I don't even like star trek (for a plethora of reasons. Give me a good Fifth Element or Cowboy Bebop.) but they introduced best skinflints
IMDB fails to have a listing for this particular actor, either in the casting credit of the show itself, or for her own self
If I remember rightly, the then prince and now king of Jordan once appeared as an uncredited extra in the Voyager episode 'Investigations'. Memory Alpha says it was arranged as a surprise present for him while he was in the US, as the king is a self-confessed Trekkie.
....make it part of the Fic...
Seven investigates this mysterious officer she keeps seeing that nobody seems to know.
I'd write it so she's sentient fiction. Or something neat.
5125570
5126265
Damn, digging deep into the bubblegum pop rock catalogue for this one!
5126287
Lord knows all the shit we have to go through to get there
SAVE ME SLIM WHITMAN
From an out of character point of view:
On a TV show, the main characters are "series regulars" and they are hired by the production company on contracts for the entire season. Almost everyone else is either an "extra" or a "day player". Day players are the smaller supporting roles; they are contracted to the production on a day-by-day basis. If they need a day player for multiple days, they schedule and contract for each needed day -- it's not necessarily a one day job, but the *formal employment contract* is for one day at a time. Extras are hired en masse through a casting company, which is basically a temp agency, and are not contracted to the actual production at all.
The key point is that extras don't have speaking roles. They're not necessarily silent, but what they say is always background chatter and crowd noises and such; they don't have actual lines scripted and recorded. That's part of the union rules; only a contracted actor may have lines. However, it's very common for low-level recurring characters to be hired as extras for a production but contracted as day players if the story requires a few lines. Those are the roles you see in the credit that have names like "Crewman #1" or "Officer #3" -- if you have a contracted role you are entitled to a spot in the credits, but the very low level speaking roles generally don't have any actual character name or background assigned.
Just to make sure I'm being clear on this: a day player role doesn't necessarily have no name and background; that is generally a feature of the "glorified extra" tier of minimal day player roles. Day players do get hired for meatier roles as well, which is the formal (as opposed to colloquial) meaning of the term "co-star". When you see "co-starring X, Y, and Z" in the actual movie or show credits, that identifies cast members who are day players. A more recent tweak to the union contract allows fo recurrent day players to be contracted for three-day or one-week stints at a substantial discount.
If you're a film nerd and pay attention to the credits, you'll also see the phrase "guest starring" or "special appearance by" a lot. Guest stars fall in between the seasonally-contracted series regulars and the day players; they are normally contracted for the entire production of one episode (typically ~8 days), which is also referred to as "top of the show" or "major role" status. Guest star roles tend to be recurring, but a key contractual rule is anyone who has a contracted acting role in half or more of a season's given episodes must be contracted as a series regular.
In the modern era of tightening production budgets, "top of the show" roles are less common than they used to be; there's a lot of negotiation as to how a "major role" is defined and there's a lot of roles that probably would have been "top of the show" in the past, but are compressed down to recurring day performer roles now.
5128457
Then wouldnt by those rules, this actor would by default have a named character role? It was already pointed out that this character was present in all but 3 episodes in the series.
5129785
Yes, but the extent of the named role is going to be something like, "Bridge Officer 11" with no canon backstory or even a canon name. TV production is very fast moving and there is very little imagination for extraneous detail.