Star Trek Voyager's Sarah Silverman

Sarah Silverman maintains a reputation as one of our hottest and no holds barred comedians. She’s the gal with the chuckles, plus a definite point of view. With an attitude and an act ranging from no limits brashness to speculating on the very origins of the human race, Silverman’s comedy holds something outrageous or just plain out there for everyone. She’s now firmly ranked in the same rarified female, funny air as Kathy Griffin, Wanda Sykes, Margaret Cho, Ellen DeGeneres, and Roseanne Barr. Silverman is well known as a funny lady now, but back in the 90s, she was a serious scientist! Though only guest starring in a two part episode, she became an active part of UPN’s Star Trek: Voyager’s crew, as she fought the evil Ed Begley Jr!

“Your curves don’t look so good.” —Ensign Tom Paris to astronomer Rain Robinson in Star Trek: Voyager’s "Future’s End"

Early Career—Saturday Night Live

Barely into her professional career, Silverman accomplished something most comedians or comic actors only dream of doing for an entire career—she nailed a place on NBC’s legendary Saturday Night Live as a writer and featured player. Can’t remember her in your favorite sketches? It’s no wonder. She was hired for the 1993 - 1994 season, but only lasted 18 months before being fired. Instead of getting discouraged and weighing her down, Silverman looked at the setback as a way to get more focused and toughen up in her career.

The Sarah Silverman Show on Comedy Central

Sitcoms tend to be old reliable vehicles of TV. They attract an audience with an almost perverse treatment and the recycling of the everyday, mundane and the predictable. All In The Family—the dysfunctional family bickering in a living room, day in and day out. Three’s Company—the wacky roommates avoiding landlord Mr. Roper’s wrath and struggling to paying the rent. Friends—the wacky roommates dating one another until cancellation. Taxi—the wacky cab drivers seeking out a living in a pre-Uber world.

Even a small taste of the show introduces viewers to one of the most bizarre and outlandish laugh fests ever filmed. Silverman and her co-stars seem to operate in a world sort of recognizable to our own, but nothing can be confirmed as business as usual, when you have storylines such as Sarah dating God himself. Not surprisingly, the Almighty and Sarah don’t work out, but other plots saw Sarah getting engaged to her dog, Doug, or co-stars, her two gay friends, Brian and Steve, body switching after bumping heads while trying to pick up a magical dragon. See—perfectly mundane, even boring plotlines just trying to fill up a lowly half an hour of weekly television.

Indeed, The Sarah Silverman Show plots make even the most cosmic crazy plotlines of a show like Trek seem completely ordinary. Before Sarah and her comic cohorts challenged the sitcom world to doing things in a wholly organic sense of rib tickling insanity, she’d guest star on the 3rd spin-off of Gene Roddenberry’s space opera, and nearly get herself a permanent role on the show.

Rain Robinson & Ensign Tom Paris of Starfleet—Time Travel Rendezvous

Warping onto UPN in 1995—The United Paramount Network—Star Trek: Voyager strove to break new ground. Lead actress Kate Mulgrew (Orange Is The New Black) headed up the first Trek TV show to feature a female captain, Kathryn Janeway. Instead of simply resting on the laurels of a milestone for the franchise and not bothering to assemble a strong female cast in additional roles, Voyager also boasted a female Chief Engineer in B’Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson), a mysterious alien in Kes (Jennifer Lien), and even a recurring female villain in the traitorous Seska played by Martha Hackett, who had to juggle two alien race identities.

Shortly after my Deep Space Nine episode aired, I got a call from the Star Trek writing office at Paramount. Zayra Cabot, assistant to Executive Producer and co-creator of Voyager, invited me to come out and pitch to the new UPN (now defunct) show. The first season had recently begun, and so I paid close attention to how the characters were being sketched out and to the general thrust of the show’s initial narrative direction.

"Future’s End" is a fun time travel romp which sees the lost in space Federation Starship flung back in time to Earth’s past—the oh so primitive 20th century. Ed Begley Jr. (Battlestar Galactica) plays Starling, a hippie turned tech guru ala Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, who gets his hands on future hardware and builds a ruthless empire. Starling targets Rain, a dedicated astronomer who loves pizza, as dangerous and expendable, but before his hitman can kill her, Voyager’s Tom Paris and Tuvok save the day.

According to writer/producer Bryan Fuller, who's now busy working on the new show, Star Trek: Discovery, co-executive producer Brannon Braga wanted to bring Silverman onto Voyager as a permanent cast member, saying “... Braga liked writing for Silverman and the freshness she brought to the Voyager.” The idea never came life, instead the Borg drone, 7of9 - played by Jeri Ryan—was cast over Rain. Can VOY fans imagine Rain solving science snags with her 20th century knowledge versus sexy Seven’s rampaging Borg tech cred? Rain would have to do serious tech and cultural catching up, so it would be a tough climb for all involved. Everything seems to have worked out well for both the show’s cast and viewers. And clearly, Sarah Silverman's career never suffered for it.

Feel The Bern, Sarah—The Politics Of The Sanders Movement

“I’m Sarah Silverman, and this past year I’ve been feeling the Bern. Relax, I put some cream on it.” —Sarah Silverman at the 2016 DNC.

There’s an old notion that good times and joyful celebration are powerful remedies for life’s ills. Look on the bright side. Laughter’s the best medicine. We comfort friends and loved ones by extolling the virtues of the healing power of getting or giving soothing laughs. If laughter is indeed a balm to the troubled, what better thing can there be than to invite a comedian to bring about party unification by yukking up a political storm.

The United Nations should conduct a study on such phenomenon. Jerry Seinfeld and Tim Allen dispatched to conflict ridden areas of the globe to foster a ceasefire? Kevin Hart and Will Ferrell doing another Get Hard movie—but now it’s about making a go of it in the rough and tumble world of politics? Stranger things happen, but for Silverman, the call of Bernie Sanders movement and then to finally support Hillary Clinton, meant she showed up in person to give her speech.

At the DNC, as confirmation of Hillary Clinton as Democratic Presidential Nominee loomed ever closer, Silverman blasted Bernie loyalists by calling them RIDICULOUS.

First things first: Silverman was a staunch Bernie Sanders supporter, so any notion that she’s attacking Sanders or Bernie Bros has no validity. Silverman knew an inevitability of Clinton’s political ascendance cancelled out any notions of Bernie besting her. A hard fought primary race had come to an end, and Silverman tried to add her distinct voice to a call for unity within the Democratic party. Amid more than a few boos, Silverman—alongside SNL alum—Senator Al Franken managed to quell a good portion of the Bernie Or Bust crowd, but it certainly wasn’t an easy haul. I wonder what her Star Trek: Voyager alias Rain would say about such a strong, political view?