Star Trek Actor Says Their Trek Hero Is Just Like Their Marvel Character
Rebecca Romijn says there are some uncanny similarities between her Star Trek character Una Chin-Riley, and her X-Men villain Mystique.
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According to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds actress Rebecca Romijn, if her Trek hero Una Chin-Riley needs a sympathetic ear while Starfleet has her locked up in between seasons, maybe her old Marvel character can come by to listen to her woes. Romijn recently joined her castmates at the 56-Year Mission Star Trek convention in Las Vegas, where she talked about the two characters she’s best known for. The actress old fans that her Strange New Worlds character and the Brotherhood’s Mystique–who she played in the X-Men films–share some uncanny (we apologize for nothing) similarities.
As reported by TrekMovie, Romijn commented on the similarity between her Star Trek and Marvel roles when asked a question about the upcoming Season 2 of Strange New Worlds. “What also is really strange about it, and I probably shouldn’t say this, but I kept going back to when I was playing Mystique as a mutant,” Romijn mused. “I had little bits of dialogue in season 2 that were literally word-for-word things I said in the X-Men series before. But they are related. They are two characters, and I relate them.”
If you’ve watched Season 1 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, then you can probably guess the nature of the similarities between Una and Romijn’s Marvel character. Early in the inaugural season of Strange New Worlds, we learn that Una is secretly an Illyrian; a race of genetically-engineered people, and the genetically-engineered are not allowed within a hundred light years of Starfleet service. Season 1 ends on a cliffhanger, with Una’s heritage somehow being discovered and Captain Pike’s (Anson Mount) First Officer being arrested by Starfleet.
The parallels between Star Trek’s Una and Marvel’s Mystique–or any of Marvel’s mutants–seem pretty clear. Like Mystique, Una is being attacked for her heritage, and for being “different.”
Though it’s still a little surprising for Romijn to say Una and Mystique share “word-for-word” dialogue. While Jennifer Lawrence‘s version of the character has a lot more to say, Romijn’s version doesn’t speak often and when she does, she’s usually speaking through one of her many disguises and in someone else’s voice. Considering how sparse her actual dialogue was in the films, it’s conceivable the lines shared between the characters was no accident.
It will be interesting to see how Romijn’s Star Trek character’s story is resolved in the seasons of Strange New Worlds to come. Throughout Trek’s narrative, the ban on genetic engineering is often depicted as the last remaining prejudice of the otherwise utopian Federation. But we know Una’s story won’t end with the Federation doing away with that prejudice, because a century later–in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine–when the genetic alterations Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) was forced to endure as a child are uncovered, that engineering is still illegal in the Federation and Bashir almost loses everything because of it.
We also know that Una Chin-Riley can’t remain on Strange New Worlds forever since the showrunner hopes to take the story into the timeline of Star Trek: The Original Series, and Una’s character was off the ship by then. Not to mention that when the Season 1 finale gave us a glimpse into a possible future, it showed us the Enterprise without Una. Whether or not Romijn’s Star Trek and Marvel characters ultimately share the same fate remains to be seen.
