Star Trek Villain Desired A Forbidden Romance
Over the years, different Star Trek captains have captivated audiences while serving as exemplars of morality, strength, and courage. However, one fairly consistent quality is that most of these characters were very unlucky in love, including Voyager’s Captain Janeway (no, that freaky affair with a hologram doesn’t count).
Interestingly, one of the show’s earliest villains sought to change all that: before he fully read the script for “State of Flux,” the actor who played the Kazon named Culluh (Anthony De Longis) thought that he might be a romantic partner for Janeway.
The Kazon
Now, we don’t want to sound too judgmental, but one of the reasons that the idea of the Kazon Culluh hooking up with Janeway is so crazy is because the Kazon might very well be the dumbest aliens in all of Star Trek. Seven of Nine later confirms that the Borg thought these guys were “unworthy of assimilation,” meaning that they would add no value to the Collective.
On top of that, they were meant to be Voyager’s version of Los Angeles gangs of the ‘90s, so a romance with this guy would have meant that upright science nerd Janeway would have been making time with an intergalactic gangbanger.
Romancing The Captain
With that information about the Kazon in mind, why the heck did the actor playing Culluh think that he might have a shot with Captain Janeway? According to actor Anthony De Longis, he had only read a few pages of the “State of Flux” script and made some pretty big assumptions about his character. While he didn’t elaborate on how he came to this conclusion, these few pages gave him the impression that he “might somehow be romancing the Captain.”
Acknowledged Janeway Could Do Better
Of course, whether or not he knew much about the Kazon going into the audition, the actor soon realized that Culluh wouldn’t be hooking up with Janeway anytime soon. In his words, after reading the rest of the script, “it became very clear that this really wasn’t an option.” Plus, he eventually came to the same realization that any fan of the show could have easily told him: “chances were that Janeway wasn’t going to be interested anyway.”
The Hair Was A Clue
Whether or not the actor was a big fan of Star Trek: Voyager going into “State of Flux,” he had some further context clues that romance with Janeway wasn’t in the cards after he saw his hair and makeup. Like most of the Kazon, Culluh looks a bit like what would happen if a Klingon had the ultimate bad hair day, and the visual effect is very fearsome indeed.
He claims that seeing his hair and makeup helped solidify that he wouldn’t be romancing the captain, meaning that the fearsome villain looked nothing like the kind of handsome leading man who could potentially win Captain Janeway over.
Still Better Than The Lizard Hook-Up
While her relationship with pretty much all of the Kazon was very antagonistic, it is admittedly fascinating to ponder the storylines we might have gotten if Janeway and Culluh had become the Delta Quadrant’s most unpredictable power couple.
Voyager might very well have gotten home that much quicker, and they could have had some strong early allies when they needed them the most. Plus, let’s be real…could shacking up with a Kazon really be any weirder or more embarrassing than the time Janeway turned into a lizard and had Tom Paris’ little reptile babies?
