Hemmer is an Aenar, an alien race whose members are canonically blind.
ThroughoutStar Trek ’s prospicient , long journey from an odd little sci - fi show in the 1960s to the cultural phenomenon it is today ( there are presently six ongoing television appearance and persistent rumors of a new movie on the sensible horizon , plus conventionality , cruise , LARPs , you name it ) , there has been one guiding rule by which even the installment fans like the least always follow . Star Trekis , first and foremost , a positive , comforting , and aspirational vision of the future . spaceship are led by captains nearly parental in their wisdom and assuredness who wield crews of enthusiastic pilots and researchers and PCP whose mission is to fetch the beetleweed closer together .
Because the cosmos ofStar Trekis so huge and good for exploration , there is room in every loop for more : more characters , more alien race , more complex story tune , more representation for those who would otherwise be marginalized . Star Trek : Strange New Worldsintroduces Hemmer , the gruff yet charming chief technologist aboard the USSEnterprisewhose character is foregrounded during the tense natural process of the show ’s 4th episode , " Memento Mori . "
Hemmer is a phallus of the Aenar , the paler , more peaceable inhabitants of the icy Sun Myung Moon Andor ( home of the militaristic , dreary - skinned Andorians ) . Introduced intoTrekcanon in three episodes ofStar Trek : Enterprise , the Aenar are considered an tough subspecies , possessing telepathic and second-sighted abilities . They are canonically blind , their other senses having evolved to compensate . Hemmer is played by the Canadian actor Bruce Horak , who is legally unsighted , a trait Paramount was looking for when casting an appropriate thespian for the function .
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Horak , who is curious , paying attention , and candid about his varying connections to his character , spoke to Thrillist about his love forStar Trek , delving into the details of a mysterious exotic wash , and which vista of Hemmer hit close to home .
Thrillist : You ’re part of the Starfleet fellowship now . How cool is that?Bruce Horak : There ’s been a lot of tears . It ’s been tears of joyfulness . It ’s been a real dream . I started watchingStar Trekwhen I was a little small fry . My dad was a in high spirits school English teacher , and he wrote a dissertation on creating a high school course for science fiction . That was just his rank heat . So when theStar Trek : The Original Seriesreruns were on , the whole family would gather around and we ’d watch it and do our Shatner impressions . I really produce into it whenNext Generationcame out . My pa had just retired from teaching , and so we just dug in good order into it . When the call went out , I could n’t say no . I did n’t even have to opine about it — I just said yes right away . Are you kidding?Star Trek ?
What were your thoughts on Hemmer when you first read the script?When I first heard about him , I got really excited that the call was look for a blind or visually impaired performer specifically to play a blind unknown . I had watchedEnterprisea couplet of eld before , but I ’d sort of binged it , so it was a bit of a fuzz . So , I go back and keep an eye on the Aenar episode . You get it on , there ’s not much about them . Memory Alpha[the officialStar TrekWiki ] does n’t have a whole lot about them . So , I got really excited because I thought , well , absolutely everything that he says about himself is plump to be honest . We ’re essentially putting new footmark into the guts of theStar Trekuniverse . That ’s just absolutely electrifying . There ’s lots to draw on from the characters — the Andorians , and the twosome of Aenar that we experience , and engineers in general . It just feel like I was given a great great , lenient ball of clay and enter the fortune to go , " Okay , get ’s build this thing . " What a charge .
Marni Grossman/Paramount+
The first matter I read , that I auditioned for , was the introduction of him with Uhura at the dinner party company [ in Episode 2 ] . I loved it . I loved that it ’s his first scene , and they get properly into impairment and the idea of stultification and abilities , and the fact that he ’s superior . I read it , and I was like , " Oh my god , he ’s Daredevil . He ’s a superhero . He ’s flummox these powers . And I need to do that . I desire to be that bozo . " It ’s aspirational . Even if it ’s just on the screen , I require to be capable to just catch a carrot that ’s thrown at me without me even recognize it ’s occur .
Hemmer is far and away my favoriteStar Trekcharacter case , this very ill-humoured working man who is very professional and not about to have anyone upstage him . His character reference is built on who he is and where he comes from . You have a not bad gang of scene in Episode 4 with Uhura where you guys are stuck in the cargo bay , and he has to allow her to facilitate him . Which he seems really not well-chosen about . It ’s very , very skinny to base . I lost 91 % of my seeing when I was a baby to retinoblastoma cancer . I grew up in a fairly big family with three elderly brothers and went to a steady shoal , and I really shinny and I fought to keep up with the world . I was told at a fairly youthful years that , you know , this is a sighted human beings , and you ’ve get to count on out how to populate in it , to conform to in and to possibly surpass . But just to keep up with the camp , you ’re gon na have to shape twice as hard . That was frustrative , certain , for a small kid with 9 % vision , just trying to keep up and finding fashion to adapt . And then the engineering start to come along , and I get under one’s skin a little telescope , so I could sit at the back of the class and read the blackboard , and I read to type really fast , so I could typewrite faster than anyone else could handwrite . And I got expectant print books , and I learned to speed - read large print so that I was able to keep up . All of these adaptation that I was ready went hand in hand with the technology as it started to get on . I sense like this is what the last perhaps five or 10 long time has been . I do n’t necessitate to ask somebody , " Can you read this for me ? " I just pull up my phone and I use the magnifier and there it is — I’m able to do that . It gives me confidence and autonomy . And I ’m able to move about the worldly concern in a direction that is keeping up with everyone else .
That being said , it ’s hard sometimes to ask for helper . It ’s difficult to get along up against a restriction . And sprightliness has been about , for me in any event , coming up against those limitations and finding way around them . Oftentimes I observe a way on my own . The deterrent example , surely from that shot , is there ’s other hoi polloi who can do this and you actually grow stronger together . If you need to go tight , go alone ; if you want to go far , go together . I just mean that ’s such a beautiful opinion . And I think that ’s be in that particular fit — and inStar Trekin general . That ’s one of the themes of it ! We got ta figure out a way to go together , because if we just attempt to go alone , we ’re fit to run into a burn globe of star gas . That ’s my engineer talk right there .
Yes , very technobabble.[Laughs ] Yeah , that ’s right .
You have a really beautiful tune in this episode , where you tell Uhura , " Pacifism is not passivity . " It ’s not a weakening thing , this is a strengthen affair . That just struck home for me . I ’ve often tried to use being a pacificist , and it for sure gets dismissed often as kind of lazy . I think the lesson in a lot of theStar Trekepisodes and in the canon is that there ’s another way , there ’s another resolution . It ’s not just sitting back and watching . It ’s not just fighting . There ’s got to be a third option . Looking for that is active , and it requires listening and compassion and empathy , all of those very difficult science . Oftentimes it requires taking a hazard , and being the risk - takers and those smashing captain andStar Trekhistory . We have this firm convention , and we ’re not going to erupt it , and then they take a risk to go beyond it and they find another solution . It ca n’t just be , " We ’re gon na blow them out of the sky . " We ’ve got to find another way to do it . It makes perfect good sense to me that the engine driver , the one powering the ship and moving it through the world , is one who ’s dedicated to the principles of Starfleet . [ Uhura ] asks him what his life ’s determination is , and he says , " To fix what is broken , " which is classic locomotive engineer .
I have speak toa few people in the past , actors and writers and directors of this variety of thing , about how science fiction , peculiarly current - solar day sci - fi , is by nature very inclusive , in a sense that there ’s so much more possibility in the genre for all these dissimilar character types , all these dissimilar people to be in it . Do you also get that feeling?I do . I think not only in the musical style itself , but also in , as I was speak about before , the technology , and how I ’ve been using it to advance and keep up . It ’s going at such an exponential pace now , what they can do with CGI and with all of that post - production clobber . I was always very ego - conscious looking at myself on photographic camera , because it does n’t dwell and you may tell that my eye are mess up , and I kind of got warded off from doing camera work very immature because I just could n’t stand take care at myself on - screen door . And then the first sentence I saw Hemmer , and what they have created not only in the prosthetics — I intend , the prosthetics I ’ve got to bear every day and they ’re just incredible , and I could see those — but then in the office - production with what they actually did to my eyes . Those are n’t tangency lens . That ’s CG . They ’ve given me young eyes .
Just image Daniel Day - Lewis transform himself into Christy Brown inMy Left Foot , I was convinced , I ’m like , " Oh , of course , that ’s Christy Brown . " And then I catch Daniel Day - Lewis go up and swallow an Academy Award and I ’m like , " hold off a minute ! That ’s not the same guy ! " But he transmute himself . He did that through tomentum and makeup and acting . Now we can go in with CG and digitally remove an arm or a leg or whatever . And I thought , well , what ’s the next stage ? The next looping of it is you may take a disabled performer and make them able-bodied - corporal . awing to see someone in a chairman and say , " Well , yeah , I was totally convinced that he was dancing , or she was dance . " We can do that now . If we can make somebody fly , if we can give someone novel eyes , the theory are infinite . I love scientific discipline fiction , because I like dreaming about the hereafter . But a lot of what I ’m seeing right now is , expect a arcminute , we ’re living in the time to come . I think , the fact that you and I are Zooming together is like , yes , this is great . This is2001 . This isStar Trek .
