The Star Trek character you forgot was played by Seth MacFarlane from Family Guy

In case it wasn’t obvious from the sci-fi comedy show “The Orville,” TV guru Seth MacFarlane is a huge Trekkie. “The Orville,” in its structure, lighting, and character types, is a lot like “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” just with a few crude jokes and rude comments added throughout. MacFarlane also once presented William Shatner, in the role of Captain Kirk, on the big screen at the Academy Awards. Some may even know about The “Star Trek” fan film that MacFarlane made in high schoolWhere he cast himself as Captain Kirk.

His Trekkie credentials don’t end there. On one of the “Next Generation” Blu-ray discs, MacFarlane hosted a commentary track for Episode “Cause and Effect” Talk to episode writer Brannon Braga. He was also in the documentary “Trek Nation” and included countless “Star Trek” references. In his animated comedy series “Family Guy”, “American Dad!” And “The Cleveland Show.” Yes, MacFarlane has always been a huge Star Trek fan.

So his appearance in “Star Trek: Enterprise” must have been a formative experience for him. Many Trekkies may have forgotten this, but MacFarlane played a character named Ensign Rivers in two episodes of that series. He didn’t have a substantive role, but his appearance cemented him as a key character throughout Trek lore. Ensign Rivers first appeared in the third season episode “The Forgotten” (April 28, 2004) as an unnamed engineer who is berated by Tripp Tucker (Connor Trainer), the Enterprise’s head of engineering. He also appeared in the season 4 episode “Affliction” (February 18, 2005) when his character was finally named. Ensign Rivers didn’t seem to like his experience on the Enterprise, even though he was serving on a new ship, the USS Columbia, the second time we saw him.

In “The Forgotten”, the USS Enterprise is recovering from a massive fire in previous episodes, and must repair many of its systems. Tripp Tucker doesn’t sleep much and is overworkedhaving to oversee every aspect of the ship’s engine improvements. Ensign Rivers was briefly reprimanded for missing a micro-crack in the magnesium engine housing. Rivers defends himself by saying he took a stress test, but that wasn’t enough for an angry Tucker. This is all his appearances in the movie “The Forgotten”.

However, Rivers reappears several additional times in “Affliction”, but only to deliver lines such as “Yes, sir”, “This is the diagnosis you requested”, and “The dilithium matrix is ​​stable”. He probably has one minute of screen time overall. In one scene, he questions why Tripp wants to align the dilithium array within 0.3 microns when the manual says 0.5 is acceptable. Ensign Rivers is by no means a dynamic or complete character, but it sure was a delight for MacFarlane to read classic “Star Trek” technobabble. It’s the technological and technical attention to detail that brought so many Trekkies back to the franchise, so MacFarlane will likely be completely comfortable with it. He didn’t like all the “Star Trek” actors.

Since Rivers’ character was played by a well-known celebrity like MacFarlane, his character was more popular than most of the random engineers, doctors, and bridge officers on Trek. As such, Ensign Rivers was given his own playable card in the 2006 edition of the “Star Trek Customizable Card Game”, a popular and expansive game that was first released in 1994 and has been expanding ever since. On his card, Ensign Rivers finally got Stuart’s first name, which was no doubt a deliberate reference to Stewie Griffin, a character MacFarlane plays on his show “Family Guy.”