Monday, September 21, 2015

Character Insight No. 160: Renlay Sharr

This is the latest installment in a series of "Character Insight" articles regarding the rich history of characters in the Star Trek universe. An audio version will appear on the This Week in Trek podcast, available for direct download here 
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Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review another recurring character from the background of Voyager, Ensign Renlay Sharr.

Renlay Sharr being holo-photoed

(A "high quality" image of Renlay in sickbay, courtesy memory-alpha.org)

Ensign Sharr is a background character who does not appear until the fifth season of Voyager, which means apparently she was working below decks in her own version of the redshirt diaries before appearing on the actual show. When she does appear, it is most often on the bridge at stations like the conn, making her a Starfleet command track officer.

Like other faces in the crowd for Voyager, Renlay provides a consistent background character when we see various activities affecting the entire crew.  For example, she has to undergo a deep image picture scan with the rest of the crew thanks to one of the EMH's programs in the episode "Latent Image."  She is also seen at various crew celebrations like at the marriage feast for Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres in the episode Course: Oblivion, as well as in the mess hall to watch a crew ping pong tournament in the episode Relativity

She is also subject to be background evidence of crew suffering on multiple occasions. One example is in the episode Bliss, where she and others are affected by the neurogenic field of a bioplasmic organism. Another example comes in the episode Memorial, where her and another regular background character Ashmore ,who we also recently profiled, were traumatized by an alien beacon that made them relive flashbacks of a slaughter of Nakan colonists. 

One of the only times we see the character speak is to an alien visitor in the episode Survival Instinct. But it is unfortunately just a part of background crowd noise while Seven of Nine talks with Naomi.

Here's to you, late season background Voyager character. You certainly allowed stand ins to be much cheaper while paying for the inevitable bigger salaries on the regular crew in the later years of this show. 

Ensign Sharr was played by regular extra Erin Leigh Price, but she received no credit for these 15 or so appearances. She has also appeared as a vampire chick in Buffy, and in a few shorts like The Leftovers and Farm Sluts. We'll leave that last bit to your imagination, as it's much better than the plot synopsis you will find online.

Stay tuned next week as we return finally to some in the Best Of series. If you have a favorite character, please send a tweet @BuckeyeFitzy with requests to do first!


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