Twenty years after the original Independence Day stormed the box office, a new sequel will blast its way into theaters. And while there’s been plenty of discussion over who among the original cast is returning (Jeff Goldblum! Bill Pullman! Judd Hirsch!) and who isn’t (Will Smith! Mae Whitman!), there’s one name in particular on the former list that stuck out—mostly because it seemed impossible that his character had lived to see another movie.
Most moviegoers assumed that Dr. Brakish Okun—played by Brent Spiner of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame—had died in the original film. In one of the movie’s most memorable scenes, the seemingly lifeless body of the gray-haired scientist is thrust up against the glass of an observation room; his vocal cords get played like a fiddle by *Independence Day’*s creepy aliens. Somehow, against all odds, Okun is back—albeit with a protective scarf around his damaged neck—in Independence Day: Resurgence.
But that’s only the beginning of the return of Brent Spiner. Vanity Fair chatted with the actor to learn how the new movie justifies his return—and why geek culture has become mainstream.
VF.com: Were you surprised to find out Dr. Okun was coming back?
Brent Spiner: No, I wasn’t. I knew I was going to get a call, because they had told me when we were working that I was not completely dead. I was only partially dead.
Why do you think most people grasped the wrong end of the stick there?
Well, I looked kind of dead, I think. I think they assumed that I had been choked to death, or that the tentacles of the alien had really punished me badly. But in fact the alien was very gentle. He was just basically trying to speak through me and communicate through me, and the result was that I was badly damaged. But as you will see in the new movie, I survived.
Twenty years later, how has the world of blockbuster filmmaking changed?
To hit the set, and find Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum and Judd Hirsch and Roland Emmerich and Vivica Fox and all the people I’d worked with 20 years before—it was like a family reunion. It was fantastic. But I think Independence Day started the ball rolling on that sort of return to the big disaster movie. I know Roland is now being referred to as the soulful master of disaster, and he is indeed. I think it all sprang from him and his imagination and his effects into those kinds of films. Now, it’s just bigger and bigger and bigger. This film is gigantic. I just saw it last night for the first time, and it’s overwhelming in its hugeness.
But there must have been huge leaps forward, technologically, since the original.
I mean, for me personally, it was not that big of leap to be working on green screen or blue screen because I spent so much time doing that when when I did Star Trek. We had a green screen in every episode; that was the view screen of the Enterprise. I was always talking to people who weren’t actually there. Fortunately, I don’t do that in my own life, but it made it really easy for me to have that experience. The biggest difference, really, was just there were huge, enormous banks of monitors where special-effects people were already working and setting up what the effects were so that we could take a peek and see what we were doing.
Speaking of your work on Star Trek: The Next Generation, how are you feeling about its big-budget franchise reboot and the glossy new CBS show? What’s the enduring appeal of this story?
You know, it’s the 50th anniversary of Star Trek. A lot of people are kind of divided. Some people find Star Trek really profound and amazing, and other people find it silly. In fact, I think it’s kind of a combination of both, and that’s what gives it its charm. I always said it was like when you used to tie a towel around your neck and fly around the house, except that you might be doing Shakespeare while you were doing that. That was sort of Star Trek.
I tell you what: now that it’s 50 years old, I think it has to be taken seriously. Anything that’s half a century and still going, you’ve got to kind of pay attention and say, “Well, what’s this all about?” I’m really pleased to be part of what I consider the great American epic. On it goes, and hopefully it’ll go forever.
