the make-up artist continues to put the "head" onto Ethan Phillips

It's like a ski-mask in a way. I'll be sitting here now for over two hours. The interesting thing is that when we started the make-up this morning, history wasn't a subject, which is great, because I can sit here and my bonds will mature. We're now in our 22nd hour, a little bit longer than expected, in fact everyone here has already gone home, had dinner, slept a full night and come back, and I have been here in this chair.

It's very delicate. If I move I lose a good portion of my throat so I cannot move at this point. I'm actually the second actor to play this part. The first guy moved at this point, and he's now no longer with us.

I played a character on [TNG], a Ferengi (Dr Farek in [TNG: Menage à Troi]; Marina Sirtis, an ensemble [TNG] cast member, appears in three [Star Trek Voyager] episodes in Seasons 6 and 7), so I've been in the rubber before. Ferengi make-up takes a little bit longer. That was in the Third Season of [TNG] so this is the second time I've played a character in Star Trek. That guy was a pretty evil guy, Dr Farek. Hypothetically speaking, what's happening in a sense is that we're actually shooting an episode right now, we're shooting episode 105 ([#5 Phage]). They're probably building sets for episode 107 ([#7 Eye Of The Needle]). They're writing episode 110 (#10 Prime Factors).

They're working on many different episodes at once, all the different departments. Michael Westmore created the whole thing. I don't know how he does it. He showed me some magazines in his room, 'National Geographic's and animal stuff. I don't know how he gets his ideas but I think the fact that he has to come up with so many aliens, I wouldn't want to be married to him. I think it would be very strange to think like that, but to create something that's so alien that's, I think, so very appealing at the same time, it's pretty amazing, so I give a lot of credit to him, and, you know, I'm real glad I've got somebody doing that for me, you know, made it look this good.