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When you look at the crew of the USS Enterprise, Erica Ortegas stands out. Unlike other Star Trek: Strange New Worlds characters like Pike and Uhura, Ortegas is an original crew member created for the series. This means the character is a blank slate, and her destiny can lead her almost anywhere.

“It’s an absolute blast,” Ortegas actress Melissa Navia tells Popverse’s Ashley Victoria Robinson at New York Comic Con 2025. “I personally was presented with these scripts, and I always want to show the audience, and especially fans of Ortegas over the last several seasons who are clamoring to hear more of her backstory. So much of what I always say when it comes to Ortegas is you see so much of who she is through her work and through how her crew interacts with her and trusts her.”

“The way that she’s a pilot. The way that she’s a helmsman. You can tell so much about her past, and what she did as a soldier, and how she’s come to this position on the Enterprise. And so I have all these storylines that are always playing throughout, even if nobody else knows. A lot of times there’s things that I’ve discussed and [my castmates], they know about things going on in my head that nobody else will ever know.”

“In this particular season, having her deal with the trauma of feeling like she came up in a situation where she didn’t have the answers, and how does she climb out of that, and in so doing, does she become different, or do we see a side of Ortegas that we don’t like. We saw a little bit of that in the finale of season one, which I loved, because we were in an alternate reality that really shouldn’t have existed.”

For more on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, check out the full interview below:

Space may be the final frontier, but there's no end to Popverse's love of the Star Trek universe. Hop aboard the starship Enterprise with our Star Trek watch order, explore strange new worlds with our upcoming Star Trek TV shows and movies list, seek out the new life of the franchise, and boldly go where no Star Trek film has ever gone before - with Quentin Tarantino?