Hello,
my name is Bruce Horak.
And I play the character of Hemmer
on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Rerouting auxiliary power. Get ready.
Hemmer is the chief engineer,
so he's often found in Engineering.
He is an Aenar,
which is a subspecies of the Andorian people.
Akiva and I really wanted
to have an alien member of the crew
in addition to Spock, and we
weren't ready to introduce Scotty yet,
and we needed an engineering character
because we've built this incredible AR set for Engineering.
I think it was Kirsten Beyer,
who's one of our producers on the show,
who suggested that we look at the Aenar
who came from Enterprise.
We have, you know,
an opportunity to increase,
in a regular way, the pantheon of aliens.
Now, the Aenar are a subspecies of the Andorians.
They grew up in these ice caves and they're blind at birth.
They don't see,
but they have these incredible heightened senses.
Hemmer may not be able to see,
but his other senses compensate.
Compensate? They are superior.
They are telepathic at a level that's much more than,
you know, your average Andorian.
I've read that, among many things,
the Aenar have a form of precognitive ability.
I knew you were going to ask that.
Because you sensed my question before I asked it?
Because everyone always asks that.
To research the role of the Aenar,
I watched a couple of episodes that they appear in.
They first appear in Star Trek: Enterprise.
And then I just went down the rabbit hole
on the fan sites, Memory Alpha,
dug into as much backstory as I could find.
Just went deep into the Andorian cultures and lifestyles,
and learned about how the Aenar are all pacifists,
and sort of took that in.
Pacifism is not passivity.
It's the active protection of all living things
in the natural universe.
What do I love about Hemmer?
I love his confidence.
I love his journey over the series.
To impress me,
you're going to need to do better than theorize.
He sort of starts as like a,
a bit of a crusty codger
and eventually breaks down,
and you get to learn about what makes him tick.
Engineering to transporter. Try it now.
What the--how did you...?
I am a genius.
And Hemmer is a genius.
He knows it, and he's not afraid to tell you so.
Hemmer out.