Strange New Worlds Star Melissa Navia Found One Ortegas Scene All Too Relatable [Exclusive]

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Security alert! This article contains spoilers for “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” season 3, episode 9. 

One of the biggest challenges facing any science fiction or fantasy series is helping audiences suspend their disbelief and truly invest in the some of the more outrageous ideas presented. Thankfully, a little bit of good character writing and an earnest performance can go a long way toward doing that, creating relatable characters in a totally unrelatable setting. On the Paramount+ series “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” one character who pretty regularly feels relatable is helmsman Lieutenant Erica Ortegas, played by Melissa Navia. The hotshot pilot and former soldier in the Klingon Wars has become a major fan favorite, and for good reason, but what helps Navia really get into her character’s head? 

I had the chance to chat with Navia via Zoom and asked her all about getting into Ortegas’ headspace in the season 3 episode “Terrarium,” as the character ended up stranded on a deserted planet on the other side of a wormhole from the Enterprise, trapped with a downed Gorn pilot. Given the fact that the Gorn had previously captured Ortegas and then nearly killed her during her escape, she has some serious baggage with the monstrous-seeming aliens that’s played out throughout season 3. That part is admittedly kind of hard to relate to, but Navia pointed out a moment earlier in the season, after the disrupted wedding in episode 2, where we can really see (and feel) what Ortegas is going through. 

In the rather fun and silly “Wedding Bell Blues,” the crew of the Enterprise end up dealing with the godlike alien Trelane (Rhys Darby) and almost have a wedding between Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush) and Spock (Ethan Peck). While the wedding gets called off, the partying doesn’t, and everyone has a glorious time dancing to Wham!… except for Ortegas, who smiles sadly and watches from the sidelines. She’s only somewhat recently recovered from her physical wounds from the Gorn escape and the mental ones are still healing, as Navia explained:

“I love that scene because it’s so painful, and I could relate to Ortegas in that moment. I know a lot of people can, where it’s like, something is going on with you where you cannot celebrate. And she’s watching all her friends and she’s so happy that they’re having such a great time, but she just cannot join in. And you see her take off to go hit the punching bag, and what’s behind her is essentially what she’s been dreaming of and she feels like it’s the thing that almost took her out, and it didn’t, but it’s still haunting her.”

While Navia has never dealt with being a Gorn captive, she tragically lost her partner Brian Bannon to acute leukemia between filming the first and second seasons of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” and she has noted that the loss and “Star Trek” are inextricably linked, binding her to Ortegas through trauma. She once wrote that she and her character “are now more alike than I ever could have imagined – more than I ever wanted,” and you can see it in these small but vital moments. There’s real vulnerability in Navia’s connection to her character, and it makes the performance that much stronger. But there’s more to it than just a shared understanding of trauma, however, because Navia also feels connections to Ortegas as a pilot.

Lt. Ortegas isn’t the first time Navia has played a pilot, having starred as Co-Pilot Eva Schafer on “New Amsterdam,” and she shared that she had always wanted to try flying for herself, even taking an introductory flight around 15 years ago to see if she wanted to get her pilot’s license (she did, but couldn’t afford it on a working actor’s budget). In getting to play Ortegas, however, she’s making some of her pilot dreams come true, and noted that she’s spoken to pilots at “Star Trek” conventions who “say that Ortegas gets it right,” which is hugely validating. What’s even better, however, is how her character might have an impact on the future of aviation as she investigates its past:

“To see little kids coming up to me, [saying] that they want to be pilots because of Ortegas, that has made me look into the history of female aviators. So right now, I’m reading a book called ‘Fly Girls,’ which I highly recommend, about the early days of aviation and in particular female aviators. It’s so interesting that in playing the role, I am now becoming inspired by the history and by the women who came before me, and of course all the Star Trek actors who have been helmsmen and -women before me.”

I grew up in a U.S. Air Force family and even did Air Force Junior ROTC in high school, and Ortegas is the first helmsman on a “Star Trek” show that really feels like a pilot in attitude and intensity. Sometimes a person is just perfect for a role, and the writing has helped by leaning into Navia’s own experiences and strengths. Not only that, but seeing a Colombian-American woman be such a badass pilot is truly inspiring, as she follows in a long tradition of women in “Star Trek” who inspired real-life heroes to chase their dreams. 

“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” is available to stream on Paramount+.