Robert Picardo didn't become a doctor but has played them. Photo courtesy of Chamber Music Plus.

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In the perfect world of his mother's wildest dreams, Robert Picardo would have been a doctor.

Instead, he played one on TV.

Twice — the hologram Doctor on "Star Trek: Voyager" and the lovable Dr. Dick Richard on "China Beach."

"I had the vicarious thrill without the malpractice insurance," Picardo joked during a phone interview from his Los Angeles home in late January.

How Picardo came to ditch doctoring for acting is a story that has become Hollywood legend.

Picardo, who will perform Saturday in Chamber Music Plus Southwest's "A Beautiful Deception," relishes telling how American classical music icon and cultural hero Leonard Bernstein convinced Picardo's mother that her little boy should be an actor.

The setup: Picardo was a 19-year-old sophomore at Yale University, majoring in — you guessed it — pre-med when he landed a role in the Yale production of Bernstein's Mass. The Mass had been commissioned a few years earlier by the family of John F. Kennedy to inaugurate the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in 1971. Bernstein's Mass was more music theater than classical music, involving 200 performers — musicians, singers, choir and dancers.

The story, as told by Picardo: "It was an extraordinary experience. The maestro was very kind to me. He called me the 'Great Picardo.' I didn't know he was really goofing on the 'Great Caruso' (Enrico Caruso). He likes Italian names, I guess.

"He pulled me aside and said, 'What are you going to do with your life?' I said, 'I'm pre-med.' He goes, 'Oh. You have a really natural stage energy that's unusual. You should consider doing this for a living.' I looked him in the eye and said, 'You'll have to tell my mother.' Because I was not about to break the news that she was going to lose the family doctor. . . .

"At the opening night party, I dragged my mother over to him and he repeated those words of encouragement. He was such an iconic figure for all Americans, my mom in particular. He was the classical music god to her, so the fact that he said something kind about her son made her sit up, take notice and give me my one-way ticket out of pre-med with her blessing. That was sort of the validation that enabled me to try a performing career."

What happened next: He traveled with the Yale cast to Vienna for the European premiere of the Mass. He returned to Yale and changed his major to theater and fast-tracked out in three years with a vow to his mom that he would give acting a couple years — until he was 25. If it didn't hold by then, he pledged they could revisit his career plans. By age 25, he had two Broadway leads to his credit and was well on his way. "Ironically, I haven't done any music theater since the Mass until I got on 'Star Trek'," Picardo mused aloud. His character in "Star Trek" sang in a few episodes.

The fate of the Picardo family doctor: That rests with his sister, a Phoenix psychiatrist. "Fortunately my sister, 18 months older, became a doctor, so everything ended up all right," he said with a sigh.