Character Insight No. 180: Crewman Fitzpatrick

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we profile Fitzpatrick, a crewman and regular background character appearing on Voyager.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp180

Fitzpatrick has actually been used for two background characters, with the other being an admiral sending orders to Kirk's Enterprise in the memorable TOS episode The Trouble with Tribbles. But the Fitzpatrick we are covering today is instead the prolific face in the crowd on Voyager, a crewman and ensign who shows up in 38 episodes.

Many of these episodes show Fitzpatrick in one of two places: the mess hall, during important crew events there, and the aft stations on the bridge. Although Fitzpatrick does not have any speaking lines, he does follow quite a few orders without making the official scripts in these bridge appearances.

One of the mess hall appearances actually has the closest thing to a Quote of the Week, as the crewman plays the boatswain's whistle at the funeral for crewman Kurt Bendera.

"Quote" (from Alliances): <<Whistle melody>>

Isn't that sweet? Some of his other notable appearances include participating in bets during Tom Paris's radiogenic sweepstakes, helping lead the team to recover Kes and Neelix while the crew was stranded in the two part episode Basics, and enjoying the female company of a Sikarian on the Delta Quadrant's version of a pleasure planet.

As covered with other Voyager background character, this high level of recurrence in the background was a necessary facet of the story of this show, and it adds consistency and more familiarity to the crew compared to other iterations of Trek. Because there's not much to say about Fitzpatrick, here's a fun fact: the surname is the 60th most common name in Ireland, which means perhaps this Fitzpatrick was indeed related to his predecessor Admiral in the TOS times.

Fitzpatrick was played by Kerry Hoyt, who played various background roles in TNG and Voyager. He is married to another regular background Star Trek actor Caroline Gibson, but his most famous work is likely as the regular stand-in for his look alike comedian Jim Carrey in many of Carrey's biggest movies of the 90s and 2000s. So if you ever did a double-take and thought Jim Carrey was making a cameo, it's probably Hoyt instead.

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Feedback can be sent to me with future segment suggestions on Twitter @BuckeyeFitzy.

Character Insight No. 179: Damar

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we profile Damar, a Cardassian recurring character on Deep Space Nine.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp179


Glinn Damar was a Cardassian government and military leader who served as the right hand of Gul Dukat during the early years of Deep Space Nine. He helped Dukat fight a one-ship war against the Klingons for over a year during Dukat's demotion and disgrace for rescuing his illegitimate half-Bajoran daughter Tora Ziyal. Damar was a by-the-book Cardassian, hating all things Bajoran. However, he tolerated Dukat's dealings with them in the name of restoring the Cardassian Union to power.

Damar supported and assisted Dukat with the entry of the Cardassian Union into the Dominion, although he quickly grew distrustful of the Dominion leadership. His most notable moments during his time under Dukat were helping take Deep Space Nine away from the Federation, neutralizing the self-replicating mines the Federation put around the wormhole, and killing Dukat's daughter Ziyal when she betrayed the Cardassians during a return of the Federation to take back the space station. Dukat was captured in this battle while Damar fled.

Damar then was promoted to legate and became the head of Cardassia while Dukat went through a nervous breakdown. Damar was unable to stop Weyoun and the founders from blaming many losses on the Cardassians and diminishing their standing even in their home quadrant. That led him to eventually rebel against the Dominion, an effort that led to the execution of Damar's family as well as the annihilation of one of the cities on Cardassia. However, those events caused Cardassians as a whole to turn against the Dominion and fully join the efforts of the Federation and the Klingons in defending the Alpha Quadrant.

Quote (from The Dogs of War):
Damar: Citizens of Cardassia, hear me! The Dominion told you that the rebellion has been crushed. What you have seen here today proves that that is yet another lie. Our fight for freedom continues, but it will take place here, in the streets. I call on Cardassians everywhere to rise up, rise up and join me. I need *you* to be my army! If we stand together, nothing can oppose us. Freedom is ours for the taking!

Damar died in one of the final battles of the Dominion War, in an assault on the Dominion Headquarters, ending a run of 23 appearances on the show. His efforts in turning Cardassia back against the Dominion were honored by the Federation and by the Cardassian Union.

This character was perhaps not as well-developed as Dukat or Elim Garak, but he was a memorable piece of one of the best story arcs the Star Trek series has ever seen. Plus, he got to experience the full villain to hero transformation, which is a fun development to watch.

Damar was played by Casey Biggs, who continues his stage and film acting career today at the age of 60. He has appeared in many TV shows like the X-files, and his most recent work will be released as the movie entitled Unbelievable in 2016. Ironically, he was also married to Roxann Dawson for a couple years in the 80's before they both got famous Star Trek roles.

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Feedback can be sent to me with future segment suggestions on Twitter @BuckeyeFitzy.

Character Insight No. 178: Ensign Russell

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we profile Ensign Russell, a recurring character appearing on both TNG and Voyager.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp178

Russell serves as an engineering crewman and ensign aboard Captain Picard's Enterprise. He serves for five years on the Federation flagship before transferring to command division with a new assignment aboard the USS Voyager. As you might imagine, that led now-Lieutenant Russell on a wild adventure with the rest of the stranded crew in the Delta Quadrant.

His first appearances on TNG begin in season three, with some appearances in Ten Forward, engineering, and on the bridge. While helping Geordi with repairs on the shields and the sensor array, his name is mentioned for the first time in the episode Tin Man.

QUOTE: Geordi - "Russell, watch the lateral grid balance...no, no no that's too much. We'll have to do it manually."

He also interacts with Geordi on many other occasions, including when trying to detect a source of music in the episode Lessons. Spoiler: it's Captain Picard in a Jefferies Tube!

After that first season of appearances, Ensign Russell is seen almost exclusively working in engineering. However, he is the almost always present whenever the main characters or guest characters make their way to engineering, which happens in about half the episodes. That helped Russell rack up a lot of appearances, 62 alone in TNG. He added 7 more appearances in Voyager, although as with most background characters, he was never credited in these roles.

On Voyager, it is unclear what the newly-minted Lieutenant does, as he is always seen either in the holodeck or in the mess hall in his appearances. Most of these appearances are in the third season, although he also appears in one fifth season episode Dark Frontier, so he was not apparently one of the crew members lost on the trip back to the Alpha Quadrant.

Russell was played by regular stand in Carl David Burks, with the character being named after one of the children of the writers on the episode Tin Man. He was a stand in for Brent Spiner and Robert Duncan McNeil on these Star Trek series. He and his wife took over a North Hollywood Club in 1996 that later became famous as Club Dragopolis. Burks found a new gender identity and took the name Debbie David, serving as emcee and hostess in this very club, while also continuing to appear in films like I Was a Teenage Dragqueen.

So this is certainly one of the more interesting lives in the tapestry of background Star Trek characters and actors.

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Feedback can be sent to me with future segment suggestions on Twitter @BuckeyeFitzy.

Character Insight No. 177: Lieutenant Hadley

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we profile Lieutenant Hadley, a regular background character from TOS.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp177

Hadley served as a regular bridge officer aboard Captain Kirk's Enterprise. He most often appeared at the Navigator and Helmsman stations, although he also appeared at communications on a couple other episodes. Hadley also served as a regular assistant in engineering for Montgomery Scott and as a security detail on the ship and on away missions. Essentially, Hadley is the swiss army knife of a crewman on the Enterprise.

There's some debate over what rank Hadley was, as he appeared in a gold uniform with lieutenant insignia when manning the navigator and helmsman stations, but then always had no insignia when in a red uniform on security details. That would indicate ensign, and he later appeared some in the gold uniform without insignia as well. Regardless of his rank, he clearly served enough roles to be a valuable junior member of the crew.

Like all background characters who dared to be on security detail or on the front line of the bridge, Hadley was subject to some assaults and other dangers. One example of this is when he was infected with the spores on Omicron Ceti III and joins a mutiny in the episode This Side of Paradise, and another example is when he was miniaturized and placed in stasis by Flint in the episode Requiem for Methuselah. He does not suffer any permanent injuries or death though, which allows him to become the most prolific recurring character on this series.

All told, Hadley appears in 62 episodes, albeit with no significant speaking lines to quote from. He was played by regular extra William Blackburn, who brought his normal stoic self to the role. Blackburn has been quoted as saying that he acted just as he would in real life pushing buttons and navigating a ship as a job, which is to say, without a lot of emotion. He also appeared as other characters on TOS like the White Rabbit and the Gorn Captain.

Blackburn was a professional ice skater before his acting career, and at the end of Star Trek he transitioned to a costumer in the TV business. That led to lead costumer roles on famous shows like T.J. Hooker and Night Court. Hadley ignored his Star Trek heritage for many decades following his TOS role, but he resurfaced in 2007 and partnered with Paramount to release some behind-the-scenes home movies he recorded while working on the show in the 1960s. These are a treasure trove of previously-unseen information, which proves you just never know where gold mines will come from in the history of this franchise.

So Hadley served as one of the more important faces in the crowd on TOS, and it's good to see someone serve on security detail without dying. So maybe there's hope for Ensign Williams and the other red shirts after all.

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Feedback can be sent to me with future segment suggestions on Twitter @BuckeyeFitzy.