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.
------------
Feedback can be sent to me with future segment suggestions on Twitter @BuckeyeFitzy.
No comments:
Post a Comment