Character Insight No. 187: Gul Madred

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we profile Gul Madred, the Cardassian interrogator who is one of the most memorable one-off characters in TNG.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp187


Madred is a Cardassian officer who interrogates Captain Picard in the episode Chain of Command, Part II, which Mike and Darrell just finished reviewing. The intricate dialogue between Madred and Picard during the interrogation and torture that span this entire episode reveals a lot about Cardassian history and values, but even more so as a character piece on Picard. Aside from the great acting performances in this episode, we have Madred to thank for some of the most important character development provided to Captain Picard in the TNG series.

However, Madred himself is revealed to be a delightfully deep and flawed character. He backs the brutal Cardassian military establishment because he believes it has the power to eradicate poverty and violence he experienced as a homeless child growing up. After suffering through great stress and turmoil as a child, he sees nothing wrong with having his own young daughter present during part of Picard's torture. That's an interesting bring your daughter to work day, indeed.

Jil Orra - "Do Humans have mothers and fathers?"
Madred - "Yes... but Human mothers and fathers don't love their children as we do. They're not the same as we are."

Despite his best and brutal efforts of physical pain and humiliation, Madred cannot force Picard to submit to his will by falsely admitting there are five lights instead of the four he shines on Picard frequently. Of course, the epilogue of the episode reveals that Picard had just about been broken by Madred's techniques, even though Madred never gets to see this first hand.

Madred - "How many lights do you see there?"
Picard - "I see four lights."
Madred - "No. There are five."

Even though Madred was a one-off character written to advance Picard's character and story, the complexity of his background and interplay with the Captain has made him a popular side figure in many Star Trek novels, comics, and video games. For example, Madred and Picard meet again in the novel Ship of the Line, where Picard reveals that efforts to recapture Federation prisoners were aided by Madred's daughter, who was sickened by what she saw during Picard's torture. These are the types of somewhat obvious but neat twists that get worked into the expanded universe of Star Trek fiction when a great character is right there for the taking by authors.

David Warner played Madred, and he also appeared in two TOS movies. In The Final Frontier, he plays ambassador Talbot, while in The Undiscovered Country, he plays Klingon Chancellor Gorkon. He accepted the role of Madred on three days' notice, and as a result, came into filming needing to read his lines off cue cards and not knowing anything about Cardassians. That makes his performance even more impressive in this episode. 

Warner continues acting even at the ripe old age of 75, and some of his other biggest films include the original Tron and Titanic. He's also well-known for voice acting work, including various villain roles such as Ra'a al Ghul on Batman: The Animated Series.

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

Character Insight No. 186: M'Pella

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we profile M'Pella (pronounced "meh-PEL-uh"), a recurring background character on Deep Space Nine.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp186


M'Pella is one of the Bajoran dabo girls who works for many years in Quark's Bar aboard DS9. Her first appearance comes in the late Season 5 episode Call to Arms, in which the Federation abandons the station when the Cardassians and Dominion take over. Thus, she comes on the scene just when the Dominion War begins to fire up, AKA the most interesting long story stretch of this show.

As one of the typical characters milling about the bar, she is often seen in the company of Morn, the most prolific recurring character of this series. Indeed, she is present to comfort Quark and others during Morn's memorial when the crew erroneously thinks he has died in the episode Who Mourns for Morn?

She's also no stranger to the typical violence that can occur in the wild west of gaming tables on the edge of the frontier. She has to defend off strong advances from a drunk Grathon Tolar in the episode In The Pale Moonlight, and she also witnesses Molly O'Brien stab a Markellian with a broken bottle in the episode Time's Orphan. Quark would probably call that just part of the job, even though it runs essentially close to modern themes like sexual assaults for similar jobs and workers.

M'pella shows up in 23 episodes, which does not sound like a ton but it was about half of the episodes in the final two seasons where she shows up. As a result of so many appearances, the show writers finally gave her some dialogue in the episode The Dogs of War, which was also her final appearance:

M'Pella- "Let's do it...at this point, I don't care if he fires me"

M'Pella- "I hope you're not going to be lonely in that great, big, Nagal residence"

M'Pella is one of those characters which likely could spin off plenty of interesting stories of her own, if she were made a more regular character than some of the Ferengi of DS9. Nevertheless, we will have to leave those stories to our imagination, unless the new TV show writers think one season of an anthology series should focus on Dabo Girls: Behind the Scenes. That would indeed be an interesting alternative to your normal Star Trek.

Cathy DeBuono played M'Pella when she was not acting as a stand-in or body double for Terry Ferrell, AKA Jadzia Dax. Her most recent work came in 2014 in a short called Jen Foster She and a movie entitled Crazy B-words. She has also been active in radio and can be followed on Twitter @cathydebuono.

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

Character Insight No. 185: Lieutenant Junior Grade Jae

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we profile Lieutenant Junior Grade Jae, a recurring background bridge crew member on TNG.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp185


Jae first appears in the fourth season of TNG, a few episodes after the events of the two-part episode The Best of Both Worlds. She often appears on the bridge over the final four seasons of the show, manning various stations as an operations officer. She is probably best remembered for her mohawk-like hairdo for the first portion of her appearances, which made her stand out even in a crew containing multiple species and an android.

Like many background characters, this puts her in the line of fire on multiple occasions. For example, she was seriously injured in the episode Disaster when the Enterprise strikes a quantum filament. She also passes out when the ship overheats to remove an infection of nitrous parasites in the episode Cost of Living. This action in the line of fire continues all the way to the movies, as Jae is the injured officer who must be replaced at the conn by Deanna Troi after being hit by flying debris while the Enterprise crash lands on Veridian III in Star Trek Generations.

Jae is clearly interested in music and ship social activities, as she is often seen in crew Ten Forward events as well as at concerts and poetry readings performed by main crew regulars. We also learn that this character is highly into swimming. That, plus appearances all over the bridge as well as at the transporter room and in main engineering, shows that this is another swiss army knife crew member in the background on the Enterprise-D.

Her speaking roles are small, like in this background conversation with Riker in the episode Liaisons:
Riker - "Good evening, ensign"
Jae - "Good evening"

Jae also appears in the episode Lower Decks, which focuses on some of the lesser known but often seen background characters. However, this is just one of 62 appearances over the final four seasons of the show, with 3 additional appearances in the first 3 TNG movies.

Regular background actress Tracee Lee Cocco played Jae, and she appeared as a Borg in a few episodes as well while also appearing in Voyager and Deep Space Nine. She also played a lifeguard in Baywatch during her acting career, which ended with Star Trek in the 1990s. She now is a dental hygienist in California, so that proves you just never know who is cleaning your teeth!

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

Character Insight No. 184: Best of Dr. Leonard McCoy

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we continue the "Best Of" series for The Original Series characters with a look at Dr. Leonard McCoy, AKA "Bones."  Here are some of his best quotes and appearances.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp184


Dr. McCoy is most often seen debating with Spock and Captain Kirk, and he often becomes frustrated with the cold, logical approach of Spock, as evidenced in this clip from Spectre of the Gun (season 3):

McCoy: Mr. Spock, why don't you join us common humanoids in trying to find a way out of here and quit explaining why we can't get out of here.

That episode also gives us a variation on one of McCoy's most memorable often-used lines:

McCoy: Let it go, Jim. He's dead.

Although it is rare, sometimes McCoy gets the upper hand on Spock in these circumstances and he can't help but let a zinger fly in the Vulcan's direction. One example of this is in The Galileo Seven (season 1), where Spock's leadership style with a marooned shuttle crew turns out to not be perfect leadership:

Scott: Mr. Spock, you said a while ago that there were always alternatives.
Spock: Did I? I may have been mistaken.
Dr. McCoy: Well at least I lived long enough to hear that.

Dr. McCoy was such a good character he has inspired bands like Warp 11 to memorize him in songs. As requested by Sunshine and Mike, here's a quick intermission interlude from that band.

INSERT WARP 11 CLIP

Bones is one of the older members of the crew and he never shies away from sharing his southern wisdom or crankiness. His level of cranky humor hit all-time highs in the movies when he's dragged out of retirement to go aboard the Enterprise again, as evidenced in The Wrath of Khan:

McCoy: [reference to the turbolift] Who's been holding up the damn elevator?

That movie also references McCoy's love for fine alcohols like bourbon and:

Kirk: Romulan Ale. Why, Bones, you know this is illegal.
McCoy: I only use it for medicinal purposes.

Our final clip comes from Journey to Babel, where the Doctor finally has the last word when Kirk, Spock, and Sarek all end up bed-ridden:

McCoy: [to Spock] Shut up.
[Kirk opens mouth to comment, McCoy interrupts]
McCoy: Shh. Shh.
[Kirk lays back dejectedly]
McCoy: [smiles] Well, what do you know? I finally got the last word.

McCoy set the standard for both doctors in Star Trek and close counsel to a captain. We can see his influence in almost every subsequent Star Trek series, and it's a credit to the late Deforest Kelley who breathed life into this complex character and made him a charming legend.

Insert "I'm a Doctor..." medley