Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review William McKenzie, a crewman engineer who is a background character on Voyager.
https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp228
William McKenzie is a regular background character in the engineering department during the seven-year stranding of the Voyager ship in the Delta Quadrant. He appears in 34 episodes, ranking him among the most regular faces in the crowd on a show where regular background characters were used a large amount.
Although most appearances show McKenzie in civilian garb or with no rank pips, which indicates his crewman status, there are a couple episodes including Jetrel where the character is shown with Lieutenant pips. Thus, we do not know exactly what this character's rank status is.
However, it is clear he is an engineering specialist, as a good number of his appearances are as a worker in the background when notable events happen in engineering. These include when a photonic life form breaks out of the ship in the episode Heroes and Demons, when a console explodes in that department in the episode Investigations, and during the multiple tests of transwarp drive capabilities. His other appearances is as one of the most familiar faces during crew celebrations and assemblies. The most notable of these is when he blows the boatswain's whistle when Captain Janeway hallucinates her own death and funeral in the episode Coda.
Unlike Crewman Fitzpatrick, whose best "quote" was this whistle when we covered him a few months ago, we do hear or see McKenzie referred to by name verbally or visually in a couple episodes. Although he has no real speaking lines like most background characters, at least we know his name, and it's consistent.
As mentioned on profiles of other Voyager background characters, this show needed to keep a more consistent set of people in the background in view of the lack of potential transfers to and from the ship when stranded in the Delta Quadrant. This was a nice touch, and it gave character stand in actors a chance to have other roles on the show as well.
https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp228
William McKenzie is a regular background character in the engineering department during the seven-year stranding of the Voyager ship in the Delta Quadrant. He appears in 34 episodes, ranking him among the most regular faces in the crowd on a show where regular background characters were used a large amount.
Although most appearances show McKenzie in civilian garb or with no rank pips, which indicates his crewman status, there are a couple episodes including Jetrel where the character is shown with Lieutenant pips. Thus, we do not know exactly what this character's rank status is.
However, it is clear he is an engineering specialist, as a good number of his appearances are as a worker in the background when notable events happen in engineering. These include when a photonic life form breaks out of the ship in the episode Heroes and Demons, when a console explodes in that department in the episode Investigations, and during the multiple tests of transwarp drive capabilities. His other appearances is as one of the most familiar faces during crew celebrations and assemblies. The most notable of these is when he blows the boatswain's whistle when Captain Janeway hallucinates her own death and funeral in the episode Coda.
Unlike Crewman Fitzpatrick, whose best "quote" was this whistle when we covered him a few months ago, we do hear or see McKenzie referred to by name verbally or visually in a couple episodes. Although he has no real speaking lines like most background characters, at least we know his name, and it's consistent.
As mentioned on profiles of other Voyager background characters, this show needed to keep a more consistent set of people in the background in view of the lack of potential transfers to and from the ship when stranded in the Delta Quadrant. This was a nice touch, and it gave character stand in actors a chance to have other roles on the show as well.
McKenzie was played by Richard Sarstedt, who was Robert Beltran's stand in when the real Choktay was unavailable. Sarstedt also played a long running background ensign on TNG and other background characters in Trek series and movies, which are his only credited roles in acting. His last work was in Enterprise, but perhaps this is the type of guy who shows up in Discovery at some point based on his long history with many versions of Trek.
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Contact me with segment suggestions @BuckeyeFitzy on Twitter! Thanks!
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Contact me with segment suggestions @BuckeyeFitzy on Twitter! Thanks!
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