Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review Ambassador Kamarag, a recurring character who appeared in the latter TOS movies.
https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp232
Kamarag is the Klingon ambassador who serves as the official representative of the Empire to the Federation. He is an outspoken and hotheaded diplomat in the appearances we see on screen, and his distaste for Captain Kirk is readily apparent. It seems that one brash individual will never see eye-to-eye with a similar brash individual on the other side. Regardless, this ambassador does clearly have the interests of the Klingon Empire at heart, and he therefore serves his role well.
In his first appearance, Kamarag is the lead protestor of the Federation's development and testing of the Genesis device. Too bad he wasn't able to speak up more before the madman Khan got his hands on Genesis.
He then defends the actions of Klingon crews who attacked the Enterprise on the Genesis planet as necessary to defend their race, as the Klingons apparently felt the weapon capabilities of this technology were a direct threat to them. To this end, he proclaims that there can be no peace between the Klingons and the Federation as long as Kirk lives without prosecution by the Federation for his alleged war crimes in defending himself against the Klingon attack.
It should come as no surprise that he then defends the Klingon government when they arrest Kirk and Dr. McCoy following up on the assassination of chancellor Gorkon. He is forced to begrudgingly applaud Kirk when the Enterprise crew later saves the Federation president and the new Klingon chancellor from another assassination attempt, which was designed to bring war between these factions.
Kamarag was originally to be played by Eddie Murphy, and one wonders what an interesting difference that would have made on this character. Instead, the character was played by John Schuck, who had ben previously married to Susan Bay, a friend and later spouse of Leonard Nimoy.
Schuck endured some long days of make-up and wardrobe design in order to pull off the unique look for the Klingon Ambassador. One of the sacrifices was that the make-up base used on his skin to match the prosthetics did serious damage to his original skin, but all such issues heal with time. Schuck wanted to bring a King Lear-type theatrical performance that evoked a lot of humanity, and he successfully pulled this off, according to both Gene Roddenberry and film director Leonard Nimoy.
Schuck still occasionally acts today, although some of his older work on shows like The Munsters Today, Murder She Wrote, and Matlock is more memorable. He's rarely recognized for this role as a result of the make-up, at least until he opens his mouth and speaks. It's something a lot of podcasters and content producers can relate to!
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