Character Insight No. 267: Gabler

Welcome back to Character Insight!  This week, we review Lieutenant Gabler, a recurring character from The Animated Series. 

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp267 

Gabler is an operations division officer serving aboard Kirk's Enterprise on the five year mission.  Gabler is one of the best engineers in Scotty's department, but he also spends time as a security officer.  In other words, he gets the most bang for his buck out of the red uniform he wears.

We typically see Gabler serving as an engineering lead when Scotty is on another part of the ship or on another mission.  One example of this is in the episode One of Our Planets is Missing, where Gabler must supervise opening a series of doors at the rear of the nacelle to allow Scotty and Kirk to carry a force field box with an antimatter villus into the nacelle.  He's also seen receiving orders to operate ship systems in episodes like The Survivor, and Once Upon a Planet, where this quote comes from.

QUOTE (from Once Upon a Planet)

Scotty: Keep trying Lieutenant. Bridge to engineering deck...Gabler, what's the problem down there? We have zero G's on the bridge. 

Gabler: I know that sir.  The trouble seems to be in the gravity control computer.  But the bay door is jammed and I can't get to it. 

Other than the 5 appearances in TAS, Lieutenant Gabler is not seen much in Star Trek, with very limited mentions in books and other stories.  He is given the first name Frank in one short-story adaptation. 

As he is a human officer unlike the other regular recurring characters added in this series, there is likely no compelling reason to re-visit him or add him in, although I would not be surprised to see an Easter Egg about this type of character in a show like Discovery, considering the easter eggs dropped so far in Season 1.

Gabler was another of many characters voiced by James Doohan in this series.  

Happy New Year, and I hope the holiday season treated everyone well as we head into a new batch of Discovery episodes.

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Character Insight No. 266: Arex

Welcome back to Character Insight!  This week, we review Lieutenant Arex, a recurring character from The Animated Series. 

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp266 

Arex is a command division officer serving aboard Kirk's Enterprise on the latter stages of the five year mission.  Arex is typically seen at his primary role as a ship's navigator on the bridge.  He's a long time veteran of Starfleet who has a reputation as the best navigator in the fleet.  However, he often fills in for the senior staff when they are incapacitated or off ship, as happens frequently in The Animated Series. 

A couple of Arex's most memorable moments are as follows.  In the episode Mudd's Passion, he falls under the influence of Mudd's love potion and neglects his duties to play the lute on the bridge instead.  At least there's some music to set the mood!

In the episode The Practical Joker, Arex is in command and takes a lunch break with another regular TAS recurring character M'Ress.  The food dispensers begin malfunctioning after they get their lunch, and that causes Scotty to blame them for breaking the dispensers.

QUOTE (from The Practical Joker)

Arex: Officer Scott, won't you join us for lunch?
Scott: No thanks Arex, I'm just going to grab a sandwich.
Arex: Very good.
<Food dispenser malfunctions>
M'Ress: Excuse me for laughing, but
Scott: Go ahead and laugh. Big Joke. I'm sure you two are responsible for this.
Arex: Hey wait a minute, we didn't cause this to happen.

Arex also ages in reverse like a Benjamin Button in The Counter-Clock Incident.  Thus, even though he was added to the bridge staff as a regular to provide another alien presence on the ship, he is often affected by much of the same issues as the rest of the crew in this series.  He was also intended to be a replacement for the regular character Chekov, who was not included in TAS.  Perhaps this would be an interesting callback if another Abrams movie as made, as the CGI tech now exists to make such a character lifelike in today's movies.

Would you like to see Arex and M'Ress become characters in place of Chekov in the movies?  Send a letter to Quentin Tarantino with your requests.

Arex was one of many characters voiced by James Doohan in this series.  He was the most prolific recurring character and really more of a regular on TAS, with 19 appearances.  If you want more of Arex, he shows up a lot in the books. 

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Character Insight No. 265: Crewman Nelson

Welcome back to Character Insight!  This week, we review Crewman Nelson, a recurring character from TNG.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp265 

Nelson is an engineer who works in the operations division on Picard's Enterprise.  He is seen in 57 total episodes and was in the script for a handful more, but some appearances in the background hit the cutting room floor.  That puts Nelson in the top 10 for most prolific background characters in this iteration of Star Trek.

In most of these appearances, Nelson is seen in the corridors or in the background in engineering, typically only for one or two scenes.  When not in engineering or in that department's meetings, he is often working in the shuttle bay or in the shuttlecraft.  He is also seen in some episodes in off duty situations with friends, typically in Ten Forward.  Indeed, he's seen more than most characters enjoying the company of crew mates and drinks in the lounge.  Regardless, he is a lot like other regular TNG background characters we've previously profiled like Martinez, Russell, and Darien Wallace.

Some of Nelson's most notable appearances include the following.  He has to dive through a side door in engineering to escape shots fired by some terrorists on board the ship in the episode The High Ground.  He is given a name in dialogue in the episode Clues, where he works with Data on a sensor diagnostic before working with Geordi LaForge on some computer analysis, becoming one of the key crew members in solving the mystery of the crew blackout.

QUOTE (from Clues)

Geordi: Data, I'll take over from here.  Nelson, I need your help with this computer.

Nelson had about 10 more appearances following this naming in Clues, but his character is not given any speaking lines or bigger roles.  Often the naming of a long time background character is done as a farewell thanks, but in this case, that thanks came a lot earlier before this character stops appearing in the background.  While such roles are perhaps not glamorous, they are important for showing consistency in the crew beyond just the main characters we see the most.

Crewman Nelson was played by Rachen Assapiomonwait.  His most recent acting work was a couple of video shorts in 2007 and 2008, but he can also be seen in bit roles in the movies Monkeybone and Showdown in Little Tokyo.  Unfortunately, no further information could be found about what he's been doing for the last 10 years, so he's faded into the background of life, ironically. 

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Character Insight No. 264: Owen Paris

Welcome back to Character Insight!  This week, we review Admiral Owen Paris, who is Tom Paris's father and a recurring character form Voyager.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp264

Owen Paris is a senior Starfleet officer by the time we see him on Voyager, but he was previously the captain on the USS Al-Batani.  Kathryn Janeway was the science officer on that ship, and as such, she learned a great deal from Owen Paris.  This led her to track down Owen's son Tom in a penal colony when she needs a pilot and expert on navigating the Badlands.  She gives Tom a chance where other captains may not thanks to the former mentor relationship with his father.

In reminiscing about Owen Paris, Tom noted that his father was always pressuring him to excel, likely as a result of the strong self drive the Admiral has.  Owen was a firm proponent of the Prime Directive as a leading principle to guide space exploration, and he was believed to never change an opinion once he finalized his opinion on a matter.  He cares about family, and he cares about excellence in performance.

With this background, it should come as no surprise that Owen Paris leads the successful Pathfinder Project to establish contact with the lost Voyager ship and to help bring his former colleague Janeway and his son home from the Delta Quadrant.  In this role, we see Admiral Paris interact wit the quirky Reginald Barclay.  While the Admiral is inclined to be harsh when Barclay does not follow orders, he sees the brilliance and promise in Reginald's ideas, and lets those blossom into the successes of the Pathfinder Project.

QUOTE

Much like Kelby, who we covered last week, Owen Paris is a recurring character who is highly memorable as a result of the important episodes he appears in, but his main contribution is to provide significant background and color to explain why Tom Paris ends up on Janeway's ship, and the motivations of these two main characters. This is precisely the type of recurring role that makes Star Trek great.  And hey, he's not a total jerk admiral, so that's a change of pace.

Owen Paris was played by Richard Herd, who has not really had any leading roles in a 50 year acting career, but has a great niche as a recognizable face thanks to his authoritarian look and stance.  He played the recurring character Wilhelm in Seinfeld, and he recently appeared in this year's critically acclaimed movie Get Out.  He overcame bone marrow cancer as a child in the 1930's, and briefly served in the Army during the Korean War, before living the life of a stage and film actor.

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Contact me with segment suggestions @BuckeyeFitzy on Twitter! Thanks!