Take me out to the ballgame, take me out to the crowd...oh, don't mind me, I'm just celebrating the return of spring training, with baseball and springtime right around the corner. But since you're here...Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review one of the greatest baseball players of the future, Buck Bokai. After all, when a Twitter account made in honor of such a player asks you to profile his character, how can you say no?
https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp276
We first hear of Buck Bokai in the TNG episode The Big Goodbye, where he is an unnamed player referenced for his breaking of a longtime consecutive hits record set in 1941 by Joe DeMaggio. However, we do find out the name of this player until Deep Space 9, where Commander Sisko has a baseball card of the player seen in the episode The Storyteller. His full name is Harmon Buck Gin Bokai, which explains why he is generally just referred to as Buck or Buckaroo Bokai.
According to the statistics set on the baseball card, Bokai plays in minor leagues for four years before his debut in the Planetary Baseball League in 2019. Elon Musk better get those space settlements going soon if we are to have a Planetary League by next year!
During his career, Bokai plays briefly for the Crenshaw Monarchs, the Gothan City Bats, Tanis, and Seibu before moving on to a lengthy career with the London Kings. It is in this uniform that we see Bokai on the baseball card of Sisko, and later when aliens use his image from Ben Sisko's imagination in the episode If Wishes Were Horses to interact with the staff on the station. It is established in this episode that Bokai broke DeMaggio's streak of consecutive games with a hit in 2026, shortly after his arrival in London.
QUOTE
According to his statistics, Bokai was a prolific home run hitter as a switch hitter in his early career, but then morphed into a consistent hit machine. He plays infield spots ranging from second base to third base. He is mentioned as having taken part in World Series in 2032, a loss to the Yankees ironically enough, and in 2042. Interest in baseball had waned to where only 300 people attended the final game of the 2042 World Series, which ended with a walk off home run by Bokai. The sport was suspended after this, adding to the legend of Buck Bokai. One would figure he made the Hall of Fame, if they still had such a thing after the sport ended.
The generation of this character was done by show executive producer Michael Pillar as a decorative item for Ben Sisko's desk, again reinforcing the love of baseball in the Commander. A model maker on staff named Greg Jain helped come up with the statistics of Bokai's playing career, and he in a baseball uniform was pictured as the player on the card. When another actor with high similarity in appearance was cast to play this role in If Wishes Were Horses, the baseball card was revised on the front photo to show the actor instead of Jain, although Jain is still shown on the back side picture. It's the small details like this one that add so much depth to the characters of a show like Deep Space 9. Plus it's fun to watch Ben Sisko fawn over a real baseball legend.
Sadly, we appear to be falling short in real life baseball of the timing and expectations for Buck Bokai, but as we learned from Back to the Future, that's what happens when you write the history of the near future. If a player names after the Buckaroo Banzai show appears as a rookie in the major leagues next spring, buy all the rookie cards and stock in him you can...as apparently he's destined for greatness.
Bokai was played by Keone Young, who was born in Hawaii and has had a long, successful acting and voice acting career. He also appears as Mr. Sato in an episode of Enterprise, as well as in the movies Crank, North, Dr. Doolittle 2, and Legally Blonde 2. He just turned 70 years old, but you can still hear him in upcoming episodes of the Ninja Turtles show on Nickolodeon...he just loves playing ninja warriors according to recent interviews of him at conventions.
Thanks random Twitter account of Buck Bokai for the suggestion. Woo-ee.
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Contact me with segment suggestions @BuckeyeFitzy on Twitter! Thanks!
Monday, February 26, 2018
Monday, February 19, 2018
Character Insight No. 275: Koss
Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review the Vulcan architect Koss, a recurring character from Enterprise.
Koss is introduced in the season 1 episode Breaking The Ice, and we find out that he was betrothed to T'Pol when they were children. However, the marriage has not occurred yet when she chooses to join the crew of Enterprise. This puts the wedding on hold once again, but it comes back up again in a few years.
More specifically, it comes up when T'Pol returns home to Vulcan following the Xindi war. Her mother T'Les and Koss himself urge T'Pol to complete the marriage, with Koss offering his influence from his father on the Vulcan High Command to help T'Pol get her mother back on the Vulcan Science Academy staff. Koss and T'Pol do end up tieing the knot before she returns to Enterprise in the episode Home.
From this same episode, we learn that Koss is about the same age as T'Pol, and we also see that there is no pretension in this particular Vulcan. He knows what he wants, and he gets it, albeit temporarily as we later find out.
More specifically, it comes up when T'Pol returns home to Vulcan following the Xindi war. Her mother T'Les and Koss himself urge T'Pol to complete the marriage, with Koss offering his influence from his father on the Vulcan High Command to help T'Pol get her mother back on the Vulcan Science Academy staff. Koss and T'Pol do end up tieing the knot before she returns to Enterprise in the episode Home.
From this same episode, we learn that Koss is about the same age as T'Pol, and we also see that there is no pretension in this particular Vulcan. He knows what he wants, and he gets it, albeit temporarily as we later find out.
QUOTE
Koss later provides assistance in a number of ways to the Enterprise crew. He helps Captain Archer and T'Pol by providing transporter codes that enable them to reach the Vulcan High Command. He also provides an Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations necklace to T'Pol which ends up containing a hidden map of Vulcan's Forge, which comes in handy. Unfortunately, he decides to end his marriage with T'Pol after her mother dies, and we find out that the marriage is officially dissolved before the end of the series.
If nothing else, the character of Koss provides expository background for T'Pol's character, and further bits of Vulcan culture like the practices of betrothal and marriage dissolution. In this regard, the Vulcans are not entirely unlike humans, despite their often-used disdain for the future Federation allies in this series.
Koss was played by Michael Reilly Burke. Burke played a Borg in one TNG episode and a Cardassian in a DS9 episode before taking on this recurring role of Koss, and he also had small roles in many television shows and movies. One of his career highlights is as the title character Ted Bundy in that biographical thriller. He continues to act today, while he also raises two children with his wife of 10 years.
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Contact me with segment suggestions @BuckeyeFitzy on Twitter! Thanks!
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
Character Insight No. 274: Ensign Murphy
Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review Ensign Murphy, a background recurring character from several episodes of Voyager.
We've covered many other characters from Voyager who are purely background, but still hold more than ten appearances in view of the need to re-use extras often to fit the story of a small stranded crew in the Delta Quadrant. Murphy is one of those characters, showing up as a security officer in 11 total episodes.
Murphy appears to be a trusted top level security officer under Tuvok's guidance, as he often covers for Tuvok at the bridge security station when Tuvok is unavailable. Furthermore, Tuvok brings Murphy along on several important security teams and away missions. These include when a security team must storm main engineering after Neelix defeats Michael Jonas in the episode Investigations, and when Tom Paris and Harry Kim must be rescued from a maximum security prison in the episode The Chute.
Murphy gets his high point and his name from another episode called False Profits. In this episode, he is ordered to escort a couple Ferengi to secured quarters, but they knock him unconscious on the way. It's a tough life being a rarely-named security officer on a starship.
QUOTE
Chakotay: Ensign Murphy, take these...men...to secured quarters.
Ferengi: This is outrageous! We'll hold you responsible for all lost profits. We'll sue!
Ferengi: This is outrageous! We'll hold you responsible for all lost profits. We'll sue!
As with similar such characters we've profiled in the past, he is also seen on occasion off duty in social settings. This includes taking part in Tom Pari's radiogenic sweepstakes in a holodeck episode, and being in the mess hall for a couple celebrations. Murphy may not be the most important character from Voyager, but he adds consistency to the background which is vital over a long seven year run.
Background actor Shepard Ross played ensign Murphy. Ross played a couple of alien characters as well during Voyager's run, and he is a background Enterprise crewman in Star Trek First Contact and Insurrection as well. Around the same time, he did some stand in work for movies like Liar Liar and Bio-Dome. He has retired to Houston, Texas, where he is a wine connoisseur and owner/operator of two restaurants called Glass Wall and Pax Americana. Check them out next time you're down south.
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Contact me with segment suggestions @BuckeyeFitzy on Twitter! Thanks!
Monday, February 5, 2018
Character Insight No. 273: The Roles of James Horan
Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we follow up on last week's character profile and also continue our series on actors who played multiple roles in Star Trek, with a look at James Horan.
https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp273
As covered last week, James Horan holds the distinction of being the only actor to play a recurring Jem'Hadar character Ikat'ika in Deep Space Nine. However, Horan has also contributed many other characters across several Star Trek series.
In TNG, Horan played Dr. Jobril, a Takaran scientist who decides in the episode Suspicions to try and steal new metaphasic shielding technology. He commits murder and fakes his own death to try and steal this technology. Dr. Crusher foils the attempt and kills this character.
His next appearance is as Lieutenant Barnaby in the TNG episode Descent, Part II, who is a security officer who implements a daring plan to move the Enterprise relative to a Borg planet to rescue a stranded search party from the ship. Ironically, Dr. Crusher is in temporary command and discusses the use of this same metaphasic shielding with Barnaby in this episode, and he admits knowing the research on this tech as an easter egg callback to his prior appearance as Dr. Jobril.
INSERT QUOTE
Taitt: "If your calculations are even slightly off, we'd hit the atmosphere."
Barnaby: "I'll have to be sure my calculations are accurate, Ensign."
Originally Barnaby was to become a recurring character, but plans for this were scrapped. That was probably fine with Horan, as he's indicated in interviews he preferred acting in alien makeup than not, thanks to the character being sort of made for you when wearing masks.
That brings us to his latter appearances, all being alien. These include DS9's Jem'Hadar Ikat'ika we profiled last week, the Kolaati trader named Tosin who is an antagonist in the Voyager episode Fair Trade, and as a pseudo time-traveling villain from the 28th Century from several episodes of Enterprise, known only as Humanoid Figure or as Future Guy. This latter role was developed to give another interesting story angle to the Suliban Cabal, and it's a character we will have to cover in detail on a future segment.
James Horan brought a lot of interesting villain characters to life, and that's definitely necessary when making episodic television. Outside Star Trek, Horan has been most successful as a soap opera actor in the 1980s and 1990s, and as a video game voice actor in recent years, including for World of Warcraft Legion. He can most recently be seen in The Orville as a Krill character for one episode, which might as well be considered yet another Trek appearance. He's originally from my neck of the woods in Kentucky, and that's where he does a lot of work from as he moves towards retirement age.
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Contact me with segment suggestions @BuckeyeFitzy on Twitter! Thanks!
https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp273
As covered last week, James Horan holds the distinction of being the only actor to play a recurring Jem'Hadar character Ikat'ika in Deep Space Nine. However, Horan has also contributed many other characters across several Star Trek series.
In TNG, Horan played Dr. Jobril, a Takaran scientist who decides in the episode Suspicions to try and steal new metaphasic shielding technology. He commits murder and fakes his own death to try and steal this technology. Dr. Crusher foils the attempt and kills this character.
His next appearance is as Lieutenant Barnaby in the TNG episode Descent, Part II, who is a security officer who implements a daring plan to move the Enterprise relative to a Borg planet to rescue a stranded search party from the ship. Ironically, Dr. Crusher is in temporary command and discusses the use of this same metaphasic shielding with Barnaby in this episode, and he admits knowing the research on this tech as an easter egg callback to his prior appearance as Dr. Jobril.
INSERT QUOTE
Taitt: "If your calculations are even slightly off, we'd hit the atmosphere."
Barnaby: "I'll have to be sure my calculations are accurate, Ensign."
Originally Barnaby was to become a recurring character, but plans for this were scrapped. That was probably fine with Horan, as he's indicated in interviews he preferred acting in alien makeup than not, thanks to the character being sort of made for you when wearing masks.
That brings us to his latter appearances, all being alien. These include DS9's Jem'Hadar Ikat'ika we profiled last week, the Kolaati trader named Tosin who is an antagonist in the Voyager episode Fair Trade, and as a pseudo time-traveling villain from the 28th Century from several episodes of Enterprise, known only as Humanoid Figure or as Future Guy. This latter role was developed to give another interesting story angle to the Suliban Cabal, and it's a character we will have to cover in detail on a future segment.
James Horan brought a lot of interesting villain characters to life, and that's definitely necessary when making episodic television. Outside Star Trek, Horan has been most successful as a soap opera actor in the 1980s and 1990s, and as a video game voice actor in recent years, including for World of Warcraft Legion. He can most recently be seen in The Orville as a Krill character for one episode, which might as well be considered yet another Trek appearance. He's originally from my neck of the woods in Kentucky, and that's where he does a lot of work from as he moves towards retirement age.
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Contact me with segment suggestions @BuckeyeFitzy on Twitter! Thanks!
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