Character Insight No. 283: Kalita

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review Kalita, a recurring character who appears in TNG and DS9.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp283 

Kalita is a Maquis resistance movement fighter who holds a lieutenant leadership role within the organization.  While in the resistance cell led by Macias, she kept a close and suspicious eye on Starfleet officer Ro Laren for potential subterfuge and undermining of the Maquis agenda.  However, Ro Laren proves her loyalty to the cause by fooling Federation sensors and helping steal medical kits from the Enterprise-D.

Ro Laren then fully defects from the Federation to the Maquis following these events.  She is rescued by Kalita's vessel when she abandons her ship in this defection process.  Thus Kalita serves a critical role in the fallout of the Ro Laren story line.

We later see Kalita in DS9, as she works with Thomas Riker to steal the U.S.S. Defiant from the space station.  She mans the helm for missions and strikes against various Cardassian targets.  But the Federation catches up with the Maquis and takes back the Defiant, at which point Kalita is arrested and put into custody.

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Kalita is one of those characters who made for a good tie across TNG and DS9, as those series were taking place in the same timeline around the same set of years.  The Maquis is one of a few things that spans from TNG to Voyager, and this was another memorable small role in that organization and the complicated stories it presented for various regular cast members of these series.

Kalita was played by Shannon Cochran, who also played alien characters in another DS9 episode as well as in the movie Star Trek Nemesis.  She's run the gamut from human to Klingon and Romulan, basically achieving the entire Star Trek experience.  She continues to act today, with small TV and film roles including on ER, Frasier, Seinfeld, and the movie The Ring.

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Character Insight No. 282: Enabran Tain

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review Enabran Tain, a recurring character from Deep Space 9.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp282 

Enabran Tain is the head of the Obsidian Order for 20 years.  During this time, he trusts nobody but his own housekeeper.  As one might expect from the leader of such an organization, Tain is ruthless and has a reputation for not having a heart.  In this time, Tain trains and then later expels Elim Garak from the Order and basically exiles him from Cardassian society.

As it turns out, Garak is Tain's son.  This fact was covered up publicly, but Garak knows this throughout his life.  Garak is trained by and essentially mentored by his father closely, and it explains why Garak is so good at the underhanded things he does when helping the crew of DS9.  Of course, such a familial relationship is bound to be complicated, and we see that play out in the handful of episodes Tain appears in.

For example, when Dr. Bashir tracks down Tain in his retirement to find out how to deal with Garak's malfunctioning cranial implant in the episode The Wire, Tain agrees to help only so that Garak can live a long, miserable life.  Tain also locks the claustrophic son in a dark closet to punish him at times during childhood.  But there are good moments as well, including a day they shared when Garak was 4 years old and he mounted a riding hound in front of his father.  Tain remembers that day and his pride in his son when on his deathbed in a later episode (In Purgatory's Shadow).

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Tain was the only head of the Obsidian Order who lived long enough to retire.  He didn't take it easy in retirement though, as five years later he led a fleet of Order and Tal Shiar ships in a covert mission to try and destroy the Founders homeworld.  That was a complete failure, and he is captured by the Dominion and made a prisoner when the rest of his fleet is destroyed in the Battle of the Omarion Nebula.  Tain manages to send a signal to his son Garak and they get to see each other one final time in an escape attempt before Tain passes away.

The character of Elim Garak is just a recurring role, but it is one of the most interesting such roles in Star Trek.  As such, it only makes sense to further flesh out his character with additional roles like Enabran Tain.  Despite only having 4 appearances, all are impactful in that they fill out the background of Garak, an otherwise mysterious and hard-to-understand fellow.

Tain was played by Paul Dooley, who was born 90 years ago in Parkersburg, West Virginia, which is notable because it is across the river from the hometown of yours truly.  He had tons of stage, television, and film roles spanning an ongoing 60 year career, including Emmy nominations for his work in HBO's Dream On and his work in another show called The Practice.  His most recent work was voice work in Cars 3, as the character of Sarge.

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Character Insight No. 281: Vice Admrial Nakamura

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review Vice Admiral Nakamura, a recurring character from TNG.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp281

Ironically, Admiral Nakamura is shown to have the stereotypical "badmiral" tendencies despite the show writers giving viewers a glance of the past man who became the Admiral. Nakamura is described as having served as a lieutenant with Jean-Luc Picard on the U.S.S. Reliant when the latter was an upcoming ensign. Picard recalls Nakamura's total distaste for snap inspections pulled on starships.

Nevertheless, when we first see Nakamura as an admiral, he forces a snap inspection of the Enterprise while in command of Starbase 173. During this same episode, Nakamura sides with Commander Maddox and approves a plan to disassemble Data until Picard's crew successfully defends the androids rights in the trial at the core of the episode The Measure of a Man. By adding Nakamura's background to this story, it makes the narrative more complex on both sides, rather than the usual badmiral forcing things down to starship crews.

Nakamura is next seen in charge of Starbase 219, and he invites Picard to the annual Starfleet Admirals' Banquet. Picard is not terribly broken up when he has to miss this event thanks to delays caused at the Enterprise. So while Nakamura and Picard have some sort of friendly past, it's not enough for Picard to want to hang out at the admiral level during the course of the TNG show.

Nakamura's final appearance is in the alternate future timeline created by Q in the finale All Good Things. We see Nakamura send the Enterprise a message to head to the Romulan border when the entire fleet is put on yellow alert.

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Nakamura is provided with different first names in Star Trek works outside normal canon. He is Mamoru Nakamura in the video games, while he is Tujiro Nakamura in at least one of the novels. Much like Alynna Nechayev and other admirals we've profiled from TNG, Nakamura has a layer of depth and complexity that makes it worthwhile to revisit his character, despite the badmiral first appearance. His character is one that helps add consistency and ties across the universe outside the starship we normally focus upon.

Admiral Nakamura was played by Clyde Kusatsu. He auditioned for the role of Quark in DS9 but did not get it. However, he has continued to enjoy a long acting career running through today, as he turns 70 later this year. Recent works include in the movie Harold and Kumat escape Guantanamo Bay, and on the new Hawaii Five-0 and William Shatner's show (Bleep) My Dad Says.

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Character Insight No. 280: Hugh

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review Hugh, a Borg character who appears on several episodes of TNG.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp280 

Hugh is found by the crew of the Enterprise-D in a wreckage of a Borg scout ship in the Argolis cluster, in the episode I, Borg.  Over the objections of Captain Picard, Doctor Crusher and Geordi nurse Hugh back to health and find out how to nourish him in a similar fashion to when he was a part of the Collective.  Picard decides that Hugh will provide a perfect opportunity to implant a program in the Borg to destroy them, which Crusher does not agree with.

Before Picard tries to put this plan into action, Hugh interacts enough with the members of the Enterprise crew to understand humanity better and individuality.  He begins to understand and accept different views than what he was taught at the Collective, and these new views come out when Picard tests him later in the episode.  The changes in Hugh were enough that Picard realizes the change in him and backs off his plan to destroy the Borg with him.

Picard offers asylum to Hugh, but that is refused as Hugh realizes he will be hunted down until found by the Borg, putting the Enterprise crew at risk.  He is found by the Collective and assimilated back into another cube crew, but his individuality was spread to other drones and it led to a complete disarray on his cube.  Ironically, the individuality given to Hugh was just as deadly as any virus Picard has originally hoped to implant. 

The Collective left the cube to drift, at which point Lore, Data's brother, discovers the cube and begins putting the Borg to his own uses.  Hugh leads a group of drones to oppose the actions of Lore, including assisting the Enterprise crew again when Data needs rescued from Lore in the Descent two-part episode.  So while Hugh does not bring down the Collective, he does prove important years later and a good lesson for the Enterprise crew to not burn bridges.

The name Hugh is a pun based on a mispronunciation of the word you, and this was meant to carry the meaning of individuality for the character.  His character name was regionalized in many countries to be a similar sounding word to the local language equivalent of you, which means this character is Tim in the Czech Republic, Tug in Italy, and Lou in France.  The pun doesn't work in Japanese, so they called him Blue there.

Hugh was another good piece of the evolving Borg puzzle that played out over the course of TNG and Voyager.  The fact that Picard could be restored to humanity and Hugh could take on individuality were key cogs in what eventually became the Seven of Nine main character.  By giving the Borg more depth and facets, this character added to one of the greatest villains of the series in a meaningful way.

Hugh was played by Jonathan Del Arco.  He originally auditioned for the role of Wesley Crusher, but after not getting the role, the casting of the show did not return to him for guest roles until 5 years later with Hugh.  This Uruguayan actor has played in other TV shows including Miami Vice, The Wonder Years, and The Closer.  His Dr. Morales character on The Closer was so good he has continued in the role for 6 years of a more recent show entitled Major Crimes, which is his most recent work.

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