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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