Character Insight No. 295: Sonya Gomez

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we cover ensign Sonya Gomez, a brief recurring character from TNG.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp295 

Sonya Gomez is first seen shortly after she is picked up at a Starbase following her graduation from Starfleet Academy.  The ensign is overly excited about exploration and being assigned to the flagship, and this overexcitement makes it trouble for her to focus on her engineering job duties initially.  However, Geordi helps her out as a mentor figure while she works through these initial days.  It doesn't stop her from accidentally making missteps like spilling hot chocolate on Captain Picard when they accidentally run into one another.

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In her couple of appearances, Gomez ends up being a vital crew member in helping overcome a Borg attack and also rescuing the captain from the Pakleds.  She also provides advice to an unsure Wesley Crusher before he transfers off the ship to go to Starfleet Academy himself.  Her experiences in awkwardly dealing with the captain and at the Academy made her a good person to provide timely advice to someone who was following her track, in a sense.

Gomez was originally to be a love interest for Geordi, but that did not pan out because the seeds of that romance were replaced by a big brother-little sister mentor type relationship with some of the humorous missteps she takes in her first appearance.  The story was to have Geordi eventually risk his life to take his visor off and have surgery to establish his vision so he could actually see his beautiful romance interest, but it did not pan out when Gomez didn't come back for more appearances.  The eyesight storyline was revisited in the movies though.

Gomez serves a bit of fan service in that she acts like many of us would if we were young 20-somethings granted our dream to serve in space exploration.  A fun production note is that her third appearance may have been scrapped because she cut her hair after her second appearance and then had to come back in for reshoots of one corridor scene, so the crew had to use hair extensions and such to make it work.  That's a silly way to go, but the character is memorable even if the complete arc with Geordi never developed.

Lycia Naff played Sonya Gomez, and she started her career as a dancer on the TV show Fame of the early 80s.  Naff only acted regularly for about 10 years, but she then reappeared for a couple TV bit roles in 2007 and 2008 including on Ghost Whisperer.  She quit acting to become a journalist, and she has enjoyed a successful career working as a columnist for many top newspapers and magazines.

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Character Insight No. 294: Shakaar Edon

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we cover Shakaar Edon, a recurring character from Deep Space 9.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp294

Shakaar Edon was the Bajoran leader of a resistance cell of fighters during the Cardassian occupation of the planet Bajor. During his 12 years of leading one particular cell of fighters, he recruits a 13-year old Kira Nerys into the cell and sends her on her first resistance missions. Shakaar becomes a mentor and advisor to Kira in this time.

Once the occupation had ended, Shakaar retired from his fighting days to become a farmer in the Dahkur Province, a literal swords to plowshares shift. Shakaar needed soil reclamators to make the farming successful and he asked for them from the provisional Bajoran government led by Kai Winn. The government initially provided the reclamators but then Winn decided to try and force them back by using the militia. She was willing to start a civil war over some farming equipment.

The head of the militia, Kira, and Shakaar decided the best path to oppose Winn's objectives was to oppose her in the election for first minister of Bajor. Shakaar entered the race and won based on his resistance fighting history and his resistance of the unjust actions of Winn's provisional government. He then leads the Bajorans as a politican for much of the rest of Deep Space 9.

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Shakaar also becomes romantically involved with Kira following his election to first minister, and this relationship lasts for a few months. We see him at her bedside when she gives birth to the daughter of Miles and Keiko O'Brien, for example. The mentor becomes lover storyline was provided to both continue the development of what was happening on Bajor and also to further the character of Kira, and both of these objectives were achieved.

The character of Shakaar was inspired by a real life historical figure in Mexico named Emiliano Zapata. Zapata also rose up against an unjust government and then put in a government of his own in that country, always continuing to fight for what was right for his country and his people. This morphed into the love interest and mentor character for Kira as well, giving this recurring character a lot of facets despite only appearing in a handful of episodes.

Duncan Regehr played Shakaar Edon, and his other Star Trek work includes as the character of Ronin in the TNG episode Sub Rosa. He had a 30 year acting career spanning from the late 70s through 2009, and one of his most notable works is likely as the lead of the Zorro TV series in the early 90s.

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Character Insight No. 293: The Roles of Majel Barrett-Roddenberry

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we continue our series on actors who played multiple roles in Star Trek, with a look at Majel Barrett-Roddenberry.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp293 

Majel Barrett was born as Majel Leigh Hudec in Cleveland, Ohio in 1932.  She was the daughter of a police officer, and she initially pursued a career in law by becoming a legal clerk and going to law school in Miami.  However, she failed out of contracts law and she then decided to move to New York to try acting.

She landed parts in a couple of stage plays but eventually found the acting competition to be too tough in New York, leading to a move to California in the 1950s.  She earned several stage, film, and television parts over the next few years, and eventually became signed by Lucille Ball's production company Desilu after attending an acting class by that organization.  Around this same time, she met Gene Roddenberry and became very close friends with him, and then his mistress and eventually his wife.

During this time, Gene was developing the pilot for Star Trek, and he wrote a role Number One just for Barrett.  NBC rejected the pilot and specifically objected to the characters of Spock and Number One, so when Gene did a second pilot for the show, he decided to compromise by removing the Number One character and combine her character traits into a modified Spock.  Barrett later joked that Gene "kept the Vulcan and married the woman because he didn't think Leonard Nimoy would have it the other way around."

Gene still found a spot for Barrett though in TOS, having her play Nurse Christine Chapel with a blonde wig as a disguise.  She was credited as Majel Barrett for this role rather than her birth name so as to keep this a secret from NBC, who didn't want her on the show.  When Lucille Ball found out about this deception and their affair, as Gene was married to someone else at that time, she tried to fire them both, but she was talked out of it.  And so, Majel Barrett went on to become the First Lady of Star Trek.

QUOTE (Nurse Chapel from TOS)

In addition to playing Number One and Nurse Chapel, Barrett also provided the computer's voice in several episodes of TOS.  This computer voice role would be repeated in every Star Trek television series through Enterprise, and several of the movies as well.  Her presence in all forms of Star Trek and her 20 year marriage to Gene gave her the moniker The First Lady of Star Trek.

She also lent her voice to many characters in the Animated Series, playing almost as many roles in this show as James Doohan.  Her only regular character beyond Chapel was M'Ress (insert M'Ress QUOTE).  Later, she played the bombastic betazoid Lwaxana Troi in episodes of TNG and DS9, the mother of Deanna Troi.  

QUOTE (Lwaxana Troi from TNG)

Barrett's roles outside Trek were numerous, but she is definitely best known for her Trek roles.

After Gene Roddenberry died in 1991, Barrett carried on his legacy by continuing to operate the catalog company Lincoln Enterprises they formed together and by using his notes from his papers to develop two more science fiction TV series called Earth: Final Conflict and Andromeda.  She passed away in 2008 from Leukemia, being survived by her son with Gene, Rod Roddenberry.

Majel Barrett, thanks to her relationship with Gene Roddenberry and her working drive, added more to this franchise than perhaps any other actor or actress.  Her imprint on Star Trek will always persist, and we will always think of her voice when reflecting on these series.  

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