Welcome back to Character Insight! I'm back following a business trip to Europe that caused my absence last week, and I'm sorry to report the airlines have not yet invented transporter technology. Maybe next time!
This week, we cover Bok, a recurring villain character from TNG.
The character of Bok allows the TNG showrunners to play out a story of individual grudges and revenge against Captain Picard. We first see him in the episode The Battle, in which he explains that 9 years earlier Picard commanded the USS Stargazer when it destroyed the ship Bok's son was serving on. This causes Bok to plot revenge for nearly a decade, and this episode is where he takes his first shot at the Federation flagship Captain.
In The Battle, Bok uses a thought maker as a mind control device to try and force Picard to take command of the Stargazer again and attack the Enterprise. However, this plot does not work and he loses his command and rank of DaiMon when his first officer relieves him from duty for pursuing a highly unprofitable venture. Everything for the profit, after all.
QUOTE
This would not be the last we see of the Ferengi villain. He is imprisoned on Rog Prison following the events of his first encounter with Picard, but he continues to plot another way to exact his revenge. He buys his way out of prison a few years later and then convinces another Ferengi crew that he would lead them on a profitable ransom mission. The plan was to resequence the DNA of a person named Jason Vigo to make him appear to scans to be Picard's biological son, and then to ransom and kill Vigo.
We see this latter plot play out in the episode Bloodlines. Bok informs Picard of his ransom plan and lures him to the Dorias Cluster, but Picard again foils his plot including by discovering that Vigo is not actually his son before Bok can execute his plan. The second Ferengi crew that were told this was a profitable ransom mission discovered it was definitively not, and apprehended Bok before he could cause more damage. So revenge did not win the day against Captain Picard.
Unlike the initial takes on the Ferengi as general villains for the TNG crew, the character of Bok and the understandable revenge storyline made this race a better foil for the Federation. Although it does not rise to the narrative levels of Khan for the original series crew, Bok follows a similar driven plot and creates a similar crisis for Picard to deal with. Those parallels make Bok a highly memorable character despite his limited appearances.
Bok was played by Frank Corsentino in the first appearance and then by Lee Arenberg in the second. Star Trek was Corsentino's final acting roles, as his career mostly spanned from being a native on Gilligan's Island in 1965 through TV series in the mid-80's. Arenberg has gone on to much success in the past 3 decades, including as the pirate Pintel in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and as some of the dwarves in Once Upon a Time.
----
Contact me with segment suggestions @BuckeyeFitzy on Twitter! Thanks!
No comments:
Post a Comment