Character Insight No. 344: Ilia and Star Trek: TMP

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first Star Trek movie by sharing my experience of seeing the movie for the first time, and then we do a character profile on Lieutenant Ilia from that movie.

https://archive.org/details/characterinsightep344 

My personal first Trek movie experience was seeing The Final Frontier when it hit television, shortly before seeing The Undiscovered Country.  Needless to say, the sixth movie in the theater was far more impressive to a young BuckeyeFitzy than the What Does God Need With A Starship movie.  That led me to seek out a box set of the other movies at the ripe old age of 9 or 10, and so my first experience with The Motion Picture was on a fuzzy small TV screen and a VHS tape.  Given that this movie is more about the amazing big screen visuals than characters and action, that kind of made TMP a heavy disappointment, especially as compared to Wrath of Khan and Voyage Home.  But I admit, I didn't have a chance to appreciate it on the big screen as it was intended.

TMP opened the door for what is now 12 other movies and 6 future TV shows, so the original return of Trek is something we should all be thankful for.

Today's short segment will focus on Lieutenant Ilia, who was a Deltan female conn officer on the Enterprise during what becomes the V'Ger mission.  Deltans are known for their sexuality and strong affect on other races like humans, so in order to be a Starfleet officer, Ilia had to take a vow of celibacy.  This is a bit awkward as she had previously on her home planet had relations with Commander Will Decker, who is also on Kirk's Enterprise.

We don't see much character development of Ilia beyond this background, as she is killed in the movie by the V'Ger probe.  The V'Ger probe then creates an artificial life form in the guise of Ilia to act as a liaison to the "carbon units" infesting the ship.  Although the probe replicated her memories and personality, V'Ger suppresses these aspects of Ilia, which reveals that Ilia really is gone.  Nevertheless, Will Decker decides to sacrifice himself to join what's left of her and the V'Ger probe at the end of the movie, opening these roles on the ship to once again be filled by the TOS regulars in future films.

As you likely know, TMP was a replacement for a Phase II scrapped television project, and some of the general concepts from Phase II did live on when a second TV show eventually aired 8 years later in The Next Generation.  Once of these general concepts was an ESP and sex-positive attitude character who serves on a bridge crew with a commander who had a past romantic relationship with her, AKA Deanna Troi is based on Ilia while Commander Will Riker is a small leap of letters away from Will Decker.  They even named the Betazoid race in a similar fashion as Ilia's Deltans, based on the Greek alphabet.  So while Ilia and Commander Decker only show up in The Motion Picture, the general concepts and underlying character threads were more than fully developed, just with modified characters in TNG.

Persis Khambatta played Ilia, and she had a short unsuccessful Bollywood career in India before establishing herself primarily as a US television actress. TMP was one of her only breakout movie roles.  Khambatta passed away in 1998 at the age of 49.

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Character Insight No. 343: Persis

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we wish everybody in America a Happy Thanksgiving and follow up with another augment character from Enterprise related to Malik, who we covered last week.  This week's subject is Persis.

https://archive.org/details/characterinsightep343
  

Persis is one of 20 human augments raised by Arik Soong, the great grandfather of Noonien Soong, who would perfect artificial lifeforms.  As this elder Soong did not have the technology available for such innovations, he had to rely on human augments like Persis and genetic engineering, which he had access to as a chemist working on Cold Station 12.

Persis was beautiful and used that to put herself in a position close to power, by being the consort to augment leader Raakin.  However, she proves in what we see in this series of episodes that she is cunning and has high intellect, allowing her to be a natural leader herself.  She plays a key role in overthrowing Raakin when she decides to side with Malik, who she had also fallen in love with.  She goads Raakin into making a first move against Malik, leading to his capture and later death.

QUOTE

Persis also leads the assault on the Enterprise to rescue Soong, who was being held by the Enterprise crew to try and lure and trap these augments.  She succeeds in returning Soong to the augments, where Soong and Malik begin plotting to steal another 2000 augment embryos from Cold Station 12.  While Persis helps Malik again in taking command back from Soong, who had taken over, she ends up releasing Soong and hiding his escape path by disabling internal ship sensors.  Malik kills Persis for this betrayal once he figures it out.

Persis first appears as just a pretty face and a consort to a male leader, but we quickly see that she is the one pulling the strings to shift the balance of power when she deems it necessary.  Her character has more depth than the savagery of Malik, which makes it sad to see her get killed in this storyline.  Arik Soong believed that augments could be much better members of society than Khan, and in the case of Persis, he may have had a perfect example.

Persis was played by Abby Brammel, who continues to act today in small roles, mostly on television.  Her most notable recurring role outside Trek was on The Unit in the late 2000s, but she can more recently be seen as a recurring character on the popular Fox drama 9-1-1.  Brammel turned 40 just this year and has recently had her first child, so we can likely expect more out of this actress as the years go on.

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Character Insight No. 342: Malik

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review a character from Enterprise who appears in a couple episodes, this character being Malik.

https://archive.org/details/characterinsightep342 

Malik is one of 19 human augments who were made by 20th century genetic engineering in the timeline of Star Trek.  The embryos of these 19 augments were stolen by Arik Soong and then raised as children by Soong on a distant planet called Trialas IV.  However, at the age of 10, Soong is captured and put in prison for stealing the embryos, leaving the augments to fend for themselves.  It goes about as well as it did when Khan and his followers were stranded on Ceti Alpha.

To this end, Malik grows tired of being stashed away on a distant planet when the augments reach age 20.  Thus, he hatches a plan to steal a Klingon Bird-of-Prey, which he successfully does with one of his augment brothers Saul.  This angers the leader of the augments, whose name was Raakin.  This also leads Raakin and Malik to become fully at odds with one another, a conflict that had initially arisen over a shared love interest in Persis, one of the female human augments in their group.

Malik convinces Persis, who was Raakin's consort, to help overthrow the leadership of Raakin shortly after the theft of the Bird-of-Prey.  Malik kills Raakin and then shows his true self to be incredibly ruthless, a familiar trait for augment leaders as we've seen in other stories.

QUOTE

The crew of Enterprise then runs into Malik and the augments when Malik detects that Soong is aboard Enterprise.  Malik successfully captures Soong by taking Captain Archer hostage to assure his safe escape from Enterprise.  The Bird-of-Prey then takes off for Cold Station 12, the place where 1800 more augment embryos are being stored.

This obviously would be a bad situation, so Archer and his crew continue to try and capture the augments to put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak.  Of course, there are thousands of nasty pathogens stored in stasis at the cold station, leading Malik to torture others and threaten to make biological weapons out of this nasty stuff.  Long story short, with great effort and many twists and turns, Archer and his crew stop the augments and end up killing Malik in the end.  Soong realizes the error of his ways based on how Malik turned out.

Malik was played by Alec Newman except one child appearance in a flashback played by Jordan Orr.  Newman is originally from Glasgow and studied in the Shakespeare theater until coming to the field of acting.  He continues to act in many TV shows today, but it possibly best known for his role Muad'Dib in the 2000 Dune movie.

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Character Insight No. 341: Calvin Hudson

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review a recurring character from The Maquis two-part episode of Deep Space 9, that being Calvin Hudson.

https://archive.org/details/characterinsightep341 

Calvin Hudson was a fellow Starfleet cadet at the Academy with Ben Sisko, and they graduate together in 2354. They remained close friends after the Academy, including spending time together in New Berlin as couples once they both were married, and also having adventures with shared friend Curzon Dax.

Hudson is a Lieutenant Commander by the time we meet him in the episode The Maquis, and he is serving as a double agent at this point for the Federation and the rebel Maquis.  Hudson had climbed the Federation ranks quickly thanks to having similar qualities as Sisko: good leadership and the ability to inspire trust in those he worked with.  That put him in position to be a primary attache to the Demilitarized Zone planets after the Federation-Cardassian Treaty is signed.

But after seeing firsthand the significant suffering and abuse of colonists by the Cardassians, he joins the Maquis and uses his Starfleet position to provide supplies and intelligence.  Sisko discovers Hudson's double agent role and Hudson initially tries to convince Sisko to allow the Maquis to use DS9 as a repair station for their ships, but Sisko is much more loyal to his Starfleet principles than Hudson and thus declines the proposal.  Hudson escapes the Federation grasp in a skirmish at the end of the two-part episode.

QUOTE from The Maquis
"You're throwing away your entire life."
"And beginning a new one."

We later find out that Hudson dies in a different fight with the Cardassians a couple years later.  He is described by a fellow Starfleet defector as a martyr for the Maquis cause.  Hudson provides an interesting contrast of a similar character and a similar officer as Sisko, but he turns out much differently based on a different set of life experiences and decisions made.

Behind the scenes, the writers had originally planned to kill off the Calvin Hudson character in this two-part episode, but showrunner Michael Pillar convinced the writers to not do so because they had done that for a couple other interesting and notable guest star characters recently.  Later Michael regretted the decision, leading the writers to put in a note killing off the character in the script for Blaze of Glory.  So we never see Hudson show up again, despite the threads left open at the end of this notable Maquis-centric episode.

Calvin Hudson was played by Bernie Casey, who had fame as an actor by his appearances in 80s movies like Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Revenge of the Nerds, and Never Say Never Again. Before acting, he was a track and field champion in college and a profession football player. He was not a fan of Star Trek, but he took this guest star role because he wanted to work with Avery Brooks, who he admired. He passed away two years ago at the age of 78.

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Character Insight No. 340: Icheb

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review a recurring character from the latter seasons of Voyager, the former Borg drone Icheb.

https://archive.org/details/characterinsightep340 


Icheb was a young Brunali who was discovered by Voyager after he had been assimilated by the Borg. However, what Voyager did not know was why all of adult Borg drones on Icheb's cube were dead while several premature/developing Borg drones were alive. Voyager decides to try and re-integrate these four young people into non-Borg society and Seven of Nine decides to try and lead these children back, following her own successful re-integration.

Life aboard Voyager was difficult initially for the former Borg children, as Seven tried for a long time to control the children with heavy discipline and rules. When Icheb, the oldest but most gentle and soft-spoken one of the bunch, refuses a disciplinary order and yelled at Seven for never letting the children do what they want, she realizes that a different approach needs to be taken. She starts treating the children more as individuals and this helps them continue to re-integrate into normal society.

Icheb's original homeworld and his Brunali race are eventually discovered by Voyager. The Brunali are an agrarian society that used to be very technologically advanced, but that led to constant attacks by the Borg thanks to their planet being near the mouth of a Borg transwarp conduit. Janeway sends Icheb back home over Seven's objection, and Icheb discovers that his parents used their society's great knowledge in genetics to craft him as a virus to defeat the Borg Collective. In other words, they had made Icheb as a weapon rather than a son, and had voluntarily put him through assimilation.

QUOTE from Child's Play
"Then why does my stomach feel so strange?"
"You've got butterflies in there."
"I never assimilated… butterflies."

Icheb's parents sedate him and send him again towards the transwarp conduit to finish the process he had started, but Seven exposed their plan and stopped Icheb from being re-assimilated by the Borg. With no real home to return back to, Icheb decides to stay on Voyager. That makes him unlike all other locals who joined Voyager for a time, as all the other children, Neelix, and Kes all end up going back to their home societies or staying with another society before Voyager returns to the Alpha Quadrant.

Icheb eventually applies to Starfleet Academy to earn his commission that he earned in the field based on his strong aptitude in astrophysics. He becomes a valuable member of the crew, serving in various science and engineering fields over the last two years of Voyager's journey. At the same time, we see some fun character development as he mistakenly believes Lieutenant Torres has fallen in love with him, and he interacts regularly as a peer to Q Junior when that adolescent joins the crew for a time. Icheb also shows an appreciation for James Kirk and loves playing the Vulcan game kal-toh, once even beating Tuvok at the game.

Icheb was a modern version of Neelix and Kes, someone to give local flavor to the crew based on them undertaking a long journey far from Earth. In this regard, he adds interesting new character and story possibilities just like Seven of Nine did previously, while continuing the ongoing story of the journey home and the conflict with the Borg. He's a really important character to what made Voyager unique and good.

Icheb was played by Manu Intiraymi in most appearances and then by Mark Bennington in the one appearance we see this character as an adult. Intiraymi continues to act today, but his most notable regular role beyond Voyager was on the TV series One Tree Hill, where he plays Billy. His name is a combination of Incan words for the God of law and the God of the sun.

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Character Insight No. 339: The roles of Rebecca Romijn and Jerry O'Connell

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review the career and roles of Rebecca Romijn, a recent notable addition to the Star Trek family, as well as her husband Jerry O'Connell, who she is bringing into Star Trek with her.

https://archive.org/details/characterinsightep339  

Unlike other actors and actresses we've done profiles on in this series, Romijn has not yet appeared in multiple different character roles.  However, she was a surprising recognizable face added in season 2 of Discovery and she reprised her role as Number One in a great Short Trek for this season entitled Q&A.  To celebrate her continued appearance on the show, this segment will look at her background for those unfamiliar.

Romijn was born in 1972 in California, and her father was a former Dutch national who was a custom furniture-maker while her mother taught English.  In high school she was known as the jolly blonde giant thanks to her notable 6 foot height and positive demeanor.  She went to college to study music but dropped out to pursue a modeling and later acting career.  

In her modeling career, she grew to become one of the famous Victoria's Secret models, also making the first appearance in body paint in Sports Illustrated, a precursor to the body-positive ESPN magazine body issues we see two decades later.  During this time she was also married to John Stamos of Full House fame, but they divorced a few years later.

The body paint turned out to be a ticket to one of her biggest film roles when she started acting, that being the villain Mystique in various X-Men movies.  While a younger version of the character was eventually taken over by Jennifer Lawrence, Romijn became one of the defining faces of that franchise in the 2000's, alongside acting greats Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart.  In this time she also met and married her current husband, Jerry O'Connell, and had twin daughters with him.

Although Romijn has played in a number of TV and film roles in the last 20 years, more recently she has taken on a regular voice role as Lois Lane in Superman and Batman videos.  She then added Star Trek to her resume by playing Number One on Pike's Enterprise in Discovery.  As stated earlier, she has shown more than capable of carrying on the intrigue of this character originally portrayed by Majel Barrett.

Interestingly, it appears Romijn has also brought her long-time acting husband into the Trek ranks as well.  Jerry O'Connell is perhaps best known for his role in the 1986 film Stand By Me, but he has continued to be a prolific film and TV actor for the last 35 years.  His Trek role will be as Commander Ramson in the first episode of Star Trek Lower Decks, which is in pre-production at the time of this segment.  Perhaps this will become another power acting couple that will add several memorable characters to Trek, we can only hope.

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Character Insight No. 338: Christopher Brynner

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review a key character from the two-part episode Past Tense of Deep Space 9, Christopher Brynner.

https://archive.org/details/characterinsightep338

Christopher Brynner is the wealthy businessman and owner of Brynner Information Systems, a company based in San Francisco in the 21st Century on Earth. His past is not revealed in any detail on screen, but a short story in one of the Strange New Worlds compilations posits that Brynner was previously a lieutenant in the US Army in the early 2000's, serving in the Iraq war. Whatever his background is, he turns out to be in the right place at the right time to help Jadzia Dax when she and two other DS9 crew members are transported back in time to this history of Earth.

Ben Sisko and Julian Bashir were being held in the city's sanctuary district, a place where the homeless and mentally-ill were interned. Outsiders thought this was a good solution with ample care being given to these people, but on the inside, it was basically a prison. Dax convinces Brynner to help her find and retrieve Sisko and Bashir from this prison-like setting.

QUOTE

But because a Starfleet crew cannot let injustice stand for no reason, Dax also works to convince Brynner to restore computer access for the residents at the sanctuary district. He does help achieve this in the end, allowing residents to reveal their poor condition to the outside world. It is left as an open question where Earth will take this information from there, and given the current political nature of our society, who knows how this would be handled in real life today.

The little additional bits of character we learn about Brynner come from his dialogue with Dax, including some about his life experiences of skiing on Mount Cook and obtaining and later removing a Maori tattoo from his body. He may not be the most likeable character, but he does have power and influence and he is convinced to use those for the greater good. His character name was derived from Chris in The Magnificent Seven, who was played by actor Yul Brynner.

Brynner was played by Jim Metzler, who enjoyed a long acting career with many small appearances in television shows. He's appeared in shows ranging from NYPD Blue to Grey's Anatomy, and he was nominated for a Golden Globe for one of his supporting roles in the 1982 film Tex.  His final TV appearance credited was on Mad Men in 2014, and he's been enjoying retirement since then.

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Character Insight No. 337: The roles of Cameron

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review another actress who played multiple roles on Star Trek, that being Cameron.

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Cameron is the stage name for Roberta Jean Oppenheimer. Not much is known of her pre-Hollywood background, although we know as a child she always dreamed of being a stage star, leading to her move to Las Vegas to appear in several stage shows. Most of her television and movie appearances came in the 1990's. Some of this work was as a stand-in, but she also earned some significant screen time as a background character in Trek.

Her most notable recurring role was as Ensign Kellogg on Picard's Enterprise. She appears in over 40 episodes over the final four seasons of the show, with further appearances in the movies Generations and First Contact. She was only identified by name in the episode The Drumhead, and her appearances are usually in the mess hall or as a security officer.

As a stand-in, she served as one of the Beverly Crusher stand ins over her four years on the show, and she also worked a little as a stand-in for Seven of Nine when that character was first added to Voyager. She was replaced in latter seasons of Voyager in this role, but this was near the end of her short acting career in TV.

As for other bit roles in Trek, Cameron ran the gamut through the alien races of the show. She played a Klingon aide to Gowron in TNG, a Cardassian officer in another TNG episode, a Prytt guard and a human unnamed officer on Voyager. She also participated in many live and print Trek marketing materials, including promotions tours for DS9 and as a crew character for Star Trek The Experience in Vegas.

Outside Star Trek, Cameron appeared in several movies including Coneheads, Tales from the Hood, and Tomorrow Man.  She also relived her Vegas show girl days in one of the worst-reviewed movies of all time entitled Sunset Strip.  After wrapping up her TV and movie career, she appeared as the show creator and writer on the burlesque show Cameron's Bump and Grind. She retired from public view following this self-made show.

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Character Insight No. 336: Best of Nog (tribute to Aron Eisenberg)

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we honor actor Aron Eisenberg, who passed away this week, with a Best Of segment for his most notable TV character, Nog from Deep Space 9.

https://archive.org/details/characterinsightep336 

The character of Nog appears in over 40 episodes of the show and he arguably has one of the best character arc stories of Star Trek. A large credit of that goes to the superb acting of Eisenberg, who elevated some of the scenes he was in and the other actors around him.

Nog starts as a child character and a local foil to Jake Sisko, Commander Sisko's son who was recently moved to the space station.  In one of their first pranks and escapades together in the episode A Man Alone, they release some bolites on a dining couple to cause them to turn blue, green, and yellow for a short time.  

QUOTE (from A Man Alone, S1):

Jake and Nog's friendship grows and Nog learns many valuable things from Jake and also from Keiko O'Brien, who sets up a school on the station.  Nog proves his resourcefulness on many occasions, including in helping Jake escape from the Jem'Hadar while on a camping trip that turns into the first conflict with The Dominion.  That incident led Nog to desire to be the first Ferengi to serve in Starfleet.  He must convince Sisko as a command officer to endorse his application to the Academy, leading to this memorable scene in Heart of Stone where he convinces Sisko of his motives.

QUOTE (from Heart of Stone. S3):

Nog has a fast rise through the Academy, earning the rank of ensign after just two years as a cadet thanks to his help during the beginning of the Dominion War.  While there are many memorable missions from the Dominion War days, his accidental encounter with the USS Valiant, which was being run by the Red Squad cadets from the Academy, is perhaps his best character piece as an officer.  He initially joins the Red Squad crew and follows orders blindly despite his friend Jake's objections, but he discovers his mistake before it's too late and escapes the exploding Valiant in an escape pod with Jake.

QUOTE (from Valiant, S6):

We also see Nog deal with and overcome PTSD in another great episode It's Only A Paper Moon following losing his leg in later Dominion battles, and he ends up on the Defiant crew with the other DS9 officers to help end the war at the end of the series.  His arc completes with him being promoted to lieutenant junior grade by Sisko, a far cry from the mischievous child character Nog was in season 1.

Nog was played by Aron Eisenberg, who sadly passed away this week at the age of 50.  Despite struggling with health problems since birth and going through multiple kidney transplants in his lifetime, Eisenberg was one of the most fan-friendly and engaging actors you could meet at various conventions and events.  He only acted for about 10 years, but he had moved on to other passions including a photography business and parenthood in recent years.  The Trek world is truly richer thanks to Eisenberg's contributions to it, and we will greatly miss him in this community.

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Character Insight No. 335: The Roles of William Morgan Sheppard

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we continue our series on actors who played multiple roles in Star Trek, with a look at actor William Morgan Sheppard, who played 4 different memorable characters in Trek.

https://archive.org/details/characterinsightep335 

William Sheppard was born in 1932 in London and was educated in Ireland and the UK.  He started his career with a 12-year stint in the Royal Shakespeare Company, appearing in various stage plays.  In the 1970s he moved into TV acting, especially on British television shows.  Over the next 30+ years he generally showed up as a guest actor in small roles on all kinds of TV shows and movies, which brings us to his Trek appearances.

His first and most notable appearance was as the scientist Ira Graves in the season 2 episode of TNG entitled The Schizoid Man.  He is effectively a grandfather figure to Commander Data because he taught Data's creator Noonien Soong everything he knew.  Graves has a terminal illness when the Enterprise comes across him, so they are working on saving all of his research, leading Data and Graves to spend a lot of time together.  Graves transfers his consciousness into Data to try and live forever, but the Enterprise crew figures this out, and Graves surrenders Data's body by transferring his knowledge but not his consciousness to the Enterprise computer, dying once and for all.

The next we see of William Sheppard is as the one-eyed Klingon Commandant on Rura Penthe in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.  The Commandant welcomes Kirk and Bones to the prison planet and then helps try to entrap them in a conspiracy to kill them, but as well all know, Spock and the Enterprise foil this plan.  

His next character was as a pilot of a ship hunting a ship-devouring protoplasmic beast that creates illusions to trap and consume ships and their inhabitants, in the Voyager episode Bliss.  This character Qatai is a bit of a Captain Ahab here, trying to exact vengeance on the beast for eating his family 40 years before.  He helps the Voyager escape after they are fooled by the beast and continues his battle with the beast.

Finally, Sheppard appears as the lead Vulcan science minister who tells Spock that he has made the Vulcan Academy despite his disadvantage of a human mother in the 2009 Star Trek movie.  We'll never forget Zachary Quinto's Spock basically telling this guy off and going to Starfleet instead.

Despite only appearing a single time for each of these characters, William Morgan Sheppard left a memorable impact by playing interesting characters in great Trek stories.  He leaves a legacy that all other guest actors should aspire to for this series.

William Morgan Sheppard died in January of this year, with his wife and son by his side in the hospital.  His son has also appeared on Star Trek and on Doctor Who, making them two of the only actors to cross over in those two famous sci-fi universes.

Thanks to Jared on the Discord for this segment suggestion!

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Character Insight No. 334: Ensign Giusti

Welcome back to Character Insight!  This week, we review Ensign Giusti, who appeared in the TNG two-parter Gambit.

https://archive.org/details/characterinsightep334 

Episodes like Gambit cause the chain of command to be invoked and put lower officers in command of the ship.  In this case, Captain Picard was believed dead and first officer Riker was off ship searching for him when both became abducted by a group of pirates seeking to reassemble an ancient Vulcan psionic weapon called the Stone of Gol.

As a result, Commander Data is left in charge of the ship, and that leaves his ops station open for a relief officer.  In this case, that relief officer is Ensign Giusti. What's notable about this character is that the actress Sabrina LeBeauf was a well-known TV actress thanks to her role on The Cosby Show over the previous years.  It's similar to when you see familiar faces show up in final seasons of popular TV shows today, like Aaron Rodgers and Ed Sheeran showing up in Game of Thrones, for example.

Anyway, unlike most short-term guest characters, Giusti has a relatively normal shift at ops and nothing horrible happens to her.  That's likely because the focus is really diverted between Data dealing with command and his superiors trying to foil their captors' devious plans.  In the end, she is just one of the 11 different faces we see at the ops station on Picard's Enterprise and unfortunately, one of the least memorable.

QUOTE - NOPE

This ensign has not made significant appearances in the books and other non-canon works.  According to production notes, she was named for a friend of Naren Shankar, one of the show writers and producers.

Ensign Giusti was played by Sabrina LeBeauf.  Outside the aforementioned role of Sondra Huxtable on The Cosby Show, she appeared regularly in only one other TV show, that being Fatherhood from the mid-2000s.  She spent much of her acting career on stage in Shakespeare plays in Washington DC, and she also continues a side career in interior design today.

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Character Insight No. 333: Li Nalas

Welcome back to Character Insight!  This week, we review Li Nalas, a recurring Bajoran character from Deep Space 9.

https://archive.org/details/characterinsightep333 

Li Nalas served in the ore processing center aboard the Terek Nor station before becoming a leader in one of the minor resistance cells during the Cardassian occupation of Bajor. He became legend largely as a result of a mistake, after many of his cell were killed in an ambush by Cardassians in the Sahving Valley. 

Li and two companions survived, and when they left hiding to find food and water, Li was the lead scout and killed a surprised Cardassian coming out of a bath in the Valley lake. Li's companions found him with the Cardassian Gul collapsed on top of him and they assumed Li won a great hand-to-hand combat. That made Li a folk hero in the resistance, above his rejections of the story of this battle with the Gul.

Li was captured by the Cardassians and assumed dead for 10 years, but he is discovered in a labor camp by Major Kira and Miles O'Brien when they gain access to the camp to rescue Bajorans. When he comes back into free society, he is very uncomfortable with his hero status and fame. He tries to escape on a ship headed for the Gamma Quadrant, but he is found out and has to explain himself and the story of his legend to Ben Sisko.

For a short time, Li replaces Major Kira as the liaison officer aboard Deep Space 9 under orders from Minister Jaro Essa, who wants to get Kira out of power and move Li away from his plots on Bajor. However, Li doesn't stay in the role long, as he helps uncover another plot to do a coup d'état on Bajor and saves Major Kira from insurgents trying to take over the government. He defends the station against an attack and saves Ben Sisko's life, while sacrificing his own in the process, thereby finally living up to his hero status.

QUOTE (from The Siege)

Where are you running to? This is Bajor. We're Bajorans. We fought a war to regain our homeland. How can you abandon it like frightened Cardassian voles? These ships are for our guests who must leave because it's no longer safe for them. We're Bajorans. I say we stay and solve our problems together. Are you willing to join me?

Li Nalas provides more background on Bajoran history wrapped in a familiar hero discovery journey, and it allowed the show writers to shake things up on station for a brief period. Overall, this was a good addition to the series, albeit a brief one.

Li was played by Richard Beymer, who is best known for playing the starring role of Tony in the 1961 film West Side Story as well as his role as Benjamin Home in the Twin Peaks series. He's been retired from acting since 2000 except for a reappearance in the Twin Peaks reboot last year, at the ripe old age of 79.

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