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 Thomas Kopache, including his most notable character Kira Taban from Deep Space 9.
Thomas Kopache was born in 1945 in New Hampshire and he did not enter the field of acting until he was nearly 40 in the 1980s. Kopache started with many small roles on television, eventually showing up as a background character in several different Star Trek series. Indeed, he is one of only 5 actors who played in all 4 post-TOS Trek series before the new era of Discovery, and he is also one of only 4 actors to play at least 7 characters on Trek.
We begin with his most famous Trek character, that being the aforementioned Kira Taban from DS9. Taban is Major Kira Nerys's father, and we see him in a couple of flashback episodes explaining the Major's background. Taban was married to Kira Meru, who was one of many Bajoran women captured and made to be love slaves called comfort women for Cardassian officers on Terek Nor. Because Meru was cooperative with the Cardassians, Taban and his three children were well treated and taken care of by the Cardassians during the occupation of Bajor.
Taban is killed as a result of weapons fire received when trying to defend his home and village from a Cardassian assault group wanting to burn the village down. Nerys was by his side for most of his dying hours, although she leaves on a raid to attack her father's assailants and he dies before she returns. This haunts her character for many years, as explained in the episode Ties of Blood and Water.
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Thomas Kopache's first roles were before this one, as he appears as a Romulan named Mirok and a train engineer in different episodes of TNG. He then appears as a communications officer on the Enterprise-B at the opening scenes of Star Trek Generations. In Voyager, he played a character named Viorsa, and then in Enterprise, he plays a Vulcan Tos and a sphere-builder test subject. Thus, Kopache brought a ton of very distinct characters to life over his many years involved with this franchise.
Outside Trek, Thomas Kopache is also best known for his roles as a judge on Boston Legal and as an assistant Secretary of State on The West Wing. He also plays the liberal cowboy on HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, a fun character who pokes fun at drug and medical device ads and conservatives.
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