Character Insight No. 351: The Xindi (Did You Know)

Welcome back to Character Insight! I apologize for my absence the past couple months but pandemic life demanded a refresher period, and I'm developing some new segment ideas and concepts for the rest of 2020 and beyond.  If you have any concepts you'd like to see, let us know!

Turning to today's segment, we cover The Xindi with a "Did You Know" feature, checking in on five interesting facts that you may or may not have picked up on as you traversed the latter seasons of Enterprise.

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1. The Xindi as a villain in Enterprise were originally to be one particular species much like prior villains the Klingons and Romulans. But the show producers wanted to investigate what it may be like if humans had not been the only species on Earth to develop high levels of intelligence. Hence, we end up with the 5 distinctive species making up this tenuous alliance in the show, and something new and unique in Star Trek lore to that time.

2. This background of the Xindi was written to remain relatable to Earth history in that the different species came into conflict and civil war, but it went so much farther with the destruction of their original home planet and the extinction of a sixth species, the Avians. The Xindi background serves as another cautionary tale on the track that humanity has previously been on with wars and conflicts.

3. The Xindi speak the Insectoid and Aquatic languages with each other because those two species are incapable of speaking the common language of the Primates, Arboreals and Repitlians. Despite these overlaps to work with one another, we see different styles of written language rendered for all 5 of the species, reflecting their significant differences. 

4. The Delphic Expanse, the region where the Xindi reside in the time of Enterprise, is an artificial zone of spatial anomalies generated by waves of gravimetric energy emitted by a series of massive spheres built by, you guessed it, the Sphere Builders. The Delphic Expanse was designed as a space version of the Bermuda Triangle, where predictable laws of physics and nature go out the window, adding more danger and unpredictability to the long mission Enterprise takes to find the Xindi in this region.

5. The Xindi were intentionally left out of episodes following their major arc in season 3 of Enterprise because while they proved to be popular with show fans, the show writers wanted to make a clear break from that story arc that defined the core of the Enterprise story. We are left to wonder if they do eventually join the Federation as is posited from another timeline by Daniels during the show and also in the game Star Trek Online.

In summary, the Xindi defined a new type of villain with a complicated past that fit well with the evolving and more complex storytelling TV shows were doing in the decade Enterprise was produced. It also provided a chance for the makeup artists and CGI crews to really stretch their legs and show off the best work they could produce at the time, and it all came together to make a great success on par with the Dominion War arc of DS9. 

Keep the dialogue going on Twitter. What other Xindi facts should we know? Until next time, all hail the Guardians who may be shifty-eyed Sphere Builders. 

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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.

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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.

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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. 331: Vosk

Welcome back to Character Insight!  This week, we review Vosk, a recurring character from the Temporal Cold War storyline of Enterprise.

https://archive.org/details/characterinsightep331 

Vosk is a Na'Kuhl, a faction in the 29th Century that believes that it was their rights to use time travel to benefit their race. He leads the charge against Daniels and the Temporal Accord, the interstellar treaty that prohibited the use of time travel to change history, which was signed in 2769.  Instead of limiting his time travel to scientific pursuits and research, Vosk is firmly of the mindset to use the technology for personal gain.

In a callback to the appearance of Nazis in TOS, Enterprise brings in the Germans from Earth history in Vosk's story.  He travels back in time to 1944 thanks to a stealth form of time travel that could not be detected and stopped by Daniels.  He then helps the German Nazi forces, which in this timeline had successfully invaded the east coast of the United States.  In exchange for his advanced technology to wage the world war, Vosk receives the resources he needs to build a new temporal conduit to return to the future.

Nobody seems to be bothered by his alien appearance in the German military uniform in this timeline, but we are already in a strange world with the Nazis having military strategy discussions within the White House.  But I digress...

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Vosk was in conflict with the German general major and ends up killing him to end his alliance with the Nazis after he acquires what he needs to travel back to the future.  He launches back into the future with attacks on Daniels and other factions, breaking the temporal cold war open into a full blown conflict.  Daniels relies on our his old favorite Captain Archer and the Enterprise crew to travel back to the 1940's and stop Vosk.  Which of course they do, because Nazis and bad guys are dumb.

Vosk added a bit of good flavor to the temporal storylines we see in Enterprise, but unfortunately, instead of making him a long-term villain, they use up the character and kill him in his first interaction with Archer's crew.

Vosk was played by Jack Gwaltney, who has enjoyed over 30 years in an acting career mostly focused on small television roles.  He is perhaps best known for his role as a detective in the Jason Statham movie Safe, and he can most recently be seen in the movie Mohawk.

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Character Insight No. 329: Crewman Rossi

Welcome back to Character Insight!  This week, we review Crewman Rossi, a background character from several seasons of Enterprise.

https://archive.org/details/characterinsightep329 

Crewman Rossi is in the command division and serves aboard Archer's Enterprise.  We see her in the background of many scenes throughout the first three seasons of this show. 

In the first season, Rossi was seen most often as a face in the crowd at the mess hall.  This included for the movie night in which the crew watches the Earth film For Whom The Bell Tolls.  In one of these appearances, she is found unconscious next to her salad by Trip Tucker thanks to a Ferengi gas canister on board the ship.

In the second season, we see Rossi in the mess hall on many more occasions, but we also see her join other crewmates in some R&R, including a shore leave on Risa and on a recreation facility at an automated repair station the Enterprise visits.  As with many poor background characters, she is also subject to the bad things that happen on board, including when she is possessed by a wisp in the episode The Crossing. 

As her time on Enterprise goes on, we actually see crewman Rossi more in a work context.  She is seen on the aft bridge working in the second season, and then we see her at the helm and in the situation room in various third season episodes.  Thus, she joins the long list of distinguished officers who has served at the conn of a Starship Enterprise. 

The character of Rossi was named for Enterprise associate producer Dave Rossi, when the character was given a name after appearing in several scripts.  Rossi appears in many deleted scenes in the special features, if you watch those on the Enterprise disc sets.  This is not surprising, given her over 25 appearances on the show.

Rossi was played by regular background actress Hilde Garcia.  Garcia also appeared in some other stand in and background roles in Enterprise as well as in one episode of Voyager.  She maintained a personal and professional website and blog for many years and as recently as 2016, but has not been very active in the acting field in recent years as she and her husband David have focused on raising their family.

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Character Insight No. 321: V'Las

Welcome back to Character Insight!  This week, we review V'Las, a recurring Vulcan character shown on Enterprise.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp321 

Administrator V'Las is the head of the Vulcan High Command in the era of Archer's Enterprise.  While in this role, he conspired with a deep-undercover Romulan operative named Talok to facilitate an invasion of Andoria by the Vulcans, which would lead to the subjugation of the Vulcan people by the Romulans.  He's a "tricky Dick" type of leader, by Star Trek presidential standards.

During the events of Enterprise, Captain Archer assists Vulcan and Andoria in signing a peace treaty and ending their long conflict.  However, V'Las is already plotting in the background to make a full scale attack on Andoria, and this is just a delay tactic to put the Andorians off guard.  His plans for invasion were threatened by a dissident group known as Syrannites.  That leads V'Las to make it his goal to eliminate these political dissidents, root and stem.

Part of his plan involved bombing the United Earth Embassy on Vulcan, trying to pin it to the dissident group.  To keep his plot secret, he ends up having to relieve Vulcan ambassador to Earth Soval of his job duties when Soval learns the truth about the bombing.  Soval then ends up letting Archer know what was going on, leading to a space battle where the Enterprise joins the Andorians in defending against the Vulcan attack.

Archer and T'Pau end up going to the High Command and presenting the Kir'Shara to undermine V'Las's authority to stop the battle and make him step down.  The last we see of V'Las is in a falling out with his Romulan agent Talok as they deal with the fallout of their conspiracy plots falling apart.  While V'Las tried to sow seeds of war in Vulcan, his efforts being foiled actually becomes one of the key moments leading to the eventual founding of the Federation, including both the Andorian Empire and the Vulcans.

A couple of theories have emerged in the novels as to why this head of the High Command would be a double agent for Romulus.  One theory is that the real V'Las was replaced by a Romulan agent at some point before he ascended to Administrator.  Another theory is that he is the son of Romulan sleeper agents who infiltrate Vulcan society after a war between those planets.  We are never given the total backstory on screen, so these are just interesting theories.

Robert Foxworth played V'Las, and this was also his second Trek role.  His first was as Admiral Leyton from a Deep Space 9 episode as we covered a few months back.  He's also known more recently as the voice of Ratchet, the Autobot medic in the live action Transformers movies.

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Character Insight No. 315: Billy

Welcome back to Character Insight!  This week, we review ensign Billy, a background officer seen on Enterprise.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp315 

Billy is an operations division officer who also works some engineering and security shifts on board Archer's Enterprise.  He can be remembered by his imposing visage and his shaved head, making him a perfect look for a security or operations grunt type officer.

In the first season, we see Billy helping carry boxes and hanging out in the mess hall, talking to other crewmates.  He's one of the regular background characters we often see walking past main characters as they are in the corridors of the ship or hanging out in engineering.  One of his few speaking lines first occurs when he calls Trip Tucker from engineering during the episode Civilization.

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Billy shows up in multiple episodes in all four seasons of the show, doing all the types of things background characters are known for from previous Star Trek shows.  Although he was seen or heard a few times during his appearances, the actor Solomon Burke, Jr. was not credited for these appearances formally until the finale.  In that finale, we see Billy tell Archer that it was time to give his speech at the Federation Founding Ceremony.

This character was unnamed until his third appearance, and following that his name is used in other episodes consistently when it comes up.  His promotion to ensign occurs between the primary four seasons of the show and the finale, so perhaps Billy is on his way up the chain in Starfleet and the newly-formed Federation.

As mentioned, Solomon Burke, Jr. played Billy.  He is the son of the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Solomon Burke, who was a soul and blues musician.  Burke is also a musician playing in a band called The Position.  He also continues to act, with recent appearances in the films Sun Dogs and the musical Revival.

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Character Insight No. 314: The Roles of Kellie Waymire

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we continue our series on actors who played multiple roles in Star Trek, with a look at guest star Kellie Waymire, who played a character in one episode of Voyager before being cast as a recurring character on Enterprise.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp314 

Kellie Waymire was born in Columbus, Ohio, a town of great renown. She pursued degrees in theater and that led her to California to pursue an acting career.  She started on the soap opera One Life to Live in 1994 and then had several TV and movie small roles before appearing on Voyager in the year 2000.

Waymire was case as Layna, an actress working in an open-air theater of a pre-industrial planet that B'Elanna Torres becomes stranded on in the episode Muse.  Layna is in love with a show writer Kelis, who ends up inspired by Torres while she is stranded on the planet.  Lanya becomes a jealous girlfriend who tries to ruin the stage play, but her actions end up contributing to the play's success in the end.  This was a chance for Waymire to show off her original theater roots, but in a TV context.

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Waymire impressed the show runners enough that this appearance earned her an invite to be a recurring character on Enterprise a couple years later.  She appears as crewman first class Elizabeth Cutler in a few episodes of the first season of this show.  We see that she is an entomologist and and exobiologist on her first away mission in the episode Strange New World.  She uses her expertise to study the diverse insect population on a new planet Archer IV.

Cutler could often be seen pursuing her studies in her off time, including over meals, showing her dedication to the sciences.  She also interacts with T'Pol and Dr. Phlox a ton, giving the impression she is a xenophilic who prefers the aliens over her human crewmates.  These interactions with Phlox lead to her taking on an interim medic role and briefly becoming infatuated with him.  However, as a married man, he rebuffs these interests and they remain friends.

Although Waymire and the show runners intended to continue this role into future seasons of Enterprise, the actress suddenly passed away in 2003 from an undiagnosed cardia arrhythmia at the age of 36.  Her character was referred to later in the third season, but no mention on screen was made that the character died.

This is one of those sad stories where a promising recurring character appeared to be poised for bigger roles in a show, and Waymire is precisely the type of actress who probably would've shown up again on the new Trek shows now being produced.  Despite only having a few Star Trek appearances, she left a favorable impression and good performances for us to enjoy.

Kellie Waymire can also be seen on the HBO series Six Feet Under, as well as in guest spots on 90s hit shows like Seinfeld, the X-Files, and NYPD Blue.

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