Character Insight No. 283: Kalita

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review Kalita, a recurring character who appears in TNG and DS9.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp283 

Kalita is a Maquis resistance movement fighter who holds a lieutenant leadership role within the organization.  While in the resistance cell led by Macias, she kept a close and suspicious eye on Starfleet officer Ro Laren for potential subterfuge and undermining of the Maquis agenda.  However, Ro Laren proves her loyalty to the cause by fooling Federation sensors and helping steal medical kits from the Enterprise-D.

Ro Laren then fully defects from the Federation to the Maquis following these events.  She is rescued by Kalita's vessel when she abandons her ship in this defection process.  Thus Kalita serves a critical role in the fallout of the Ro Laren story line.

We later see Kalita in DS9, as she works with Thomas Riker to steal the U.S.S. Defiant from the space station.  She mans the helm for missions and strikes against various Cardassian targets.  But the Federation catches up with the Maquis and takes back the Defiant, at which point Kalita is arrested and put into custody.

QUOTE

Kalita is one of those characters who made for a good tie across TNG and DS9, as those series were taking place in the same timeline around the same set of years.  The Maquis is one of a few things that spans from TNG to Voyager, and this was another memorable small role in that organization and the complicated stories it presented for various regular cast members of these series.

Kalita was played by Shannon Cochran, who also played alien characters in another DS9 episode as well as in the movie Star Trek Nemesis.  She's run the gamut from human to Klingon and Romulan, basically achieving the entire Star Trek experience.  She continues to act today, with small TV and film roles including on ER, Frasier, Seinfeld, and the movie The Ring.

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Character Insight No. 282: Enabran Tain

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review Enabran Tain, a recurring character from Deep Space 9.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp282 

Enabran Tain is the head of the Obsidian Order for 20 years.  During this time, he trusts nobody but his own housekeeper.  As one might expect from the leader of such an organization, Tain is ruthless and has a reputation for not having a heart.  In this time, Tain trains and then later expels Elim Garak from the Order and basically exiles him from Cardassian society.

As it turns out, Garak is Tain's son.  This fact was covered up publicly, but Garak knows this throughout his life.  Garak is trained by and essentially mentored by his father closely, and it explains why Garak is so good at the underhanded things he does when helping the crew of DS9.  Of course, such a familial relationship is bound to be complicated, and we see that play out in the handful of episodes Tain appears in.

For example, when Dr. Bashir tracks down Tain in his retirement to find out how to deal with Garak's malfunctioning cranial implant in the episode The Wire, Tain agrees to help only so that Garak can live a long, miserable life.  Tain also locks the claustrophic son in a dark closet to punish him at times during childhood.  But there are good moments as well, including a day they shared when Garak was 4 years old and he mounted a riding hound in front of his father.  Tain remembers that day and his pride in his son when on his deathbed in a later episode (In Purgatory's Shadow).

QUOTE

Tain was the only head of the Obsidian Order who lived long enough to retire.  He didn't take it easy in retirement though, as five years later he led a fleet of Order and Tal Shiar ships in a covert mission to try and destroy the Founders homeworld.  That was a complete failure, and he is captured by the Dominion and made a prisoner when the rest of his fleet is destroyed in the Battle of the Omarion Nebula.  Tain manages to send a signal to his son Garak and they get to see each other one final time in an escape attempt before Tain passes away.

The character of Elim Garak is just a recurring role, but it is one of the most interesting such roles in Star Trek.  As such, it only makes sense to further flesh out his character with additional roles like Enabran Tain.  Despite only having 4 appearances, all are impactful in that they fill out the background of Garak, an otherwise mysterious and hard-to-understand fellow.

Tain was played by Paul Dooley, who was born 90 years ago in Parkersburg, West Virginia, which is notable because it is across the river from the hometown of yours truly.  He had tons of stage, television, and film roles spanning an ongoing 60 year career, including Emmy nominations for his work in HBO's Dream On and his work in another show called The Practice.  His most recent work was voice work in Cars 3, as the character of Sarge.

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Character Insight No. 281: Vice Admrial Nakamura

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review Vice Admiral Nakamura, a recurring character from TNG.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp281

Ironically, Admiral Nakamura is shown to have the stereotypical "badmiral" tendencies despite the show writers giving viewers a glance of the past man who became the Admiral. Nakamura is described as having served as a lieutenant with Jean-Luc Picard on the U.S.S. Reliant when the latter was an upcoming ensign. Picard recalls Nakamura's total distaste for snap inspections pulled on starships.

Nevertheless, when we first see Nakamura as an admiral, he forces a snap inspection of the Enterprise while in command of Starbase 173. During this same episode, Nakamura sides with Commander Maddox and approves a plan to disassemble Data until Picard's crew successfully defends the androids rights in the trial at the core of the episode The Measure of a Man. By adding Nakamura's background to this story, it makes the narrative more complex on both sides, rather than the usual badmiral forcing things down to starship crews.

Nakamura is next seen in charge of Starbase 219, and he invites Picard to the annual Starfleet Admirals' Banquet. Picard is not terribly broken up when he has to miss this event thanks to delays caused at the Enterprise. So while Nakamura and Picard have some sort of friendly past, it's not enough for Picard to want to hang out at the admiral level during the course of the TNG show.

Nakamura's final appearance is in the alternate future timeline created by Q in the finale All Good Things. We see Nakamura send the Enterprise a message to head to the Romulan border when the entire fleet is put on yellow alert.

QUOTE

Nakamura is provided with different first names in Star Trek works outside normal canon. He is Mamoru Nakamura in the video games, while he is Tujiro Nakamura in at least one of the novels. Much like Alynna Nechayev and other admirals we've profiled from TNG, Nakamura has a layer of depth and complexity that makes it worthwhile to revisit his character, despite the badmiral first appearance. His character is one that helps add consistency and ties across the universe outside the starship we normally focus upon.

Admiral Nakamura was played by Clyde Kusatsu. He auditioned for the role of Quark in DS9 but did not get it. However, he has continued to enjoy a long acting career running through today, as he turns 70 later this year. Recent works include in the movie Harold and Kumat escape Guantanamo Bay, and on the new Hawaii Five-0 and William Shatner's show (Bleep) My Dad Says.

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Character Insight No. 280: Hugh

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review Hugh, a Borg character who appears on several episodes of TNG.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp280 

Hugh is found by the crew of the Enterprise-D in a wreckage of a Borg scout ship in the Argolis cluster, in the episode I, Borg.  Over the objections of Captain Picard, Doctor Crusher and Geordi nurse Hugh back to health and find out how to nourish him in a similar fashion to when he was a part of the Collective.  Picard decides that Hugh will provide a perfect opportunity to implant a program in the Borg to destroy them, which Crusher does not agree with.

Before Picard tries to put this plan into action, Hugh interacts enough with the members of the Enterprise crew to understand humanity better and individuality.  He begins to understand and accept different views than what he was taught at the Collective, and these new views come out when Picard tests him later in the episode.  The changes in Hugh were enough that Picard realizes the change in him and backs off his plan to destroy the Borg with him.

Picard offers asylum to Hugh, but that is refused as Hugh realizes he will be hunted down until found by the Borg, putting the Enterprise crew at risk.  He is found by the Collective and assimilated back into another cube crew, but his individuality was spread to other drones and it led to a complete disarray on his cube.  Ironically, the individuality given to Hugh was just as deadly as any virus Picard has originally hoped to implant. 

The Collective left the cube to drift, at which point Lore, Data's brother, discovers the cube and begins putting the Borg to his own uses.  Hugh leads a group of drones to oppose the actions of Lore, including assisting the Enterprise crew again when Data needs rescued from Lore in the Descent two-part episode.  So while Hugh does not bring down the Collective, he does prove important years later and a good lesson for the Enterprise crew to not burn bridges.

The name Hugh is a pun based on a mispronunciation of the word you, and this was meant to carry the meaning of individuality for the character.  His character name was regionalized in many countries to be a similar sounding word to the local language equivalent of you, which means this character is Tim in the Czech Republic, Tug in Italy, and Lou in France.  The pun doesn't work in Japanese, so they called him Blue there.

Hugh was another good piece of the evolving Borg puzzle that played out over the course of TNG and Voyager.  The fact that Picard could be restored to humanity and Hugh could take on individuality were key cogs in what eventually became the Seven of Nine main character.  By giving the Borg more depth and facets, this character added to one of the greatest villains of the series in a meaningful way.

Hugh was played by Jonathan Del Arco.  He originally auditioned for the role of Wesley Crusher, but after not getting the role, the casting of the show did not return to him for guest roles until 5 years later with Hugh.  This Uruguayan actor has played in other TV shows including Miami Vice, The Wonder Years, and The Closer.  His Dr. Morales character on The Closer was so good he has continued in the role for 6 years of a more recent show entitled Major Crimes, which is his most recent work.

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Character Insight No. 279: The Roles of Brock Peters

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

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp279

Peters was born in New York City to immigrant parents who came from Africa and West India, so he's kind of like a modern day Alexander Hamilton.  He studied acting in high school and quickly landed a role in the opera Porgy and Bess coming into college.

That led to roles in several movies and on Broadway shows, most notably as the black man unjustly accused and convicted suspect in the rape of a white woman in the classic 1962 film To Kill A Mockingbird.  He also became friends with Charlton Heston in this time period and that led to roles in several of this famous actor's films, including Major Dundee and Soylent Green.

He eventually became a regular TV show guest star, with credits on shows spanning from Gunsmoke to Murder, She Wrote.  In this middle of this span, he was a regular on the soap opera The Young and The Restless, playing a character for seven years.  While on this soap opera, he started in Trek and became Admiral Cartwright from the TOS movies The Voyage Home and The Undiscovered Country.  We covered the Admiral in detail on our movie villains series of this segment.

QUOTE (from Star Trek VI)
Admiral Cartwright: Arrest those men!
Spock: Arrest yourself.

The Star Trek production team couldn't just leave such a good actor as a villain, so Peters was brought back to play Commander Sisko's father Joseph Sisko, a restaurant owner in New Orleans on Earth, in several latter season episodes of Deep Space 9.  He was the only actor to portray a parent of a commanding officer, at least before the events of Star Trek Discovery.  That allowed the writers to add more depth and complexity to the main character of Ben Sisko, as a result of his interactions with Joseph.

QUOTE (from Joseph Sisko)

More detail on this character can be found in last year's segment dedicated to Joseph Sisko.  Peters adds one additional Trek credit in one of these Joseph Sisko episodes, as he also appears as a 20th Century preacher in the episode Far Beyond the Stars.

Brock Peters is like other actors we have profiled in this series in that he brought multiple highly memorable characters to life for Star Trek.  His contributions to the tapestry of characters will not soon be forgotten.  Peters continued acting until his death of pancreatic cancer in 2005.  His many characters live on, however, thanks to his broad reach and depth of experience in movies, television, and stage shows.

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Character Insight No. 278: Timothy Lang

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review Timothy Lang, a security officer who appears on several episodes of Voyager.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp278


Lang is a technician who works in the security branch of Voyager under Commander Tuvok's leadership.  He is seen in many such contexts in this role, including on the bridge station and as a guard in the brig.  One such example of his brig duty is shown in the episode Thirty Days, where he must escort Tom Paris to the brig and guard him until Voyager comes under attack.

Like other background characters, we also see Lang in other non-duty contexts.  He is asleep in sickbay when a deuterium shortage forces him and the other patients to evacuate sickbay to conserve ship resources.  He is also seen in receptions in the mess hall, such as in the episode Someone to Watch Over Me.

He also shows up as a part of away missions, such as when he accompanies Harry Kim and the Doctor on a rescue mission that ends up being for a Druoda missile.  He is instructed to watch the missile and keep it company while the other crewmates debate whether to beam this missile back to the ship.

QUOTE? (from Warhead)

Timothy Lang is confirmed to be one of the casualties on board when those are listed on a readout in the final season episode Imperfection.  No details are known about this death of the technician.  Lang appears in over 10 episodes, but he's just a consistent background face like so many others in the Voyager series.

Regular background actor Sylvester Foster played Lang in all appearances, despite not being credited for this role.  Sly Foster also appeared in the movie First Contact and in other roles on Voyager, as a stand-in or a background character.  He also recurs in the background of many other shows like The Shield, Dexter, and Castle.  He continues to act and work as a TV producer today at the age of 61.

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Character Insight No. 277: Dr. Timicin

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, in memory of the passing of actor David Ogden Stiers, we profile his character in Star Trek as a guest star, that being Dr. Timicin from the TNG episode Half a Life.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp277

Sometimes a guest star role is written with such depth and complexity that shows go out of their way to cast well known actors to execute the part.  This appears to be the case with Dr. Timicin, as the episode he is featured in includes a love story with another recurring character, a high level of scientific discovery for planet saving purposes, and conflict between culture, tradition, and individual desires.  These are a lot of heavy themes to mix in one character and appearance, but thanks to David Ogden Stiers, this is pulled off rather successfully.

Dr. Timicin is a Kaelon who dedicates his life to finding a solution to their planet's dying sun.  He develops a potential solution and travels on Picard's Enterprise to another star to test his theory out.  Unfortunately, the test failed and he had to return home without a solution.

In the meantime, he falls in love with Lwaxana Troi during the journey.  Honestly, if anybody could fall in true love with that strong-willed character, they should live happily ever after.  But that was not meant to be, for when the Enterprise returns to Kaelon II, Dr. Timicin is scheduled to commit a Resolution in accordance with his society's beliefs, AKA suicide.  While he temporarily decides to seek asylum on board the Enterprise from this fate, his daughter talks him out of the decision and he returns home to face his fate.  So the love of the elder Troi was just not meant to be.

QUOTE

As good as this episode is, David Ogden Stiers will always be best known for his role on MASH, as Major Charles Emerson Winchester III.  Winchester was the second in command of the unit after Frank Burns goes AWOL, and he provides comic relief thanks to his interactions with Hawkeye and B.J.  Interestingly, this Midwesterner taught himself a Boston accent for the Winchester character without voice coaching. 

Stiers enjoyed a long career also highlighted by conducting symphonies, stage acting, and voice acting roles in many Disney movies, most notably, as Cogsworth in Beauty and the Beast.  He passed of bladder cancer this week at the age of 75, but he has provided a lifetime of great acting in Star Trek and beyond.  The following quote of his view on the arts sums up his life perfectly: The thing I love about the arts - music, theater, museums, galleries - is that everybody wins because you are touched and hopefully moved, and it is unique to every person.

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