#Trek recurring characters

[dustykneed]

Picture this; Bones holding Joanna, rocking her to sleep and the part in Beautiful Boy where it’s like “The monster's gone, He's on the run, And your daddy's here” is playing. :,)

Fatherhood gives you certain... skills. Coincidentally, this is also how Jim finds out that Bones sings.

:'))

[the-oracle-of-the-lost]

uhhh no (sweating) i definitely didn't forget Chekov when i said i was done with my tos portraits. i would never forget my Russian son... (i'm so sorry. i left him at the dilithium refueling station.)

anyways! next week we'll definitely be onto tng!

monochrome trek portraits 7/?

[writergeekrhw]

I was wondering for DS9 in particular, how did it work when the writer's room realised it would be great to have a recurring character in a particular episode? I am thinking about the logistics of knowing ahead of time that the actor for this character would actually be available to film it. For example Civil Defense (unsure if you worked on it, but it's what got me thinking about it) uses Dukat but it doesn't seem to be a plot that was written just to have a Dukat episode - but rather that Dukat was a fun addition to an already conceived plot idea.

In such a case, how did you know that Marc Alaimo would be available for the episode? Is there a negotiation with the recurring actor while the episode is being written? Did each season have a pre-negotiated number of X appearances by Marc Alaimo and you could decide where to use him? Or does a Marc Alaimo appearance actually come first and an episode gets written around him? (obviously the same could be asked for any other recurring actor)

Would appreciate any insight into how this process worked because it seems complicated to me.

We had season deals with our recurring actors, so we'd guarentee them, say 8 of 26 and that gave them a better rate and guaranteed work, in exchange for which we'd get a higher level of priority for them over, say, a guest spot on another show.

When we wanted to use someone like Marc, we'd give casting a heads-up well in advance, like when we were breaking the story, and say, "Hey, we need Marc for episode 8, can you book them?" and they'd do so. If there was an issue (and I don't ever remember one), we'd work it out by scheduling their days around the conflict, or we'd shift the episode. But since we had them on recurring contracts, I don't think this ever happened.

On their part, I think if they got offered another gig, they'd check with us and make sure we didn't need them for the days they were working.

In a few extreme examples, we were even able to do this with regular cast, notably when Armin was doing his BUFFY side hustle or when Colm was off doing a movie.

Showbiz!

[orpheuslookingback]

lower decks is ending next season nooooooo

i know 5 seasons is like a respectable run but even so!! im gonna miss it a lot. plus i just want to have a trek show around thats set in the more recent trek era and where a good chunk of the main cast arent characters from older shows. i love SNW but i want more new people and i want to see more of whats going on post the canon of the older shows

[sweetandglovelyart]

I didn’t have time to draw something for Halloween, so here’s this old drawing I did a while ago of Meta Knight as Captain Picard/Locutus of Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation that I feel somewhat fits the Halloween theme. I call him Locutus of Borb.

[youngpettyqueen]

I love this argument that Julian and Garak are having about Earth vs Cardassia political styles and I especially love that Garak is like. shocked at how impassioned he is about this topic

[suh01]

the guy who played kivas fajo played that role so perfectly

[enthusiastic-nimrod]

Some old characters I felt like experimenting with! Originally they were intended to be put into a more classic historical/fantasy setting (something I consider a bit of a comfort zone, but I was having trouble figuring out their styles and was encouraged to try putting them into scifi.

Now I love the idea of them being scifi characters. and have a lot of fun concepts for them existing in a sort of retro futurism world, but I am Not Great at scifi fashion so I'm back to square one!

[handlewithcharacter]

The way I’ve only gone through four stages of grief in the last twenty hours because I’m stuck on bargaining in that I have become 100% convinced that Ro Laren is still alive...

[aquamonstra]

UNDERRATED CHARACTER ALERT .

SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME

LIEUTENANT CHAPMAN

HE IS SO PRECIOUS AND SWEET AND CUTE AND SO KIND AND UNDERSTANDING TO SEVEN AND IS GENUINELY INTERESTED IN HER

AND THAT'S THE ONLY EPISODE HE'S IN.

A FUCKING CRIME. 😭😭😭😭😭

[mnemonicpneumaticknife]

I'm saying the names of recurring characters out loud when they show up on Star Trek now. 13/12 experience, do recommend.

I also imagine a live studio audience making noise. Different mixes of cheers, booing, woo~!, hooting, and hollering depending on the character.

[cosmicgnome]

i love how committed everyone on ds9 is to asking odo if he’s a virgin

[vintagetvstars]

Brad Dourif Vs. LeVar Burton

Propaganda

Brad Dourif - (Deadwood (season 1), Star Trek: Voyager, Wild Palms) - fantastic character actor and notorious scene-stealer who's consistently the most memorable part of anything he appears in. if you need a scrungly hot intense weirdo for something, this is your #1 go-to guy. he was a main character on deadwood as the cantankerous yet lovable doc cochran, had recurring parts of substance on star trek: voyager, wild palms, and ponderosa, and a memorable guest star of many other shows, from murder she wrote to babylon 5, as well as acting in many tv movies. he’s played like a million priests for some reason (mainly evil or conflicted ones including at least one vampire priest), if you're into that. anyway you really gotta see this guy in action for the full effect, because his true je ne sais quoi lies in the way he delivers lines, gesticulates, and moves.

LeVar Burton - (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Roots) - as well as his wonderful performance as geordi laforge in next generation, levar burton had his breakout role starring as kunta kinte in the 1977 miniseries roots which set records for television viewership (its finale was estimated to have been watched by 130 million+ viewers, more than half the U.S. population at the time). he also directed numerous episodes of tng, ds9 (including the one where rom unionizes quark's), voyager and enterprise, and promoted literacy with his beloved pbs show reading rainbow, which he hosted for 23 years!

Master Poll List | How to submit propaganda | What is vintage? (FAQ)

Additional propaganda below the cut

Brad Dourif:

LeVar Burton:

[trillscienceofficer]

to expand a bit on what I said on this post, I think a recurring habit in the Trek fandom re: women is to interpret their actions as the result of their ‘inherent nature’ rather than, idk, calculated choice or long-term effort or even intentional disregard. I see this most often with Jadzia and Seven, though in opposite directions; the former is naturally gregarious while the latter is ornery due to trauma, and neither assumptions get questioned by the (very obvious, imho) instances in which they don't gel really well with their actions onscreen. They're not the only ones who get this treatment but certainly the characters who, to me, exemplify the trend best.

In the case of Jadzia it is somewhat understandable, given her relatively subdued character arc and the presence of the Trill metaphor which sometimes seem to be more about who Dax was rather than who she is now. Yet to me it's obvious that so much of what Jadzia does is the result of years and years of practice and adaptation, and both her storylines and what she says about herself point to the importance that conscious choices and striving to get what she wanted, often against insurmountable odds, had in her life. So while I don't think everything she does is explicitly a calculus on her part, I think Jadzia has a specific purpose more often than she doesn't. And yes she's fun and she pranks people at the same time! Being purposeful isn't in contradiction with that, I think, and not taking her agency into consideration makes Jadzia a less interesting character to me.

It's more unclear to me why Seven gets this treatment, though, since her character arc is such a big part of Voyager once she's on board. It's not the first time I say this either, but it's odd that Seven's actions get so often attributed by the fandom to her trauma or her (subtextual) autism as unchangeable characteristics by which everything can be explained. I agree that those are essential aspects of Seven's character! But when her plots most often revolve about her past (violently enforced) lack of options and her present of overwhelming choices whose consequences she struggles to understand, to me it's more interesting to see Seven's actions as the result of careful assessment of priorities that change over time. The fact that so much about her changes (she starts to value her relationship to others) while other aspects remain somewhat the same (her prickliness above all) speak to the existence of those priorities and their shift as she adapts to the world around her, while still remaining recognizably herself. I can't actually imagine Seven not having a purpose in everything she does, since it's so ingrained in her from the Collective that everything has to have a purpose in order to exist (‘I only want to be useful’ etc). Claiming that she ‘can't help herself’ imho falls short of explaining why she behaves the way she does. Where in that is her constant internal reassessment of the situation? Where is the overthinking, the rationalizing, and where are the blind spots that she doesn't even know about? Saying that it's just her ‘nature’ doesn't quite cover the complex negotiating of her role and place as an individual on the ship and in a universe comprised of individuals, at least to me. I think it's a huge disservice to Seven, actually.

[jbk405]

I'm taking a guess that you're probably most of the way through season three by now, so I wanted to bring you into the fold on Miles O'Brien. He's the answer to a question you actually asked back when watching TOS: Over the course of season three he gradually transforms from a commissioned officer into an NCO.

Colm Meaney (Actor) was a recurring extra starting in the TNG pilot, and his unnamed character wore a variety of officer rank insignias in different episodes (In the picture above he's a Lieutenant, senior grade). Over the course of the show he got a name and gradually got a more defined character instead of just "Person on screen". And as this developed, they realized it made more sense for the character he was becoming to not be an officer.

They had established at the beginning of TNG that all Starfleet personnel are commissioned officers, so by default he had been presented as an officer all along. The writers didn't really understand what any of it meant, and they wanted to show that there wasn't a "working class" anymore as part of the idea that Humanity Had Evolved. But in season three they realized that it does matter and that it doesn't make sense to have no enlisted personnel at all.

In this timeframe O'Brien works a lot as the Transporter Chief, which is a position not a rank, but as such he was often addressed just as "Chief". So they kinda went with that, and over the course of the season he gradually morphs into a Chief Petty Officer. He still often wears officer insignia, because that was all that they had, but eventually you learn to just ignore that (They do finally make dedicated NCO rank insignia in about six seasons).

Once he showed that enlisted personnel existed they begin showing up more in the show starting in upcoming season four. Never a lot, but at least they're explicitly there. Usually it's represented by the lack of any rank insignia on the collar, so if a character has a blank collar they're meant to be an NCO (Or the costumer thought they were too unimportant to bother with, which actually happened to O'Brien once in season one). Script notes for O'Brien refer to him as everything from 'warrant officer' to 'Ensign, junior grade' (Which doesn't exist elsewhere) so you can tell the writers really struggled with the entire concept.

Chronotrek TNG Part 4

We're sailing through season 2!

2x11- Contagion

Appearing out of nowhere sure sounds like a transporter.

It always amazes me that medical personnel have no medical first aid training outside of their tech. If tech is so automated that anyone can use it, specialists at least should be trained in what to do if an emergency renders tech useless. They don't know what a splint is, FFS.

2x12- The Royale

Beyonce meme: NASA?!?

2033 and 2079- when the flag had 52 stars. Puerto Rico and DC statehood in the next 9? It's possible.

The laugh I laughed when "It was a dark and stormy night... (heavy sigh)"

2x13- Time Squared

In the beginning, they seemed to be establishing a 'time travel always happened' explanation of time travel that seemed to track with Pike in SNW and the red lights in Disco, but by the end of the episode, I'm not so sure anymore.

2x14 The Icarus Factor

Hey, dad's from Liar Liar. Also ew.

Why would Geordi ever believe a Klingon ceremony involved a ballroom and formalwear :joy:

2x15 Pen Pals

They have memory erasing? Did I know that before? Nice to see Pulaski being less of a jerk to Data.

2x16 Q-Who?

Why do they even have a food replicator in engineering if drinks aren't allowed? (Also imagining someone saying you can't have coffee in the plant causing a mutiny lol)

PEE-card or Pih-CARD?

Borg reminds me of Scorpius from Farscape- like who raided the BDSM shops for these costumes?

Picard's point as he says engage is almost comedic and out of place. Almost fan-servicey sometimes.

2x17 Samaritan Snare

Can you make our ship go? (Yes) We look for things to make our ship go.

They're gonna steal him, aren't they?

They stole him.

Why would surgeons wear full red (and no masks!) Of course this is a bloodless show, so they're not gonna show splatter anyway. But apparently they don't have to cut anymore either. How you replace a heart without cutting I do not know.

2x18 Up the Long Ladder

They really softened Pulaski huh? Or was it just towards Data?

This is another abortion analogy- are they allowed to steal DNA to procreate? Riker even says 'the right to exercise control over our own bodies."

They really should have asked the women's opinions about the arrangement first, though. There's like 3 of them and they have to have multiple children via multiple men. That sounds like my nightmare.

2x19 Manhunt

Man. I can't believe she'd snipe her own daughter like that lol

2x20- Emissary

Half-Klingon, huh? Humans really are the sluts of the universe. I usually see this kind of thing (there are half-elves and half-orcs, but always half-human, etc.) explained as humans are naturally more diverse within our race compared to other races which means we're more capable of inter-species breeding. You never see the same diversity of skin tone, size, features, personality, etc. in fantasy/sci-fi races as you do in real humans (partially because they have to be recognizable as Vulcan/elf/Klingon/halfling, etc.)

2x21 Peak Performance

sheds a tear look how far Pulaski's come.

One of my fave TNG gifsets here- It is possible to make no mistakes and still lose.

2x22 Shades of Gray

As far as clip shows go... it wasn't the worst I've seen.

3x1 lol Wes's little pimple face in 4k.

The uniforms are certainly thicker! AND collared! Yay!

All due respect to Sir Pat Stew, but Brent Spiner might have been the best actor on that set. The range he had to show.

Nanite civilization. Do we ever check in on them again?

3x2 Hey that voice is recognizable. Oh! Mrs. Doubtfire and Liar Liar (again!)

You don't understand the scope of my crime. I didn't kill just one Husnock or a hundred or a thousand. I killed them all. All Husnock everywhere. Are 11,000 people worth 50 billion? Is the love of a woman worth the destruction of a species?

We are not qualified to be your judges. We have no law to fit your crime.

God what would you even do if you wanted to penalize him for genocide? There's nothing you COULD do to a creature with that power... good thing he's punishing himself.