I don't know if this has ever been asked, but why wasn't Gul Dukat, the Gul Macet character during DS9? It seems like such an easy and logical, so to speak, thing to do. Was this another Tom Paris/ Nicholas Locarno situation? oops. I posted this in the wrong section. Can this be moved please??
I'd guess they wanted the main antagonist to be the Prefect of Bajor. Macet very well couldn't do that being he's already established as a captain on the Federation border.
Why would it be "easy and logical"? There's really no reason for Dukat to be Macet other than Marc Alaimo played both of them.
Suspiciously identical cousins, yes. But Macet was actually a good guy for a Cardassian, who grew out the only beard we've ever seen on a Cardassian deliberately to distinguish himself from Dukat, of whom he was no fan. If I recall, Dukat was not originally supposed to be performed by Marc Alaimo. But when they decided the guy they originally hired was no good, they brought in the first guy who ever played a Cardassian because they knew he could do it. So it's kind of a Letek-Quark situation crossed with a Bujold-Janeway situation. .
Well, everybody has a doppelgänger out there. Macet and Dukat wouldn't have to be related to look alike.
Especially in the Trek universe, considering the way actors play multiple roles, a fact that's often lampshaded in the novel-verse. So Dukat and Macet didn't really need to be related, but it makes Macet's character in the novels a lot more interesting if they are.
The Dukat/Macet thing is the same as the Romulan Commander/Sarek thing. Just bringing back a great actor.
It probably came down to money. Like Nick Locarno being renamed Tom Paris for Voyager, Macet was likely renamed Dukat to avoid having to pay royalties to the writer of "The Wounded" every time the character appeared on Deep Space Nine.
I'm not so sure. If you look at Paris and Locarno, the appearance, speech, and mannerisms are all identical between the two characters, even the backstories. If you look at Macet and Dukat, though, their appearances do differ somewhat, and their speech and mannerisms (despite being played by the same actor) do differ pretty significantly. Macet does not display any of the arrogance Dukat does; he's in a bad position and having to cover for his government's duplicity, yes, but he only shows anger as a result of Picard's incompetence in dealing with the situation--and even then, you can see him remove himself from the bridge at one point to keep from exploding any further...an act of restraint Dukat wouldn't have had in him. Macet speaks much more softly most of the time and when it comes to body language, you don't see him parade around and invade people's space the way Dukat does. Rather, Macet has more of a direct, military-march sort of mannerism that comes off as strong but not as posturing.
Since Dukat was probably pretty established in the script before Marc was cast, I highly doubt anyone considered making them the same character. The only time I know that merging two character played by the same actor came up were the Romulans Carolyn Seymour played in "Contagion" and "Face of the Enemy". (Apparently they were kept separate because producers mistakenly believed she'd been killed off in "Contagion").
...Perhaps she was? Our heroes ran away before they would have been able to tell whether the Warbird of Commander Taris recovered from the software weapon or succumbed to it. Sometimes "return of an old nemesis" stories work very well even when there's no logical reason for the old nemesis to cross paths with our heroes again. The Commander of the Warbird that Troi infiltrated was not on a mission in any way relating to Picard or the Enterprise, so having her be Taris would have been quite a coincidence. But the writers could have forced us to swallow that coincidence, and made references to the Commander having once been humiliated by Troi's very starship, thus heightening the tension of what would happen if Troi got exposed. On the other hand, the story worked well without such references. Personally, I'm happy the TNG/DS9/VOY Cardassian character crossovers were essentially limited to Gul Evek, and kept elegantly in context. I would have loved to see a TNG Ferengi military character visit DS9 in some role, though - mainly because I think the military (privateering?) side of the Ferengi culture would have warranted some mention in DS9. Timo Saloniemi
Most likely, yes. But whereas Gowron only appears a handful of times, Tom Paris appeared in every VOY episode. That's a lot more checks. It also depends on how the writers contacts were worded.
Since Gowron showed up in more than one TNG episode, he was no longer the property of the writer who created him he was the property of the show itself and there were no royalties involved in his usage in DS9. Locarno was only in one TNG episode so there would be a royalty issue.
Huh.. I didn't know that. Then couldn't they have worked Locarno into Preemptive Strike somehow then since Season 7 was running when they were setting up the Voyager concept?
I don't get why so many people have this confusion. It's simply the same actor, but a different character. One seldom hears/reads people confuse Lacarno with Tom Paris.