Worst Star trek actor ever

Discussion in 'General Trek Discussion' started by The Overlord, Feb 11, 2011.

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  1. Nerys Myk

    Nerys Myk A Spock and a smile Premium Member

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    Bakula's performance always seemed off. I was very disappointed with his work. Billingsley was great and managed to rise above the material.
     
  2. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    Holy crap! An opinion different than mine! Is this where I try to demean you for thinking differently than me? :rofl:
     
  3. Nerys Myk

    Nerys Myk A Spock and a smile Premium Member

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    Not if I demean you first!!!!!!!!
     
  4. Danger Ace

    Danger Ace Commander Red Shirt

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    Well, I did say "good" to the extent the writting allowed. Bakula is recognized as being a fine actor. Billingsly also known to be very good at character work. The writing simply did not support the talent (again, Blalock's unbridled awfulness being excluded from that sentiment).

    I mean Blalock was so bad anorexics used to watch her performances as T'Pol to purge themselves of their most recent meal.
     
  5. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    Bakula wasn't cutout for the role. He simply wasn't the type of actor that could project authority. That has nothing to do with writing and everything to do with acting style.

    As far as Blalock goes, we'll simply have to agree to disagree.
     
  6. Danger Ace

    Danger Ace Commander Red Shirt

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    Agreed.
     
    Last edited: Mar 31, 2013
  7. TorontoTrekker

    TorontoTrekker Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I've met him as well, on multiple occasions, and I have to agree, he's actually very warm and really enjoys meeting his fans. The issue with his acting in TOS is that the crew was not an ensemble, as is common today, but that Sulu was part of the second tier of cast members. With the exception of "The Naked Time", I can't recall him having anything interesting to do in the entire series. All he was there for was to push buttons and occasionally say, "Aye aye, sir."

    I did think he was a little off in his Voyager episode, but he was essentially trying to duplicate a performance he'd given five years earlier. Unless you're performing in theatre, doing the same role every night, that's not easy. When they broke away from replicating scenes from TUC, his performance got a lot better. Grace Lee Whitney was a thousand times worse in that episode, IMO.

    I was going to cite Frank Gorshin in this thread myself. He was stiff in the role, and every time he had to say the name "Cheron", he paused as though he was trying to remember how it was pronounced. (I'm pretty sure he pronounced it in at least two different ways in the episode, too.)

    And you can add me to the list of people who didn't like Jolene Blalock's acting, either. It always seemed to me that she was trying so hard to present an unemotional facade that her face would actually twitch from the strain.

    It seems that a common problem among actors who have guest-starred as Vulcans is that they feel like they have to show that they're being unemotional, instead of letting the unemotional dialogue do most of the work for them. "Unemotional" does not have to equal "wooden". In the case of Jolene Blalock, her acting is probably the whole reason they had to do the "Stigma" storyline and retcon Surak's influence to occur more recently in Vulcan history than we'd otherwise been led to believe. (It didn't help that Gary Graham - who is otherwise a fine actor - played Ambassador Soval like he was constantly on the verge of a temper tantrum.)
     
  8. Anwar

    Anwar Admiral Admiral

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    You can do Vulcan and show some depth, Tim Russ and Mark Lenard pulled off full-blooded Vulcans nicely.
     
  9. Danger Ace

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    With Mark Lenard doing it brilliantly. He is full on logical and disciplined but you never once doubt his love for his wife, Amanda, nor his feelings for his son, Spock. Just a super-talented actor. :techman:
     
  10. Danger Ace

    Danger Ace Commander Red Shirt

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    I always felt a common misperception seemed to be people thinking Vulcans didn't have or deeply repressed emotions without any mechanism for release (except Ponn Farr). Vulcans, to my mind, were highly disciplined not emotionless. They felt things but were raised to be stoic - this was done through the embracing of logic as a philosophy.
     
  11. YellowSubmarine

    YellowSubmarine Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Guy who played Morn. Wooden featureless performance.
     
  12. Amaris

    Amaris Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Seriously! His line reading was dreadful!
     
  13. Mysterion

    Mysterion Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Denise Crosby. She was smart to have pulled the escape lever when she did.
     
  14. Shaka Zulu

    Shaka Zulu Commodore Commodore

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    Plus, Wes Studi is an actual First Nations person, unlike Beltran.

    I would've gone with Adam Beach as Chakotay, but around the time Voyager started, he was quite young to be a First Officer on any ship.
     
  15. Mysterion

    Mysterion Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I would have gone with Graham Greene (Dances With Wolves) as Chakotay. Older, wiser, a real sense of gravitas. Would have set up a more interesting relationship between that chartacter and Janeway, IMO.
     
  16. TorontoTrekker

    TorontoTrekker Vice Admiral Admiral

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  17. heavy lids

    heavy lids Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Wang, Beltran, or the entire ENT cast.
     
  18. Gov Kodos

    Gov Kodos Admiral Admiral

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    Wang or Beltran, especially when set off against Ethan Phillips who could give real feeling to his character in spite of becoming a one note gag for much of the series. His professionalism should have shamed those two into silence.
     
  19. Shaka Zulu

    Shaka Zulu Commodore Commodore

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    ^I'd also go with Beltran and Wang, the latter especially for his whining about how he didn't get to direct when he couldn't or wasn't willing to put in the hours to learn how to do it in the informal 'school' set up by Berman & Braga that helped Frakes, Burton, McNeil and Dawson become directors later on in life. If Beltran didn't like the show, he should have quit.
     
  20. Sam_I_Am

    Sam_I_Am Captain Captain

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    I don't think at all that Colm Meaney is the worst Trek actor but I do remember one TNG episode when O'Brien and Keiko were eating dinner. Something struck the ship and it shuddered, and O'Brien said, 'something's wrong!'. Something in his expression and delivery had my mother and I burst out laughing.
     
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