Cast the Characters of Trek Literature

Discussion in 'Trek Literature' started by Haval_Runa, Apr 10, 2006.

  1. KRAD

    KRAD Keith R.A. DeCandido Admiral

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    ^ One of the great folk singers of our time. Also one of the funniest. And one of my personal heroes.
     
  2. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I'm just trying to get over the fact that he actually did an 18 minuet song.
     
  3. TJ Sinclair

    TJ Sinclair Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    He put 18 minuets into one song? :eek:

    Seriously, though... I really shouldn't be surprised that someone today hasn't heard of Arlo or Woody Guthrie... Jeez, in twenty years, people might not know who Bob Dylan is...
     
  4. KRAD

    KRAD Keith R.A. DeCandido Admiral

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    The actual song isn't 18 minutes. In fact, it isn't even a song, it's just a single refrain. But the rest of the time is taken up with the story of how he was arrested for littering in 1965 and later that year was drafted, and how the former experience had an effect on the latter. It's hilarious (all the more so for the fact that it's true), and one of the great touchstones of the 1960s counterculture movement.
     
  5. Sci

    Sci Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    For me it's almost a 50/50 mixture. There are some novel characters that I can't help but see certain actors as -- Edward James Olmost as Reyes, Ewan McGregor as Tim Pennington, Vincent Kartheiser as Shar, Sean Maher as Vedek Yevir, Kurtwood Smith as Kant Jorel, Stanley Adams as Cervantes Quinn, Bruce McGill as Koll Azernal, Peter MacNicol as Min Zife, John F. Kennedy as Kenneth Wescott.

    On the other hand, there are some characters where I just can't quite find an actor who completely embodies how I view the character, even if I find people with similar energies or close approximations. No one quite matches my views of T'Prynn, Lurqal, Jetanien, Elias Vaughn, Rana Desai, Safranski, Jas Abrik, Miranda Kadohata, or Jasminder Choudhury.

    To me the most vivid example of this is actually Nan Bacco. I have an incredibly vivid, specific view of Bacco, down to a sense of certain physical tics that aren't even described in the texts, but there's no actor I'm aware of who fully embodies my view of the character. Actually, the closest I can even think of to my view of Bacco is my 11th grade English teacher!
     
  6. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I meant minutes, for some reason I can never remember how it's spelled.

    I really like to try to cast as many of the characters as possible when I read a book, partly because I like to see if I can match someone up, and also because it really helps me to picture what's going on if I can get a good mental template for the character, locations, ect. I can usually come up with my own mental picture when I don't have an actor, like Choudhury, I have an actress in my cast list, but I've never seen her in anything and she was only breifly mentioned on the thread, and after Destiny I don't think she quite looks right. As for some of the people you mentioned, I go with Bruce Boxleitner for Vaughn, and... huh, I actually don't have anyone for Jetanien. I also go with KRAD's pick of Stephanie Jacobsen from BSG, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

    Oh, and when I cast I try to go mostly on appearances and voice ect. , because IMO as long the actor is good they could probably pull of the character.
     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2009
  7. KRAD

    KRAD Keith R.A. DeCandido Admiral

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    That's okay, the physical and verbal template for Nan Bacco is my late great-grandmother (after whom the character was named). :)
     
  8. TJ Sinclair

    TJ Sinclair Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Simon Tam as Yevir? Seriously? Wow, never would have thought of that one. And honestly, I never thought of McGregor as Pennington until the idea showed up in David's notes. After that, I think it works, but I'm not sure...

    Of those, the only ones I really have "cast" in my mind are Stephanie Jacobson as Kadohata, and either Robert Duvall or Harvey Keitel as Jetanian.

    For me, it's my second grade teacher, more or less. Bacco's an interesting case... there are confirmed influences on the character, which can swing perception one way or another. For me, these days, she's fifty percent Kate Mulgrew and fifty percent Cherry Jones.
     
  9. TJ Sinclair

    TJ Sinclair Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I know. I just couldn't resist the joke. :)
     
  10. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I've been thinking about Cherry Jones as Bacco too. President Taylor comes across pretty similar to the way I've imagined Bacco to be, so I can't help but think of her as Bacco now.
     
  11. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Good grief, that's just wrong. I believe the character is modelled on Billy Bob Thornton, though my personal choice is Richard Dean Anderson in his Legend mode.
     
  12. William Leisner

    William Leisner Scribbler Rear Admiral

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    Just for the record, the quote within this quote is erroneously attributed to me. I quite honestly never do mental casting as I read, and while I experimented with mental casting when writing The Insolence of Office, I don't know that it really helped a whole lot.
     
  13. Sci

    Sci Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Yeah, I'd be the one who wrote what's attributed to William.

    *shrugs* When I read Cervantes Quinn, I always end up picturing a gruffer, less humorously white-washed Cyrano Jones.

    Seriously. My mental image of Quinn is Adams as Cyrano Jones, puking in the corner at a bar because he took one too many shots of tequila.
     
  14. Kermett

    Kermett Ensign Red Shirt

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  15. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Libby Webber was played onscreen by Jennifer Gatti. And Akolo Tare is Polynesian.

    I do not think that word means what you think it means...
     
  16. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    No offense Kermett, but you might want to stop with the "perfect cast" , or "stellar cast" stuff, because most of those haven't been.
     
  17. KRAD

    KRAD Keith R.A. DeCandido Admiral

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    For the record, there are two characters in A Singular Destiny for whom I had particular people in mind cast in the role.

    One, as stated elsewhere in this thread, is Arlo Guthrie, best known as a folk singer, but also an actor (he appeared as himself in the Alice's Restaurant movie, appeared in an episode of Renegade as a fugitive, and was a regular on the short-lived 1990s series The Byrds of Paradise), is the template for Sonek Pran. Arlo's a Star Trek fan, and he and I exchanged e-mails a while back, and when I was developing the character of Sonek (a character type that I've had in my head for a while, to wit, someone who functions entirely on the strength of his words), I realized that he was Arlo -- well, kinda. :) In any case, he's who I had in mind.

    The other one is David Nykl as Bojan Hadzic. I was originally going to use the da Vinci as the S.C.E. ship dealing with Maxia Zeta, but then TerriO -- who is much smarter than me -- pointed out that using the da Vinci on top of President Bacco and the Gorkon was getting a little too self-indulgent (even for Mr. Self-Indulgent Me). So I switched to the Musgrave, keeping Stevens as a familiar character. Given the similarities between the S.C.E. and the Stargate franchises, I thought it might be fun to see what it would be like if my favorite Stargate character, Radek Zelenka from Atlantis (played by Nykl), served on an S.C.E. ship. So Hadzic is pretty much Zelenka transported to the Trek universe. :)
     
  18. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Ok, now I'm intrigued, because I've always liked Zelenka too.
     
  19. TJ Sinclair

    TJ Sinclair Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Please, stop with the self-impressed commentary. We get that you're a legend in your own mind, and it's getting tiresome.

    Do you actually read the novels you're proposing cast for? And have you actually watched the series they're based on? Because, it really seems like you have no idea what you're talking about.
     
  20. Turtletrekker

    Turtletrekker Admiral Admiral

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    And isn't Lyssa Campbell always described as blonde?