I was just watching TNG "Lower Decks on BBC America (why is it on BBC America? One Brit qualifies a series?). The character of Ben in 10 Forward, in his mannerisms and how he acts, seems a whole lot like Guinan. I think he does a great job with the character, but it soooo feels like Guinan in the way he coaches people into talking to each other...the way Guinan does it. It's a shame we never see him again...not even on DS9.
^ Would've been a great twist, even in a novel. As far as BBCA running the show, at least it's on somewhere. Though with the blu-rays coming out, I've been avoiding watching it there. They are perpetually stuck in the S4-S6 cycle it seems.
The lines were originally written for Guinan, but Whoopi was suddenly unavailable. There was an intention, in the early planning of DS9, that Guinan's son might be imprisoned there, this giving the writers an opening to use Guinan on that series. Ultimately, they ended up with Martus Mazar, who used his El-Aurian talents (and canonizing the name of Guinan's species) to cheat at Quark's.
Marina Sirtis also has British ancestry. I remember an interview she did, and talked about the London premiere of one of the TNG films that the Queen attended, where she & Patrick Stewart had to bow/curtsy or whatever to her out of respect & such.
This was a very successful character and was well played by Bruce Beatty. I would have liked to see more of this character... but he was introduced ten episodes before the end of the series, so there was no time left...
No, she is English by birth, with Greek ancestry. She was born in London and grew up in England, although she has now taken on American nationality.
Really? Wouldn't that partly defeat the purpose of the episode? Ben, like the rest of them, was a 'lower decks' character. Isn't that the point of all this?
It wasn't the original point. The point was for Guinan to do her usual listening-to-problems shtick. When Whoopi was unavailable, the writers decided to add one more "lower decks" character to the mix, thus strengthening the script's theme. I believe this anecdote is reported in the Asherman "TNG Companion", but I heard it from Richard Arnold at an Aussie convention before that edition came out.
I think it was for the best that Guinan wasn't in this episode. Her presence would have definitely overshadowed the Lower Decks characters.
That would have been an interesting move indeed, but it wasn't what was planned. As some have said, the TNG Companion says that he was shoehorned in when Whoopi wasn't available. However, the DS9 producers did originally conceive Martus Mazur from the episode Rivals to be Guinan's wayward son, but this was lost during production. They wanted him to be a recurring character, but the episode was a stinker so he was quietly dropped.