Cast the Characters of Trek Literature
- Thread starter Haval_Runa
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He put 18 minuets into one song? 
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...
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...
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.
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!
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Star Trek Voyager - Spirit Walk 1 - 2
Lt. Lyssa Campbell - Charity Shea
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1634966016/nm1692976
Lt./ Counselor Astall - Liv Tyler
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3156318976/nm0000239
Lt. Akolo Tare - Marsha Thomason
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1879938816/nm0859720
Starfleet Intelligence Libby Webber - Jennifer Connelly
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1820236032/nm0000124
Another stellar cast!
Lt. Lyssa Campbell - Charity Shea
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1634966016/nm1692976
Lt./ Counselor Astall - Liv Tyler
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3156318976/nm0000239
Lt. Akolo Tare - Marsha Thomason
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1879938816/nm0859720
Starfleet Intelligence Libby Webber - Jennifer Connelly
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1820236032/nm0000124
Another stellar cast!
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...
I do not think that word means what you think it means...
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.
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.
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.
And isn't Lyssa Campbell always described as blonde?
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